Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/504

 imputation of being in the wrong; and that there is no action, how unreasonable or wicked soever it be, which those, who are guilty of it, will not attempt to vindicate, though, perhaps, by such a defence as aggravates the crime.

It is, indeed, common for men to conceal their faults, and gratify their passions in secret, and especially, when they are first initiated in vice, to make use rather of artifice and dissimulation, than audaciousness and effrontery. But the arts of hypocrisy, are, in time, exhausted, and some unhappy circumstance defeats those measures which they had laid for preventing a discovery. They are at length suspected, and, by that curiosity which suspicion always excites, closely pursued, and openly detected. It is then too late to think of deceiving mankind by false appearances, nor does any thing remain, but to avow boldly what can be no longer denied. Impudence is called in to the assistance of immorality; and the censures which cannot be escaped must be openly defied. Wickedness is in itself timorous, and naturally skulks in coverts and in darkness, but grows furious by despair, and, when it can fly no further, turns upon the pursuer.

Such is the state of a man abandoned to the indulgence of vitious inclinations. He justifies one crime by another; invents wicked principles to support wicked practices; endeavours rather to corrupt others, than own himself corrupted, and, to avoid that shame which a confession of his crimes would bring upon him, calls "evil good, and good evil, puts darkness for light, and light for darkness." He endeavours to trample upon those laws which he is known not to observe, to scoff at those truths which, if admitted, have an evident tendency to convict his whole behaviour of folly and absurdity, and, from having long neglected to obey God, rises at length into rebellion against him.

That no man ever became abandoned at once, is an old and common observation, which, like other assertions founded on experience, receives new confirmation by length of time. A man ventures upon wickedness, as