SECTION 3:

 

THE CAUSES AND REMEDIES OF MAN’S UNSUCCESSFUL-NESS IN HIS PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

 

CHAPTER 1:

 

 The general Cause of III Success. Deviation from Reason, the general Cause of Man's III Success. The Effects of which are, 1. The Proposal of false Ends; 2. Coldness in Pursuit of our true Ends.

 

 BUT if this be true, that happiness is attainable; and if it be as true, as certainly it is, that there needs no eloquence to enkindle in any man the desires of happiness, or to spur him on to endeavor its attainment, all mankind being carried on towards it by natural, and therefore constant and passionate inclinations; will it not be natural to demand, whence is it that so few are happy Whence is it that misery and trouble, affliction and sorrow, fill almost every place, and eyery bosom Not only no kingdom or city, but no town, no village, no family, being exempt and free; no place or person is privileged against grief and trouble; it invades the tribunal of judges, the thrones

 

of Princes, and what is almost as sacred as either, the retirements and closets of the devout and learned; nay^ scarcely is the church and the altar a secure sanctuary against it.

 

This will not be difficult to comprehend, if we soberly consider the true causes of man's misery. I shall discourse of them here only generally and briefly, as the nature of an introduction requires.

 

 Many are the particular causes of human misery, but they may all be reduced to this universal and immediate one, namely, That we do not live conformably to our reason.

 

 Quid enim rations timemus ant cupimus

 

 When do our affections spring from, or when are they governed by reason When are our desires or fears, our joys or SORROWS, wise, and just, and holy How frequently are our actions nothing else but the brutish and blind sallies of foolish passions, and our lives nothing else but the wanderings and rambles of deluded imaginations! How commonly do we act what we ourselves condemn And how commonly doth the whole course of our lives displease ourselves as much as others; and yet we live on in contradiction to our reason, and sometimes to our inclinations too. But in nothing does our deviation from reason more evidently appear than in two things:—

 

 First, In proposing to ourselves false and irrational ends of life. And, Secondly, In our insincerity in pursuing the true and rational one; that is, happiness. As to the first, who sees not how the life of man is perverted; the tendency of nature crooked and bowed to designs utterly unsuitable to the capacities and faculties of a rational mind, and to the great end of our creation Who can look into the life of man, and not easily conclude that his chief aim is wealth and greatness, not happiness Or, which is something sillier, that his design is some unnecessary accomplishment, not virtue and goodness; or a vain esteem and popular applause, not the peace and wisdom of his mind Who sees not how greedily men pursue those sensual satisfactions which naturally tend to enslave the soul, and to extinguish the rational pleasure and vigor of our minds In a word, wealth, and honor, and power, and pleasure, are the idols of mankind; these are the things for which they live, for which they love and value life; these are the glorious possessions which inflame our industry; these are the things which the unfortunate man envies, and the fortunate honors; these are the things which distinguish mankind into their several ranks and degrees: the contempt or esteem of the world being ever proportioned to the degrees of wealth and power of which they fancy others possessed. To these noble ends the sage and experienced parent trains up his young one is instilling daily into them all the maxims of covetousness and ambition, and judging of their proficiency and hopefulness by the progress they make towards these ends; that is, the more enslaved they are, the more hopeful, the more promising is their youth.

 

 Nor are men more zealous in pursuing the false, than cold and insincere in pursuing the true, ends of life,— virtue and happiness. This is too evident to any one who shall consider how fond we are of our diseases and errors; how impatient of that instruction or reproof which tends to cure, undeceive, and disabuse us; how sluggish we are in the study of important truths; how listless and remiss in the use of those means which conduce to virtue, to the freeing our minds, and to the confirming our resolutions; and therefore, lastly, how light, wavering, and unconstant we are in the practice of those things which right reason convinces us to be our duty.

 

CHAPTER 2:

 

The particular and immediate Cause of ill Success.

 

 ALL that I have said in the former Chapter is plain and evident; we see, and feel it, and bemoan it, but yet we live on in the same manner still. Whence, therefore, is this infatuation of our understanding that enslaves us to false and irrational ends Whence is that impotence of mind Whence is that insincerity that deludes our desires, and produces nothing but feeble and unsuccessful endeavors Neither is this a difficult matter to discover. That we live and act irrationally, proceeds evidently from three causes:—1. The frame of our nature. 2. A vicious education. 3. Vicious conversation.

 

 1. The first source of irrational desires and actions is, the composition of our nature. Our sensual and brutish appetites have their foundation in our natural constitution, as well as our rational affections - hence is it that there is in man a doubtful fluctuation and indetennination to different objects, the reason of the mind, and the appetite of the body, distracting and dividing him by their different proposals; the impressions of sense and representations of reason successively awakening in him very different desires. Whereas angels by the perfection, and beasts by the imperfection of their nature,’are confined to their proper and necessary objects; man is left to a strange uncertainty, undetermined by the reasons of the mind, or the instinct or appetite of the body; moved, indeed, successively by each, perfectly governed and overruled by neither. But it were well for man if the inclinations of these two different principles were so justly poised, that he were naturally left in a true liberty and pure indifference, equally able to follow the dictates of reason, and the appetites of flesh and blood. But, alas, how impetuous are the lusts of the body! How irresistible are those passions which the objects of sense, aided by a carnal imagination, raise in us! On the other side, how cold are the representations of” reason, when we most need us assistance and authority! How faint and feeble the natural inclination of the soul to what is truly good and great! How remote and distant the rewards of virtue, and consequently how weak and cold their influence; and how faint and imperfect is the pleasure that attends-it, abstracted from future rewards, in all other minds besides those who are arrived in some sort at perfection! It is true, at some seasons the remonstrances of conscience are so sharp,, its reproaches so bitter, the confusion of the mind so insufferable, that they render that which is a pleasure to the sense, a torment to the soul; and its agreeableness to our imagination cannot make amends for its contradiction to our reason. But, alas! these are but short-lived fits; for business diverts, pleasure enchants and repeated violence offered to our reason, stupifies and deadens the natural conscience; and, what is worse than all this, a silly and vicious education does generally so corrupt our judgments, and prepossess us with vain and foolish affections, that the checks of conscience are extremely seldom and extremely faint, unless the commission ef some gross sin awaken it by a deep and deadly wound. This is,—

 

 2. A second cause of that general apostasy from reason so notorious in the world,—a silly and vicious education. How well does it fare with children, when they derive only their original corruption from their parents! Ah, how often are their weak dispositions to vice nursed and cherished by their parents into an absolute, uncontrollable, and settled tyranny! Nay, what is worse yet, how often are those towardly, dispositions which many bring into the world with them, choked and stifled, not only by the indulgence, but even by the example and authority of parents!

 

 When corrupt inclination is ripened into a second nature,—when our innate weaknesses and follies are confirmed by those false principles, and that vicious confidence which we derive from education,—then we are sent into the world, left to our own disposal, abandoned to ’our own government. Poor creatures! Not only exposed, unarmed, unguarded, to temptations, but, like SAMSON to the Philistines, tied and bound too! Ah, could we so •easily burst our bonds as he did his! But whence should we recover our lost liberty

 

 3. Conversation, instead of being an assistance to us in. our endeavors after happiness, doth generally tend to promote our misery; philosophy is not now the business of conversation, nor is friendship any way serviceable to the great e*nd of life. The ligament of society is riot and reveling, or sordid profit and interest, or peradventure folly, trifling, and impertinence. These are the ties and - bonds of our confederacies; so that whatever authority our friends and acquaintance have over us, is employed to no other purpose but to recommend and endear vice to us; to render it, if not beautiful, at least less deformed than it is. Hence it is that retirement is so generally •recommended to those who design to make any progress in true wisdom, and that such as are truly virtuous so passionately complain of the disadvantages they suffer by conversing with the world; for the truth is, wisdom and goodness are such unfashionable themes of discourse, such-unusual, nay, I may add, unwelcome subjects of entertainment, that the company deserves now to be praised, which is only barren and unprofitable, not hurtful, and wherein we suffer no greater loss than that of our time.

 

 It is now easy to imagine what fruit a corrupt nature must bring forth, when not only left destitute of necessary cultivation, but depraved yet more by a vicious education, and vicious conversation; what can all these together bring forth, but a loathsome brood of diseases and vices, such as these: Rashness, precipitancy, heedlessness, and unthoughtfulness; false notions, ungovernableness, and impotence of will; insincerity, levity, and inconstancy; which are the plagues of human life, and the fatal obstacles of our tranquility For either they obstruct our true happiness, by preventing our search after it; or delude our search, by perverting our understanding; 01 else they frustrate the influence of its discovery, by obstinate reluctances in the body, and an unhappy impotence in the mind. All this is manifest upon the mpst transient glance we can take of these particulars. To begin with want of consideration. This is a necessary effect of that corruption which I have ascribed to nature, education, and conversation: the body, unaccustomed to obey, is impatient of deliberation when its pleasure is in view, and a taking imagination overrules whatever weak plea reason makes; nay, what is worse, the very disuse of reason in men abandoned to the conduct of custom, and swayed by the enticement of inclination, and authority of example, bereaves them almost of the faculty itself; so that their life and actions are not the effects of judgment and deliberation, but injudicious, unweighed custom; or more rash, heedless, or precipitant passion. And can any man think, that when the meanest art or profession is not learned without right instruction or just diligence, wisdom, the great art of living happily, shall be attained without so much as just consideration When a man cannot grow rich or prosperous without contrivance and industry, is it probable he should grow happy by inadvertency and chance It is impossible. For innumerable will be the false and pernicious notions which such a one corrupted and depraved, rash and unadvised, must be betrayed into and confirmed in. There is no principle so false, no practice so absurd, which such do not readily entertain; hence it is that men do so generally live by rote, that men's principles are the fashionable ones of the neighborhood or nation, that their manner of life takes that shapes •which their rank and quality, and the chance of their conversation gives it: and their very religion itself is the native commodity of the soil they are planted in: hence it is, finally, that men are unrighteous and wicked, careless and unconcerned, notwithstanding all the calls or invitations, all the rewards and menaces of the Gospel, convictions of conscience, impulses of grace, mercies, threats, and judgments of GOD. And covetousness, luxury, un-cleanness, profaneness, ambition, are as constantly practiced in court and city, as condemned in the pulpit and press; nor is it to be expected otherwise, for false notions give countenance and authority to our follies, and fortify us in all our wretched miscarriages against the assaults of law and reason, of conscience and GOD himself. No condition is so desperately forlorn as that of sin and folly, backed and authorized by inveterate principles. These render our very industry not only useless, but even fatal and destructive to our happiness; these defeat the very tendency of our nature toward happiness, and, turning it into a wrong channel, make it run with violence towards our misery.

 

 These help to render our passions both numerous and ungovernable, by presenting some things as evils which are not, and by augmenting real evils beyond their natural proportion; and herein consist the very essence and being of human misery, or at least a part of it, when our own folly increases both the number and weight of evils, and our numberless passions exceed all just and natural bounds. And this is a constant truth: the less understanding there is in any man, the more violent is his passion; the passion of a fool being like the zeal of a bigot,— the more blind the more furious.

 

 Insincerity is another fruit of the corruption of our nature, and the depravation of education and conversation. This is that which makes us lazy in our search after truth, and partial in the examination of our opinions and actions; for when the bent of our nature runs towards carnal pleasures, and this is confirmed by education and false notions of things, we shall be apt to take up and caress ourselves with present, easy, and ready entertainment. We shall not extend our care or prospect very far, but be content to enjoy the sweet in every present circumstance and event, without regard to their future tendency. The same distemper prevailing, we shall be apt to think every thing healthful that is pleasant, and easily admit those principles most true, which are most grateful to our appetites. It is not therefore to be wondered at, if the same humor-which makes us greedy of embracing, makes us obstinate in defending, pleasing errors; for the same fondness and partiality render us incapable of instruction, and impatient of advice, though designed by the most faithful affection, and managed with the most prudent tenderness.

 

 It is easy now to judge what must be the state of that man, who is insincere and false to himself in his deliberations, and obstinate in the defense of his errors; who is partial in all his own reflections, and impatient of the faithful reflections of others. How is it probable that that man should attain to any rational happiness, who is incapable of using his own reason aright, or enjoying the benefit of others'

 

 But it is not the only mischief we suffer by these diseases of the mind, that they render us incapable of discovering true happiness; they also disable us to pursue it, when discovered, with that earnestness and vigor which the importance of the thing requires; for they must needs beget in us a slothful remissness in our endeavors, and an unhappy levity and inconstancy in all our purposes. It is very improbable that we should be steady and immoveable in those purposes which are not founded upon clear and solid reason, or zealous in such as are encountered with violent opposition from ourselves; hence it is that )the scenes of man's life are so various, so frequently changed; that every man does so often shift his person, and appear a very different actor on the stage. Nor is it any man's wit or sagacity that turns him into all these different shapes, but his vice and folly; for being ignorant of the true good, the true happiness of man, he catches at fleeting shadows, and courts thin airy dreams, and uncertain apparitions; and therefore daily sets up new projects, and those too repugnant to the old; and thus man wearieth out himself by vain and unsuccessful, because inconstant, vanishing attempts. 

 

 This were tolerable, did it befall us only in temporal things, whose emptiness makes our success itself disappointment; but alas, we suffer the same thing in the weighty concerns of virtue and happiness. Our religious purposes generally die strangled in the birth, and all our glorious designs dash themselves to pieces against the next difficulty or temptation; and yet relapsed into a,state of folly, and sin, and danger, we would again return to that narrow path, whose steep and rough ascent discouraged us; wandering in night, and fog, and storm, fain would we reach the happy region, where calm light and cheerful day do ever dwell: Plainly, when we resolve to be virtuous, we are kept from it by the seeming ease and pleasure of sin, and the hardships necessary to be undergone in the attainment of virtue; and yet the remorse, and danger, and dissatisfaction which always accompany a negligent and sinful life, make us wish for the peace and comfort, the security and rewards of virtue. But O, how seldom do we proceed further than wishes, or some attempts more lax and disspirited than our wishes! The reason is plain; virtue is more rational, vice is more grateful; the understanding is convinced, but the will is enslaved: " The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit- against the flesh.” A sinner cannot purchase the pleasures of the mind, but by some severities of the body; nor enjoy the pleasures of the body, without the checks and reproaches of the mind: and this makes him unsteady and irresolute in all his purposes.

 

CHAPTER 3:

 

The Cure of the former Maladies.

 

 FROM this account of the rise and progress of man's misery, it is easy to infer what it is wherein the happiness •of this life consists, or at least, what the universal or immediate cause of it is, namely, a conformity of our minds and lives to true reason; this is a state of light and knowledge, of peace and security, of lasting and rational delight. This invests the understanding in its just sovereignty, and restores the will to its true liberty. This makes our prospect of the future, taking and inviting, and our reflection on the time past, easy and comfortable. This lays a solid foundation for our reliance on the merits and intercession of our Mediator, and raises our hope as high as heaven. This prevents our misfortunes and calamities, or, what is more happy, enables us to conquer them. In a word, this makes us great in life, but much more great and venerable in death: righteousness and goodness revealing its beauty and glory most then, when all things else shrink and fade.

 

 We see the happiness that springs from our conformity and subjection to reason: and it is easy for these two things wherein, especially,. I have declared the sinner's deviation from reason to consist, to infer, what we must do, if we will life rationally,—

 

First, We must propose to ourselves a wise and rational end of life.

 

 Secondly, We must pursue this end with life, and spirit, and constancy.

 

 These I lay down as the first and most comprehensive rules for the attainment of happiness: I will therefore say something of each, but briefly, and in general terms, as the nature of this treatise requires.

 

 First, We must propose to ourselves a wise and rational end of life; that is, the true happiness of a rational creature. When we have done this, when our understandings are fully convinced of the excellence and necessity of it, and when we have possessed our minds with a sacred reverence, a firm and devout love for it; this, like the eastern star, will lead us through all the windings and turnings of life, to Bethlehem and happiness: this will soon disengage us from that labyrinth of contradictious desires and wild opinions, in which the fool and sinner are endlessly entangled. When we have done this, we shall find every place a school, every one we converse with a tutor, and every passage of our life, or another's, full of instruction: not a look, whether cheerful or melancholy; not a word, whether wise or foolish; not a sigh that an oppressed heart vents, not a joy that smiles in the face, but ( will show us the use and beauty of divine truth, and divine virtue: for in the vicious we shall see what false and fading pleasures, what idle fears, what vain sorrows, fill their minds; in the good, we shall see what true peace virtue creates in the mind, what constancy and majesty in the life, what courage and hopes it inspires in affliction, what magnanimity atid humility in prosperity; and in a word, what light, what serenity it diffuses through the whole man. We shall see in many instances every day, what the mischiefs of irrational desires and ungovernable passions are; and, on the contrary, how great the advantages of truth and virtue, of wisdom, and the due regulation of all our passions; nor is the illumination of our understanding the only advantage which we shall reap from the prefixing ourselves a raiional end of life, and the possessing our souls with the love of it; for when we have done this, we shall be actually freed from the greater part of the troubles of life; we shall be raised above all senseless, silly desires, and consequently above all senseless, silly vexations: For when we have set our hearts upon true and rational happiness, how unnecessary, nay, how despicable will most of these things appear which we now admire and covet We shall not then think it reasonable to sigh and toil for this house or that land, for this preferment or that trade, this honor or that beauty; for these are no essential, no necessary ingredients of a rational happiness.

 

 Nor is this all: Thy joys and pleasure will increase upon thee: for by approaching every day nearer and nearer to thy great end, thou wilt be wonderfully surprised with fresh delight, whilst thou dost behold the fruit of thy travel, and the daily increase of thy wealth. Thou wilt see “thyself, like a thriving plant, grow up daily more strong and beautiful. The covetous man grows not richer by heaping up, nor the ambitious man greater by rising higher; or, at least, neither grows happier by being either richer or greater; but thou wilt every day grow wiser by study, more virtuous by practice; calmer and happier by both. O, to what a height will thy pleasure rise, when thy store shall grow big enough to entertain not thyself only, but all men else; when the thirsty shall come and drink at thy streams, and the scorched shall refresh themselves under thy shade; when thou, led by the same spirit with our great I am (and the Master, shall open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, shalt cast out devils, and strengthen the feet of the lame; I mean, when thou shalt teach the foolish wisdom, when thou shalt persuade and charm the obstinate, when thou shalt deliver the unclean and the passionate from the evil spirits, the vices that possessed them,, and when thou shalt teach the enslaved and impotent sinner how to overcome the world, the flesh, and the Devil; thou wilt then indeed, as thou art the image, so do the works if GOD; thou wilt be a heavenly and tutelar, though mortal, angel amongst men; and wherever thou dost, there wisdom, virtue, and happiness will dwell too. But to attain to this state, it is not only necessary to prefix ourselves a rational end of life; but also, Secondly, We must pursue this end with life, and spirit, and constancy. It is not a good fit, or a devout passion that will make us either virtuous or happy: there must go more than this to conquer an ill habit, or implant a good one. It is not one brisk sally, or one warm charge, that will subdue the world and flesh, and put us into possession of victory and security: no, when warmth and passion have made a prosperous impression on the enemy, a sober patience must make good the ground we have gained, a steady and resolved courage must urge and press the advantage to an issue; without vigor, patience, and constancy to carry us still forwards, the warmth with which we begin the course of virtue will stand us in little stead:

 

 Ah, how many have marched out of Egypt, and perished in the wilderness! How many have wrecked within sight of shore! How many have lost their reward of repentance by their relapse! How many ha^e fallen by negligence, security, and sloth, into that wretched state, out of which they had once delivered themselves by courage, resolution, and self-denial! Nor is the necessity of vigor, patience, and constancy, in our pursuit of happiness, the only motive to it; the certainty of success, and the greatness of the advantages, which attended it, are sufficient to animate any man that seriously considers it: the labor and hope of the husbandman is lost, unless the fruitful earth and fruitful seed be blessed with fruitful seasons too. The trade of the merchant is properly but adventuring, and his increase depends as much on winds and waves, as on his own skill and diligence; but it fares not thus with man in his pursuit of happiness. The traffic of the philosopher depends not upon winds nor tide; the seeds of virtue, if the ground be well cultivated, will thrive in any weather, and sometimes better in storms than sunshine. Finally, the success of our conflicts against sin and misery, depends not on fortune, but courage and industry.

 

 How unspeakable a pleasure is it now to think, that we cannot be disappointed of our travels, nor defeated of our hopes, while we labor for virtue and happiness If our endeavors be sincere and persevering, our success is certain and unquestionable. But what an accession doth this pleasure receive, when we consider, what will be the glorious fruit of this success Tranquillity, cheerfulness, enlargement of soul, pleasure, life, immortality; in one word, happiness. O glorious reward of our conflict, and our victories! What neither wealth, nor greatness, nor honor, nor crowns; what neither blood nor toil, nor cunning, nor fortune, can give! That, rational and sincere endeavors after wisdom and virtue, will give the meanest man upon earth, that is, happiness! O blessed issue of philosophical, that is, truly Christian travel! The rich, the great, the honorable, the mighty, may complain even of their success, and repent them of the purchase they have made at too dear a rate; but the Christian can never repent of the success of his study, his self-denial, his patience, his prayers: for how is it possible to complain of being happy, or repent of being wise and -virtuous There is nothing empty, nothing evil, nothing mean, nothing uncertain, true wisdom, in rational happiness.

 

 This brief and general account of happiness, and of the way to it, does naturally instruct us how we are to treat the body, and what it is that a rational education and wise conversation ought to aim at: if our conformity to reason be either the happiness of this present life, or the immediate causes of it, (for I will not trouble myself with nice and subtile distinctions,) then it is plain, that we are obliged to such a kind of discipline and government of ourselves, as may render the body most obsequious to the mind, and may exalt and establish the power and dominion of reason. For whatever tends to obscure our understanding, to enfeeble the will, to cherish our sensual inclinations, and augment their force, doth so far necessarily tend to deprave the nature of man, and to subvert and overthrow his happiness: and from hence it appears, that the excellence of education consists in possessing the minds of youth with true notions of good and evil, and informing and moulding their minds into an esteem and veneration for wisdom and virtue. 

 

 The first virtue I conceive a child capable of, is obedience; and this is indeed the foundation of all virtue. To this, let him be inured and trained up betimes: he that finds it easy to obey another's reason, will not find it difficult to obey his own; for when the judgment comes to be formed and ripened, when it comes to exercise its authority, it will find a body not used to give, but receive commands. From this virtue of obedience, he is to be led gently on to a rational and voluntary choice of what is good; he must be taught gradually, not only his plain duty, but the motives to it; for it is as necessary to his happiness that he should love, as that he should know his duty. But this we strive in vain to instill by art and instruction, if we do not instill it by the influence of wise examples too.

 

 As to conversation, it is plain, that it ought to be the practice of those virtues which a pious education instilled; and that we ought to have no less reverence for our reason when we are under our own government, than we had for the authority of our parents when we were under theirs. What ought to be the tie of friendship, what the rules of conversation, and what the great ends of society, is abundantly manifest from the nature of that happiness which it behooves us to propose as the great end of life What is the great end of man, ought to be the design of society;, and therefore it is plain that wisdom and virtue ought to be the foundation and bond of those friendships which we enter into, and that conversation should be so regulated, that we may grow by it more wise and virtuous.

 

 I have now finished this discourse, which I designed only as an introduction to those which are to follow. I do not think that it is now necessary for me, in a pathetic conclusion, to persuade men to endeavor to be happy. The desires of happiness are inseparable from all beings; at-least it is impossible to be rational, and not desire to be happy. If I have therefore sufficiently proved that it is possible to be happy; and if I have showed that a diligent inquiry, a vigorous and persevering industry, is necessary to the attainment of it; if I have pointed out the general causes of human misery, and, together with them, their general cure and remedy, I have done enough to enkindle those desires, and beget those resolutions in my Reader, which if they do not make him actually happy, will, at least, prepare him for a further enjoyment of happiness. I have therefore nothing more to put him in mind of now, but this, That as I all along suppose the grace of GOD necessary to second and enforce our reason, so I would ever be understood to urge the necessity of our prayers, as much as that of our endeavors, the fervency of the one, as much as the sincerity of the other.