and apt to fall into hectick fits: any accident weakened him, so that he thought he could not live long. And when he went from London, he said he

should come to town

believed he never more. Yet, during

his being in town, he was so well, that he went often abroad, and had great vivacity of spirits. So that he was under no such decay, as either darkened or weakened his understanding; nor was he any way troub led with the spleen or vapours, or under the power of melancholy.

What he was then, compared to what he had been formerly, I could not so well judge, who had seen him but twice before. Others have told me, they perceived no difference in his parts. This I mention more particularly, that it may not be thought, that melancholy, or want of spirits, made him more inclined to receive any impressions; for indeed I never discovered any such thing in him.

Having thus opened my way to the heads of our discourse, I shall next mention them. The three chief things we talked

about were, morality, natural religion, and revealed religion, Christianity in particular. For morality, he confessed he saw the necessity of it, both for the government of the world, and the preservation of health, life, and friendship; and was very much ashamed of his former practices, rather because he had made himself a beast, and brought pain and sickness upon his body,and had suffered much in his reputation, than from any deep sense of a Supreme Being, or another state. But so far this went with him, that he firmly resolved to change the course of his life, which he thought he should effect by the study of philosophy, and had not a few solid and pleasant notions concerning the folly and madness of vice. But he confessed, he had no remorse for his past actions or offences against God, but only as injuries to himself and to mankind.

Upon this subject I shewed him the effects of philosophy for reforming the world; that it was a matter of speculation, which but few either had the leisure or the

capacity to inquire into. But the principle, that must reform mankind, must be obvious to every man's understanding. That philosophy, in matters of morality, beyond the great lines of our duty, had no very certain, fixed rule; but the lesser offices and instances of our duty went much by the fancies of men, and customs of nations; and consequently could not have authority enough to bear down the propensities of nature, appetite, or passion. For which I instanced in these two points.

The one was about that maxim of the Stoicks, to extirpate all sorts of passion and concern for any thing. That, take it on one hand, seemed desirable; because if it could be accomplished, it would make all the accidents of life easy; but I think it cannot, because nature, after all our striving against it, will still return to itself. Yet, on the other hand, it dissolved the bond of nature and friendship, and slackened industry, which will move but dully without an inward heat; and if it delivered a man of

many troubles, it deprived him of the chief pleasures of life, which arise from friendship.

The other was concerning the restraint of pleasure, how far that was to go. Upon this, he told me, the two maxims of his morality then were, that he should do nothing to the hurt of any other, or that might prejudice his own health. And he thought, that all pleasure, when it did not interfere with these, was to be indulged, as the gratification of our natural appetites. It seemed unreasonable to imagine these were put into a man only to be restrained, or curbed to such a narrowness, This he applied to

the free use of wine and women.

To this I answered, that if appetites being natural was an argument for indulg ing them, then the revengeful might as well allege it for murder, and the covetous for stealing, whose appetites are no less keen on those objects; and yet it is acknowledged, that these appetites ought to be curbed. If the difference is urged from the injury another person receives, the injury is

as great, if a man's wife is defiled, or his daughter corrupted and it is impossible for a man to let loose his appetites to vagrant lusts, and not transgress in these particulars. the disorders, that must rise from thence, but by regulating these appetites. And why should we not as well think, that God intended our brutish and sensual appetites should be governed by our reason, as that the fierceness of beasts should be managed and tamed by the wisdom, and for the use, of man? So that it is no real absurdity to grant, that these appetites were put into men on purpose to exercise their reason in the restraint and government of them; which, to be able to do, ministers a higher and more lasting pleasure to a man, than to give them their full scope and range. And if other rules in philosophy be observed, such as the avoiding of those objects that stir passions, nothing raises higher passions, than ungoverned lust; nothing darkens the understanding, and depresses a man's mind more, nor is any thing managed with

So there was no curing