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to execute what they please themselves with con. triving.

For this reason, the casuists of the Roman Church, who gain, by profession, great opportunities of knowing human nature, have generally determined that what it is a crime to do it is a crime to think.* Since by revolving with pleasure the facility, safety, or advantage of a wicked deed, a man soon begins to find his constancy relax and his detestation soften; the happiness of success, glittering before him, withdraws his attention from the atrociousness of the guilt, and acts are at last confidently perpetrated, of which the first conception only crept into the mind, disguised in pleasing complications, and permitted rather than invited.

No man has ever been drawn to crimes by love or jealousy, envy or hatred, but he can tell how easily he might at first have repelled the temptation; how readily his mind would have obeyed a call to any other object, and how weak his passion has been after some casual avocation, till he has recalled it again to his heart, and revived the viper by too warm a fondness.

Such, therefore, is the importance of keeping reason a constant guard over imagination, that we have otherwise no security for our virtue, but may corrupt our hearts in the most recluse solitude, with more pernicious and tyrannical appetites and wishes than the commerce of the world will generally produce: for we are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude; but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour; and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness.

*This was determined long before their time. See Matt., vi., 28.-C.

In this disease of the soul, it is of the utmost importance to apply remedies at the beginning; and therefore I shall endeavour to show what thoughts are to be rejected or improved, as they regard the past, present, or future; in hopes that some may be awakened to caution and vigilance, who, perhaps, indulge themselves in dangerous dreams; so much the more dangerous, because, being yet only dreams, they are concluded innocent.

The recollection of the past is only useful by way of provision for the future; and, therefore, in reviewing all occurrences that fall under a religious consideration, it is proper that a man stop at the first thoughts, to remark how he was led thither, and why he continues the reflection. If he is dwelling with delight upon a stratagem of successful fraud, a night of licentious riot, or an intrigue of guilty pleasure, let him summon off his imagination as from an unlawful pursuit, expel those passages from his remembrance, of which, though he cannot seriously approve them, the pleasure overpowers the guilt, and refer them to a future hour, when they may be considered with greater safety. Such an hour will certainly come: for the impressions of past pleasure are always lessening, but the sense of guilt, which respects futurity, continues the

same.

The serious and impartial retrospect of our conduct is indisputably necessary to the confirmation or recovery of virtue, and is therefore recommended under the name of self-examination, by divines, as the first act previous to repentance. It is, indeed, of so great use, that without it we should always be to begin life, be seduced for ever by the. same fallacies. But, in order that we may not lose the advantage of our experience, we must endeavour to see everything in its proper form, and excite in ourselves those sentiments which the great Author of nature has decreed the concomitants or fol

lowers of good or bad actions. Let not sleep," says Pythagoras, "fall upon thy eyes till thou hast thrice reviewed the transactions of the past day. Where have I turned aside from rectitude? What have I been doing? What have I left undone which I ought to have done? Begin thus from the first act, and proceed; and, in conclusion, at the ill which thou hast done be troubled, and rejoice for the good."

Our thoughts on present things being determined by the objects before us, fall not under those indulgences or excursions which I am now considering. But I cannot forbear, under this head, to caution pious and tender minds, that are disturbed by the irruptions of wicked imaginations, against too great dejection and too anxious alarms; for thoughts are only criminal when they are first chosen and then voluntarily continued.

"Evil into the mind of God or man

May come and go, so unapproved, and leave
No spot or stain behind."*"

In futurity chiefly are the snares lodged by which the imagination is entangled. Futurity is the proper abode of hope and fear, with all their train and progeny of subordinate apprehensions and desires. In futurity events and chances are yet floating at large, without apparent connexion with their causes, and we therefore easily indulge the liberty of gratifying ourselves with a pleasing choice. To pick and cull among possible advantages is, as the civil law terms it, in vacuum venire, to take what belongs to nobody; but it has this hazard in it, that we shall be unwilling to quit what we have seized, though an owner should be found. It is easy to think on that which may be gained, till at last we resolve to gain it, and to image the happiness of particular conditions till we can be easy in no other. We ought,

* Milton.

at least, to let our desires fix upon nothing in arother's power for the sake of our quiet, or in another's possession for the sake of our innocence. When a man finds himself led, though by a train of honest sentiments, to wish for that to which he has no right, he should start back as from a pitfall covered with flowers. He that fancies he should benefit the public more in a great station than the man that fills it, will in time imagine it an act of virtue to supplant him; and as opposition readily kindles into hatred, his eagerness to do that good to which he is not called, will betray him to crimes which in his original scheme were never proposed.

He, therefore, that would govern his actions by the laws of virtue, must regulate his thoughts by those of reason; he must keep guilt from the recesses of his heart, and remember that the pleasures of fancy and the emotions of desire are more dangerous as they are more hidden, since they escape the awe of observation, and operate equally in every situation, without the concurrence of external opportunities.

THE PASSIONATE MAN DESCRIBED.

"Yet oh! remember, nor the god of wine,
Nor Pythian Phoebus from his inmost shrine,
Nor Dindymene, nor her priests possess'd,

Can with their sounding cymbals shake the breast,
Like furious anger."

HOR.-FRANCIS's Trans.

THE maxim which Periander of Corinth, one of the seven sages of Greece, left as a memorial of his knowledge and benevolence, was, Be master of thy anger. He considered anger as the great disturber

of human life, the chief enemy both of public hap. piness and private tranquillity, and thought that he could not lay on posterity a stronger obligation to reverence his memory than by leaving them a salutary caution against this outrageous passion.

To what latitude Periander might extend the word, the brevity of his precept will scarce allow us to conjecture. From anger, in its full import, protracted into malevolence and exerted in revenge, arise, indeed, many of the evils to which the life of man is exposed. By anger operating upon power are produced the subversion of cities, the desolation of countries, the massacre of nations, and all those dreadful and astonishing calamities which fill the histories of the world, and which could not be read at any distant point of time, when the passions stand neutral, and every motive and principle are left to its natural force, without some doubt of the truth of the relation, did we not see the same causes still tending to the same effects, and only acting with less vigour for want of the same concurrent opportunities.

But this gigantic and enormous species of anger falls not properly under the animadversion of a writer, whose chief end is the regulation of common life, and whose precepts are to recommend themselves by their general use. Nor is this essay intended to expose the tragical or fatal effects even of private malignity. The anger which I propose now for my subject, is such as makes those who indulge in it more troublesome than formidable, and ranks them rather with hornets and wasps than with basilisks and lions. I have therefore prefixed a motto which characterizes this passion, not so much by the mischief that it causes as by the noise that it utters.

There is in the world a certain class of mortals, known, and contentedly known, by the appellation of passionate men, who imagine themselves entitled

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