SECTION XVI. 48f A fluttering beau is ever solicitous about dress andpublic appearances; an antiquary spends his days among medals and ancient parchments, tombs and inscriptions a critic wastes his life in correcting letters and syllables, in placing and displacing A's and B's ; a virtuoso perhaps, is too much employed among his shells and his fossils, his worms and his butterflies ; and an idle tradesman dwells in coffee-houses, feeds upon news-papers, and squanders away his time among the wars, and the treaties of princes, the counsels and the campaigns of Europe, and thecere- moniesof ambassadors. All of them have their passions engaged on Their several chosen objects, which they call good : Most of these, if moderately pursued according to theirjust value, or real use, in science or in human life, and according to the different stations and conditions of men, have something of good in them, and the pursuit of them would not be culpable : But these men commit a gross mistake when they call them good in so high a degree as to let the affairs of their family run at randomin the pursuit of them, or neglect the more important interests of their souls and eternity. You see how strangely some men judge what is good for them. Again, among persons that profess religion and mean to be christians, we find some who 'lay out their thoughts and wishes, their hopes, and fears and joys, who employ their love, their wrath and hatred, and every passion about some little rites and forms, feasts and fastings, about the distinguishing phrases and opinions of somenarrow sect or party, and make these the rules for their conducttoward their neighbours ; while faithand honesty, love to God, and general benevolence to man, the devotion of the heart, and holiness of life, are too'much forgotten. You may judge hereby what it is they call good in religion, and in what preposterous order they have ranged their ideas, and their value of things. If we would cure ourselves of these follies, and wisely em- ploy all our passions upon proper objects, and that in a due de- gree, let us take the utmost care to gain ajust estimate of all the objects we converse with, that we mayneither over-rate, nor un- dervalue them : We must prefer God above creatures, the soul above the body, eternal things above temporal. Let God and religion, Jesus Christ and the gospel, truth and virtue, divine graceand heavenly glory, stand uppermost, and hold the highest and best place among all our ideas of good: Let sin and folly, the devil andhis temptations, anguish of conscience and hell, be counted the greatest and worst of evils : And let every thing else be ranged in our esteem, according to their relation to, or in- fluence upon these best and worst of objects. Suffer nothing that relates merely to this mortal and perishing life, to come in compe- tion with things infinite and eternal. Vol.. u. II la
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