40 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 



tice of the Supreme Being, that there must be ano- 

 ther state of existence, in which a just retribution 

 shall be made, and every man be happy or miserable, 

 according to his works. 



These miseries also afford proof of a future state, 

 with reference as well to the mercy as justice of God. 

 It is scarcely to be imagined that infinite benevolence 

 would create a being capable of enjoying so much 

 more than is here to be enjoyed, and qualified by na- 

 ture to prolong pain by remembrance, and anticipate 

 it by fear, if he were not designed for something no- 

 bler and better than a state, in which many of his 

 faculties can serve only for his torment ; in which he 

 is to be importuned by desires that can never be sa- 

 tisfied, to feel evils he had no power to avoid, and to 

 fear many which he shall never feel. There shall 

 surely come a time when every capacity for happi- 

 ness shall be filled, and none shall be wretched but 

 by his own fault. 



Artificial Misery. 



The perceptions, as well as the senses, may be im- 

 proved to our own disquiet, and we may, by diligent 

 cultivation of the powers of dislike, raise, in time, an 

 artificial fastidiousness, which shall fill the imagina- 

 tion with phantoms of turpitude, show us the naked 

 skeleton of every delight, and present to us only the 

 pains of pleasure and the deformities of beauty. 



Disappointments are cruelly aggravated by our 

 own peculiar temper and frame of mind, which see 

 disasters only, and overshadow us with melancholy. 



Temporal Blessings. 



Providence permits temporal blessings to reason 

 only. 



Providence rewards nothing but good sense, which 

 follows the simple rule of adapting means to ends. 



