Or doth the Almighty pervert righteousness?

A man, to save the honour of his regiment, may impair the efficiency of an army, or, to promote the interests of his college or school, may inflict a lasting injury on education, or, to protect his associates, may withhold or pervert evidence, or, to aggrandize his trade, may ruin his country.

According to Wordsworth, society and the crowded unnatural life of cities tend to weaken and pervert humanity; and a return to natural and simple living is the only remedy for human wretchedness.

Contumax voluntas, as Melancthon calls it, malum facit: this stubborn will of ours perverts judgment, which sees and knows what should and ought to be done, and yet will not do it.

He had completely lost, in his own case, the keen power of diagnosis of the observant physician, and if he still continued to reason about it, it was only to confound and pervert symptoms, under the influence of the moral and physical depression into which he had fallen.