THE THIEVES AND THE COCK.
Two Thieves broke into a house with a design to rob it; but when they had pried into every corner, found nothing worth taking away but a Cock, which they seized upon and carried off. When they were about to kill him, he begged very hard that they would spare his life, putting them in mind how useful he was to mankind, by crowing and calling them up betimes to their work. You villain, replied they, it is for that very reason we will wring your head off; for you alarm and keep the people waking, so that we cannot rob in quiet for you.
APPLICATION.
The same thing which recommends us to the esteem of good people, will make those that are bad have nothing but hatred and ill-will towards us; for every man who has engaged himself in a vicious or wicked course of life, fiend-like, makes himself, as it were, the natural adversary of virtue. It is in vain for innocent men, under oppression, to complain to those who are the occasion of it: all they can urge will but make against them; and even their very innocence, though they should say nothing, would render them sufficiently suspected. The moral, therefore, that this Fable brings along with it, is to inform us that there is no trusting, nor any hopes of living well, with wicked unjust men; for their disposition is such, that they will do mischief to others as soon as they have the opportunity. When vice flourishes, and is in power, were it possible for a good man to live quietly in its neighbourhood, and preserve his integrity, it might be sometimes perhaps convenient for him to do so, rather than quarrel with and provoke it against him. But as it is certain that rogues are irreconcileable enemies to men of worth, if the latter would be secure, they must take methods to free themselves from the power and society of the former.