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THE GUARDIAN .
N° 55 .
but at the ſame time that they extol her beauty ,
“ they take care to leffen her portion. Such in nocent creatures are they, and ſo great ſtrangers
to the world, that they think this a likely method to increaſe the number of her admirers. Virtue has in herſelf the moſt engaging
charms; and Chriſtianity, as it places her in the ſtrongeſt light, and adorned with all her native attractions, ſo it kindles a new fire in the foul, by adding to them the unutterable rewards which attend her votaries in an eternal ſtate.
Or if
there are men of a faturnine and heavy com
plexion, who are not eaſily lifted up by hope,
there is the proſpect of everlaſting puniſhments to agitate their fouls, and frighten them into the practice of virtue, and an averſion from vice. Whereas your fober free-thinkers tell you, that
高
virtue indeed is beautiful, and vice deformed ; the former deſerves your love, and the latter your abhorrence ; but then it is for their own ſake, or on account of the good and evil which im
mediately attend them, and are inſeparable from - their reſpective natures. As for the immortality of the foul, or eternal puniſhments and rewards,
thoſe are openly ridiculed, or rendered ſuſpicious by the moſt fly and laboured artifice.
I will not ſay, theſe men act treacherouſly in the cauſe of virtue ; but will any one deny , that
they act fooliſhly, who pretend to advance the intereſt of it by deſtroying or weakening the ſtrongeſt motives to it, which are accommodated
to all capacities, and fitted to work on all diſpo fitions, and enforcing thoſe alone which can affect
only a generous and exalted mind ?
