At the same time, when I affirm this, I find it necessary to make certain explanations, to draw certain distinctions. In the first place, I would not, by what I have said, in the least deny that an ample number of coarse proverbs are extant: it needs but to turn over a page or two of Ray’s _Collection of English Proverbs_, or of Howell’s, or indeed of any collection in any tongue, which has not been weeded carefully, to convince oneself of the fact;—nor yet would I deny, that of these many may, more or less, live upon the lips of men. Having their birth, for the most part, in a period of a nation’s literature and life, when men are much more plain-spoken, and have far fewer reticences than is afterwards the case, it is nothing strange that some of them, employing words forbidden now, but not forbidden then, should sound coarse and indelicate enough in our ears: while indeed there are others, whose offence and grossness these considerations, while they may mitigate, are quite insufficient to excuse. But at the same time, gross words and images, (I speak not of wanton ones,) bad as they may be, are altogether different from immoral maxims and rules of life. And it is these immoral maxims, unrighteous, selfish, or otherwise unworthy rules, of which I would affirm the number to be, if not absolutely, yet relatively small. And then further, in estimating the morality of proverbs, this also will claim in justice not to be forgotten. In the same manner as coarse proverbs are not necessarily immoral, so the application which is made of a proverb by us may very often be hardhearted and selfish, while yet the proverb itself is very far from so being. This selfishness and hardness lay not in it of primary intention, but only by our abuse; and in the cases of several, these two things, the proverb itself, and the ordinary employment of it, will demand to be kept carefully apart from one another. For instance: _He has made his bed, and now he must lie on it_;—_As he has brewed, so he must drink_;—_As he has sown, so must he reap_;[144]—if these are employed to justify us in refusing to save others, so far as we may, from the consequences of their own folly, or imprudence, or even guilt, why then one can only say that they are very ill employed; and there are few of us with whom it would not have gone hardly, had all those about us acted in the spirit of these proverbs so misinterpreted; had they refused to mitigate for us, so far as they could, the consequences of our errors. But if the words are taken in their true sense, as homely announcements of that law of divine retaliations in the world, according to which men shall eat of the fruit of their own doings, and be filled with their own ways, who shall gainsay them? What affirm they more than every page of Scripture, every turn of human life, is affirming too, namely, that the everlasting order of God’s universe cannot be violated with impunity, that there