ort periodical
abstinence whets her appetite to a keener relish for suspended
enjoyment; and while she fasts from amusements, her blinded conscience
enjoys a feast of self-gratulation. She feeds on the remembrance of her
self-denial, even after she has returned to those delights which she
thinks her retreat has fairly purchased. She considers religion as a
system of pains and penalties, by the voluntary enduring of which, for a
short time, she shall compound for all the indulgences of the year. She
is persuaded that something must be annually forborne, in order to make
her peace. After these periodical atonements, the Almighty being in her
debt, will be obliged at last to pay her with heaven. This composition,
which rather brings her in on the creditor side, not only quiets her
conscience for the past, but enables her joyfully to enter on a new
score."

I asked Sir John how Lady Belfield _could_ associate with a woman of a
character so opposite to her own? "What can we do?" said he, "we can not
be singular. We must conform a _little_ to the world in which we live."
Trusting to his extreme good nature, and fired at the scene to which I
had been a witness, I ventured to observe that non-conformity to such a
world as that of which this lady was a specimen, was the very criterion
of the religion taught by Him who had declared by way of pre-eminent
distinction, that "his kingdom was not of this world."

"You are a young man," answered he mildly, "and this delicacy and these
prejudices would soon wear off if you were to live some time in the
world." "My dear Sir John," said I, warmly, "by the grace of God, I
never _will_ live in the world; at least, I never will associate with
that part of it whose society would be sure to wear off that delicacy
and remove those prejudices. Why this is retaining all the worst part of
popery. Here is the abstinence without the devotion; the outward
observance without the interior humiliation; the suspending of sin, not
only without any design of forsaking it, but with a fixed resolution of
returning to it, and of increasing the gust by the forbearance. Nay,
the sins she retains in order to mitigate the horrors of forbearance,
are as bad as those she lays down. A postponed sin, which is fully
intended to be resumed, is as much worse than a sin persisted in, as
deliberate hypocrisy is worse than the impulse of passion. I desire not
a more explicit comment on a text which I was once almost tempt