BY

LAURENCE STERNE, A. M.

PREBENDARY OF YORK,

AND

VICAR OF SUTTON ON THE FOREST,

AND OF

STILLINGTON, NEAR YORK.

VOL. V.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR JOSEPH WENMAN,

No. 144, FLEET-STREET.

M DCC LXXXV.

Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.

TH

THERE are two opinions which the inconfiderate are apt to take upon truft. -The first is a vicious life, is a life of liberty, pleafure, and happy advantages. -The fecond is-and which is the converfe of the first-that a religious life is a fervile and most uncomfortable state.

The first breach which the devil made upon human innocence, was by the help of the first of thefe fuggeftions, when he told Eve, that by eating of the tree of knowledge, fhe fhould be as GOD, that is, fhe fhould reap fome high and strange felicity from doing what was forbidden her.-But I need not repeat the fuccefs-Eve learned the difference between good and evil by her tranfgreffion, which the knew not beforebut then the fatally learned at the fame time, that the difference was only thisVOL. V. A 2

that good is that which can only give the mind pleafure and comfort—and that evil is that, which must neceffarily be attended Jooner or later with fhame and forrow.

As the deceiver of mankind thus began his triumph over our race-fo has he carried it on ever fince by the very fame argument of delufion.-That is, by pofieffing men's minds early with great expectations of the prefent incomes of fin,--making them dream of wondrous gratifications they are to feel in following their appetites in a forbidden way-making them fancy, that their own grapes yield not fo delicious a tate as their neighbour's, and that they fhall quench their thirst with more pleasure at his fountain, than at their own. the opinion which at first too generally prevails-till experience and proper feafons of reflection makes us all at one time or other confefs-that our counsellor has been (as from the beginning) an impoftor-and that inttead of fulfilling thefe hopes of gain and fweetness in what is forbidden—that, on the contrary, every unlawful enjoyment leads only to bitterness and lofs.

This is

The fecond opinion, or, That a religious life is a fervile and uncomfortable state, has proved a no lefs fatal and capital falfe principle in the conduct of unexperience through life, the foundation of which mistake ari.