to most People not to do amiss, than that
of Glory, which cannot consist with it: For no Body can rationally
think that Glory can be due to them for doing that, which it would be
shameful in them not to do. But there is yet a farther Folly and ill
Consequence in Men's intitling Ladies to Glory on account of Chastity
which is, that the conceit hereof (especially in those who are
Beautiful) does ordinarily produce in them a Pride and Imperiousness,
that is very troublesome to such as are the most concern'd in them.

One whose business it was to remark the Humours of the Age, and of
Mankind in general, has, I remember, made a Husband on this occasion
to say,

_Such Vertue is the Plague of Human Life,
A Vertuous Woman, but a Cursed Wife._

And he adds,

_In Unchaste Wives,
There's yet a kind of recompencing Ease,
Vice keeps 'em Humble, gives 'em care to please.
But against clamorous Vertue, what Defence?_

If Mr. _Dryden_ did distinguish herein, between real Vertue and that
Idol one of Men's Invention, he was, perhaps, not much in the wrong in
what he suggests: But if he design'd in this a Satyr against Marriage,
as a state in the which a Man can no way be happy, it appears then how
much Vertue is prejudiced by this foreign Support, whilst it becomes
thereby expos'd to such a Censure; which if it may be Just in
reference to a vain Glorious Chastity, yet can never be so of a truly
Vertuous one: Obedience to the Law of God, being an Universal
Principle, and admitting of no Irregularity in one thing any more than
in another, which falls under it's Direction.

It is indeed only a Rational Fear of God, and desire to approve our
selves to him, that will teach us in All things, uniformly to live as
becomes our Reasonable Nature; to inable us to do which, must needs be
the great Business and End of a Religion which comes from God.

But how differently from this has the Christian Religion been
represented by those who place it in useless Speculations, Empty
Forms, or Superstitious Performances? The Natural Tendency of which
things being to perswade Men that they may please God at a cheaper
Rate than by the Denial of their Appetites, and the Mortifying of
their Irregular Affections, these Misrepresentations of a pretended
Divine Revelation have been highly prejudicial to Morality: And,
thereby, been also a great occasion of Scepticism; for the Obligation
to Vertue being loosen'd, Men e