hours. Actuated by fome high paffion, he conceives great defigns, and furmounts all difficulties in the execution. He is infpired with more lofty fentiments, and endowed with more perfuafive utterance, than he poffeffes at any other time. Paffions are the active forces of the foul. They are its highest powers brought into movement and exertion. RELIGION requires no more of us than to moderate and rule them. For neceffary as their impulse is, to give activity to the mind, yet if they are not kept in fubordination to REASON, they speedily throw all things into confufion. Like wind and fire, which are instrumental in carrying on many of the beneficent operations of nature; when they rife to undue violence, or deviate from their proper course, their path is marked with ruin; fo are the paffions either useful or deftructive, according to their direction and degree. Ye impetuous paffions, terrible whirlwinds, you excite those tempefts that drown individuals in perdition; you change innocent pleasure into debauchery; the feftive goblet into drunkenness; prudence into avarice; caution into cowardice; by you, fathers are induced

1

to take up arms against their children, and children. against their fathers; you drive to fuicide; you change industry into rapine and robbery; it is you, in a word, that occafion all the diforder and confufion in this fublunary state.

SECT.

WE are, by no means, to imagine, that RELIGION tends to extinguish the fense of honour, or to fupprefs the exertion of a manly Spirit. It is under a false apprehenfion of this kind, that Chriftian patience is fometimes ftigmatifed in difcourfe as no other than a different name for cowardice. On the contrary, every man of virtue ought to feel what is due to his character, and to fupport properly his own rights. Refentment of wrong is an useful principle in human nature; and for the wifeft purposes was implanted in our frame. It is the neceffary guard of private rights; and the great restraint on the infolence of the violent, who, if no refiftance were made, would trample on the gentle and peaceable.

But

But in the fulness of felf-eftimation, we are too apt to forget what we are. We are rigorous to offences, as if we did not daily entreat heaven for mercy. Nothing is in general fo inconsistent as anger. The most inconfiderable point of intereft, or honour, fwells into a momomentous object; and the flightest attack seems to threaten immediate ruin. It overpowers reafon; confounds our ideas; difterts the appearances, and blackens the colour, of every object. As it swells, it constantly juftifies to our apprehenfions the tumult which it creates, by means of a thousand false arguments which it forms, and brings to its aid. Beware, therefore, and fupprefs these moments of delufion. Sufpend your violence, I beseech you, for an inftant. Anticipate that period of coolness, which, of itself, will foon arrive. Allow yourself to think, how little you have any profpect of gaining by fierce contention; but how much of true happiness you are certain of throwing away. Wait until the fumes of passion be fpent; until the mist which it hath raised is diffipated, when you fhall fee where truth and right lie; and reason fhall, by degrees, refume the afcendant. Did you only preferve yourself composed for a moment, you would difcover the infignificancy of moft of those provocations which you mag5 B

VOL. IV.

nify

nify fo highly. When a few funs more have rolled over your head, the ftorm will have, of itself, fubfided; the caufe of your prefent impatience and disturbance will be utterly forgotten. Can you not, then, anticipate this hour of calmnefs to yourself; and begin to enjoy the peace which it will certainly bring? If others have behaved improperly, leave them to their own folly, without becoming the victim of their caprice, and punishing yourself on their account. To prove that paffion is exorbitant in its demands, what proportion, for instance, is there between the life of a man, and an affront received, or supposed to be given by fome unguarded expreffion. How fantastic, then, how unjustifiable, are thofe fuppofed laws of modern, honour, which for such an affront require no lefs reparation than the death of a fellow creature; and which, to obtain this reparation, requires a man to endanger his own life? Laws which, as they have no foundation in reafon, never received the leaft fanction from any wife and polished nations of antiquity; but were devised in the darkest ages of the world, and are derived to us from the ferocious barbarity of Goths and Vandals. Who is there, were he to behold his enemy during that conflict which human nature muft fuffer at the laft, but must feel relentings

at