7. Others of the philosophers rather chose to retort the injury of a smart reply, than thus to disarm it with respect to themselves. They show that it stung them, though at the same time they had the address to make their aggressors suffer with them. Of this kind is Aristotle's reply to one who pursued him with long and bitter invectives. You, says he, who are

used to suffer reproaches, utter them with de light; I who have not been used to utter them, take no pleasure in hearing them.

8. Diogenes was still more severe on one who spoke ill of him: nobody will believe you when you speak ill of me, any more than they would believe me should I speak well of you.

In these and many other instances I could produce, the bitterness of the answer sufficiently testifies the uneasiness of mind the person was under who made it.

9. I would rather advise my reader, if he has not in this case the secret consolation, that he deserves no such reproaches as are cast upon him, to follow the advice of Epictetus: If any one speaks ill of thee, consider whether he has truth on his side; and if so, reform thyself, that his censures may not affect thee.

10. When Anaximander was told that the very boys laughed at his singing: then I must learn to sing better.

Ay, says he, But if all the

sayings of phylosophers which I have gathered together for my own use on this occasion, there are none which carry in them more candour and good sense than the two following ones of Plato.

11. Being told that he had many enemies who spoke ill of him; it is no matter, said he, I will live so that none shall believe them. Hearing at another time, that an intimate friend of his had spoken detractingly of him; I am sure he would not do it, says he, if he had not some reason for it.

12. This is the surest as well as the noblest way of drawing the sting out of a reproach, and a true method of preparing a man for that great and only relief against the pains of calumny, "a good conscience."

13. I designed in this essay, to show, that there is no happiness wanting to him who is possessed of this excellent frame of mind, and that no person can be miserable who is in the enjoyment of it; but I find this subject so well treated in one of Dr. South's sermons, that I shall fill this Saturday's paper with a passage of it, which cannot but make the man's heart burn within him, who reads it with due attention.

14. That admirable author, having shewn she virtue of a good conscience, in supporting a man under the greatest trials and difficulties of life,

concludes with representing its force and efficacy in the hour of death.

15. The third and last instance, which above all others this confidence towards God does most eminently show and exert itself, is at the time of death; which surely gives the grand opportunity of trying both the strength and worth of every principle.

16. When a man shall be just about to quit the stage of this world, to put off his mortality, and to deliver up his last accounts to God; at which sad time, his memory shall serve him for little else, but to terrify him with a frightful review of his past life, and his former extravagancies stripped of all their pleasure, but retaining their guilt; what is it then that can promise him a fair passage into the other world, or a comfortable appearance before his dreadful judge when he is there?

17. Not all the friends and interests, all the riches and honours under heaven can speak so much as a word for him, or one word of comfort to him in that condition; they may possibly reproach, but they cannot relieve him.

18. No, at this disconsolate time, when the busy temper shall be more than usually apt to vex and trouble him, and the pains of a dying body to hinder and discompose him, and the settlement of worldly affairs to disturb and con

.

found him; and in a word, all things conspiro to make his sick-bed grievous and uneasy: nothing can then stand up against all these ruins, and speak life in the midst of death, but a clear conscience.

19. And the testimony of that shall make the comforts of heaven descend upon his weary head, like a refreshing dew, or shower upon a parched ground. It shall give him some lively carnests, and secret anticipations of his approaching joy. It shall bid his soul go out of the body undauntedly, and lift up his head with confidence before saints and angels. Surely the comfort, which it conveys at this season, is something bigger than the capacities of mortality, mighty and unspeakable, and not to be understood until it @omes to be felt.

20. And now who would not quit all the pleasures, and trash, and trifles, which are apt to captivate the heart of man, and pursue the great rigours of piety, and austerities of a good life, to purchase to himself such a conscience, as at the hour of death, when all the friendship in the world shall bid him adieu, and the whole creation turns its back upon him, shall dismiss the soul and close his eyes with that blessed sentence, "Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

ON CONTENTMENT.

1. I was once engaged in discourse with a Rosicrucian about the great secret. As this kind of men (I mean those of them who are not pofessed cheats) are over-run with enthusiasm and philosophy, it was very amusing to hear this religious adept discanting on his pretended discovery. He talked of the secret as of a spirit which lived within an emerald, and converted every thing that was near it to the highest perfeetion it is capable of.

2. It gives a lustre, says he to the sun, and water to the diamond. It irradiates every metal, and enriches lead with the properties of gold. It heightens smoke into flame, flame into light, and light into glory. He further added, that a single ray of it discipates pain, and care, and melancholy, from the person on whom it falls. In short, says he, its presence naturally. changes every place into a kind of heaven.

3. After he had gone on for some time in this unintelligible cant,I found that he jumbled natural and moral ideas together in the same discourse, and that his great secret, was nothing else but

content.