It remains that I humbly and earnestly be seech all that shall take this book in their hands, that they will consider it entirely, and not wrest some parts to an ill intention. God, the searcher of hearts, knows with what fidele. ity I have written it. But if any will drink up only the poison that may be in it, without taking also the antidote here given to those ill principles, or considering the sense that this great person had of them when he reflected seriously on them; and will rather confirm themselves in their ill ways, by the scruples and objections which I set down, than be edified by the other parts of it: as I will look on it as a great infelicity, that I should have said any thing that may strengthen them in their impieties, so the sincerity of my intentions will, I doubt not, excuse me at his hands to whom I offer this small service.

I have now performed, in the best manner I could, what was left on me by this noble lord, and have done with the part of an historian. I shall in the next place say somewhat as a divine. So extroardinary a text does almost force a sermon, though it is plain enough itself, and speaks with so loud a voice, that those who are not awakened by it, will perhaps consider nothing that I can say.

If our libertines will become so far sober as to examine their former course of life, with that disengagement and impartiality, which they must acknowledge a wise man ought to

use in things of greatest consequence, and balance the account of what they have got by their debaucheries, with the mischiefs they have brought on themselves and others by them, they will soon see what a mad bargain they have made.

Some diversion, mirth and pleasure, is all they can promise themselves; but to obtain this, how many evils are they to suffer! How many have wasted their strength, brought many diseases on their bodies, and precipitated their age in the pursuit of those things? And as they bring old age early on themselves, so it becomes a miserable state of life to the greatest part of them; gouts, stranguries, and other infirmities, being severe reckonings for their past follies; not to mention the more loathsome diseases, with their no less troublesome cures, which they must often go through who deliver themselves up to forbidden pleasure.

Many are disfigured beside with the marks of their intemperance and lewdness, and, which is yet sadder, an infection is derived ofter times on their innocent, but unhappy issue, who being descended from so vitiated an original, suffer for their excesses.

Their fortunes are profusely wasted both by their neglect of their affairs, (they being so far buried in vice, that they cannot employ either their time or their spirits, so much exhausted by intemperance, to consider them)

and by that prodigal expense which their lusts put them upon.

They suffer no less in their credit, the chief mean to recover an entangled estate; for that irregular expense forceth them to so many mean shifts, makes them so often false to all promises and resolutions, that they must needs feel how much they have lost, that which a gentleman and men of ingenuous tempers do sometimes prefer even to life itself, their hon our and reputation.

Nor do they suffer less in the nobler pow ers of their minds, which, by a long course of such dissolute practices, come to sink and degenerate so far, that not a few, whose first blossoms gave the most promising hopes, have so withered as to become incapable of great and generous undertakings, and to be disabled to every thing but to wallow like swine in the filth of sensuality, their spirits being dissipated, and their minds so numbed, as to be wholly unfit for business, and even indisposed to think.

That this dear price should be paid for a little wild mirth, or gross and corporeal pleasure, is a thing of such unparralleled folly, that if there were not too many such instances before us, it might seem incredible.

To all this we must add the horrors that their ill actions raise in them, and the hard shifts they are put to, to stave off these, either by being perpetually drunk or mad, or by an

habitual disuse of thinking and reflecting on their actions, and (if these arts will not per€fectly quiet them) by taking sanctuary in such atheistical principles as may at least mitigate the sourness of their thoughts, though they cannot absolutely settle their minds.

If the state of mankind and human societies are considered, what mischiefs can be equal to those which follow these courses.

Such persons are a plague where ever they come: they can neither be trusted nor loved, having cast off both truth and goodness, which procure confidence and attract love. They corrupt some by their ill practices, and do irreparable injuries to the rest They run great hazards and put themselves to much trouble, and all this to do what is in their power to make damnation, as sure to themselves as they possibly can. What influence this has on the whole nation is but too visible; how the bonds of nature, Wedlock, and all other relations are quite broken. Virtue is thought an antique piece of formality, and religion the effect of cowardice and knavery. These are the men that would reform the world by bringing it under a new system of intellectual and moral principles: but bate them a few bold and lewd jests, what have they ever done or designed to do, to make them be remembered, except it be with detestation? They are the scorn of the I

present age, and their names must rot in the

next.

Here they have before them an instance of one who was deeply corrupted with the contagion which he first derived from others, but unhap pily heightened it much himself. He was a master indeed, and not a bare trifler with wit, as some of those are who repeat, and that but scurvily, what they may have heard from him or some others, and with impudence and laughter will face the world down, as if they were to teach it wisdom; who, God knows, cannot follow one thing a step further than as they have conned it and take from him their bor rowed wit and their mimical humour, and they will presently appearwhat they indeed are, the least and lowest of men.

If they will, or if they can think a little, I wish they would consider,that by their own principles they cannot be sure that religion is only a contrivance; all that they pretend to is only to weaken some arguments that are brought for it; but they have not brow enough to say, they can prove that their own principles are

true.

So that at most they bring their cause no higher, than that it is possible religion may not be true. But still it is possible it may be true, and they have no shame left that will deny that it is also probable it may be true; and if so, then what mad-men are they who run so great a hazard for nothing!