The bravest spirit is the best qualified for a penitent.

He, then, that will be honest, must dare to confess that he has been a knave." But the man that has been sick is half a physician, and therefore he is both well fitted to counsel others, and being convinced of the sin and folly of his former errors, is of all men the least likely to repeat them.

Want of courage was not a feature in Defoe's diplomacy.

He thus boldly described the particular form of dishonesty with which, when he wrote the description, he was practising upon the unconscious Mr.Mist.
"There is an ugly word called cunning, which is very pernicious to it [honesty], and which particularly injures it by hiding it from our discovery and making it hard to find.
This is so like honesty that many a man has been deceived with it, and have taken one for t'other in the markets: nay, I have heard of some who have planted this _wild honesty_, as we may call it, in their own ground, have made use of it in their friendship and dealings, and thought it had been the true plant.

But they always lost credit by it, and that was not the worst neither, for they had the loss who dealt with them, and who chaffered for a counterfeit commodity; and we find many deceived so still, which is the occasion there is such an outcry about false friends, and about sharping and tricking in men's ordinary dealings with the world." A master-mind in the art of working a man, as Bacon calls it, is surely apparent here.