In a discussion between Good and Evil it is sometimes hard to find examples of one or the other.
L’Estrange version
There happen’d a discourse in very good company, upon the subject of Religion and Hypocrisy; and how hard a matter it was, in the case of an artificial disguise, to know the one from the other; thought the Scripture allows us, and says one to his next man, do you know such a person? Oh very well, says t’other; hes one of the holiest men to heavenward that ever you met with, but the arrantest rascal among his neighbours in the whole parish.
Moral
‘Tis not the name, the semblance, or the ostentation of Religion and holiness that will attone for the abuse on’t: In making God the author, the director and the abettor of these flagitious villanies in Christians, that Pagans themselves would have an abhorrence for. But when all comes to all, a knave in his practice, is a knave in his heart too.