Thus temperance makes men lords over those pleasures
that intemperance enslaves them to: the one, parent of
health, vigour, fertility, cheerfulness, and every other
desirable good of life; the other, of diseases, debility,
barrenness, self-loathing, with only every evil incident to
human nature.
You laugh, perhaps, at this tail-piece of morality, ex-
tracted from me by the force of truth, resulting from com-
par'd experiences: you think it, no doubt, out of place, out
of character; possibly too you may look on it as the paltry
finesse of one who seeks to mask a devotee to Vice under a
rag of a veil, impudently smuggled from the shrine of Virtue:
just as if one was to fancy one's self compleatly disguised
at a masquerade, with no other change of dress than turning
one's shoes into slippers; or, as if a writer should think to
shield a treasonable libel, by concluding it with a formal
prayer for the King. But, independent of my flattering my-
self that you have a juster opinion of my sense and sincerity,
give me leave to represent to you, that such a supposition is
even more injurious to Virtue than to me: since, consistently
with candour and good-nature, it can have no foundation but
in the falsest of fears, that its pleasures cannot stand in
comparison with those of Vice; but let truth dare to hold it
up in its most alluring light: then mark, how spurious, how
low of taste, how comparatively inferior its joys are to those
which Virtue gives sanction to, and whose sentiments are not
above making even a sauce for the senses, but a sauce of the
highest relish; whilst Vices are the harpies that infect and
foul the feast.
Pages:
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293