vengers to execute Wrath upon them that do Evil, Rom. xiii. 4. For the Punishment of Evil-doers, and the Praise of them that do well, I Pet. ii. 14. Now, if Princes, and all that are put in Authority under them, would truly and indifferently minister Justice to the Punishment of Wickedness and Vice, and the Maintenance of true Religion and Virtue, Things would quickly be put upon a right Foot, and all Competitions for Favour would be brought to a peremptory and impartial Decifion, by the unerring Rule of Truth and Righteoufnefs; the Evil-doers would have nothing to hope, and the Well-doers nothing to fear; real Merit, Virtue, and Honour, would be the never-failing Steps to Preferment; Infamy and Shame would be the infeparable Companions of Vice and Iniquity. The Learned, the Pious, and the Good, would have the firft and faireft Claim to the Favours of the Great; and the Enemies of Religion and of Honour would be banished not only from the Courts of Princes, but even from the Houses and Countenance of all good Men; and the truly honourable, of both Sexes, would be as much afhamed of appearing in the Company of a Libertine, or Infidel, as to be caught in a difhabille, or in Company with a Bawd, or a Pick-pocket; and the Rewards of Virtue would be given to none but those who had Merit enough to deferve them.-I fhall conclude with a fhort Story.-Once upon a time, there lived, in a certain Nation, a Man of true Honour, and a confiderable Patron, who, in the Difpofal of his Favours, regarded nothing but the real Merit of the Receiver. He had long entertained very favourable Intentions towards a Clergyman of great Merit, who had lain fo long buried in the Obscurity

of a Country Village, under the Infolence and Oppreffion of a wrong-headed Country 'Squire, that the poor Man looked upon himself as quite hopeless, helplefs, and friendlefs; when, all of a fudden, this worthy Patron surprised him with the Presentation to a Living of very confiderable Value. The poor Man, amazed at this unexpected Generofity, immediately waited upon his Patron, with all thofe decent and grateful Acknowledgments which fo uncommon a Favour might be reasonably thought to deferve, The Patron cut him fhort with this rough, goodnatured Reply: Sir, pray spare your Speeches, and keep your Compliments to your felf; you are under no manner of Obligation to me. For, bad I known a more deferving Man in England than yourself, you should not have had it.

A

LETTER VIII.

Fuft Senfe of Honour proceeds from a Consciousness of some inherent Worth or Excellency in ourselves, or fome honourable Relation we bear to our Maker or Fellow-Creatures; from fome real Superiority we enjoy on the Stage of Life, or in the Scale of Being, which never fails to infpire a great and generous Mind with noble Sentiments, fuitable and correfpondent to the real Dignity of our State and Nature, so as to fcorn to be guilty of an unworthy or difhonourable Thought, Word, or Action, that may difgrace our real Character, or degrade us from the Rank in which we fhine, to the Level of our Infe→

riors. Thus, in the Scale of Beings, Men in general glory in diftinguishing themselves from the Brutes, by exerting their rational and intellectual Faculties, in fuch a Manner, and to such noble Ends and Purposes, as the great Author of our Being intended: So they diftinguish themselves from Children, and Men of Sense from Fools, by acting agreeably to their fuperior Senfe and Knowledge, and fhewing a manly and rational Contempt of thofe Baubles and Trifles, which are the fupreme Delight and Enjoyment of Childhood and Folly. Men that are exalted to high Stations, either in Church or State, diftinguish themfelves from the World below them by fuch fuperior Vigilance, Attention, Integrity, and Courage, as their exalted Stations, the Greatness of their Charge, and the Extent of their Provinces, may require; and the Man of Quality and Honour distinguishes himself from his Inferiors, not so much by his Title and Equipage, as by the Candor of his Mind, the Benevolence of his Heart, the Politenefs of his Manners, and the Generofity of his Actions; and therefore fcorns to tarnish the Luftre of his Character, by faying or doing any thing that has a mean, fordid, or ungenerous Appearance: And the truly good Chriftian, whofe Hope, and Treafure, and Converfation is in Heaven, who confiders himself as a Citizen of the new Jerufalem, keeps his Heart and Eye immoveably fixed upon the glorious Dignity, the immortal Honour of his high Calling in Chrift Jefus, which he fcorns to facrifice to Luft or Pride, Ambition or Covetoufnefs, the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World; well knowing that this present World lieth in Darkness, and that all the Riches, and Honours,

and Pleasures it can poffibly beftow on its deluded Votaries, are not worthy to be compared with one Moment's Enjoyment of that unspeakable Glory which God has prepared for them that unfeignedly love him and keep his Commandments.

The Dignity of human Nature, even in this State of Humiliation and Pennance, is fo obvious to any attentive Mind, that the very Heathens discovered it by the Light of Nature; many of them talk juftly and magnificently of our original Grandeur and primitive Perfection, before we fell into this State of Mortality and Sorrow, and of our glorious Reftitution to our primitive Felicity. This they spoke of, not only as a traditional Truth derived from the Father of the new World through all the Branches of his Family, but as an inward Sentiment of Nature, interwoven with our very Frame, and effential to our Being, of which we find many memorable Teftimonies among the Writers of the Pythagoric and Platonic Schools, all attefting this great, but melancholy, Truth, that we are a Race of finful miserable Creatures, fallen from our original Glory into a State of Imperfection and Mortality; that we are not now what we once were, what the great Author of our Being intended us to be, and what we shall be here-after. This View of our Condition has been, in all Ages, a Reafon for thinking and serious People to confider what was that Perfection, what the original Felicity of our Nature, how we came to lofe it, what was the Original of Evil, and of all the Calamities that have ever fince overfpread the Face of the Earth, and detained the whole human Species under the Bondage of Mifery and Death, whether there were

any

any Poffibility of a Restoration, and what the most probable Means to effect it. All agreed in this, that it was the Lofs of fome inward Treasure, fome fpiritual and rational Perfections, which could only be recovered by mortifying the animal Life in us, which is the Death of the inward and fpiritual, by preffing through the Slavery and Darkness of corrupt Nature, into the fupreme Center of Life, Light, and Glory; confcious, at the fame time, that, under the present Ruins of Innocence and Happiness, under the Veil of this corruptible mortal Body, there lay concealed a glorious and excellent Nature, an immortal Spirit, fighing for Deliverance, and longing for Redemption from the Bondage of Corruption into the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God; that to this glo-: rious and immortal Spirit there belonged a glorious and immortal Body, which they called * the_connatural, the luciform, the immaterial Body, the fubtle Vehicle or Chariot of the Soul; Expreffions frequently to be met with in Hierocles, and other Pythagoric and Platonic Writers, agreeable to what St. Paul calls the fpiritual Body, † 1 Cor. xv. 44. That this glorious Body, with its glorious Confort the Soul, which, in Scripture Language, conftitute the inward Man, were confined in this Prison of Flesh and Blood, from which it had no poffible Means of escaping but by weakening and mortifying our natural Appetites and bodily Lufts, which are the Chains by which we are detained in this Prifon of Corruption and Death; that every Indulgence of the animal Life was prolonging our Captivity, ftrengthening our Chains, finking

*

Τὸ σῶμα συμφυές, αυγοειδες, ἀΰλον λέπιον ἔ χημαψυχῆς. † Σῶτ μα Προμάτικον.

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