If the Tenour of our Actions
have any other Motive than the Desire to be pleasing in the Eye of the
Deity, it will necessarily follow that we must be more than Men, if we
are not too much exalted in Prosperity and depressed in Adversity: But
the Christian World has a Leader, the Contemplation of whose Life and
Sufferings must administer Comfort in Affliction, while the Sense of his
Power and Omnipotence must give them Humiliation in Prosperity.
It is owing to the forbidding and unlovely Constraint with which Men of
low Conceptions act when they think they conform themselves to Religion,
as well as to the more odious Conduct of Hypocrites, that the Word
Christian does not carry with it at first View all that is Great,
Worthy, Friendly, Generous, and Heroick. The Man who suspends his Hopes
of the Reward of worthy Actions till after Death, who can bestow unseen,
who can overlook Hatred, do Good to his Slanderer, who can never be
angry at his Friend, never revengeful to his Enemy, is certainly formed
for the Benefit of Society: Yet these are so far from Heroick Virtues,
that they are but the ordinary Duties of a Christian.
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