because you love yourself; and that self-love may induce a man to sacrifice even his life.

Dech. But what is it makes me love mankind in general?

Shep. It is a doubt with me, whether you love all mankind, or not; and whether you do not love only those, from whom you have received, or hope to receive, some benefit; and hate those who have done, or are likely to do, you an injury.

Dech. But I do love those, from whom I neither have received, nor hope to receive, any services, merely because they are men.

Shep. There is, I own, such a thing as natural affection in men towards one another; but whether this affection springs from self-love, is a question not easily decided. You love mankind, perhaps, because they are men; that is, because they are men like yourself, and like those you love : this sort of affection, however, which is not very strong, is almost wholly habitual, and may proceed originally from self-love. You are a man, and therefore, according to the saying of the comedian, you think every thing that relates to mankind concerns yourself, in some measure.

Dech. Upon your selfish principle, those men, such as Codrus, and the Decii, who sacrificed their lives purely for others, must have been mad.

Shep. If those persons did not hope for a reward in another world, of more value than life, they were certainly the most vain-glorious and delirious of all mankind. No sober man gives away his fortune, nor even a part of it, for nothing; much less will he sacrifice his life, for which any man in his senses would give up all his fortune, though it were ever so great, till he is strongly possessed with hopes of an equivalent. He is absolutely mad, who, when he might avoid it, without any such hopes, runs himself into dangers or distresses, or gives up life itself; and he is next to a madman, or a fool, who does the same on precarious hopes of an equivalent. Those libertines who are at a great deal of pains to banish from the minds of others the hopes and fears of futurity, are little better than mad: for what are they to get for all their trouble? what recompense for the infamous character of seducers, since infidelity hath no rewards? The

principle of self-love, and self-preservation, is certainly the most powerful of all our instincts; of which, if they must be called laws, this is certainly the first. He that denies this, and says he loves others better than himself, is either a fool, or a liar. If, merely for a friend, a mistress, or the public, he sacrifices his life, he is a fool, who grossly mistakes his own interest; or a madman, who knowingly acts against it. No wise man gives up his self-interest in one thing, but in order to promote it in another, that seems greater, or more certain. As to life, there is no equivalent for it but eternal life; and as we can have no tolerable assurance of that but by revelation, so no man can rationally choose death, but upon Christian principles. No man, therefore, can attain to true heroism, but the Christian; he alone can have reason to deny himself the honours, profits, and pleasures of this world, which dishonesty, or evil arts, might offer him; or to meet death, with all its terrors, from which cowardice or treachery might deliver him.

Dech. Your picture of a Christian hero makes him but a

mere mercenary.

Shep. And yours, of any other sort of hero, makes him an errant madman, or a fool.

Dech. There can be no hero without virtue, nor virtue without disinterestedness. That is, no doubt, a fine sort of virtue and heroism, which encounters a less evil for fear of a greater, and which, in hopes of an infinite reward, surrenders a trifling interest or pleasure. At this rate, the most narrow-hearted miser, the basest coward, or even the vilest thief, may be set up for a hero.

Shep. It is true, they might, if they had sense enough to see and consider their greatest interest: and surely nothing, sir, can so strongly recommend any principle as that; if it were heartily closed with, it would infallibly transform the very worst of men into saints and heroes. We may say, on the other side, that yours is a most glorious kind of virtue, that is either unable to prevail on a man voluntarily to undergo the slightest suffering; or, if it does, makes it folly and distraction in him to do it.

Dech. Is he, then, a fool, who suffers for virtue? Or he an honest man, who is hindered from stealing merely by the gallows?

Shep. These questions are only calculated to amuse. He, sir, is a fool, who suffers death for a name; and virtue, without religion, without love for, and dependence on God, without any manner of good to be found in it, or derived from it, is but a mere name. He who is kept from stealing only by the gallows, is far from being honest; because he will lie, perjure, cheat, and steal too, as often as he can do it with hopes of escaping the gallows. But he who abstains from stealing, and all other immoral actions, because he is sure God will see and punish the committal of them, will never commit an ill action; and he who will never do an ill action, is certainly a very honest man; nay, he loves a good action, and hates an ill one, on account of their consequences, and because God does: and therefore the gallows, or any other kind of punishment, is not all he considers. You will own, nevertheless, that he who is deterred from stealing by the fear of the gallows, is a good man, in comparison of him who steals under the very gallows. But he is better, who, in hopes of a glorious reward, as well as for fear of a most grievous punishment, resists temptations, denies himself unlawful pleasures, and does all the good he can. And he is best of all, who, having the inferior affections and passions bridled by the prospect of eternal punishments and rewards, raises the soul itself, by love and gratitude, to a noble desire and endeavour to please God, as the most beneficent and amiable of all beings. This man admires the beauty of a good, and abhors the foulness of an ill action, as much, nay, more than any man, who is less religious; because, whatsoever lights mere nature may lend other men to see them with, he hath the same; and, besides, considers the one as infinitely displeasing, and the other as extremely acceptable, to that Being, whose goodness he loves, and whose power he reveres, above all things. Any goodness, in the natural man, is a compliment to his own nature, and to himself; but the goodness of a Christian is love and duty to his greatest friend and benefactor: his hopes and fears do honour to God, because they are so many testimonies of confidence and veneration for Almighty God, founded on faith in his own laws. They are less selfish, too, than the pretended virtue of the self-sufficient and natural man (which makes him his own director, his own governor, his

own punisher and rewarder), inasmuch as they terminate without himself, in that gracious Being, to whom he is infinitely beholding, in that just Judge, from whom he can hope for neither connivance nor partiality, such as a deceitful heart might be apt to shew itself.

ALTHOUGH I cannot help thinking it hath been clearly proved, that the mere light of nature, as we now find it in ourselves, is unable to furnish us with a sufficient standard for our moral conduct, not to say an adequate law, to regulate the actions of men, and that the Christian religion does actually prescribe a sufficient law; it will be farther useful to observe, that the thoughts of men, in regard to any internal law, will be always mainly influenced by their sentiments concerning the chief good. Whatsoever power or force may do, in respect to the outward actions of a man, nothing can oblige him to think, or act, as often as he is at liberty, against what he takes to be his chief good, or interest. No law, nor system of laws, can possibly answer the end and purpose of a law, till the grand question, What is the chief happiness and end of man, be determined, and so cleared up, that every one may be fully satisfied about it. Before our Saviour's time, the world was infinitely divided on this important head: the philosophers were miserably bewildered in all their researches after the chief good. Each sect, each subdivision of a sect, had a chief good of its own, and rejected all the rest. They advanced, as Varro tells us, no fewer than two hundred and eighty-eight opinions in relation to this matter; which shews, by a strong experiment, that the light of nature was altogether unable to settle the difficulty. Every man, if left to the particular bias of his own nature, chooses out a chief good for himself, and lays the stress of all his thoughts and actions on it. Now if the supposed chief good of any man should lead him, as it often does, to violate the laws of society, to hurt others, and to act against the general good of mankind; he will be very unfit for society, and, consequently, as he cannot subsist out of it, an enemy to himself. Robbers, thieves, assassins, rebels, are all instances of this; and so are also those more cunning, but more dangerous persons, who know how to evade the laws, or even, by their assistance, to gain unjust

advantages to themselves, and hurt society. As self is, unquestionably, the ruling principle of man, it is highly necessary to every man to know in what his main interest consists, and how to obtain it: and as that happiness (if we allow the world to be the work of a wise and beneficent Author) must be such, as is consistent with the happiness of others; so it cannot be riches, pleasure, honour, power, or any thing else, about which mankind may be tempted to contend; and yet it must be one and the same to all men: for we cannot imagine there is a distinct kind of chief good or happiness allotted to every individual. But what it is, or by what means to be arrived at, is a question, which, if nature; reason, or philosophy, could have done it, might have been determined long before our Saviour came into the world.

Dech. How the ancient philosophers came to differ so widely about this matter, I cannot guess; but this I am sure of, that nothing is more plain and obvious to reason, than that the chief happiness of man consists in living up to the dictates of his nature.' I will, for the present, grant you, that the principle from which all human actions flow, is the desire of happiness. Now the happiness of all beings whatever consists in the perfections of their nature; and the nature of a rational being is most perfect, when it is perfectly rational. God, who does nothing in vain, would in vain have planted the desire of happiness in mankind, if he had not given them reason to distinguish such actions as make for their happiness, from such as oppose it.' I have here given you, sir, the right notion of our chief end and good; and you will allow, I believe, that I have not been beholding to revelation for it.

Shep. But Tindal, from whom you borrow it, and whose revelations are, I find, of more authority with you than those of the Scriptures, took the principle upon which he falsely concludes this to be our chief happiness from revelation. He says, 'We are made in the image of God;' which, I am sure, neither he, nor any man else, could have known, had he not been told it by revelation. He says, moreover, and produces no other reasons for it but a bold passage from Dr. Scot, that 'the happiness of God consists in the purity and

Christ. Old as Creat. chap. 3.