22 Religion and Virtue, s E R M. are, according to truth, and to their real I. nature and importance ; in other words, that it is wifdom ; and that to abandon our felves to impiety, unrighteoufnefs, and fen - fual pleafures, is to confound things, to neg- lea their differences, to treat them quite otherwife than, at leaft if we confidered, we fhould judge them to be ; or that it is folly. Another notion of wifdom is, an ability to improve our reafon to the beft purpofes. All men boaft alike of this high prerogative of their nature, that they are rational ; but they have not all the fame dexterity in the ufe of reafon, nor an equal capacity to em- ploy it for the fame valuable ends. The conftitution of the human nature kerns to be uniform ; we have the fame original de- terminations, the fame fenfes, er ways of perceiving things, and the fame propenfities or affections which conflitute the ends we purfue ; but they are various and unequal in their excellency and importance, according to the different parts of our nature to which they relate, and the ufes which the wife author of our being defigned them for. There is, for example, in man, a delire to meat and drink, and other gratifications of the
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