Pain and Misery. Their Torments have
already taken root in them, they cannot be happy when divested of the
Body, unless we may suppose, that Providence will, in a manner, create
them anew, and work a Miracle in the Rectification of their Faculties.
They may, indeed, taste a kind of malignant Pleasure in those Actions to
which they are accustomed, whilst in this Life; but when they are
removed from all those Objects which are here apt to gratifie them, they
will naturally become their own Tormentors, and cherish in themselves
those painful Habits of Mind, which are called, [in [5]] Scripture
Phrase, the Worm which never dies. 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 Arch-Bishop
_Tillotson_ and Dr. _Sherlock_, but there is none who has raised such
noble Speculations upon it as Dr. _Scott_ [6] 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 in 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.

C.

[Footnote 1: Natural History of Staffordshire, by Robert Plot, L.L.D.,
fol. 1686. Dr. Plot wrote also a Natural History of Oxfordshire, and was
a naturalist of mark, one of the Secretaries of the Royal Society, First
Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Historiographer Royal, and Archivist of
the Herald's Office. He died in 1696, aged 55.]

[Footnote 2: Dr. Atterbury]

[Footnote 3: Diogenes Laertius, Bk. viii.]

[Footnote 4:

The paths of Virtue must be reached by toil,
Arduous and long, and on a rugged soil,
Thorny the gate, but when the top you gain,
Fair is the future and the prospect plain.

_Works and Days_, Bk. i. (_Cooke's Translation_).]

[Footnote 5: [in the]]

[Footnote 6: John Scott, a young tradesman of Chippenham, Wilts.,
prevailed on his friends to send him to Oxford, and became D. D. in
1685. He was minister of St. Thomas's, Southwark, Rector of St. Giles in
the Fields, Prebendary of St. Paul's, Canon of Windsor, and refused a
Bishopric. He was a strong op