7. *_Cælia_ is always telling you how _provoked_ she is, what _intolerable shocking_ things happen to her, what _monstrous_ usage she suffers, and what _vexations_ she meets with every where. She tells you that her patience is quite worn out, and there is no bearing the behaviour of people. Every _assembly_ that she is at, sends her home provoked; something or other has been said or done, that no reasonable, well bred person ought to bear. _Poor people_ that want her charity, are sent away with hasty answers; not because she has not a heart to part with any money, but because she is _too full_ of some trouble of her own, to attend to the complaints of others. _Cælia_ has no business upon her hands, but to receive the income of a plentiful fortune: but yet by the doleful turn of her mind, you would be apt to think that she had neither _food_ nor _lodging_. If you see her look more pale than ordinary, if her lips tremble when she speaks to you, it is because she is just come from a _visit_, where _Lupus_ took no notice at all of her, but talked all the time to _Lucinda_, who has not half her fortune. When cross accidents have so disordered her spirits, that she is forced to send for the _doctor_ to make her able to eat; she tells him, in great anger at providence, that she never was well since she was born, and that she envies every beggar that she sees in health.
This is the unquiet life of _Cælia_, who has nothing to torment her but her own _spirit_.
If you could inspire her with _Christian humility_, you need do no more to make her happy. This virtue would make her thankful to God for half so much health as she has had, and help her to enjoy more for the time to come. This would keep off _tremblings_ and _loss_ of appetite, and her blood would need nothing else to sweeten it.
8. I have just touched upon these absurd characters, to convince you in the plainest manner, that religion is so far from rendering a life _dull_, _anxious_, and _uncomfortable_, that on the contrary, all the miseries, vexations, and complaints that are in the world, are owing to the want of religion; being directly caused by those absurd passions, which religion teaches us to deny.
9. Most people indeed confess, that religion preserves us from many evils, and helps us in many respects to a more happy enjoyment of ourselves; but then, they imagine, this is only true of such a _moderate share_ of religion, as restrains us from the excesses of our passions. They suppose that the _strict rules_ of piety must make our lives _dull_ and _uncomfortable_.
This objection supposes, that religion, _moderately_ practised, adds to our happiness; but that heights of religion have a contrary effect.
*It supposes therefore, that it is happy to be kept from the _excesses_ of envy, but unhappy to be kept from _other_ degrees of _envy_; that it is happy to be delivered from a _boundless_ ambition, but unhappy to be without a _moderate_ ambition. It supposes also, that the happiness of life consists in a _mixture_ of virtue and vice, of ambition and humility, charity and envy, heavenly affection and covetousness. All which is as absurd, as to suppose that it is happy to be free from excessive pains, but unhappy to be without moderate pains; or that the happiness of _health_ consisted in being partly sick, and partly well.
But if humility be the peace and rest of the soul, then no one has so much happiness from humility, as he that is the most humble. If excessive envy is a torment of the soul, he is most happy who extinguishes every spark of envy.
Thus it is in every virtue: the more you act up to every degree of it, the more happiness you have from it. And so of every vice: if you only abate its excesses, you do but little for yourself; but if you reject it in all degrees, then you feel the true ease of a _reformed_ mind.
10. And, as to those enjoyments which piety requireth us to deny ourselves, this deprives us of no real comfort.
For, 1_st_, Piety requires us to renounce no ways of life, where we can act _reasonably_, and offer what we do to God. All ways of life, all enjoyments that are within these bounds, are no way denied us by the strictest rules of piety. Whatever you can do, or enjoy, as in the presence of God, as his servant, as his rational creature; all that you can perform conformably to a rational nature, is allowed by the laws of piety. And will you think that your life will be uncomfortable, unless you may displease God, and act contrary to that reason and wisdom which he has implanted in you?
As for those satisfactions, which we dare not offer to a holy God, which are only invented by the folly and corruption of the world, which inflame our passions, and sink our souls into grossness and sensuality, and render us incapable of the divine favour either here or hereafter, surely it can be no uncomfortable thing to be rescued by religion from such self-murder, and to be rendered capable of eternal happiness.