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forcing his understanding to patronise thofe appetites, which it is its chief business to hinder and reform.

The cause of virtue requires so little art to desend it, and good and evil, when they have been once shewn, are so easily distinguished, that such apologists seldom gain prolclytes to their party, nor have their sallacies power to deceive any but thofe whofe desires have clouded their discernment. Ail that the best saculties thus employed can perform is, to persuade the hearers that the man is hopeless whom they only thought vicious, that corruption has passed from his manners to' his principles, that all endeavours sor his recovery are without profpect os success, and that nothing remains but to avoid him as insectious, or hunt him down as destructive.

But if it be fuppofed that he may impofe on his audience by partial representations os consequences, intricate deductions of remote causes,, or perplexed combinations of ideas, which having various relations appear disferent as viewed on difserent sides; that he may sometimes puzzle the weak and well-meaning, and now and then seduce, bv the admiration of his abilities, a young mind, still fluctuating in unsealed notions, and neither fortified by instruction nor enlightened by experience; yet what muli be the event of such a triumph? A man cannot spend all this lise in frolick: age, or disease, or solitude will bring some hours of serious consideration, and it will then afford no comfort to think, that he has extended the dominion of vice, that he has loaded himself with

the the crimes of others, and can never know the extent of his own wickedness, or make reparation for the mischief that he has caused. There is not perhaps in all the stores of ideal anguish, a thought more painsul, than the consciousness 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 deasened them to every call but the alluring voice of the syrens of destruction.

There is yet another danger in this practice: men who cannot deceive others, are very often successsul in deceiving themselves; they weave their sophistry till their own reason is entangled, and repeat their pofitions till they are credited by themselves; by often contending they grow sincere irt the cause, and by long wishing for demonstrative arguments, they at last bring themselves to sancy that they had found them. They are then at the uttermost verge of wickedness, 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 sewest sailings, either with respect to abilities or virtue, are generally most ready to allow them: for not to dwell on things of solemn and awsul consideration, the humility of consessors, the tears of saints, and the dying terrors of persons eminent for piety and innocence, it is well known that Cæsar wrote 6 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 Cæsar's, warned posterity against a mistake into which he had sallen. So much, says Celsus, does the open and artlefs confession of an error become a man confcious that he has enough remaining to fupport his character.

As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it, without searing any censure so much as that of his own mind. As justice requires that all injuries should be repaired, it is the duty of him who has seduced others by bad practices or salse notions, to endeavour that such as have adopted his errors should know his retraction, and that thofe who have learned vice by his example, should by his example be taught amendment.

Numb. 32. Saturday, July 7, 1750.

'iajrflat 41 Xj-iVii x»v.^j»li»ii. PrfHAC.

Of all the woes that load the mortal state,

Whate'er thy portion, mildly meet thy fate;

Hut ease it as thou can'st—— Elphinstok.

SO large a part of human lise passes in a state contrary to our natural desires, that one of the principal topicks of moral instruction is the art of bearing calamities. And such is the certainty of evil, that it is the duty of every man to surnish his mind 'with thofe principles that may enable him to act under it with decency and propriety.

The sect of ancient philosophers, that boasted to have carried this necessary science to the highest persection, were the stoicks, or scholars of Zeno, whofe wild enthusiastick virtue pretended to an exemption from the sensibilities of unenlightened mortals, and who proclaimed themselves exalted, by the doctrines of their sect, above the reach of thofe > miseries, which embitter lise to the rest of the world. They therefore removed pain, poverty, lofs of friends, exile, and violent death, from the catalogue of evils; and passed, 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 wise man.

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This edict was, I think, not universally observed; for though one of the more resolute, when he was tortured by a violent disease, cried out, that let pain harass him to its utmost power, it should never force him to consider it as other than indifferent and neutral; yet all had not stubbornness to hold out against their senses: for a weaker pupil of Zeno is recorded to have consessed in the anguish of the gout, that he now found pain to be an evil.

It may however be questioned, whether these philofophers can be very properly numbered among the teachers os patience; for if pain be not an evil, there seems no instruction requisite how it may be borne; and theresore, when they endeavour to arm their followers with arguments against it, they may be thought to have given up their first pofition. But such inconsistencies are to be expected from the greatest understandings, when they endeavour to grow eminent by singularity, and employ their strength in establishing opinions oppofite to nature.

The controversy about the reality of external evils is now at an end. That lise has many miseries, and that thofe miseries are, sometimes at least, equal to all the powers of fortitude, is now universally consessed ; and therefore it is usesul to consider not only how we may escape them, but by what means thofe 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 thofe hours less wretched, which the condition of our present existence will not allow to be very happy.

The

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