CHAP. VII.

VIRTUE.

VIRTUE ise to the will

RTUE is," the doing good to mankind, "in obedience to the will of God, and for the fake of everlasting happiness.'

According to which definition," the good of “mankind” is the fujbect, the "will of God" the rule, and “everlasting happiness" the motive of human virtue.

Virtue has been divided by some moralists into benevolence, prudence, fortitude, and temperance. Benevolence proposes good ends; prudence suggests the best means of attaining them; fortitude enables us to encounter the difficulties, dangers, and discouragements, which stand in our way in the pursuit of these ends; temperance repels and overcomes the paffions that obftruct it. Benevolence, for inftance, prompts us to undertake the cause of an oppreffed orphan; prudence suggests the beft means of going about it; fortitude enables us to confront the danger, and bear up against

the lofs, difgrace, or repulfe, that may attend our undertaking; and temperance keeps under the love of money, of cafe, or amusement, which might divert us from it.

Virtue is diftinguished by others into two branches only, prudence and benevolence ; prudence attentive to our own intereft; benevolence to that of our fellow-creatures: both directed to the fame end, the increase of happiness in nature; and taking equal concern in the future as in the present.

The four CARDINAL virtues are prudence, fortitude, temperance, and juftice.

But the divifion of Virtue, to which we are now-a-days moft accustomed, is into duties, Towards God; as piety, reverence, refignation, gratitude, &c.

Towards other men (or relative duties); as justice, charity, fidelity, loyalty, &c.

Towards ourselves; as chastity, fobriety, temperance, preservation of life, care of health, &c. More of thefe diftinctions have been proposed, which it is not worth while to fet down.

I shall proceed to ftate a few obfervations, which relate to the general regulation of human conduct;

conduct; unconnected indeed with each other, but very worthy of attention; and which fall as properly under the title of this chapter as of any other.

I. Mankind act more from habit than reflection.

It is on few only and great occafions that men deliberate at all; on fewer ftill, that they inftitute any thing like a regular inquiry into the moral rectitude or depravity of what they are about to do; or wait for the refult of it. We are for the most part determined at once; and by an impulfe, which is the effect and energy of pre-established habits. And this conftitution seems well adapted to the exigencies of human life, and to the imbecility of our moral principle. In the current occafions and rapid opportunities of life, there is ofttimes little leifure for reflection; and were there more, a man, who has to reason about his duty, when the temptation to tranfgrefs it is upon him, is almost fure to reafon himself into an error.

If we are in fo great a degree paffive under our habits, where, it is afked, is the exercife of virtue, the guilt of vice, or any use of moral and religious knowledge? I answer, in the forming and contracting of these habits.

And

And from hence refults a rule of life of confiderable importance, viz. that many things are to be done, and abstained from, folely for the fake of habit. We will explain ourselves by an example or two. A beggar, with the appearance of extreme diftrefs, afks our charity. If we come to argue the matter, whether the diftress be real, whether it be not brought upon himself, whether it beof public advantage to admit fuch applications, whether it be not to encourage idlenefs and vagrancy, whether it may not invite impoftors to our doors, whether the money can be well spared, or might not be better applied; when these confiderations are put together, it may appear very doubtful, whether we ought or ought not to give any thing. But when we reflect, that the mifery before our eyes excites our pity, whether we will or not; that it is of the utmoft confequence to us to cultivate this tenderness of mind; that it is a quality, cherished by indulgence, and soon stifled by oppofition : when this, I fay, is confidered, a wife man will do that for his own fake, which he would have hefitated to do for the petitioner's; he will give way to his compaffion, rather than offer violence to ahabit of fo much general ufe.

A man

An

A man of confirmed good habits will act in the same manner without any consideration at all. This may ferve for one inftance: another is the following. A man has been brought up from his infancy with a dread of lying. occafion presents itself where, at the expence of a little veracity, he may divert his company, fet off his own wit with advantage, attract the notice and engage the partiality of all about him, This is not a fmall temptation. And when he looks at the other fide of the question, he fees no mischief that can enfue from this liberty, no flander of any man's reputation, no prejudice likely to arise to any man's intereft. Were there nothing farther to be confidered, it would be difficult to fhew why a man under fuch circumftances might not indulge his humour. But when he reflects that his fcruples about lying have hitherto preserved him free from this vice; that occafions like the prefent will return, where the inducement may be equally ftrong, but the indulgence much lefs innocent; that his fcruples will wear away by a few tranfgreffions, and leave him subject to one of the meaneft and most pernicious of all bad habits, a habit of lying whenever it will ferve his turn when all this, I fay, is confidered, a wife man will

forego