with thefe thoughts, he that knows them best will not deny that I adore him; That I obtain heaven, and the blifs thereof, is accidental, and not the intended work of my. devotion, it being a felicity I can neither think to deferve, nor fcarce in modefty to expect. For thefe two ends of us all, either as rewards or punishments, are mercifully ordained and difproportionally difpof ed unto our actions, the one being fo far beyond our deferts, the other fo infinitly below our dea m'erits.

SECT. LIV.

There is no falvation to thofe that believe not in Chrift; that is, fay fome, fince his nativity, and as divinity affirmeth, before alfo; which makes me much apprehend the end of those honeft worthies and philofophers who dyed before. his incarnation. *It is hard to

place

place thofe fouls in hell whose worthy lives do teach us virtue on earth

State

methinks, amongst those many fubdivifions of hell, there heaven might have been one limbo left, ther the mor for thefe: what a ftrange vifionible will it be to fee their poetical fictions converted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies into real devils? How ftrange to them will found the history of A▾ dam, when they fhall fuffer for him they never heard of? When they who derive their genealogy, from the gods, fhall know they are the unhappy issue of finful man? It is an infolent part of reason to controvert the works of God, or queftion the justice, of his proceedings; could humility teach others, as it hath inftructed me, to contemplate the infinite and incomprehenfible diftance betwixt the Creator and the creature, or did we ferio fly perpend that one fimile

of St. Paul, Shall the vessel say to the potter, Why haft thou made me thus? it would prevent these arrogant difputes of reafon, nor would we argue the definitive fentence of God, either to heaven or hell. Men that live according to the right rule and law of reafon, live but in their own kind, as beafts do in theirs; who juftly obey the prefcript of their natures; and therefore cannot reasonably demand a reward of their actions, as only obeying the natural dictates of their reafon. It will therefore, and must at last appear, that all falvation is thro' Chrift; which verity I fear these great examples of virtue muft confirm*, and make it good, how the perfectest actions of earth have no title or claim unto heaven.

SECT.

a Rom. ix. 20,

SECT. LV.

Nor truly do I think the lives of these or of any other were ever correfpondent, or in all points conformable unto their doctrines. It is evident that * Ariftotle tranfgreffed the rule of his own ethicks: The Stoicks who condemn paffion, and command a man to laugh in Phalaris's bull, could not endure without a groan a fit of the stone or cholick. † The Scepticks, that affirmed they knew nothing, even in that opinion confute themselves, and thought they knew more than all the world befide. Diogenes I hold to be the most vain glorious man of his time, and more ambitions in refufing all honours than Alexander in rejecting none. Vice and the devil putting a fallacy upon our reasons, and provoking us too haftily to run fromit, entangle and fink us deeper into it. *The Duke of Venice, who weds himself unto

the

the fea by a ring of gold, I will not accufe of prodigality, because it is a folemnity of good ufe and confequence in the ftate: † But the philofopher who threw his money into the fea to avoid avarice, was a notorious prodigal. There is no rivia, road or ready way to virtue; It is highway not an easy point of art to difentangle ourselves from this riddle, or web of fin: To perfect virtue, as to religion, there is required a panoplia, or compleat armour, that whilft we lye at clofe ward against one vice, we may not lye open to another: And indeed wifer difcretions that have the thread of reafo to conduct them, offend whout a pardon; whereas weaker heads may ftumble without difhonour. There go fo many circumftances to piece up one good action, that it is a leffon to be good and we are forced to be virtuous by the book. Again, the practice Use of General Rubr. See Smithipf Theory Wordsworth's poem to Duty