MRS. CHAPONE'S

LETTERS.

I.

ON THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF RELIGION.

MY DEAREST NIECE,

THOUGH you are so happy as to have parents, who are both capable and desirous of giving you all proper instruction, yet I, who love you so tenderly, cannot help fondly wishing to contribute something, if possible, to your improvement and welfare: and, as I am so far separated from you, that it is only by pen and ink I can offer you my sentiments, I will hope that your attention may be engaged, by seeing on paper, from the hand of one of your warmest friends, truths of the highest importance, which, though you may not find new, can never be too deeply engraven on your mind. Some of them perhaps may make no great impression at present, and yet may so far gain a place in your memory, as readily to return to your thoughts when occasion

recalls them. And if you pay me the compliment of preserving my letters, you may possibly re-peruse them at some future period, when concurring circumstances may give them additional weight :-and thus they may prove more effectual than the same things spoken in conversation. But, however this may prove, I cannot resist the desire of trying, in some degree, to be useful to you, on your setting out in a life of trial and difficulty; your success in which must determine your fate for ever.

Hitherto you have "thought as a child, and understood as a child; but it is time to put away childish things." You are now in your fifteenth year, and must soon act for yourself; therefore it is high time to store your mind with those principles which must direct your conduct, and fix your character. If you desire to live in peace and honour, in favour with God and man, and to die in the glorious hope of rising from the grave to a life of endless happiness-if these things appear worthy your ambition, you must set out in earnest in the pursuit of them. Virtue and happiness are not attained by chance, nor by a cold and languid approbation; they must be sought with ardour, attended to with diligence, and every assistance must be eagerly embraced that may enable you to obtain them. Consider, that good and evil are now before you; that if you do not heartily choose and love the one, you must undoubtedly be the wretched victim of the other. Your trial is now begun; you must either become one of the glorious children of God, who are to rejoice in his love for ever; or a child of destruction-miserable in this life, and punished with eternal death hereafter. Surely you will be im

pressed by so awful a situation! you will earnestly pray to be directed into that road of life, which leads to excellence and happiness; and you will be thankful to every kind hand that is held out, to set you forward in your journey.

The first step must be to awaken your mind to a sense of the importance of the task before you, which is no less than to bring your frail nature to that degree of Christian perfection, which is to qualify it for immortality; and without which, it is necessarily incapable of happiness; for it is a truth never to be forgotten, that God has annexed happiness to virtue, and misery to vice, by the unchangeable nature of things; and that a wicked being (while he continues such) is in a natural incapacity of enjoying happiness, even with the concurrence of all those outward circumstances which in a virtuous mind would produce it.

As there are degrees of virtue and vice, so are there of reward and punishment, both here and hereafter but let not my dearest niece aim only at escaping the dreadful doom of the wicked-let your desires take a nobler flight, and aspire after those transcendent honours, and that brighter crown of glory, which await those who have excelled in virtue; and let the animating thought, that every secret effort to gain his favour is noted by your allseeing Judge, who will, with infinite goodness, proportion your reward to your labours, excitè every faculty of your soul to please and serve him. To this end, you must inform your understanding what you ought to believe and to do.-You must correct and purify your heart; cherish and improve all its good affections, and continually mortify and

subdue those that are evil. You must form and govern your temper and manners, according to the laws of benevolence and justice; and qualify yourself, by all means in your power, for an useful and agreeable member of society. All this, you see, is no light business, nor can it be performed without a sincere and earnest application of the mind, as to its great and constant object. When once you consider life, and the duties of life, in this manner, you will listen eagerly to the voice of instruction and admonition, and seize every opportunity of improvement: every useful hint will be laid up in your heart; and your chief delight will be in those persons and those books, from which you can learn true wisdom.

The only sure foundation of human virtue is religion; and the foundation and first principle of religion is in the belief of the one only God, and a just sense of his attributes. This you will think you have learned long since, and possess in common with almost every human creature in this enlightened age and nation; but, believe me, it is less common than you imagine, to believe in the true God-that is, to form such a notion of the Deity as is agreeable to truth, and consistent with those infinite perfections, which all profess to ascribe to him. To form worthy notions of the Supreme Being, as far as we are capable, is essential to true religion and morality; for as it is our duty to imitate those qualities of the Divinity which are imitable by us, so is it necessary we should know what they are, and fatal to mistake them. Can those who think of God with servile dread and terror, as of a gloomy tyrant, armed with almighty power to torment and destroy them, be said to believe in the true God?-in that God who,

Can those who expect to please God by cr themselves or to their fellow-creatures-by punishments of their own bodies for the sin souls-or, by more horrid persecution of for difference of opinion, be called true bel Have they not set up another God in their own who rather resembles the worst of beings t best? Nor do those act on surer principle think to gain the favour of God by senseless siasm and frantic raptures, more like t excesses of the most depraved human love, t reasonable adoration, that holy reverenti which is due to the pure and holy Father universe. Those likewise, who murmur his providence, and repine under the restrai commands, cannot firmly believe him infinit and good. If we are not disposed to trust future events, to banish fruitless anxiety, believe that all things work together for those that love him, surely we do not really in the God of mercy and truth. If we wish all remembrance of him, all communion wi as much as we dare, surely we do not beli to be the Source of joy and comfort, the Disp all good.

How lamentable it is, that so few heart feel the pleasures of real piety! that pra thanksgiving should be performed, as they t