If they have been
corrupted, their elder relatives (if not themselves) might surely come into court and witness against him, and there is an opportunity still for them to appear.
This arises from the reasons given above; for his ministers, being all slaves and bondmen, can only be
corrupted with great difficulty, and one can expect little advantage from them when they have been
corrupted, as they cannot carry the people with them, for the reasons assigned.
Every living thing in the first place is composed of soul and body, of these the one is by nature the governor, the other the governed; now if we would know what is natural, we ought to search for it in those subjects in which nature appears most perfect, and not in those which are
corrupted; we should therefore examine into a man who is most perfectly formed both in soul and body, in whom this is evident, for in the depraved and vicious the body seems [1254b] to rule rather than the soul, on account of their being corrupt and contrary to nature.
I only hope that no friend or kinsman or acquaintance of mine, whether citizen or stranger, will ever be so mad as to allow himself to be
corrupted by them; for they are a manifest pest and corrupting influence to those who have to do with them.
But there are no real grounds for imagining that Providence has vouchsafed them so distinguishing a protection, and from the wars with which this empire hath been shaken in these latter ages we may justly believe that, like all others, it has suffered its revolutions, and that the history of the Abyssins is
corrupted with fables.
You shall read, in some of the friars' books of mortification, that a man should think with himself, what the pain is, if he have but his finger's end pressed, or tortured, and thereby imagine, what the pains of death are, when the whole body is
corrupted, and dissolved; when many times death passeth, with less pain than the torture of a limb; for the most vital parts, are not the quickest of sense.