?B i 78 THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND. ally valuable, but what arises from the mere love of virtue itself, without any regard to punishment or reward. But observe in two pages afterwards, he grants that " this principle of fear of future punishment, and hope of future re- ward, how mercenary and servile soever it may be accounted, is yet in many 'circumstances a great advantage; security and sup- port to virtue ; especially where there is danger of the violence of rage or lust, or any counter-working passion, to control and overcome thegood affections cif the mind." Now the rule and practice of Christianity, or the gospel, as it is closely connected with future rewards and punishments, may be well supported by this concession. Pray, Rhapsodus, tell me, if every man in this present life, by the violence of some counter-working passion, may not have his good affections to virtue controlled or overcome ? May not therefore his eternal fears and hopes be a great advantage, security, and support to virtue in so dangerous a state and situation, as our journey through this world towards a better ? And this is all that the de- fence of Christianity necessarily requires. And yet further, let me ask our rhapsodist, " if you have nothing else, Sir, but the beauty and excellency, and loveliness of virtue to preach and flourish upon before such sorry and de- generate creatures as the bulk of mankind are, and you have no future rewards or punishments with which to address their hope and fears, how many of these vicious wretches will you ever re- claim from all their varieties of profaneness, intemperance and madness ? Howmany have you ever actually reclaimed by this smooth soft method, and these fine words ? What has all that reasoning and rhetoric done which have been displayed by your predecessors, the Heathen moralists, upon this excellency and beauty of virtue ?' What has it been able to do towards the re- forming of a sinful world ? Perhaps nowand then a man of bet- ter natural mould has been a little refined, and perhaps also there may have been here and there a man restrained or recovered from injustice and knavery, fromdrunkenness and lewdness, and vile debaucheries, by this fair reasoning and philosophy : but have the passions of revenge and envy, of ambition and pride, and the inward secret vices of the mind been mortified merely by this philosophical language ? Have any of these men been made new creatures, men of real piety and love to God? " Go dress up all the virtues of human nature in all the beauties of your oratory, and declaim aloud on the praise of so- cial virtue, and the amiable qualities of goodness; till your heart or your lungs ache, among the looser herds of mankind, and you will ever find, as your Heathen fathers have done before, that the wild passions and appetites of men are too violent to be restrained by such mild and silken language. You mayas well
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