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the clean contrary qualities are readily acknowledged. Ay, but where and what kind of thing, then, is this strange occult quality, called ill-nature, which makes such a thundering noise against such as have the ill-luck to be taxed with it?

Why, the best account that I, or any one else, can give of it, is this: that there are many men in the world who, without the least arrogance or self-conceit, have yet so just a value both for themselves and others, as to scorn to flatter, and gloze, to fall down and worship, to lick the spittle and kiss the feet of any proud, swelling, overgrown, domineering huff whatsoever. And such persons generally think it enough for them to shew their superiors respect without adoration, and civility without servitude.

Again, there are some who have a certain ill-natured stiffness (forsooth) in their tongue, so as not to be able to applaud and keep pace with this or that self-admiring vainglorious Thraso, while he is pluming and praising himself, and telling fulsome stories in his own commendation for three or four hours by the clock, and at the same time reviling and throwing dirt upon all mankind besides.

There is also a sort of odd ill-natured men, whom neither hopes nor fears, frowns nor favours, can prevail upon to have any of the cast, beggarly, forlorn nieces or kinswomen of any lord or grandee, spiritual or temporal, trumped upon them.

To which we may add another sort of obstinate ill-natured persons, who are not to be brought by any one's guilt or greatness to speak or write, or to swear or lie, as they are bidden, or to give up their own consciences in a compliment to those who have none themselves.

And thus having given you some tolerable account of what the world calls illnature, and that both towards superiors and towards equals and inferiors-as it is easy and natural to know one contrary by the other-we may from hence take a true measure of what the world is observed to mean by the contrary character of goodnature, as it is generally bestowed.

And first, when great ones vouchsafe this endearing eulogy to those below them, a good-natured man generally denotes some slavish, glavering, flattering parasite, or hauger-on; one who is a mere tool or instrument; & fellow fit to be sent upon any malicious errand; a setter, or informer, made to creep into all companies; a wretch employed under a pretence of friendship or acquaintance, to fetch and carry, and to come to men's tables to play the Judas there; and, in a word, to do all those mean, vile, and degenerous offices which men of greatness and malice use to engage men of baseness and treachery in.

Bat then, on the other hand, when this word passes between equals, commonly by a good-natured man is meant either some easy, soft-headed piece of simplicity, who suffers himself to be led by the nose, and wiped of his conveniences by a company of sharping, worthless sycophants, who will be sure to despise, laugh and droll at him, as a weak empty fellow, for all his ill-placed cost and kindness. And the truth is, if such vermin do not find him empty, it is odds but in a little time they will make him so. And this is one branch of that which some call good-nature-and good-nature let it be indeed so good, that according to the wise Italian proverb, it is even good for nothing.

Or, in the next place, by a good-natured man is usually meant neither more nor less than a good-fellow, a painful, able, and laborious soaker. But he who owes all his good-nature to the pot and pipe, to the jollity and compliances of merry company, may possibly go to bed with a wonderful stock of good-nature overnight, but then he will sleep it all away again before the morning.

The Pleasures of Amusement and Industry Compared.

Nor is that man less deceived that thinks to maintain a constant tenure of pleasure by a continual pursuit of sports and recreations. The most voluptuous and 200se person breathing, were he but tied to follow his hawks and his hounds, his dice and his courtships every day, would find it the greatest torment and calamity that could befall him; he would fly to the mines and galleys for his recreation, and to the spade and the mattock for a diversion from the misery of a continual unintermitted pleasure. But, on the contrary, the providence of God has so ordered the course of things, that there is no action, the usefulness of which has made it the matter of duty and of a profession, but a man may bear the continual pursuit of it without loathing and satiety. The same shop and trade that employs a man in his youth,

employs him also in his age. Every morning he rises fresh to his hammer and anvil; ne passes the day singing; custom has naturalised his labour to him; his shop is his element, and he cannot with any enjoyment of himself live out of it.

Religion not Hostile to Pleasure.

That pleasure is man's chiefest good-because, indeed, it is the perception of good that is properly pleasure-is an assertion most certainly true, though, under the common acceptance of it, not only false, but odious. For. according to this, pleasure and sensuality pass for terms equivalent; and therefore he that takes it in this sense, alters the subject of the discourse. Sensuality is indeed a part, or rather one kind of pleasure, such a one as it is. For pleasure, in general, is the consequent apprehension of a suitable object suitably applied to a rightly disposed faculty; and so must be conversant both about the faculties of the body and of the soul respectively, as being the result of the fruitions belonging to both.

Now, amongst those many arguments used to press upon men the exercise of religion, I know none that are like to be so successful as those that answer and remove the prejudices that generally possess and bar up the hearts of men against it: amongst which there is none so prevalent in truth, though so little owned in pretence, as that it is an enemy to men's pleasures, that it bereaves them of all the sweets of converse, dooms them to an absurd and perpetual melancholy, designing to make the world nothing else but a great monastery; with which notion of religion, nature and reason seem to have great cause to be dissatisfied. For since God never created any faculty, either in soul or body, but withal prepared for it a suitable object, and that in order to its gratification. can we think that religion was designed only for a contradiction to nature, and with the greatest and most irrational tyranny in the world, to tantalise and tie men up from enjoyment, in the midst of all the opportunities of enjoyment? to place men with the furious affections of hunger and thirst in the very bosom of plenty, and then to tell them that the envy of Providence has sealed up everything that is suitable under the character of unlawful? For certainly, first to frame appetites fit to receive pleasure, and then to interdict them with a 'touch not, taste not,' can be nothing else than only to give them occasion to de vour and prey upon themselves, and so to keep men under the perpetual torment of an unsatisfied desire; a thing hugely contrary to the natural felicity of the creature, and consequently to the wisdom and goodness of the great Creator.

He, therefore, that would persuade men to religion both with art and efficacy, must found the persuasion of it upon this, that it interferes not with any rational pleasure, that it bids nobody quit the enjoyment of any one thing that his reason can prove to him ought to be enjoyed. 'Tis confessed, when, through the cross circumsances of a man's temper or condition, the enjoyment of a pleasure would certainly expose him to a greater inconvenience, then religion bids him quit it; that is, it bids him prefer the endurance of a lesser evil before a greater, and nature itself does no less. Religion, therefore, intrenches upon none of our privileges, invades none of our pleasures; it may, indeed, sometimes command us to change, but never totally to abjure them.

Ingratitude an Incurable Vice.

As a man tolerably discreet ought by no means to attempt the making of such a one his friend, so neither is he, in the next place, to presume to think that he shall be able so much as to alter or meliorate the humour of an ungrateful person by any acts of kindness, though never so frequent, never so obliging.

Philosophy will teach the learned, and experience may teach all, that it is a thing hardly feasible. For, love such a one, and he shall despise you. Commend him, and, as occasion serves, he shall revile you. Give him, and he shall but laugh at your easiness. Save his life; but, when you have done, look to your own.

The greatest favours to such a one are but the motion of a ship upon the waves; they leave no trace, no sign behind them; they neither soften nor win upon him; they neither melt nor endear him, but leave him as hard, as rugged, and as unconcerned as ever. All kindnesses descend upon such a temper as showers of rain or rivers of fresh water falling into the main sea; the sea swallows them all, but is not at all changed or sweetened by them. I may truly say of the mind of an ungrateful person that it is kindness proof. It is impenetrable, unconquerable; unconquerable

by that which conquers all things else, even by love itself. Flints may be meltedwe see it daily-but an ungrateful heart cannot; no, not by the strongest and the noblest flame. After all your attempts, all your experiments, for anything that man can do, he that is upgrateful will be ungrateful still. And the reason is manifest; for you may remember that I told you that ingratitude sprang from a principle of ill-nature: which being a thing founded in such a certain constitution of blood and spirit, as, being born with man into the world, and upon that account called nature, shall prevent all remedies that can be applied by education, and leaves such a bias upon the mind, as is beforehand with all instruction.

So that you shall seldom or never meet with an ungrateful person but, if you look backward, and trace him up to his original, you will find that he was born so; and if you could look forward enough, it is a thousand to one but you will find that he also dies so; for you shall never light upon an ill-natured man who was not also an ill-natured child, and gave several testimonies of his being so to discerning persons, long before the use of his reason.

The thread that nature spins is seldom broken off by anything but death. I do not by this limit the operation of God's grace, for that may do wonders: but humanly speaking, and according to the method of the world, and the little correctives supplied by art and discipline, it seldom fails but an ill principle has its course, and nature inakes good its blow.

These extracts shew the racy, idiomatic style of South, and his homely, masculine vigour of thought, but little tinctured with pious earnestness. We subjoin one passage, fanciful in conception, but rising almost into the region of poetry.

Man Before the Fall.

The noblest faculty of man, the understanding, was before the Fall sublime, clear, and aspiring; and, as it were the soul's upper region, lofty and serene, free from the vapours and disturbances of the inferior affections. It was the leading, controlling faculty; all the passions wore the colours of reason; it did not so much persuade as command; it was not consul, but dictator. Discourse was then almost as quick as intuition; it was nimble in proposing, firm in concluding; it could sooner determine than now it can dispute. Like the sun, it had both light and agility; it knew no rest but in motion; no quiet but in activity. It did not so properly apprehend as irradiate the object; not so much find as make things intelligible. It did arbitrate upon the several reports of sense, and all the varieties of imagination; not like a drowsy judge, but also directing their verdict. In sum, it was vegete, quick, and lively; open as the day, untainted as the morning, full of the innocence and sprightliness of youth; it gave the soul a bright and a full view into all things, and was not only a window, but was itself the prospect.

Study was not then a duty, night watchings were needless; the light of reason wanted not the assistance of a candle. This is the doom of fallen man, to labour in the fire, to seek truth in profundo, to exhaust his time and impair his health, and perhaps to spin out his days and himself into a pitiful and controverted conclusion. There was then no poring, no struggling with memory, no straining for invention. His faculties were quick and expedite; they answered without knocking, they were rendy upon the first summons, there was freedom and firmness in all their operations. I confess 'tis difficult for us, who date our ignorance from our first being, and were still bred up with the same infirmities about us with which we were born, to raise our thoughts and imaginations to those intellectual perfections that attended our ncture in the time of innocence; as it is for a peasant bred up in the obscurities of a cottage, to fancy in his mind the unseen splendours of a court. But by rating posit.ves by their privatives, and other arts of reason, by which discourse supplies the want of the reports of sense, we may collect the excellency of the understanding then by the glorious remainders of it now, and guess at the stateliness of the building by the magnificence of its ruins. All those arts, varieties, and inventions, which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious pursue, and all admire, are but the relics of an intellect defaced by sin and time. We admire it now. only as eiqueries do a piece of old coin, for the stamp it once bore, and not for those vanishing lineaments and

disappearing drafts that remain upon it at present. And certainly that must needs have been very glorious the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely when old and decrepit, surely was very beautiful when he was young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.

DR. WILLIAM SHERLOCK.

DR. WILLIAM SHERLOCK, dean of St. Paul's (1641-1707), was a divine of considerable reputation in his own times, chiedy as a writer against dissent and infidelity. His Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity,' 1691, led to a controversy with South, who had more wit though less Christian moderation than his opponent. Sherlock was for some time a nonjuror, but he at length took the oath of allegiance to William III.; and in 1691 was made dean of St. Paul's. His Practical Discourse Concerning Death,' which appeared in 1689, is one of the most popular theological works in the language. He also wrote discourses on a 'Future Judgment' (1692) and on the 'Divine Providence' (1694), in which he brought forward with irrefrag able force,' says Southey, the natural arguments for the immortality of the soul and a future state.'

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Life not too Short.

Such a long life [as that of the antediluvians] is not reconcilable with the present state of the world. What the state of the world was before the Flood, in what manner they lived, and how they employed their time, we cannot tell, for Moses has given no account of it; but taking the world as it is, and as we find it, I dare underfake to convince those men who are most apt to complain of the shortness of life, that it would not be for the general happiness of mankind to have it much longer: for, 1st, The world is at present very unequally divided; some have a large share and portion of it, others have nothing but what they can earn by very hard labour, or extort from other men's charity by their restless importunities, or gain by more ungodly arts. Now, though the rich and prosperous, who have the world at command, and live in ease and pleasure, would be very well contented to spend some hundred years in this world, yet I should think fifty or threescore years abundantly enough for slaves and beggars; enough to spend in hunger and want, in a jail and a prison. And those who are so foolish as not to think this enough, owe a great deal to the wisdom and goodness of God that he does. So that the greatest part of mankind have great reason to be contented with the shortness of life, because they have no temptation to wish it longer.

2dly, The present state of this world requires a more quick succession. The world is pretty well peopled, and is divided amongst its present inhabitants; and but very few, in comparison, as I observed before, have any considerable share in the division. Now, let us but suppose that all our ancestors, who lived a hundred or two hundred years ago, were alive still, and possessed their old estates and honours, what had become of this present generation of men, who have now taken their places, and make as great a show and bustle in the world as they did? And if you look back three, or four, or five hundred years, the case is still so much the worse; the world would be over-peopled; and where there is one poor miserable man now, there must have been five hundred; or the world must have been common, and all men reduced to the same level; which, I believe, the rich and happy people, who are so fond of long life, would not like very well. This would utterly undo our young prodigal heirs, were their hopes of succession three or four hundred years off, who, as short as life is now, think their fathers make very little haste to their graves, This would spoil their trade of spending their estates before they have them, and make them live a dull sober life, whether they would or no; and such a life, I know, they don't think worth having. And therefore, I hope at least they will not make the shortness of their fathers lives an argument against providence; and yet such kind of sparks as these are commonly the wits that set up for atheism, and,

when it is put into their heads, quarrel with everything which they fondly conceive will weaken the belief of a God and a providence, and, among other things, with the shortness of life; which they have little reason to do, when they so often outlive their estates.

3dly, The world is very bad as it is; so bad, that good men scarce know how to spend fifty or threescore years in it; but consider how bad it would probably be, were the life of a man extended to six, seven, or eight hundred years. If so near a prospect of the other world as forty or fifty years cannot restrain men from the greatest villainies, what would they do if they could as reasonably suppose death to be three or four hundred years off? If men make such improvements in wickedness in twenty or thirty years, what would they do in hundreds ? And what a blessed place then would this world be to live in! We see in the old world, when the life of men was drawn out to so great a length, the wickedness of mankind grew so in. sufferable, that it repented God he had made man; and he resolved to destroy that whole generation, excepting Noah and his family. And the most probable account that can be given how they came to grow so universally wicked, is the long and prosperous lives of such wicked men, who by degrees corrupted others, and they others, till there was but one righteous family left, and no other remedy left but to destroy them all; leaving only that righteous family as the seed and future hopes of the new world.

And when God had determined in himself, and promised to Noah never to destroy the world again by such a universal destruction, till the last and final judgment, it was necessary by degrees to shorten the lives of men, which was the most effectual means to make them more governable, and to remove bad examples out of the world, which would hinder the spreading of the infection, and people and reform the world again by new examples of piety and virtue. For when there are such quick successions of men, there are few ages but have some great and brave examples, which give a new and better spirit to the world.

Advantages of our Ignorance of the Time of Death.

For a conclusion of this argument, I shall briefly vindicate the wisdom and goodness of God in concealing from us the time of our death. This we are very apt to complain of, that our lives are so very uncertain, that we know not to-day but that we may die to-morrow; and we would be mighty glad to meet with any one who would certainly inform us in this matter how long we are to live. But if we think a little better of it, we shall be of another mind.

For 1st, Though I presume many of you would be glad to know that you shall certainly live twenty, or thirty, or forty years longer, yet would it be any comfort to know that you must die to-morrow, or some few months, or a year or two hence? which may be your case for aught you know; and this, I believe, you are not very desirous to know; for how would this chill your blood and spirits? How would it overcast all the pleasures and comforts of life! You would spend your days like men under the sentence of death, while the execution is suspended.

Did all men who must die young certainly know it, it would destroy the industry and improvements of half mankind, which would half destroy the world, or be an insupportable mischief to human societies; for what man who knows that he must die at twenty, or five-and-twenty, a little sooner or later, would trouble himself with ingenious or gainful arts, or concern himself any more with this world than just to live so long in it? And yet how necessary is the service of such men in the world? What great things do they many times do! and what great improvements do they make! How pleasant and diverting is their conversation, while it is innocent! How do they enjoy themselves, and give life and spirit to the graver age? How thin would our schools, our shops, our universities, and all places of education be, did they know how little time many of them were to live in the world! For would such men concern themselves to learn the arts of living, who must die as soon as they have learnt them? Would any father be at a great expense in educating his child, only that he might die with a little Latin and Greek, logic and philosophy? No; half the world must be divided into cloisters and nunneries, and nurseries for the grave.

Well, you'll say, suppose that; and is not this an advantage above all the inconveniences you can think of, to secure the salvation of so many thousands who are

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