He is a spiritual highwayman that
robs on the road to heaven. His professions and his actions agree like a
sweet voice and a stinking breath.
AN OPINIONATER
Is his own confidant, that maintains more opinions than he is able to
support. They are all bastards commonly and unlawfully begotten, but
being his own, he had rather, out of natural affection, take any pains,
or beg, than they should want a subsistence. The eagerness and violence
he uses to defend them argues they are weak, for if they were true they
would not need it. How false soever they are to him, he is true to them;
and as all extraordinary affections of love or friendship are usually
upon the meanest accounts, he is resolved never to forsake them, how
ridiculous soever they render themselves and him to the world. He is a
kind of a knight-errant that is bound by his order to defend the weak
and distressed, and deliver enchanted paradoxes, that are bewitched and
held by magicians and conjurers in invisible castles. He affects to have
his opinions as unlike other men's as he can, no matter whether better
or worse, like those that wear fantastic clothes of their own devising.
No force of argument can prevail upon him; for, like a madman, the
strength of two men in their wits is not able to hold him down. His
obstinacy grows out of his ignorance, for probability has so many ways
that whosoever understands them will not be confident of any one. He
holds his opinions as men do their lands, and though his tenure be
litigious, he will spend all he has to maintain it.
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