wards the Deity; they think him bleft and happy for his want of death and corruption, they fear and reverence him for his power and dominion, but above all they love and adore him for his Juftice.

173. Inference is looked on as the great act of the rational faculty, and fo it is when rightly made; but the mind, either defirous to enlarge its knowledge, or very apt to favour the fentiments it has once imbibed, is forward to draw Inference, and therefore often makes too much hafte, before it perceives the connection of the ideas that must hold the extremes together.

174. Charity will prompt me to prefer a greater concern of my neighbour's before a flight one of my own, but in equal circumstances I am at liberty to be first kind to myself; but if I will recede even from that, I may; it is then to be accounted among the heroick flights of charity, not her binding and indispensable laws.

175. True religion, in general, is the obligation of reafonable creatures to render fuch acts of worship to God, as are fuitable to the excellency of his nature, and their dependence upon him.

176. No man has reafon to think himself rejected of God, either from eternity, or in time, that does not find the prefent marks of reprobation in his ill intentions and actions.

177. Love is the epitome of our whole duty; and all the sweetneffes and endearments of fociety that can be, so long as they are lawful and honeft, are not only confiftent with it, but parts and expreffions of it.

178. There is a happy contagion in goodness; we may

per

perhaps be kindled like green wood by the neighbouring flame. The example of another's zeal may awaken mine; those showers of benediction which the prayers of good people bring down are fo plentiful, that fome drops at least may scatter upon those about them.

179. Wisdom, valour, justice, and learning, cannot keep a man in countenance, that is poffeffed with those excellences, if he wants that lefs art of life and behaviour called good breeding. A man endowed with great perfections without this, is like one who has his pockets full of gold, but always wants change for ordinary occafions.

180. Those who perpetually praise themselves, and blame others, look as if they meant to make their own figures appear brighter by these fhades, and to recommend their own conduct by cenfuring that of their neighbours.

181. We ought always to make choice of perfons of fuch worth and honour for our friends, that if they should ever ceafe to be fo, will not abuse our confidence, nor give us caufe to fear them if enemies.

182. However partial history is in mentioning the actions of great men, which will not allow them to participate with the vulgar in the weakneffes incident to human nature, yet every the greatest spirit has its allay of imbecillity. The moft knowing scholar has found a period beyond which his curious fearch could not move; the wifeft politician has difcerned when he erred, and blushed at the mistake; and the boldest foldier, at fome time or other, has found the coward trembling in him. We may

by our endeavours raise nature above her frailty, but never triumph over her till death.

183. It is a remark of Antifthenes, that if a man would lead a fecure and unblameable life, he should either have ingenuous and honeft friends, or very fharp and bitter enemies; because the first, by their kind admonitions, would keep him from finning; the latter, by evil words, and vehement invectives. An enemy fees and underftands more in matters relating to us than our friends do, because in Plato's opinion love is blind, especially in difcerning the thing beloved; but spite, malice, ill-will, wrath and contempt, are very inquifitive and quickfighted: friendfhip is grown fpeechlefs, and has left off that freedom it did once use; therefore we must expect to hear truth only from the mouths of our enemies.

184. Forgiving enemies is only a private virtue, not the rule of publick government.

185. A vow is a kind of prifon, which reftrained nature has a mind to break.

186. There is no greater enemy to mankind than folly; that poor, bafe, low, fordid, flavish condition, which renders a man wearifome to himself, and contemptible to others, expofed to every one's deceit and craft, a flave to his own paffions, and others flattery, a ftock whereon to graft any vice, fhame, or mifery..

187. As thofe bodies are commonly the most healthful that break out in their youth, fo many times the fouls of men prove the founder for having vented themselves in their younger days: none are obferved to become greater enemies of vice, than thofe that have been the flaves of

and are so bleffed and happy as to have broke their chain.

188. Since human nature is moft delighted with those actions to which it is most accustomed, then how absolutely neceffary is it for us to gain habits of virtue in this life, if we would enjoy the eternal pleasures of the next! Heaven will not be capable of affecting thofe minds which are not qualified for it; we must in this world gain a relish of truth and virtue, if we would be able to taste that knowledge and perfection which are to make us happy in the next. The feeds of thofe fpiritual joys and raptures, which are to rife up and flourish in the foul to all eternity, must be planted in her during this her prefent state of probation in short, heaven is not to be looked upon only as the reward, but as the natural effect of a religious life. On the other hand, thofe evil fpirits who by long custom have contracted in the body habits of fenfuality, malice, and revenge, and an averfion to every thing that is good, juft, and laudable, are naturally feasoned and prepared for pain and misery; their torments have already taken root in them; they cannot be happy when divested of the body, unless we may fuppofe that providence will in a manner create them a-new, and work a miracle in the rectification of their faculties. They may indeed taste a kind of malignant pleasure in those actions to which they are accustomed whilft in this life, but when they are removed from all thofe objects which are here apt to gratify them, they will naturally become their own tormenters, and cherish in themselves thofe painful habits of mind, which are called, in fcripture phrafe, the worm which

which never dies. This notion of heaven and hell is fo very conformable to the light of nature, that it was difcovered by feveral of the most excellent heathens; it has been finely improyed by many eminent divines of the laft age, particularly Tillotson and Sherlock; but there is none who has raised fuch noble fpeculations on it, as Scott, in his first book of the Chriftian life, which is one of the finest and most rational schemes of divinity that is written in our tongue, or any other. That excellent author has shewn how every particular custom and habit of virtue will, in its own nature, produce the heaven, or a ftate of happiness in him who shall hereafter practise it: as, on the contrary, how every custom and habit of vice will be the natural hell of him in whom it fubfifts.

189. The foundation of a vigorous old age is a good conftitution of the body, and to keep good order and govern ourselves by the rules of temperance in youth, the effects whereof are the beft provifion we can lay in for age; for intemperance not only brings gray hairs, but green years, with forrow, to the grave.

190. An uncultivated mind, like unmanured ground, will foon be over-run with weeds.

191. All cannot be happy at once, because the glory of one estate depends upon the ruin of the other, where arriving at their meridian, they decline in obscurity, and fall under the horizon again.

192. Self-denial is not only the greater foundation of all civil virtues, but our Saviour alfo made it his first law and condition to all his difciples; and there is none above

the