Dishonesty (saith Cardan) is nothing else but folly and madness. [433] Probus quis nobiscum vivit? Show me an honest man, Nemo malus qui non stultus, 'tis Fabius' aphorism to the same end. If none honest, none wise, then all fools. And well may they be so accounted: for who will account him otherwise, Qui iter adornat in occidentem, quum properaret in orientem? that goes backward all his life, westward, when he is bound to the east? or hold him a wise man (saith [434]Musculus) that prefers momentary pleasures to eternity, that spends his master's goods in his absence, forthwith to be condemned for it? Nequicquam sapit qui sibi non sapit, who will say that a sick man is wise, that eats and drinks to overthrow the temperature of his body? Can you account him wise or discreet that would willingly have his health, and yet will do nothing that should procure or continue it? [435]Theodoret, out of Plotinus the Platonist, holds it a ridiculous thing for a man to live after his own laws, to do that which is offensive to God, and yet to hope that he should save him: and when he voluntarily neglects his own safety, and contemns the means, to think to be delivered by another: who will say these men are wise? A third argument may be derived from the precedent, [436]all men are carried away with passion, discontent, lust, pleasures, &c., they generally hate those virtues they should love, and love such vices they should hate. Therefore more than melancholy, quite mad, brute beasts, and void of reason, so Chrysostom contends; or rather dead and buried alive, as [437] Philo Judeus concludes it for a certainty, of all such that are carried away with passions, or labour of any disease of the mind. Where is fear and sorrow, there [438]Lactantius stiffly maintains, wisdom cannot dwell, ———qui cupiet, metuet quoque porro, Qui metuens vivit, liber mihi non erit unquam.[439]