He believes a man's words and his meaning should never agree together;
for he that says what he thinks lays himself open to be expounded by the
most ignorant, and he who does not make his words rather serve to
conceal than discover the sense of his heart deserves to have it pulled
out, like a traitor's, and shown publicly to the rabble; for as a king,
they say, cannot reign without dissembling, so private men, without
that, cannot govern themselves with any prudence or discretion
imaginable. This is the only politic magic that has power to make a man
walk invisible, give him access into all men's privacies, and keep all
others out of his, which is as great an odds as it is to discover what
cards those he plays with have in their hands, and permit them to know
nothing of his; and, therefore, he never speaks his own sense, but that
which he finds comes nearest to the meaning of those he converses with,
as birds are drawn into nets by pipes that counterfeit their own voices.
By this means he possesses men, like the devil, by getting within them
before they are aware, turns them out of themselves, and either betrays
or renders them ridiculous, as he finds it most agreeable either to his
humour or his occasions.
As for religion, he believes a wise man ought to possess it only that he
may not be observed to have freed himself from the obligations of it,
and so teach others by his example to take the same freedom. For he who
is at liberty has a great advantage over all those whom he has to deal
with, as all hypocrites find by perpetual experience that one of the
best uses that can be made of it is to take measure of men's
understandings and abilities by it, according as they are more or less
serious in it.
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