It is, however, certain, that a devotional tafte and habit are very defirable in themselves, exclufive of their effects in meliorating the morals and difpofition, and promoting present and future felicity. They add dignity, pleasure, and fecurity to any age; but to old age they are the moft becoming grace, the moft fubftantial fupport, and the fweeteft comfort. In order to preferve them, it will be neceffary to preferve our fenfibility; and nothing will contribute fo much to this purpofe, as a life of temperance, of innocence, and fimplicity.

Self-Delusion.

F it be reasonable to estimate the difficulty of any enterprise by frequent miscarriages, it may justly be concluded that it is not easy for a man to know himfelf; for wherefoever we turn our view, we shall find almost all with whom we converse so nearly as to judge of their sentiments, indulging more favourable conceptions of their own virtue than they have been able to impress upon others, and congratulating themfelves upon degrees of excellence, which their fondeft admirers cannot allow them to have attained.

Those representations of imaginary virtue are generally confidered as arts of hypocrify, and as fnares laid for confidence and praise. But I believe the fufpicion often unjust; thofe who thus propagate their own reputation, only extend the fraud by which they have been themselves deceived; for this failing is incident to numbers, who feem to live without defigns, competitions, or pursuits; it appears on occafions which promife no acceffion of honour or of profit, and to perfons from whom very little is to be hoped or feared. It is, indeed, not easy to tell how far we may be blinded by the love of ourselves, when we reflect how much a fecondary paffion can cloud our judgment, and how few faults a man, in the first raptures of love, can difcover in the perfon or conduct of his mistress.

One fophifm by which men persuade themselves that they have thofe virtues which they really want, is formed by the fubftitution of fingle acts for habits. A miser who once relieved a friend from the danger of a prison, fuffers his imagination to dwell for ever upon his own heroic generofity; he yields his heart up to indignation at those who are blind to merit, or infenfible to mifery, and who can please themselves' with the enjoyment of that wealth, which they never permit others to partake.

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From any cenfures of the world, or reproaches of his confcience, he has an appeal to action and to knowledge; and though his whole life is a course of rapacity and avarice, he concludes himself to be tender and liberal, because he has once performed an act of liberality and tenderness.

As a glass which magnifies objects by the approach of one end to the eye, leffens them by the application of the other, fo vices are extenuated by the inversion of that fallacy by which virtues are augmented. Thofe faults which we cannot conceal from our own notice, are confidered, however frequent, not as habitual corruptions, or settled practices, but as casual failures, and fingle lapfes. A man who has, from year to year, set his country to fale, either for the gratification of his ambition or resentment, confeffes that the heat of party now and then betrays the fevereft virtue to measures that cannot be seriously defended. He that spends his days and nights in riot and debauchery, owns that his paffions oftentimes overpower his refolution. But each comforts himself that his faults are not without precedent, for the beft and the wifeft men have given way to the violence of fudden temptations.

There are men who always confound the praife of goodness with the practice, and who believe themselves mild and moderate, charitable and faithful, because they have exerted their eloquence in commendation of mildnefs, fidelity, and other virtues. This is an error almost universal among those that converfe much with dependents, with fuch whofe fear or interest disposes them to a feeming reverence for any declamation, however enthusiastic, and fubmiffion to any boaft, however arrogant. Having none to recall their attention to their lives, they rate themselves by the goodness of their opinions, and forget how much more eafily men may fhew

their virtue in their talk than in their actions:

The tribe is likewife very numerous of those who regulate their lives, not by the ftandard of religion, but

the

the measure of other men's virtue; who lull their own remorfe with the remembrance of crimes more atrocious than their own, and seem to believe that they are not bad while another can be found worse.

For escaping these and a thousand other deceits, many expedients have been propofed. Some have recommended the frequent confultation of a wife friend, admitted to intimacy, and encouraged to fincerity. But, this appears a remedy by no means adapted to general ufe; for in order to fecure the virtue of one, it prefuppofes more virtue in two than will generally be found. In the first, fuch a defire of rectitude and amendment, as may incline him to hear his own accufation from the mouth of him whom he esteems, and by whom, therefore, he will always hope that his faults are not discovered; and in the fecond, fuch zeal and honesty as will make him content, for his friend's advantage, to lose his kindness.

It feems that enemies have been always found by experience the most faithful monitors; for adversity has ever been confidered as the ftate in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, and this effect it must produce by withdrawing flatterers, whose business it is to hide our weaknesses from us; or by giving a loose to malice, and license to reproach; or at leaft by cutting off those pleasures which called us away from meditation on our own conduct, and repreffing that pride which too easily perfuades us that we merit whatever we enjoy.

Part of these benefits it is in every man's power to procure to himself, by affigning proper portions of his life to the examination of the reft, and by putting himfelf frequently in such a situation, by retirement and abstraction, as may weaken the influence of external objects. By this practice he may obtain the folitude of adverfity without its melancholy, its inftructions without its cenfures, and its sensibility without its perturbations.

There are few conditions which do not entangle us with fublunary hopes and fears, from which it is neceffary to be at intervals difencumbered, that we may place ourselves in His prefence who views effects in their caufes, and actions in their motives; that we may, as Chillingworth expreffes it, confider things as if there were no other beings in the world but God and ourfelves; or, to ufe language yet more awful, may com mune with our own hearts, and be ftill.