CHAP. XXIV.

Difficulties and Advantages of the Chriftian in the World.

THERE are two things of which a wise

man will be fcrupulously careful, his confcience and his credit. Happily they are almost inseparable concomitants; they are commonly kept or loft together; the fame things which wound the one, ufually giving a blow to the other: yet, it must be confeffed, that confcience and a mere worldly credit are not, in all instances, allowed to fubfift together. God and our heartswe speak of hearts which are looked into and examined—always condemn us for the fame things, things, perhaps, for which we do not fuffer in the opinion of the world: the world, in return, not seldom condemns us for actions, for which we have the approbation of God and our confciences. Is it right to put the verdict of fuch opposite

judges

judges on an equality, nay to abide by that which will be less than nothing when his fentence, whofe favour is eternal life, shall be finally pronounced?

Between a wounded confcience and a wounded credit there is the fame difference as between a crime and a calamity. Of two inevitable evils, religion inftructs us to submit to that which is inferior and involuntary. As much as reputation exceeds every worldly good, fo much, and far more, is conscience to be confulted before credit - if credit that can be called, which is derived from the acclamations of a mob, whether compofed of " the great vulgar or the fmall."

Yet are we not perpetually feeing, that, to fecure this worthlefs fame, peace and confcience are facrificed? For to what but a miferably false estimate of the relative value of these two bleffings; what but the preference of character to duty-in fupport, too, of a rotten part of it is it, that the wretched fyftem of duelling not only main tains its ground, but is increasing with a frightful

frighful rapidity? If we have, perhaps, never heard of a truly religious man engaged in a duel*, it is not that, with all his caution, he is not liable to provocations and infults, as well as other men; nor that he has no quick fenfe of injuries, no fpirit to repel attacks, and no courage to defend himself. He who bears infults is made of like paffions with him who revenges them; his pride longs to break out if it dared; for even a good man, as the Prelate quoted in the last chapter obferves," has more to do with this one viper, than with all other his corruptions."

But, among other caufes, his fafety lies in this, that he has always endeavoured to

* Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the first of our deistical writers, and the last hero of our ancient chivalry, with that fantastic combination of devotion and gallantry which characterized the profeffion of knighthood, tells us, in the Memoirs of his own Life, that he strictly maintained the religious obfervance of the Sabbath, except when called out to fight a duel for a point of honour, which he feemed to have thought a paramount duty.

keep

keep clear of those initiatory offences which lead to this catastrophe; it is because he has been habitually governed by principles of a directly contrary tendency, and has not the leffon of forbearance to learn, when he is called upon to practice it: because he has not indulged himself in those habits, and as little as may be in those focieties which lay a man open to the confequences of which ungoverned appetites are the fource; because he has always confidered pride and paffion as the poffible feeds of murder; an impure glance as the first approach to that crime which is the ordinary fource of duelling the combined violation of these two commandments, being as clofely connected in practice, as is their position in the Decalogue. It is obfervable, that while the shifts and stratagems to which a man is commonly driven by illicit connections, fo often lead to duelling, yet that the charge of that crime itself, or of any other equally atrocious, far more rarely provokes a challenge, than the charge of the lie, to which the

crime has compelled him to refort. Can there be a more striking inftance of the falfe eftimate of character and virtue, than that the offence is not made to confift in the falfehood itself, but in the accufation of it.

The man of mere worldly principles keeps himself in the broad way, which, fhould events occur, and temptations arise to irritate him, may at any time lead to fuch a termination. His habits of life, his choice of affociates, his fyftematic refolution to revenge every infult, makes his common path a path of danger. His pride is always ready primed; he carries the inflammable matter in his habit, and the first spark may cause an explosion; while the man of principle, in addition to all the other guards before enumerated, wants, indeed, but this fingle confideration to deter him from the spirit of duelling; that it is the act of all others which ftands in the most determined oppofition to the law of God, and the spirit of the Gofpel; that it is a studied, deliberate, premeditated fubverfion of one of the

most