own gratification, is benevolence less the
temper of tranquillity and freedom than ambition or covetousness? Does
the benevolent man appear less easy with himself from his love to his
neighbour? Does he less relish his being? Is there any peculiar gloom
seated on his face? Is his mind less open to entertainment, to any
particular gratification? Nothing is more manifest than that being in
good humour, which is benevolence whilst it lasts, is itself the temper
of satisfaction and enjoyment.

Suppose then, a man sitting down to consider how he might become most
easy to himself, and attain the greatest pleasure he could, all that
which is his real natural happiness. This can only consist in the
enjoyment of those objects which are by nature adapted to our several
faculties. These particular enjoyments make up the sum total of our
happiness, and they are supposed to arise from riches, honours, and the
gratification of sensual appetites. Be it so; yet none profess
themselves so completely happy in these enjoyments, but that there is
room left in the mind for others, if they were presented to them: nay,
these, as much as they engage us, are not thought so high, but that human
nature is capable even of greater. Now there have been persons in all
ages who have professed that they found satisfaction in the exercise of
charity, in the love of their neighbour, in endeavouring to promote the
happiness of all they had to do with, and in the pursuit of what is just
and right and good as the general bent of their mind and end of their
life; and that doing an action of baseness or cruelty would be as great
violence to _their_ self, as much breaking in upon their nature, as any
external force. Persons of this character would add, if they might be
heard, that they consider themselves as acting in the view of an Infinite
Being, who is in a much higher sense the object of reverence and of love,
than all the world besides; and therefore they could have no more
enjoyment from a wicked action done under His eye than the persons to
whom they are making their apology could if all mankind were the
spectators of it; and that the satisfaction of approving themselves to
his unerring judgment, to whom they thus refer all their actions, is a
more continued settled satisfaction than any this world can afford; as
also that they have, no less than others, a mind free and open to all the
common innocent gratifications of it, such as they are. An