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illustrious Statesman cannot fail of being restored to that general estimation which they have long merited; and I humbly thank your Royal Highness for the condescending and flattering manner, in which you were pleased to send me permission to employ this sanction. I have the honour to remain,

MADAM,

With sincere and dutiful respect,
YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS'S

Most obedient

And most devoted servant,

JAMES STANIER CLARKE.

Carlton-House Library,
May 22, 1814.

ESSAYS

MORAL AND ENTERTAINING.

OF HUMAN NATURE.

Montpellier, 1668.

THE perpetual fear and agony and apprehension, which wicked men always feel within themselves, is the argument that Epicurus made, that human nature is so far from being inclined to ill, that it abhors all kind of wickedness; quia infixa nobis ejus rei aversatio est, quam natura damnavit, ideo nunquam fides latendi fit etiam latentibus; and the frequent discoveries of very enormous crimes after long concealments, merely from the unquietness of the offenders' own breasts, manifests how far our nature is from being delighted with works of darkness, that it cannot rest till they be exposed to light. If we did not take great pains, and were not at great expence to corrupt our nature, our VOL. I.

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nature would never corrupt us: We administer all the helps of industry and art to provoke our appetites, and to inflame our blood, and then we accuse nature for leading us into excesses; we kindle that fire that kindles our lust with a licentious diet, and then fan it into a flame with obscene discourses, and revile nature that it will not permit us to be chaste; we provoke and cherish our anger with unchristian principles of revenge, and then inveigh against nature for making us choleric: when, God knows, the little good we have in us, we owe only to the integrity of our nature; which hath restrained us from many vices which our passions would hurry us into. Very many men have remained or become temperate, by the very nauseating and aversion that nature hath to surfeits and excesses; and others have been restrained from making wicked attempts, by the horror and trembling that nature hath suggested to them in the approach. Many excellent men have grown to rare perfections in knowledge and in practice, to great learning, great wisdom, great virtue, without ever having felt the least repugnance in their nature to interrupt them in their progress; on the contrary their inclinations have been strengthened, their vivacity increased, from the very impulsion of their nature: but we may reasonably believe, that never man made a great

progress in wickedness, so as to arrive at a mastery in it, without great interruption and contradiction from his natural genius: insomuch as we see men usually take degrees in wickedness, and come not to a perfection in it per saltum; which can proceed from nothing but the resistance it finds from the nature of man. And if we do seriously consider, how few men there are who endeavour by art or industry to cultivate that portion. which nature hath given them, to improve their understanding, and to correct any infirmity they may be liable to, by so much as abstaining from any vice which corrupts both body and mind; we must conclude that they owe that which is good in themselves to nature, since they have nothing by their own acquisition. We cannot justly be reproached, that in this magnifying and extolling nature, we do too much neglect and undervalue the influence of God's grace; nature is as much the creation of God as grace is; and it is his bounty that he created nature in that integrity, and hath since restored it to that innocence, or annexed that innocence to it, if it be not maliciously ravished, or let loose, from it. All the particulars mentioned before may properly be called the operation of nature, because they have been often found in those who have had no light of grace, and may be still thought to be the supply

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of nature in those who seem not to walk by that light; nor is the price of grace at all advanced, or the way to attain it made more clear and easy, by such an affected contempt of nature, which makes us only capable of the other.

OF LIFE.

Jersey, 1647.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom, was the ejaculation of Moses, when he was in full contemplation of the providence and power of God, and of the frailty and brevity of the life of man: And though, from the consideration of our own time, the days allotted for our life, we cannot make any proportionable prospect toward the providence and power of God, no more than we can make an estimate of the largeness and extent of the heavens by the view of the smallest cottage or molehill upon the earth; yet there cannot be a better expedient, at the least an easier, a thing we believe we can more easily practise, to bring ourselves to a due reverence of that providence, to a due apprehension of that power, and thereupon to a useful disposition of our time in this world, how frail and short soever it is, than by applying ourselves to this ad

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