approaches of temptation, and by imperceptible gradations of guilt. Let him confider what he is going to commit by forcing his understanding to patronise those appetites, which it is its chief bufinefs 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 diftinguifhed, that fuch apologifts feldom gain profelytes to their party, nor have their fallacies power to deceive any but those whofe defires have clouded their difcernment. All that the best faculties thus employed can perform is, to persuade 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 prospect of fuccefs, and that nothing remains but to avoid him as infectious, or hunt him down as deftructive. But if it be fuppofed that he may impofe on his audience by partial reprefentations of confequences, intricate deductions of remote causes, 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 instruction nor enlightened by experience; yet what must be, the event of fuch a triumph? A man cannot spend all this. life in frolick: age, or disease, or folitude will bring fome hours of ferious consideration, and it will then afford no comfort to think, that he has extended the dominion of vice, that he has loaded f loaded himself with the crimes of others, and can never know the extent of his own wickedness, or make reparation for the mifchief that he has caused. There is not perhaps in all the ftores of ideal anguish, a thought more painful, 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 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 fuccefsful in deceiving themselves; they weave their fophiftry till their own reason 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 themselves to fancy that they have 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 feweft 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 account of the errors committed by him in his wars of Gaul, and that Hippocrates, whose name is perhaps in rational eftimation greater than Cæ far's, far's, warned posterity against a mistake into which he had fallen. So much, fays Celfus, does the open and artless confession of an error become a man confcious that he has enough remaining to fupport his cha racter. As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who confults his own dignity, to retract it as foon as he discovers it, without fearing 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 feduced others by bad practices, or falfe notions, to endeavour that fuch as have adopted his errors should know his retraction, and that those who have learned vice by his example, fhould by his example be taught amend ment. ୫୫୫ ୫୫୫ NUMB. 32. SATURDAY, July 7, 1750. Οσσά τε δαιμονίησι τύχαις βροτοὶ ἄλγε' ἔχεσιν, Of all the woes that load the mortal state, PYTHAG. ELPHINSTON. large a part of human life paffes in a state 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 The fect of ancient philosophers, that boasted to have carried this neceffary science to the highest perfection, were the ftoicks, or scholars of Zeno, whose wild enthusiastick 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 thofe 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 ftile, 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 dif turbance 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 harrass 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 fenfes : for a weaker pupil of Zeno is recorded to have confeffed in the anguifh of the gout, that he now found pain to be an evil. It may however be queftioned, whether thefe philofophers can be very properly numbered among the teachers of patience; for if pain be not an evil, there feems 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 first pofition. But fuch inconfiftencies are to be expected from the greatest understandings, when they endeavour to grow eminent by fingularity, VOL. I. K and and employ their strength in establishing opinions oppofite 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, sometimes at least, equal to all the powers of fortitude, is now universally confessed; and therefore it is useful to confider not only how we may escape them, but by what means those which either the accidents of affairs, or the infirmities of nature, muft bring upon us, may be mitigated and lightened; and how we may make those hours less wretched, which the condition of our present existence will not allow to be very happy. The cure for the greatest part of human miferies is not radical, but palliative. Infelicity is involved in corporeal nature, and intervoven with our being; all attempts therefore to decline it wholly are useless and vain: the armies of pain send their arrows against us on every fide, the choice is only between those which are more or less fharp, or tinged with poison of greater or less malignity; and the strongest armour which reason can supply, will only blunt their points, but cannot repel them. The great remedy which heaven has put in our hands is patience, by which, though we cannot leffen the torments of the body, we can in a great measure preserve the peace of the mind, and fhall. fuffer only the natural and genuine force of an evil, without heightening its acrimony, or prolonging its effects. There is indeed nothing more unsuitable to the nature of man in any calamity than rage and turbulence, which, without examining whether they are |