scripture
phrase, the worm which never dies.
21. This notion of heaven and hell is so very conformable to the light
of nature, that it was discovered by several of the most exalted
heathens. It has been finely improved by many eminent divines of the
last age, as in particular by Archbishop _Tillotson_ and Dr. _Sherlock_;
but there is none who has raised such noble speculations upon it as Dr.
_Scott_, in the first book of his Christian Life, which is one of the
finest and most rational schemes of divinity, that is written in our
tongue or any other. That excellent author has shewn how every
particular custom and habit of virtue will, in its own nature, produce
the heaven, or a state of happiness, in him who shall hereafter practise
it: as on the contrary, how every custom or habit of vice will be the
natural hell of him in whom it subsists.
_On Cleanliness_.
SPECTATOR, No. 631.
1. I had occasion to go a few miles out of town, some days since, in a
stage-coach, where I had for my fellow travellers, a dirty beau, and a
pretty young Quaker woman. Having no inclination to talk much at that
time, I placed myself backward, with a design to survey them, and pick a
speculation out of my two companions. Their different figures were
suificient of themselves to draw my attention.
2. The gentleman was dressed in a suit, the ground whereof had been
black, as I perceived from some few spaces that had escaped the powder,
which was incorporated with the greatest part of his coat; his periwig,
which cost no smull sum, was after so slovenly a manner cast over his
shoulders, that it seemed not to have been combed since the year 1712;
his linen, which was not much concealed, was daubed with plain Spanish
from the chin to the lowest button, and the diamond upon his finger
(which naturally dreaded the water) put me in mind how it sparkled
amidst the rubbish of the mine where it was first discovered.
3. On the other hand, the pretty Quaker appeared in all the elegance of
cleanliness. Not a speck was to be found on her. A clear, clean, oval
face, just edged about with little thin plaits of the purest cambrick,
received great advantages from the shade of her black hood: as did the
whiteness of her arms from that sober-coloured stuff in which she had
clothed herself. The plainness of her dress was very well suited to the
simplicity of her phrases, all which put together, though they could not
give me a great opinion of her rel
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