they should be indisposed to
attend to any thing serious, or that they grow sick of Religion, which
has no Comforts for them; that they fly from the Church and crowd to
the Playhouse: That they are tired of themselves, and their own
Thoughts, and want to lose themselves in Company from Morning to Night?
It is this unhappy, unsettled State of Mind that has introduced a Kind
of general Idleness among the People, and given Rise to almost infinite
Places of Diversion in and about this Town; it were well if they were
Places of Diversion only; but they are often Places for carrying on
worse Business, and give Opportunities to the Profligate to seduce the
Innocent, who often meet their Ruin, where they only came for
Pleasure--While I was writing this I cast my Eye upon a News-Paper of
the Day, and counted no less than fifteen Advertisements for _Plays_,
_Operas_, _Musick_, and _Dancing_, for Meetings at _Gardens_, for
_Cock-fighting_, _Prize-fighting_, &c? Should this Paper, (as many of
our News-Papers do) go abroad, what an Idea must it give to all the
Churches abroad, of the Manner in which _Lent_ is kept in this
Protestant Country? What our Saviour said to the _Jews_ upon another
Occasion, _You have turned the House of Prayer into a Den of Thieves_,
may with a little Variation, be applied to Ourselves, We have turned
this Season appointed for serious Reflexions, and Humiliation of Body
and Spirit, into a Time of Mirth and Jollity, of Musick, Dancing, and
riotous Living.

How far this Spirit of Indolence and Idleness has gone, and to what
Excess, may be seen in all Orders among us; friendly Visits for
Conversation are become insipid Things, and are degenerated into
Meetings for Gaming, where People hardly known to each other, are
invited by one Tye only, the Love of Play: Which seems now to be, not
an Amusement or Diversion, but a serious Business of Life, and one
would think a _necessary_ one, by seeing how some Children are trained
up to it.

There is a great and a grievous Evil among us, which naturally springs
from the Disorders beforementioned: I mean the great Increase of Popery
in this Kingdom. When Men have lost all Principles of Religion, and are
lost to all Sense of Morality, they are prepared to receive any
Superstition, whenever the Decay of Health, or the cross Accidents of
Life revive the Fears of Futurity; which may be stifled, but cannot be
extinguished; such Persons not able to digest the wholesome Food o