16.

A knowledge of the fine arts, is seldom subservient to the promotion of
either religion or virtue. Elegance is often indecency; witness our
prints.

17.

There does not appear to be any evil in the world, but what is necessary.
The doctrine of rewards and punishments, not considered as a means of
reformation, appears to me an infamous libel on divine goodness.

18.

Whether virtue is founded on reason or revelation, virtue is wisdom, and
vice is folly. Why are positive punishments?

19.

Few can walk alone. The staff of Christianity is the necessary support of
human weakness. But an acquaintance with the nature of man and virtue,
with just sentiments on the attributes, would be sufficient, without a
voice from heaven, to lead some to virtue, but not the mob.

20.

I only expect the natural reward of virtue, whatever it may be. I rely
not on a positive reward.

The justice of God can be vindicated by a belief in a future state--but
a continuation of being vindicates it as clearly, as the positive system
of rewards and punishments--by evil educing good for the individual, and
not for an imaginary whole. The happiness of the whole must arise from
the happiness of the constituent parts, or this world is not a state of
trial, but a school.

21.

The vices acquired by Augustus to retain his power, must have tainted his
soul, and prevented that increase of happiness a good man expects in the
next stage of existence. This was a natural punishment.

22.

The lover is ever most deeply enamoured, when it is with he knows not
what--and the devotion of a mystic has a rude Gothic grandeur in it,
which the respectful adoration of a philosopher will never reach. I may
be thought fanciful; but it has continually occurred to me, that, though,
I allow, reason in this world is the mother of wisdom--yet some flights
of the imagination seem to reach what wisdom cannot teach--and, while
they delude us here, afford a glorious hope, if not a foretaste, of what
we may expect hereafter. He that created us, did not mean to mark us with
ideal images of grandeur, the _baseless fabric of a vision_--No--that
perfection we follow with hopeless ardour when the whisperings of reason
are heard, may be found, when not incompatible with our state, in the
round of eternity. Perfection indeed must, even then, be a comparative
idea--but the wisdom, the happiness of a superior state, has been
supposed to be intuitive, and