A Good Man Can Never Be Miserable, nor a Wicked Man Happy

There is not in the scale of nature a more inseparable connection of cause and effect, than in the case of happiness and virtue; nor anything that more naturally produces the one, or more necessarily presupposes the other. For what is it to be happy, but for a man to content himself with his lot, in a cheerful and quiet resignation to the appointments of God? All the actions of our lives ought to be governed with respect to good and evil: and it is only reason that distinguishes; by which reason we are in such manner influenced, as if a ray of the Divinity were dipt in a mortal body, and that is the perfection of mankind. It is true, we have not the eyes of eagles or the sagacity of hounds: nor if we had, could we pretend to value ourselves upon anything which we have in common with brutes. What are we the better for that which is foreign to us, and may be given and taken away? As the beams of the sun irradiate the earth, and yet remain where they were; so is it in some proportion with a holy mind that illustrates all our actions, and yet it adheres to its original. Why do we not as well commend a horse for his glorious trappings, as a man for his pompous additions?

How much a braver creature is a lion, (which by nature ought to be fierce and terrible) how much braver (I say) in his natural horror than in his chains? so that everything in its pure nature pleases us best. It is not health, nobility, riches, that can justify a wicked man: nor is it the want of all these that can discredit a good one. That is the sovereign blessing, which makes the possessor of it valuable without anything else, and him that wants it contemptible, though he had all the world besides. It is not the painting, gilding, or carving, that makes a good ship; but if she be a nimble sailer, tight and strong to endure the seas; that is her excellency. It is the edge and temper of the blade that makes a good sword, not the richness of the scabbard: and so it is not money or possessions, that makes a man considerable, but his virtue.