THE honourable and very ingenious compiler of A Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors in England, having ascribed the following excellent Treatise to JOHN PERCIVAL Earl of Egmont; I think it incumbent upon me to declare in justice to the revered memory of my honoured Father, that The Great Importance of a Religious Life, was written by the late WILLIAM MELMOTH, of Lincoln's-Inn, Esq. and first published early in the beginning of the present century.

Bath, May 16,

1790.

W. M.

CHARACTER OF THE AUTHOR

OF THE FOLLOWING

TREATISE.

IT may add weight, perhaps, to the reflections contained in the following pages, to inform the reader that the author's life was one uniform exemplar of those precepts, which with so benevolent a zeal and so pathetic a simplicity of style, he endeavours to recommend to general practice. He left others to contend for modes of faith, and inflame themselves and the world with endless controversy it was the wiser purpose of his more ennobled aim, to act up to those clear rules of conduct which Revelation hath graciously prescribed. He possessed by teinper every moral virtue; by religion every Christian grace. He had a humanity that melted at every distress; a charity which not only thought no

evil, but suspected none.
He exercised
his profession with a skill and intregrity,
which nothing could equal but the dis-
interested motive that animated his la-
bours, or the amiable modesty which
accompanied all his virtues. He em
ployed his industry, not to gratify his
own desires; no man indulged himself
less: not to accumulate useless wealth:
no man more disdained so unworthy a
pursuit it was for the decent advance-
ment of his family, for the generous
assistance of his friends, for the ready
relief of the indigent. How often did
he exert his distinguished abilities, yet
refuse the reward of them, in defence
of the widow, the fatherless, and of him
that had none to help him! In a word,
few have ever passed a more useful,
not one a more blameless life; and his
whole time was employed either
in doing good, or in meditating it.
He died on the 6th day of April 1743,
in the 76th year of his age, and lies
buried under the Cloister of Lincoln's-
Inn Chapel.

MEM. PAT. OPT. MER.
F. D.

PREFACE.

THE Design of the following Treatise is, to awaken in the minds of unthink ing men, a serious sense of religion, and a true concern for the interest of their immortal souls: a design, at all times seasonable and necessary, but more especially at this time, when we see such numbers of persons carried away with the immoderate love of pleasure, and such arts invented to gratify their corrupt and vicious inclinations.

Whoever reflects with a due concern, upon the excesses and debaucheries which have overspread this nation, and has any regard for the honour of God, and the interest of that holy religion