pass one year in the world, hearing all they say, and believing nothing, entering every moment into himself, and suspending his judgment till truth and evidence appear, and I will esteem him more learned than Aristotle, wiser than Socrates, and a greater man than Plato."

2. A man must reform even his education. In every family the minds of children are turn to a certain point. Every family hath its prejudice, I had almost said, its absurdity: and hence it comes to pass that people despise the profession they do not exercise. Hear the merchant; he will tell you, that nothing so much deserves the attention of mankind as trade, as acquiring money by every created thing, as knowing the value of this, and the worth of that, as taxing, so to speak, all the works of art, and all the productions of nature. Hear the man of learning; he will tell you, that the perfection of man consists in literature, that there is a difference as essential between a scholar and a man of no literature, as between a rational creature and a brute. Hear the soldier; he will tell you, that the man of science is a pedant, who ought to be confined to the dirt and darkness of the schools, that the merchant is the most sordid part of society, and that nothing is so noble as the profession of arms. One would think, to hear him talk, that the sword by his side is a patent for preeminence, and that mankind have no need of any people, who cannot rout an army, cut through a squadron, or scale a wall. Hear him who hath got the disease of quality; he will tell you, that other men are nothing but reptiles beneath his feet, that human blood, stained every where else, is pure only in his veins. That nobility serves for every thing, for genius, and education, and fortune, and sometimes even for common sense and good faith.

Hear the peasant; he will tell you, that a nobleman is an enthusiast for appropriating to himself the virtues of his ancestors, and for pretending to find in old quaint names, and in worm eaten papers, advantages, which belong only to real and actual abilities. As I said before, each family hath its prejudice, every profession hath its folly, all proceeding from this principle, because we consider objects only in one point of view. To correct ourselves on this article, we must go to the source, examine how our minds were directed in our childhood; in a word, we must review, and reform even our education.

3. In fine, we must, as well as we can, choose a friend wise enough to know truth, and generous enough to impart it to others; a man who will shew us an object on every side, when we are inclined to consider it only on one. I say, as well as you can, for to give this rule is to suppose two things, both sometimes alike impracticable; the one, that such a man can be found, and the other, that he will be heard with deference. When we are so happy as to find this inestimable treasure, we have found a remedy of marvellous efficacy against the disorders, which the passions produce in the mind. Let us make the trial. Suppose a faithful friend should address one of you in this manner. Heaven hath united in your favor the most happy circumstances. The blood of the greatest heroes animates you, and your name alone is an encomium. Beside this you have an affluent fortune, and Providence hath given you abundance to support your dignity, and to discharge every thing that your splendid station requires. You have also a fine and acute genius, and your natural talents are cultivated by an excellent education. Your health seems free from the infirmiVOL. V. 2 c

ties of life, and if any man may hope for a long duration here, you are the man who may expect it. With all these noble advantages you may aspire at any thing. But one thing is wanting. You are dazzled with your own splendor, and your feeble eyes are almost put out with the brilliancy of your condition. Your imagination struck with the idea of the prince, whom you have the honor to serve, makes you consider yourself as a kind of royal personage. You have formed your family on the plan of the court. You are proud, arrogant, haughty. Your seat resembles a tribunal, and all your expressions are sentences from which it is a crime to appeal. As you will never suffer yourself to be contradicted, you seem to be applauded: but a sacrifice is made to your vanity and not to your merit, and people bow not to your reason but to your tyranny. As they fear you avail yourself of your credit to brave others, each endeavors to oppose you, and to throw down in your absence the altar he had erected in your presence, and on which no incense sincerely offered burns, except that which you yourself put there.

So much for irregular passions in the mind. Let us now lay down a few rules for the government of the senses.

Before we proceed, we cannot kelp deploring the misery of a man, who is impelled by the disorders of his senses, and the heat of his constitution to criminal passions. Such a man often deserves pity more than indignation. A bad constitution is We sometimes compatible with a good heart. cannot think without trembling, of an ungrateful man, a cheat, a traitor, an assassin; for their crimes always suppose liberty of mind, and consent of will: but a man driven from the post of duty by the heat of his blood, by an overflow of humors,

by the fermentation and flame of his spirits, often sins by constraint, and, so to speak, protests against his crime even while he commits it. Hence we often see angry people become full of love and pity, always inclining to forgive, or always ready to sk pardon; while others cold, calm, tranquil, revolve eternal hatreds in their souls, and leave them for an inheritance for their children.

However, though the irregularity of the senses diminishes the atrociousness of the crime, yet it cannot excuse those, who do not make continual efforts to correct it. To acknowledge that we are constitutionally inclined to violate the laws of God, and to live quietly in practices directed by constitutional heat, is to have the interior tainted. It is an evidence that the malady, which at first attacked only the exterior of the man, hath communicated itself to all the frame, and infected the vitals. We oppose this against the frivolous excuses of some sinners, who while they abandon themselves like brute beasts to the most guilty passions, lay all the blame on the misfortune of their constitution. They say, their will hath no part in their excesses they cannot change their constitutionand God cannot justly blame them for irregularities, which proceed from the natural union of the soul with the body. Indeed they prove by their talk they would be very sorry not to have a constitution to serve for an apology for sin, and to cover the licentiousness of casting off an obligation, which the law of God, according to them, requires of none but such as have received from nature the power of discharging it. If these maxims be admitted, what becomes of the morality of Jesus Christ? What become of the commands concerning mortification and repentance? But people, who talk thus, intend less to correct their faults than to

palliate them; and this discourse is intended only for such as are willing to apply means to free themselves from the dominion of irregular passions.

Certainly the best advice that can be given to a man, whose constitution inclines him to sin, is, that he avoid opportunities, and flee from such objects as affect and disconcert him. It doth not depend on you to be unconcerned in sight of an object fatal to your innocence: but it does depend on you to keep out of the way of seeing it. It doth not depend on you to be animated at the sight of a gaming table: but it doth depend on you to avoid such whimsical places, where sharping goes for merit. Let us not be presumptuous. Let us make diffidence a principle of virtue. Let us remember St. Peter, he was fired with zeal, he thought every thing possible to his love, his presumption was the cause of his fall, and many by following his example have yielded to temptation, and have found the truth of an apocryphal maxim, he that loveth danger shall perish therein, Eccles. iii. 26.

After all that virtue, which owes its firmness only to the want of an opportunity for vice, is very feeble and it argues very little attainment only to be able to resist our passions in the absence of temptation. I recollect a maxim of St. Paul, I wrote unto you not to company with fornicators, but I did not mean that you should have no conversation with fornicators of this world, for then must ye needs go out of the world, 1 Cor. v. 9, 10. Literally, to avoid all objects dangerous to our passions, we must go out of the world. Are there no remedies adapted to the necessity we are under of living among mankind? Is there no such thing as correcting, with the assistance of grace, the irregularities of our constitution, and freeing ourselves