5. Religion, according as it is understood, will prove either the greatest promoter or the greatest destroyer of engagement that can be found. While placed in obligation, servile fear and perfunctory assiduities to forms and ceremonies, how much soever it may take up of the time, it cannot with propriety be said to engage; for engaging is many times synonymous with charming or delightful, as when applied to a beauty, a dress, a behavior, a tale, a diversion; and though a man may say he was engaged in a business which was not agreeable to him, yet this is upon a supposition that while intent upon it his procedure in the several steps taken therein was voluntary upon a prospect of some advantage; for where the whole action is manifestly reluctant, as in appearing upon a recognizance the first day of the term, we do not use the word engaged, but obliged.

Nor is that word applied to every thing that draws the attention, unless there be a free consent of the Will to give it; for a man who would excuse himself for failing at a meeting, will hardly say he was engaged at home by a violent toothache, though perhaps the pain engrossed his whole attention, and he was busied all the while in applying warm flannels, or toasted figs, or other remedies for assuaging it. So he that sings psalms every third hour, or goes to Church every week day because necessary to secure him from the Devil's clutches, or because he thinks the holy Spirit would be grieved and God made uneasy by being slighted, does it only to remove a pressing dread and anxiety, with a forced not a free consent of the Will, and for the most part is so far from being intent upon his work, that his thoughts run a hankering all the while after something else; or if they do enter upon it by choice, it is like that made of their cards by such as drudge at them every day, namely, to relieve themselves from the insupportable burden of having absolutely nothing to do by having contracted a tastelessness for everything else.

But these painful assiduities, the task of fear or custom, like the dog in the manger, not only afford no engagement themselves, but stand in the way of other innocent and useful engagements that might keep up a voluntary attention during the performance without drawing on any damage, or leaving any remorse in the reflection behind.

On the other hand, when Religion is understood to be a profitable thing, and that judgment grown into an habituate intimate persuasion branching into the three spiritual virtues, by which means every part of it will be pursued as a step to our truest interest without thought of obligation or of the Devil, whom one would wish to deal with as little as possible, it is then more fertile

of real engagement than any other scheme we can propose. For ambition, avarice, and all the ruling passions that give life to the business of mankind, meet with frequent rubs and disappointments, many gaps of time pass insipidly wherein there is nothing to be done for advancing their purpose, and they are sometimes wrested from us by age, infirmity, disease, or satiety.

Whereas he who takes for his aim to do all things for the Glory of God manifested in the good and perfection of the human species, whereon his own happiness depends for ages to come, has an object the most engaging he could have chosen for his pursuit, being the amassing of treasures in a place where neither moth nor rust do corrupt, where thieves do not break through and steal, which will continue to engage in old age, in sickness, in distress, in all situations of life, and even in the hour of death; and which, so far as he can trace his reference to the common occurrences of his station, will leave no gaps nor intermissions of employment; for there is always some use to be made of his activity, either upon the ideas of the mind or motions of the body; there is a right and a wrong in every action: so that his industry can never want a subject to exercise itself upon in observing and practising that, which is right according to the circumstances of every occasion that offers.

CHAP. XXXIV.

CONTENT.

PRUDENCE and virtue for the most part consist in preferring greater enjoyment to come, before present gratification; the contest between them and appetite being whether we shall be most pleased, or soonest pleased; for pleasure is the object of both, only appetite urges to that which may be had now, and prudence chooses that which is the greatest, whether to be taken now, or not till to-morrow.

But upon the article of content the struggle seems to be of a quite different kind, both parties pulling the very contrary way from what they used in all other cases. Reason exhorts us to

rest easy under our present situation, and suspend our desires until the time shall come when they may find materials of gratification: passion and evil habit solicit us to fret and vex and torment

ourselves in present, with the tantalizing imagination of ease or pleasures at a distance lying out of our reach, or to make the most of an uneasiness by studiously aggravating all the grievous circumstances attending it. For the endeavors used to quiet the mind have for their object the present moment, to lighten the pressure actually hanging upon it; they have no respect to the future, nor purpose to accomplish beyond their immediate effects, for it may be all one to-morrow whether we have borne our troubles easily or reluctantly to-day.

On the other hand, the impulses of discontent drive us upon the thorns every current moment, through a perverse kind of prudence, under an apprehension hard to be accounted for of some benefit to redound therefrom. Discontent is a species of grief, which I have remarked upon that article in the chapter on the passions, we are led into by having experienced that an attentive reflection upon the object that troubles us sometimes discovers a way to remove it, and excites to more strenuous endeavors for throwing it off: the apprehension of this benefit frequently entertained, gives an habitual bent to the reflection, which is continually turned that way by a mechanical impulse very difficult to be overpowered by the utmost strength of resolution.

But there is another cause insensibly draws the will to indulge a greater discontent than would be cast up by the mechanical springs of passion as we live in society where we frequently stand in need of other people's assistance to relieve us from our distresses, and find them generally disposed to help us, we very soon observe that their eagerness to offer relief rises in proportion to the height of the distress; from hence we learn the artifice of oppressing ourselves as much as possible, that we may become the greater objects of compassion and have others fly the faster to our aid. Therefore grief and discontent generally abound in complaints, which though sometimes a little easing them, more frequently double their pressure and strike their roots deeper into the mind.

Therefore likewise children who have been fondled by their parents, and persons who have been much humored in their way, most commonly grow fretful upon every little disappointment; whereas such as have been always forced to bustle for themselves and nobody cared a farthing whether they were pleased or angry, bear with troubles the best, for they feel only the immediate pressure, and are so far from drawing it down with additional force by reflection, that they oftener want the sensibility requisite for putting them upon a proper guard against the like evils for the future.

Nevertheless, this, which was artifice and low cunning at first, having by long practice given a turn to the wheels of the machine, becomes involuntary habitude or spontaneous impulse; and then men cannot help fretting inwardly or by themselves where it can do no good, nor even murmuring against Providence, repining at the hardness of their lot, or ruminating upon the cruelty of their fate, all which powers have no passions to be touched with their complaints.

2. One would think there should need no exhortations with men to bestir themselves for their own present ease, nor arguments to persuade them they are then most secure when having their security in their own hands; for though we can never make ourselves wholly independent on one another, and therefore it is prudent to apply the proper means for obtaining succor in our needs, yet the less we stand in need of succor, the more we can help ourselves, the better; because no aid lies so certainly under our command as that of our own resolution; besides that many of the grievances men vex at, are not of a nature to be relieved by any external application whatsoever, and the tenderness shown to them does but aggravate their vexation by the influence of sympathy.

But men are so fond of indolence that they will not take a Fittle trouble for their own immediate relief, or the force of habit is so great that even the present smart of the thorns it drives them upon, cannot overcome it, which is the more extraordinary because in avoiding the thorns they would fall into a flowery path and so obtain actual pleasure by escaping pain. For though content be in itself nothing more than a negation of uneasiness, yet satisfaction and uneasiness constantly follow so close upon each other, that the moment one disappears, its place is occupied by the other, nor is the mind ever without some degree of either, unless when asleep, and that it is so then is more than any man can demonstrate.

Content when obtained by our own efforts is a deliverance from vexation; but there is a joy in the bare deliverance from evil, a joy in finding ourselves able to throw it off, a complacence and solacing self-approbation in having used our power well for our own benefit; therefore in common language a contented temper is understood to imply a cheerful or a happy temper. On the other hand, discontent always carries with it a want to get rid of the object it feeds upon; but any gnawing want banishes all desires out of the thoughts which might find present means of gratification, the bitter of it giving a tastelessness to everything else: so there needs only to forbear chewing the want of restoring our

relish and putting us into a state of real enjoyment, for when that is gone out of the thoughts, there will be little desires enough ready at hand to engage our activity in something or other that shall make the time pass agreeably.

It is true that wants must sometimes be encouraged, as being necessary upon particular occasions; for we have not always skill or strength enough to raise desires sufficient to carry us on to our remote advantages, in which case we must submit to drudge for them through the thorny paths of uneasiness.

Therefore fear and obligation have their seasons and their subjects wherein there is need enough of them for driving those who cannot be led: compunction, vexation, and remorse at having done amiss are generally the harbingers of virtue, for where there is no love of rectitude you must plough and harrow and tear up the ground to prepare for its reception by a shame and abhorrence of vice; and where there is but little reflection you must engage it first by raising a quick sensibility of mischiefs befalling, or dangers impending; thus making men uneasy and discontented with their present situation in order to put them upon exerting their endeavors to amend it; and when any long or laborious work is to be undertaken, it is difficult to raise such a fervency of desire as may be necessary to carry us through, but that upon rubs or disappointments it will sometimes degenerate into a want. But then in all these cases where we run ourselves upon uneasiness or the danger of it, we ought always to know what we do, to have the consent of our calm judgment upon the necessity or expedience of the thing, to make it our own voluntary act, but never submit to be dragged along by impulse of passion or importunity of habit.

3. Therefore it will be expedient, so far as is feasible, to keep the eye of understanding perpetually open, to watch the little motions of our ideas, and observe whether they proceed from mere mechanical impulse, or whether they can answer the end proposed in them: for this is the most likely means to prevent an evil habit from taking root, and to wear it off again when unhappily contracted.

For habits steal insensibly upon us before we are aware, and this of discontent has many causes contributing to its growth: the folly of servants and indiscretion of parents sow the seeds of it in our childhood, and when we come out into the world there are examples around us more than enow to cherish their growth: the godly fret at the profaneness and licentiousness of mankind, at the prosperities of the wicked, at their own want of more than human strength to perform punctually all the rigorous tasks they