These truths survive in travesty, swamped in a world of spiritual darkness and confusion; and what a few comprehend and faithfully hold, the many, in their dead jargon, repeat, degrade, and misinterpret.
So far of Respectability; what the Covenanters used to call 'rank conformity': the deadliest gag and wet blanket that can be laid on men.
And now of Profit.

And this doctrine is perhaps the more redoubtable, because it harms all sorts of men; not only the heroic and self-reliant, but the obedient, cowlike squadrons.

A man, by this doctrine, looks to consequences at the second, or third, or fiftieth turn.

He chooses his end, and for that, with wily turns and through a great sea of tedium, steers this mortal bark.

There may be political wisdom in such a view; but I am persuaded there can spring no great moral zeal.