35.  Whatever tends neither to the improvement of your reason nor the benefit of society, think it below you; and when you have done any considerable service to mankind, do not lessen it by your folly in gaping after reputation and requital.

36.  When you find yourself sleepy in a morning, rouse yourself, and consider that you are born to business, and that in doing good in your generation, you answer your character and act like a man; whereas sleep and idleness do but degrade you, and sink you down to a brute.

37.  A mind that has nothing of hope, or fear, or aversion, or desire, to weaken and disturb it, is the most impregnable security.  Hither we may with safety retire and defy our enemies; and he that sees not this advantage must be extremely ignorant, and he that forgets it unhappy.

38.  Do not disturb yourself about the faults of other people, but let everybody’s crimes be at their own door.  Have always this great maxim in your remembrance, that to play the knave is to rebel against religion; all sorts of injustice being no less than high treason against Heaven itself.

39.  Do not contemn death, but meet it with a decent and religious fortitude, and look upon it as one of those things which Providence has ordered.  If you want a cordial to make the apprehensions of dying go down a little the more easily, consider what sort of world and what sort of company you will part with.  To conclude, do but look seriously into the world, and there you will see multitudes of people preparing for funerals, and mourning for their friends and acquaintances; and look out again a little afterwards, and you will see others doing the very same thing for them.

40.  In short, men are but poor transitory things.  To-day they are busy and harassed with the affairs of human life; and to-morrow life itself is taken from them, and they are returned to their original dust and ashes.

PART III

Containing prophetic observations relating to the affairs of Europe and of Great Britain, more particularly from 1720 to 1729.

1.  In the latter end of 1720, an eminent old lady shall bring forth five sons at a birth; the youngest shall live and grow up to maturity, but the four eldest shall either die in the nursery, or be all carried off by one sudden and unexpected accident.

2.  About this time a man with a double head shall arrive in Britain from the south.  One of these heads shall deliver messages of great importance to the governing party, and the other to the party that is opposite to them.  The first shall believe the monster, but the last shall discover the impostor, and so happily disengage themselves from a snare that was laid to destroy them and their posterity.  After this the two heads shall unite, and the monster shall appear in his proper shape.