No. X. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, Da, Pater, augustam menti conscendere sedem; Give me, O Father, to thy throne access, ВОЕТИ. Give me, unveil'd, the source of good to see! NOTHING has offended me more, than the manner in which subjects of eternal moment are so often treated. To dispute on moral and theological topics is become a fashion; and it is usual with persons, of whom it is no reproach to say they are ignorant, because their opportunities of gaining knowledge have been few, to determine with the utmost confidence upon questions to which no human intellect is equal. In almost every tavern and every alehouse, illiterate petulance prates of fitness and virtue, of freedom and fate; and it is common to hear disputes concerning everlasting happiness and misery, the mysteries of religion and the attributes of God, intermingled with lewdness and blasphemy, or at least treated with wanton negligence and absurd merriment. For lewdness and blasphemy, it is hoped, no apology will seriously be offered: and it is probable, that if the question in debate was, Which of the disputants should be hanged on the morrow? it would be conducted with decency and gravity, as a matter of some importance: that risible good-humour, and that noble freedom, of which they appear to be so fond, would be thought not well to agree with their subject; nor would either of the gentlemen be much delighted, if an argument a intended to demonstrate that he would within few hours be suspended on a gibbet, should be embellished with a witty allusion to a button and loop, or a jocular remark that it would effectually secure him from future accidents, either by land or water: and yet the justice and mercy of Omnipotence, the life and death of the soul, are treated with ridicule and sport; and it is contended, that with ridicule and sport they ought always to be treated. But the effect, as well as the manner of these fashionable disputes, is always ill: they tend to establish what is called natural religion, upon the ruins of Christianity; and a man has no sooner styled himself a moral philosopher, than he finds that his duty both to God and man is contracted into a very small compass, and may be practised with the greatest facility. Yet as this effect is not always apparent, the unwary are frequently deluded into fatal error: and imagine they are attaining the highest degree of moral excellence, while they are insensibly losing the principles upon which alone temptation can be resisted, and a steady perseverance in well-doing secured. Among other favourite and unsuspected topics, is the excellency of virtue. Virtue is said neccessarily to produce its own happiness, and to be constantly and adequately its own reward: as vice, on the contrary, never fails to produce misery, and inflict upon itself the punishment it deserves: propositions, of which every one is ready to affirm, that they may be admitted without scruple, and believed without danger. But, from hence it is inferred, that future rewards and punishments are not necessary, either to furnish adequate motives to the practice of virtue, or to justify the ways of God. In consequence of their not being necessary, they become doubtful; the Deity is less and less the object of fear and hope; and as virtue is said to be that which produces ultimate good below, whatever is supposed to produce ultimate good below is said to be virtue: right and wrong are confounded, because remote consequences cannot perfectly be known; the principal barrier, by which appetite and passion are restrained, is broken down; the remonstrances of conscience are overborne by sophistry; and the acquired and habitual shame of vice is subdued by the perpetual efforts of vigorous resistance. But the inference from which these dreadful consequences proceed, however plausible, is not just; nor does it appear from experience that the premises are true. That virtue alone is happiness below, is indeed a maxim in speculative morality, which all the treasures of learning have been lavished to support, and all the flowers of wit collected to recommend; it has been the favourite of some among the wisest and best of mankind in every generation; and is at once venerable for its age, and lovely in the bloom of a new youth. And yet if it be allowed, that they who languish in disease and indigence, who suffer pain, hunger, and nakedness, in obscurity and solitude, are less happy than those who, with the same degree of virtue, enjoy health, and ease, and plenty, who are distinguished by fame, and courted by society; it follows, that virtue alone is not efficient of happiness, because virtue cannot always bestow those things upon which happiness is confessed to depend. It is indeed true, that virtue in prosperity enjoys more than vice; and that in adversity she suffers less. If prosperity and adversity, therefore, were merely accidental to virtue and vice, it might be granted, that setting aside those things upon which moral conduct has no influence, as foreign to the question, every man is happy, either negatively or positively, in proportion as he is virtuous; though it were denied that virtue alone could put into his possession all that is essential to human felicity. But prosperity and adversity, affluence and want, are not dependent upon moral conduct: external advantages are frequently obtained by vice, and forfeited by virtue; for, as an estate may be gained by secreting a will, or loading a die, an estate may also be lost by withholding a vote, or rejecting a job. Are external advantages then too light to turn the scale? Will an act of virtue, by which all are rejected, ensure more happiness than an act of vice, by which all are procured? Are the advantages which an estate, obtained by an act of vice, bestows, overbalanced through life by regret and remorse? and the indigence and contumely that follow the loss of conveniences, which virtue has rejected, more than compensated by content and self-approbation? That which is ill-gotten is not always ill-used; nor is that which is well rejected always remembered without regret. It is not to be supposed that he, who by an act of fraud gained the possession of a thousand pounds a-year, which he spends in such a gratification of his appetites and passions as is consistent with health and reputation, in the reciprocation of civilities among his equals, and sometimes in acts of bounty and munificence, and who uses the power and influence which it gives him so as to conciliate affection and procure respect; has less happiness below, than if by a stronger effort of virtue he had continued in a state of dependence and poverty, neglected and despised, destitute of any other means to exercise the social affections than mutual condolence with those who suffer the same calamity, and almost wishing, in the bitterness of his distress, that he had improved the opportunity which he had lost. It may indeed be urged, that the happiness and infelicity of both these states are still in exact proportion to virtue: that the affluence which was acquired by a single act of vice, is enjoyed only by the exercise of virtue; and that the penury incurred by a single effort of virtue, is rendered afflictive only by impatience and discontent. But whether this be granted or denied, it remains true that the happiness in both these states is not equal; and that in one the means to enjoy life were acquired by vice, which in the other were lost by virtue. And if it be possible, by a single act of vice, to increase happiness upon the whole of life, from what rational motives can the temptation to that act be resisted? From none, surely, but such as arise from the belief of a future state, in which virtue will be rewarded and vice punished; for to what can happiness be wisely sacrificed, but to greater happiness? and how can the ways of God be justified, if a man, by the irreparable injury of his neighbour, becomes happier upon the whole, than he would have been if he had observed the eternal rule, and done to another as he would that another should do to him? Perhaps I may be told, that to talk of sacrificing happiness to greater happiness (as virtue) is absurd; and that he who is restrained from fraud or violence, merely from the fear of hell, is no more virtuous than he who is restrained merely by the fear of a gibbet. But supposing this to be true, yet with respect to society, mere external rectitude of conduct answers all the purposes of virtue; and if I travel without being robbed, it is of little consequence to me, whether the persons whom I meet on the road were restrained from attempting to invade my property by the fear of punishment, or the abhorrence of vice: so that the gibbet, if it does not produce virtue, is yet of such incontestible utility, that I believe those gentlemen would be very unwilling that it should be removed, who are, notwithstanding so zealous to steel every breast against the fear of damnation; nor would they be content, however negligent of their souls, that their property should be no otherwise secured than by the |