THE FROG AND THE FOX.
A Frog leaping out of the lake, and taking the advantage of a rising ground, made a proclamation to all the beasts of the forest, that he was an able physician, and for curing all manner of distempers, would turn his back to no person living. This discourse, with the aid of some hard cramp words, which nobody understood, made the beasts admire his learning, and give credit to every thing he said. At last, the Fox, who was present, with indignation asked him, how he could have the impudence, with those thin lanthorn jaws, that meagre pale phiz, and blotched spotted body, to pretend to cure the infirmities of others?
APPLICATION.
A sickly and infirm look is as disadvantageous in a physician, as a rakish one in a clergyman, or a sheepish one in a soldier. We should not set up for correctors of the faults of others, whilst we labour under the same ourselves. Good advice ought always to be followed, without our being prejudiced upon account of the person from whom it comes; but it is seldom that men can be brought to think us worth minding, when we prescribe cures for maladies with which we ourselves are afflicted. Physician heal thyself, is too scriptural, not to be applied upon such an occasion; and if we would avoid being the jest of an audience, we must be sound and free from those diseases of which we would endeavour to cure others. How shocked must people have been to hear a preacher for a whole hour declaim against drunkenness, when his own weaknesses have been such, that he could neither bear nor forbear drinking, and perhaps was the only person in the congregation who made the doctrine at that time necessary! Others, too, have been very zealous in censuring crimes, of which none were suspected more than themselves: but let such silly hypocrites remember, that they whose eyes want couching, are the most improper people in the world to set up for oculists.