the Reward only of Actions transcendently Good, either in kind, or degree) be represented as the purchase of barely not meriting Infamy:  The apprehension of which, is a much stronger perswasive to most People not to do amiss, than that of Glory, which cannot consist with it:  For no Body can rationally think that Glory can be due to them for doing that, which it would be shameful in them not to do.  But there is yet a farther Folly and ill Consequence in Men’s intitling Ladies to Glory on account of Chastity which is, that the conceit hereof (especially in those who are Beautiful) does ordinarily produce in them a Pride and Imperiousness, that is very troublesome to such as are the most concern’d in them.

One whose business it was to remark the Humours of the Age, and of Mankind in general, has, I remember, made a Husband on this occasion to say,

     Such Vertue is the Plague of Human Life,
     A Vertuous Woman, but a Cursed Wife.

And he adds,

In Unchaste Wives, There’s yet a kind of recompencing Ease, Vice keeps ’em Humble, gives ’em care to please.  But against clamorous Vertue, what Defence?

If Mr. Dryden did distinguish herein, between real Vertue and that Idol one of Men’s Invention, he was, perhaps, not much in the wrong in what he suggests:  But if he design’d in this a Satyr against Marriage, as a state in the which a Man can no way be happy, it appears then how much Vertue is prejudiced by this foreign Support, whilst it becomes thereby expos’d to such a Censure; which if it may be Just in reference to a vain Glorious Chastity, yet can never be so of a truly Vertuous one:  Obedience to the Law of God, being an Universal Principle, and admitting of no Irregularity in one thing any more than in another, which falls under it’s Direction.

It is indeed only a Rational Fear of God, and desire to approve our selves to him, that will teach us in All things, uniformly to live as becomes our Reasonable Nature; to inable us to do which, must needs be the great Business and End of a Religion which comes from God.

But how differently from this has the Christian Religion been represented by those who place it in useless Speculations, Empty Forms, or Superstitious Performances?  The Natural Tendency of which things being to perswade Men that they may please God at a cheaper Rate than by the Denial of their Appetites, and the Mortifying of their Irregular Affections, these Misrepresentations of a pretended Divine Revelation have been highly prejudicial to Morality:  And, thereby, been also a great occasion of Scepticism; for the Obligation to Vertue being loosen’d, Men easily become Vicious; which when once they are, the Remorse of their Consciences bringing them to desire that there should be no future Reckoning for their Actions; and even that there should be no God to take any cognizance of them; they often come (in some degree at least) to be perswaded both of the one, and the other of these.  And thus, many times, there are but a few steps between a Zealous Bigot, and an Infidel to all Religion.