the Settlement we have gain’d? or are we not removing the Boundary, and marking out new Points of Rest, to which we press forward with the like Eagerness, and which cease to be such as fast as we attain them?  Our Case is like that of a Traveller upon the Alps, who should fancy that the Top of the next Hill must end his Journey, because it terminates his Prospect; but he no sooner arrives as it, than he sees new Ground and other Hills beyond it, and continues to travel on as before. [1]

This is so plainly every Man’s Condition in Life, that there is no one who has observed any thing, but may observe, that as fast as his Time wears away, his Appetite to something future remains.  The Use therefore I would make of it is this, That since Nature (as some love to express it) does nothing in vain, or, to speak properly, since the Author of our Being has planted no wandering Passion in it, no Desire which has not its Object, Futurity is the proper Object of the Passion so constantly exercis’d about it; and this Restlessness in the present, this assigning our selves over to further Stages of Duration, this successive grasping at somewhat still to come, appears to me (whatever it may to others) as a kind of Instinct or natural Symptom which the Mind of Man has of its own Immortality.

I take it at the same time for granted, that the Immortality of the Soul is sufficiently established by other Arguments:  And if so, this Appetite, which otherwise would be very unaccountable and absurd, seems very reasonable, and adds Strength to the Conclusion.  But I am amazed when I consider there are Creatures capable of Thought, who, in spite of every Argument, can form to themselves a sullen Satisfaction in thinking otherwise.  There is something so pitifully mean in the inverted Ambition of that Man who can hope for Annihilation, and please himself to think that his whole Fabrick shall one Day crumble into Dust, and mix with the Mass of inanimate Beings, that it equally deserves our Admiration and Pity.  The Mystery of such Mens Unbelief is not hard to be penetrated; and indeed amounts to nothing more than a sordid Hope that they shall not be immortal, because they dare not be so.

This brings me back to my first Observation, and gives me Occasion to say further, That as worthy Actions spring from worthy Thoughts, so worthy Thoughts are likewise the Consequence of worthy Actions:  But the Wretch who has degraded himself below the Character of Immortality, is very willing to resign his Pretensions to it, and to substitute in its Room a dark negative Happiness in the Extinction of his Being.

The admirable Shakespear has given us a strong Image of the unsupported Condition of such a Person in his last Minutes, in the second Part of King Henry the Sixth, where Cardinal Beaufort, who had been concerned in the Murder of the good Duke Humphrey, is represented