with anxieties, and tortured with difeafes, fhould have any gladness of its own, or feel any fatisfaction from the contemplation of the prefent. All the comfort that can now be expected must be recalled from the paft, or borrowed from the future; the paft is very foon exhaufted, all the events or actions of which the memory can afford pleasure are quickly recollected; and the future lies beyond the grave, where it can be reached only by virtue and devotion.

Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religious hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and forrows inceffantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulph of bottomlefs mifery, in which every reflection muft plunge him deeper, and where he finds only new gradations of anguifh, and precipices of horrour,

NUMB. 70. SATURDAY, November 17, 1750.

H

ESIOD, in his celebrated diftribution of

mankind, divides them into three orders of intellect. "The first place," fays he, " belongs "to him that can by his own powers difcern what "is right and fit, and penetrate to the remoter mo❝tives of action. The fecond is claimed by him "that is willing to hear inftruction, and can perceive

right and wrong when they are fhewn him by "another; but he that has neither acuteness nor docility, who can neither find the way by himself, "nor will be led by others, is a wretch without use "or value."

If we furvey the moral world, it will be found, that the fame divifion may be made of men, with regard to their virtue. There are some whose prin ciples are fo firmly fixed, whofe conviction is fo conftantly present to their minds, and who have raised in themselves fuch ardent wifhes for the approbation of God, and the happiness with which he has promised to reward obedience and perfeverance, that they rife above all other cares and confiderations, and uniformly examine every action and defire, by

com

comparing it with the divine commands. There are others in a kind of equipoife between good and ill; who are moved on the one part by riches or pleasure, by the gratifications of paffion and the delights of fense; and, on the other, by laws of which they own the obligation, and rewards of which they believe the reality, and whom a very finall addition of weight turns either way. The third clafs confifts of beings immersed in pleasure, or abandoned to passion, without any defire of higher good, or any effort to extend their thoughts beyond immediate and grofs fatisfactions.

The fecond clafs is fo much the most numerous, that it may be confidered as comprising the whole body of mankind. Those of the last are not very many, and thofe of the firft are very few; and neither the one nor the other fall much under the confideration of the moralift, whofe precepts are intended chiefly for those who are endeavouring to go forward up the steeps of virtue, not for those who have already reached the fummit, or those who are refolved to stay for ever in their prefent fituation.

To a man not verfed in the living world, but accustomed to judge only by fpeculative reafon, it is fcarcely credible that any one fhould be in this ftate of indifference, or ftand undetermined and unengaged, ready to follow the firft call to either fide. It feems certain, that either a man must believe that virtue will make him happy, and refolve therefore to be virtuous, or think that he may be happy without virtue, and therefore caft off all

care but for his prefent intereft. It seems impoffible that conviction fhould be on one fide, and practice on the other; and that he who has feen the right way, fhould voluntarily fhut his eyes, that he may quit it with more tranquillity. Yet all these abfurdities are every hour to be found; the wifest and best men deviate from known and acknowledged duties, by inadvertency or furprise; and most are good no longer than while temptation is away, than while their paffions are without excitements, and their opinions are free from the counteraction of any other motive.

Among the fentiments which almost every man changes as he advances into years, is the expectation of uniformity of character. He that without acquaintance with the power of defire, the cogency of distress, the complications of affairs, or the force of partial influence, has filled his mind with the excellence of virtue, and having never tried his refolution in any encounters with hope or fear, believes it able to ftand firm whatever fhall oppose it; will be always clamorous against the smallest failure, ready to exact the utmoft punctualities of right, and to confider every man that fails in any part of his duty, as without confcience and without merit; unworthy of truft or love, of pity or regard; as an enemy whom all fhould join to drive out of fociety, as a peft which all should avoid, or as a weed which all fhould trample.

It is not but by experience, that we are taught the poffibility of retaining fome virtues, and rejecting others, or of being good or bad to a particular de

gree.

gree. For it is very easy to the folitary reafoner to prove that the fame arguments by which the mind is fortified against one crime are of equal force against all, and the consequence very naturally follows, that he whom they fail to move on any occafion, has either never considered them, or has by fome fallacy taught himself to evade their validity; and that, therefore, when a man is known to be guilty of one crime, no farther evidence is needful of his depravity and corruption.

Yet fuch is the state of all mortal virtue, that it is always uncertain and variable, fometimes extending to the whole compass of duty, and fometimes fhrinking into a narrow space, and fortifying only a few avenues of the heart, while all the reft is left open to the incurfions of appetite, or given up to the dominion of wickednefs. Nothing therefore is more unjust than to judge of man by too short an acquaintance, and too flight inspection; for it often happens, that in the loofe, and thoughtlefs, and diffipated, there is a fecret radical worth, which may fhoot out by proper cultivation; that the fpark of heaven, though dimmed and obftructed, is yet not extinguished, but may by the breath of counsel and exhortation be kindled into flame.

To imagine that every one who is not com. pletely good is irrecoverably abandoned, is to fup. pofe that all are capable of the fame degree of excellence; it is indeed to exact, from all, that perfection which none ever can attain. And fince the pureft virtue is confiftent with fome vice, and the virtue of the greatest number with almost an equal

propor