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in other respects, abounds with fublime truths. If your flave destroys himself, fays Socrates to Cebes, would you not punish him, for having unjustly deprived you of your property; prithee, good Socrates, do we not belong to God after we are dead? The cafe you put is not applicable; you ought to argue thus: If you encumber your flave with a habit which confines him from discharging his duty properly, will you punish him for quitting it, in order to render you better service? The grand error lies in making life of too great importance; as if our existence depended upon it, and that death was a total annihilation. Our life is of no confequence in the fight of God; it is of no importance in the eyes of reason, neither ought it to be of any in our fight; when we quit our body, we only lay afide an inconvenient habit. Is this circumstance fo painful, to be the occafion of fo much ditturbance? My Lord, thefe declaimers are not in earneft; their arguments are abfurd and cruel, for they aggravate the supposed crime, as if it put a period to existence, and they punish it, as if that existence was eternal.

With respect to Plato's Phædo, which has furnished them with the only fpecious argument that has ever been advanced, the queftion is discussed there in a very light and defultory manner. Socrates being condemned, by an unjust judgment, to lofe his life in a few hours, had no occafion to enter into an accurate inquiry whether he was at liberty to dispose of it himself.

Suppofing him really to have been the author of those difcourfes which Plate afcribes to him, yet believe me, my Lord, he would have meditated with more attention on the fubject, had he been in circumftances which required to reduce his fpeculations to practice; and a ftrong proof that no valid objection can be drawn from that immortal work against the right of difpofing of our own lives, is, that Cato read it twice through the very night that he deftroyed himself.

The fame fophifters make it a queftion, whether life can ever be an evil? But when we confider the multitude of errors, torments, and vices, with which it abounds, one would rather be inclined to doubt whether it can ever be a bleffing. Guilt inceffantly befieges the moft virtuous of mankind. Every moment he lives he is in danger of falling a prey to the wicked, or of being wicked himself. To struggle and to endure, is his lot in this world; that of the dif honeft man is to do evil, and to fuffer. In and/to every other particular they differ, and only agree in fharing the miseries of life in common. If you required authorities and facts, I could recite you the oracles of old, the answers of the fages, and produce inftances where acts of virtue have been recompenfed with death. But let us leave these confiderations, my lord; it is to you whom I addrefs myself, and I ask you what is the chief attention of a wife man in this life, except, if I may be allowed the expreflion, to collect himself inwardly, and endeavour even while he

lives, to be dead to every object of sense? The only way by which wisdom directs us to avoid the miseries of human nature, is it not to detach ourselves from all earthly objects, from every thing that is grofs in our compofition, to retire within ourselves, and to raise our thoughts to fublime contemplations? If therefore our misfortunes are derived from our paffions and errors, with what eagerness fhould we wish for a state which will deliver us both from the one and the other? What is the fate of those fons of fenfuality, who indifcreetly multiply their torments by their pleasures; they in fact destroy their existence by extending their connexions in this life; they increase the weight of their crimes by their numerous attachments; they relish no enjoyments, but what are succeeded by a thousand bitter wants; the more lively their fenfibility, the more acute their sufferings; the ftronger they are attached to life, the more wretched they become.

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But admitting it, in general, a benefit to mankind to crawl upon the earth with gloomy fadness, (I do not mean to intimate that the human race ought with one common confent to destroy themselves, and make the world one immense grave) there are miserable beings who are too much exalted to be governed by vulgar opinion; to them despair and grievous tor-. ments are the paffports of nature. It would be as ridiculous to fuppofe that life can be a bleffing to fuch men, as it was abfurd in the fophifter

the gout.

Poffidonius to deny that it was an evil, at the fame time that he endured all the torments of While life is agreeable to us we earnestly wish to prolong it, and nothing but a sense of extreme mifery can extinguifh the defire of existence; for we naturally conceive a violent dread of death, and this dread conceals the miseries of human nature from our fight. We drag a painful and melancholy life, for a long time, before we can refolve to quit it; but when once life becomes fo infupportable as to overcome the horror of death, then exiftence is evidently a great evil, and we cannot difengage ourfelves from it too foon. Therefore, though we cannot exactly afcertain the point at which it ceases to be a bleffing, yet at least we are certain that it is an evil long before it appears to be fuch, and with every fenfible man the right of quitting life is, by a great deal, precedent, to the temptation.

This is not all. After they have denied that life can be an evil, in order to bar our right of making away with ourselves; they confess immediately afterwards, that it is an evil, by reproaching us with want of courage to fupport it. According to them, it is cowardice to withdraw ourselves from pain and trouble, and there are none but daftards who deftroy themfelves. O Rome, thou victrix of the world, what a race of cowards did thy empire produce! let Arria, Eponina, Lucretia, be of the number; they were women. But Brutus, Caffius, and

thou great and divine Cato, who didft fhare with the gods the adoration of an astonished world, thou whofe facred and august presence animated the Romans with holy zeal, and made tyrants tremble, little did thy proud admirers imagine that paltry rhetoricians, immured in the dufty corner of a college, would ever attempt to prove that thou wert a coward, for having preferred death to a fhameful exiftence.

O the dignity and energy of your modern writers! how fublime, how intrepid are you with your pens? But tell me, thou great and valiant hero, who doft fo courageoufly decline the battle, in order to endure the pain of living fomewhat longer; when a fpark of fire lights upon your hand, why do ye withdraw it in fuch hafte? how are you fuch a coward that you dare not bear the scorching of fire? Nothing, you fay, can oblige you to endure the burning fpark; and what obliges me to endure life? Was the creation of a man of more difficulty to Providence than that of a ftraw? and is not both one and the other equally the work of his hands?

Without doubt, it is an evidence of great fortitude to bear with firmness the misery which we cannot fhun; none but a fool, however, will voluntarily endure evils which he can avoid without a crime; and it is very often a great crime to fuffer pain unneceffarily. He who has not refolution to deliver himself from a miserable being by a speedy death is like one who would rather fuffer a wound to mortify, than trust to

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