It falls out often, that a benefit is followed with an injury; let which will be foremost, it is with the latter as with one writing upon another; it does in a great measure hide the former, and keep it from appearing, but it does not quite take it away. We may in some cases divide them, and both requite the one, and revenge the other; or otherwise compare them, to know whether I am creditor or debtor. You have obliged me in my servant, but wounded me in my brother; you have saved my son, but have destroyed my father; in this instance, I will allow as much as piety, and justice, and good nature, will bear; but I am not willing to set an injury against a benefit. I would have some respect to the time; the obligation came first; and then, perhaps, the one was designed, the other against his will; under these considerations I would amplify the benefit, and lessen the injury; and extinguish the one with the other; nay, I would pardon the injury even _without_ the benefit, but much more _after_ it. Not that a man can be bound by one benefit to suffer all sorts of injuries; for there are some cases wherein we lie under no obligation for a benefit; because a greater injury absolves it: as, for example, a man helps me out of a law-suit, and afterwards commits a rape upon my daughter; where the following impiety cancels the antecedent obligation. A man lends me a little money, and then sets my house on fire; the debtor is here turned creditor, when the injury outweighs the benefit. Nay, if a man does but so much as repent the good office done, and grow sour and insolent upon it, and upbraid me with it; if he did it only for his own sake, or for any other reason than for mine, I am in some degree, more or less, acquitted of the obligation. I am not at all beholden to him that makes me the instrument of his own advantage. He that does me good for his own sake, I will do him good for mine. Suppose a man makes suit for a place, and cannot obtain it, but upon the ransom of ten slaves out of the galleys. If there be ten, and _no more_, they owe him nothing for their redemption; but _they_ are indebted to him for the choice, where he might have taken ten others as well as these. Put the case again, that by an act of grace so many prisoners are to be released, their names to be drawn by lot, and mine happens to come out among the rest: one part of my obligation is to him that put me in a capacity of freedom, and the other is to Providence for my being one of that number. The greatest benefits of all have no witnesses, but lie concealed in the conscience.