Page:Fables of Aesop and other eminent mythologists.djvu/153

Rh rantably Perform; for a Subequent Promie to Connceale the Fox could not Dicharge him of a Prior Obligation to Detroy him. 'Tis true, it would have been more Generous to have don’t at firt, and while he had as yet No Colour of any Tye of Honour upon him to Preerve him. The Fox begg’d for Protection, which he had No Reaon to Expect. Firt it was upon Force, and Neceity, not Choice. Secondly, It was at his own Peril, without any Conditions for his own Security. Thirdly, He Committed himelf to the Mercy of a Man that was bound ro Kill him. Fourthly, The very Addres was candalous; for he mut needs have an Ill Opinion of the Countryman, o much as to Imagine that He could be Wrought upon to Betray his Country for the fake of a Beat. But let the Ret be as it will, there’s no Excue for the Woodman's Double Dealing.

Man that had a Great Veneration for an Image he had in his Houe, found, that the more he Pray'd to't to Proper him in the World, the More he went down the Wind till. This put him into uch a Rage, to lye Dogging at his Prayers o much, and o Long, to o Little Purpoe, that at lat he Daht the Head on’t to pieces againt the Wall; and Out comes a Coniderable Quantity of Gold. Why This 'us, ays he, to Adore a Pervere and Inenible Deity, that will do More for Blowes than for Worhip.

Fable runs better in the Humour, then it does in the Moral. It lays before us the Unprofitable Vanity of a Fale Worhip, and gives us to Underland, that the more zealous we are in a Wrong Way, the Wore. An Idol is an Abomination in the fight both of God, and of Good Men; and yet we are o to Govern our Selves, even in the Tranports of That Abhorrence, as till to Preerve a Reverence for Religion it elf, in the very Indignation we Expres for the Corruptions of it. So that the Licene of this Buffoon went a little too far perhaps, for there mut be No Playing with Things Sacred, nor Jeting, as we ay, with Edge Tools. We have the Moral of this Abandon’d Libertine up and down the World in a Thouand Several Shapes. All People that Worhip for Fear, Profit, or ome other By End, fall More or Les within the Intendment of this Emblem. It is a kind of a Conditional Devotion for Men to be Religious no longer then they can Save, or Get by't. Put foribly Hand now (ays the Devil to the Almighty in the Cae