15.  “So as poesy serveth and conferreth to delectation, magnanimity and morality; and therefore it may seem deservedly to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise the mind, and exalt the spirit with high raptures, proportioning the shew of things to the desires of the mind, and not submitting the mind to things as reason and history do.  And by these allurements and congruities, whereby it cherisheth the soul of man, joined also with concert of music, whereby it may more sweetly insinuate itself; it hath won such access, that it hath been in estimation, even in rude times, among barbarous nations, when our learning stood excluded.”

16.  But there is nothing which favours and falls in with this natural greatness and dignity of human nature so much as religion, which does not only promise the entire refinement of the mind, but the glorifying of the body, and the immortality of both.

Custom a Second Nature.

1.  There is not a common saying which has a better turn of sense in it than what we often hear in the mouths of the vulgar, that Custom is a second Nature.  It is indeed able to form the man anew, and give him inclinations and capacities altogether different from those he was born with.

2.  Dr. Plot, in his history of Staffordshire, tells of an idiot, that chancing to live within the sound of a clock, and always amusing himself with counting the hour of the day whenever the clock struck:  the clock being spoiled by some accident, the idiot continued to strike and count the hour without the help of it, in the same manner as he had done when it was entire.

3.  Though I dare not vouch for the truth of this story, it is very certain that custom has a mechanical effect upon the body, at the same time that it has a very extraordinary influence upon the mind.

4.  I shall in this paper consider one very remarkable effect which custom has upon human nature; and which, if rightly observed, may lead us into very useful rules of life.  What I shall here take notice of in custom, is its wonderful efficacy in making every thing pleasant to us.

5.  A person who is addicted to play or gaming, though he took but little delight in it at first, by degrees contracts so strong an inclination towards it, and gives himself up so entirely to it, that it seems the only end of his being.  The love of a retired or busy life will grow upon a man insensibly, as he is conversant in the one or the other, till he is utterly unqualified for relishing that to which he has been for some time disused.

6.  Nay, a man may smoke or drink, or take snuff, till he is unable to pass away his time without it; not to mention how our delight in any particular study, art, or science, rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it.  Thus what was at first an exercise, becomes at length an entertainment.  Our employments are changed into diversions.  The mind grows fond of those actions it is accustomed to, and is drawn with reluctancy from those paths in which it has been used to walk.