We are told of the good Sir Matthew Hale who was animated with a true zeal for holiness, an earnest desire to walk close to God, that he had continually in his mouth the modern Latin proverb, _We perish by permitted things_.[200] Assuredly it is one very well worthy to be of all remembered, searching as it does into the innermost secrets of men’s lives. It is no doubt true that nearly as much danger threatens the soul from things permitted as from things unpermitted; in some respects more danger; for these being disallowed altogether, do not make the insidious approaches of those, which, coming in under allowance, do yet so easily slip into dangerous excess. * * * * * [Sidenote: Proverbs and Scripture.] It would be interesting to collect, as with reverence one might, variations on scriptural proverbs or sayings, which the proverbs of this world supply; and this, both in those cases where the latter have grown out of the former, owing more nearly or more remotely their existence to them, and in those also where they are independent of them,—so far, that is, as anything true can be independent of the absolute Truth. Some of those which follow evidently belong to one of these classes, some to the other. Thus Solomon has said: “It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house;” (Prov. xxi. 9;) and again: “Better a dry morsel and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife.” (Prov. xvii. 1.) With these compare the two proverbs, a Latin and Spanish, adduced below.[201] The Psalmist has said: “As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him.” (Ps. cix. 17.) The Turks express their faith in this same law of the divine retaliations: _Curses, like chickens, always come home to roost_; they return, that is, to those from whom they went forth, while in the Yoruba language there is a proverb to the same effect: _Ashes always fly back in the face of him that throws them_; while our own, _Harm watch, harm catch_, and the Spanish, _Who sows thorns, let him not walk barefoot_,[202] are utterances of very nearly the same conviction. Our Lord declares, that without his Father there falls no single sparrow to the ground, that “not one of them is forgotten before God.” (Luke xii. 6.) The same truth of a _providentia specialissima_, (between which and no providence at all there is indeed no tenable position,) is asserted in the Catalan proverb: _No leaf moves, but God wills it_.[203] Again, He has said: “No man can serve two masters.” (Matt. vi. 24.) And the Spanish proverb: _He who must serve two masters, must lie to one_.[204] Or compare with Matt. xix. 29, this remarkable Arabic proverb: _Purchase the next world with this; so shalt thou win both_. He has spoken of “mammon of unrighteousness”—indicating hereby, in Leighton’s words, “that iniquity is so involved in the notion of riches, that it can very hardly be separated from them;” and this phrase Jerome