143 



But if the simple love of novelty has little place in the 

 regulation of our opinions, much less does it sway us in the 

 exercise of our moral capacity. Virtue is never adopted for 

 the sake of any novel sensation which may attend it. Its 

 strength, its continuance, its very existence, depends on 

 habit. Novelty bestows no beauty on the attractions of 

 goodness — the longer we are acquainted with them, the 

 more we feel their power. The first act of virtue may in- 

 deed be accompanied with emotions, never afterward expe- 

 rienced. But her dominion is not complete, until her pre- 

 cepts are obeyed spontaneously and without a struggle. — 

 Tumultuous feelings make room for a complacency border- 

 ing on deliglit, which encreases with each successive act of 

 virtue, and if elevated to its highest degree would be per- 

 haps supreme felicity. 



Vice, no less than virtue, is the child of habit. Within 

 her domains, it is true, she may be intoxicated by the fasci- 

 nations of novelty ; but the superior novelty of virtue has no 

 talisman to dissolve the enchantments of habit. The first 

 act of vice is preceded by apprehension, and attended by 

 remorse — repeated acts may blunt these stings of consci- 

 ence; but the mind at last consigns itself to a hopeless state 

 of depravity and Avretchedness — a struggle may yet retrieve 

 its liberty : but the same power, the power of habit, which 

 renders virtue superior to the whispers of seduction, renders 

 vice as insensible to the clamours of duty, and extinguishes 

 every capacity in man, but such as fits him for irretrievable 

 , misery. 



