And whatever authority the learned Mr.
Lowde places in his Old English Dictionary, I daresay it nowhere tells
him (if I should appeal to it) that the same action is not in credit,
called and counted a virtue, in one place, which, being in disrepute,
passes for and under the name of vice in another. The taking notice that
men bestow the names of 'virtue' and 'vice' according to this rule of
Reputation is all I have done, or can be laid to my charge to have done,
towards the making vice virtue or virtue vice. But the good man does
well, and as becomes his calling, to be watchful in such points, and to
take the alarm even at expressions, which, standing alone by themselves,
might sound ill and be suspected.
'Tis to this zeal, allowable in his function, that I forgive his citing
as he does these words of mine (ch. xxviii. sect. II): "Even the
exhortations of inspired teachers have not feared to appeal to common
repute, Philip, iv. 8;" without taking notice of those immediately
preceding, which introduce them, and run thus: "Whereby even in the
corruption of manners, the true boundaries of the law of nature, which
ought to be the rule of virtue and vice, were pretty well preserved.
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