forcing his understanding to patronise those appetites, which it is its chief business to hinder and reform. The cause of virtue requires fo little art to defend it, and good and evil, when they have been once fhewn, are fo eafily diftinguished, that fuch apologists feldom gain profelytes to their party, nor have their fallacies power to deceive any but thofe whose defires have clouded their difcernment. All that the best faculties thus employed can perform is, to perfuade the hearers that the man is hopeless whom they only thought vicious, that corruption has paffed from his manners to his principles, that all endeavours for his recovery are without profpect of fuccefs, and that nothing remains but to avoid him as infectious, or hunt him down as deftructive. But if it be supposed that he may impofe on his audience by partial representations of confequences, intricate deductions of remote caufes, or perplexed combinations of ideas, which having various relations, appear different as viewed on different fides; that he may fometimes puzzle the weak and well-meaning, and now and then feduce, by the admiration of his abilities, a young mind ftill fluctuating in unfettled notions, and neither fortified by inftruction nor enlightened by experience; yet what must be the event of fuch a triumph? A man cannot fpend all this life in frolick: age, or disease, or folitude, will bring fome hours of serious confideration, and it will then afford no comfort to think, that he has extended the dominion of vice, that he has loaded himfelf.. with the the crimes of others, and can never know the ex tent of his own wickedness, or make reparation for the mifchief that he has caufed. There is not perhaps in all the ftores of ideal anguish, a thought more painful, than the confciousness of having propagated corruption by vitiating principles, of having not only drawn others from the paths of virtue, but blocked up the way by which they should return, of having blinded them to every beauty but the paint of pleasure, and deafened them to every call but the alluring voice of the fyrens of deftruction. There is yet another danger in this practice: men who cannot deceive others, are very often fuccessful in deceiving themselves; they weave their fophiftry till their own reafon is entangled, and repeat their pofitions till they are credited by themfelves; by often contending they grow fincere in the cause, and by long wifhing for demonftrative arguments, they at laft bring themfelves to fancy that they had found them. They are then at the uttermoft verge of wickednefs, and may die without having that light rekindled in their minds, which their own pride and contumacy have extinguished. The men who can be charged with fewest failings, either with refpect to abilities or virtue, are generally most ready to allow them: for not to dwell on things of folemn and awful confideration, the humility of confeffors, the tears of faints, and the dying terrors of perfons eminent for piety and innocence, it is well known that Cæfar wrote an an account of the errors committed by him in his wars of Gaul, and that Hippocrates, whofe name is perhaps in rational estimation greater than Cæfar's, warned pofterity against a mistake into which he had fallen. So much, fays Celfus, does the open and artless confeffion of an error become a man confcious that he has enough remaining to support his character. As all error is meannefs, it is incumbent on every man who confults his own dignity, to retract it as foon as he discovers it, without fearing any cenfure fo much as that of his own mind. As justice requires that all injuries fhould be repaired, it is the duty of him who has feduced others by bad practices or falfe notions, to endeavour that fuch as have adopted his errors fhould know his retraction, and that thofe who have learned vice by his example, fhould by his example be taught amend ment. NUMB. 32. SATURDAY, July 7, 1750. Οσσά τε δαιμονίησι τύχαις βροτοὶ ἀλγὲ ἔχεσιν, Of all the woes that load the mortal ftate, PYTHAG. ELPHINSTON. large a part of human life paffes in a state contrary to our natural defires, that one of the principal topicks of moral inftruction is the art of bearing calamities. And fuch is the certainty of evil, that it is the duty of every man to furnish his mind with those principles that may enable him to act under it with decency and propriety. The fect of ancient philofophers, that boasted to have carried this neceffary fcience to the highest perfection, were the ftoicks, or scholars of Zeno, whose wild enthufiaftick virtue pretended to an exemption from the fenfibilities of unenlightened mortals, and who proclaimed themselves exalted, by the doctrines of their fect, above the reach of those miferies, which embitter life to the rest of the world. They therefore removed pain, poverty, lofs of friends, exile, and violent death, from the catalogue of evils; and paffed, in their haughty style, a kind of irreversible decree, by which they forbad them to be counted any longer among the objects of terror or anxiety, or to give any disturbance to the tranquillity of a wife man. This edict was, I think, not univerfally obferved; for though one of the more refolute, when he was tortured by a violent disease, cried out, that let pain harafs him to its utmoft power, it should never force him to confider it as other than indifferent and neutral; yet all had not stubbornnefs to hold out against their fenfes: for a weaker pupil of Zeno is recorded to have confeffed in the anguish of the gout, that he now found pain to be an evil. It may however be queftioned, whether these philofophers can be very properly numbered among the teachers of patience; for if pain be not an evil, there seems no inftruction requifite how it may be borne; and therefore, when they endeavour to arm their followers with arguments against it, they may be thought to have given up their firft pofition. But fuch inconfiftencies are to be expected from the greatest understandings, when they endeavour to grow eminent by fingularity, and employ their strength in establishing opinions opposite to nature. The controversy about the reality of external evils is now at an end. That life has many miferies, and that those miseries are, fometimes at least, equal to all the powers of fortitude, is now univerfally confeffed; and therefore it is useful to confider not only how we may efcape them, but by what means those which either the accidents of affairs, or the infirmities of nature, must bring upon us, may be mitigated and lightened, and how we may make those hours lefs wretched, which the condition of our present existence will not allow to be very happy. The |