The cause of virtue requires fo little art to defend it, and good and evil, when they have been once fhewn, are fo easily distinguished, that such apologists feldom gain profelytes to their party, nor have their fallacies power to deceive any but thofe whofe defires have clouded their difcernment. All that the best faculties thus employed can perform is, to perfuade the hearers that the man is hopeless whom they only thought vitious, that corruption has paffed from his manners to his principles, that all endeavours for his recovery are without profpect of fuccefs, and that nothing remains but to avoid him as infectious, or hunt him down as destructive. But if it be fuppofed that he may impofe on his audience by partial representations of confequences, intricate deductions of remote caufes, or perplexed combinations of ideas, which having various relations appear different as viewed on different fides; that he may fometimes puzzle the weak and wellmeaning, and now and then feduce, by the admiration of his abilities, a young mind ftill fluctuating in unsettled notions, and neither fortified by inftruction 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 difeafe, or folitude will bring fome hours of ferious confideration, and it will then afford no comfort to think, that he has extended the dominion of vice, that he has 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 caufed. There is not perhaps in all the stores of ideal anguifh, 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 pleafure, and deafened them to every I 2 call 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 successful in deceiving themselves; they weave their fophiftry till their own reafon is entangled, and repeat their pofitions till they are credited by themselves; by often contending they grow fincere in the cause, and by long withing for demonftrative arguments they at laft bring themselves to fancy that they have found them. They are then at the uttermoft 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 fewest failings, either with respect to abilities or virtue, are generally moft 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 Cæfar's, warned pofterity against a mistake into which he had fallen. So much, fays Celfus, does the open and artless confeffion of an error become a man confcious that he has enough remaining to Support his character. As all error is meannefs, it is incumbent on every man who confults his own dignity, to retract it as foon as he difcovers it, without fearing any censure fo much as that of his own mind. As juftice requires that all injuries fhould 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 fhould know his retraction, and that those who have learned vice by his example, fhould by his example be taught amendment. NUMB. S NUME. 32. SATURDAY, July 7, 1750. Οσσά τε δαιμονίησι τύχαις βροοὶ ἄλγε ̓ ἔχεσιν, Of all the woes that load the mortal state, PYTHAG. ELPHINSTON. O large a part of human life paffes in a ftate contrary to our natural defires, that one of the 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 fect of ancient philofophers, that boafted to have carried this neceffary fcience to the highest perfection, were the ftoicks, or scholars of Zeno, whose wild enthufiaftick virtue pretended to an exemption from the sensibilities of unenlightened mortals, and who proclaimed themfelves exalted, by the doctrines of their fect, above the reach of thofe miferies, which embitter life to the reft of the world. They therefore removed pain, poverty, lofs of friends, exile, and violent death, from the catalogue of evi's; and paffed, in their haughty ftile, a kind of irreverfible decree, by which they forbad them to be counted any longer among the objects of terror or anxiety, or to give any difturbance 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 difeafe, cried out, that let pain harrafs him to its utmost power, it fhould never force him to confider it as other than indifferent and neutral; yet all had not ftubbornness to hold out I 3 against against their fenfes : for a weaker pupil of Zeno is recorded to have confeffed in the anguish 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 againft it, they may be thought to have given up their firft pofition. But fuch inconfiftencies are to be expected from the greatest understandings, when they endeavour to grow eminent by fingularity, and employ their ftrength in eftablishing opinions oppofite to nature. The controverfy about the reality of external evils is now at an end. That life has many miferies, and that thofe miferies are, fometimes at leaft, equal to all the powers of fortitude, is now univerfally confeffed; and therefore it is ufeful 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 must bring upon us, may be mitigated and lightened; and how we may make thofe hours lefs wretched, which the condition of our prefent exiftence 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 interwoven with our being; all attempts therefore to decline it wholly are useless and vain the armies of pain fend their arrows against us on every fide, the choice is only between those which are more or lefs fharp, or tinged with poison of greater or lefs malignity; and the ftrongest armour which reafon can fupply, 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 mea fure fure 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 unfuitable to the nature of man in any calamity than rage and turbulence, which, without examining whether they are not fometimes impious, are at least always offenfive, and incline others rather to hate and despise than to pity and affist us. If what we fuffer has been brought upon us by ourselves, it is obferved by an ancient poet, that patience is eminently our duty, fince no one fhould be angry at feeling that which he has deferved. Leniter ex merito quicquid patiare ferendum eft. Let pain deferv'd without complaint be borne. And furely, if we are confcious that we have not contributed to our own fuff rings, if punishment upon innocence, or difappointment happens to induftry and prudence, patience, whether more neceffary or not, is much eafier, fince our pain is then without aggravation, and we have not the bitterness of remorfe to add to the afperity of misfortune. In those evils which are allotted to us by provis dence, fuch as deformity, privation of any of the fenfes, or old age, it is always to be remembered, that impatience can have no prefent effect, but to deprive us of the confolations which our condition admits, by driving away from us those by whofe converfation or advice we might be amufed or helped; and that with regard to futurity it is yet lefs to be juftified, fince, without leffening the pain, it cuts off the hope of that reward, which he by whom it is inflicted will confer upon them that bear it well. In all evils which admit a remedy, impatience is to be avoided, because it wastes that time and attention I 4 1 |