The Portable Edmund Burke (Portable Library) Read Online Free Page A

to their Company, they grew in Love with their Manners and never remembered or never desired to see their native Country. A small Time properly applied to Reflection, would prevent such a scandalous Degeneracy; and there is none who cannot spare it, cannot spare the smallest Part of their Time to provide for the longest of their Existence, where their Happiness, or Misery is not Precarious, or by Fits, but to endure without Interruption thro’ all Eternity.
    There are a Set of Men not infrequent in this City who tho’ they allow of Morality, cry down reveal’d Religion, yet in their Practice, they make them equal, neglecting both; how weak an Obligation, Morality consider’d in itself would be, may be seen, by supposing Laws imposed on a Nation, without Rewards for those who kept, or Punishments for those who broke them. They are not true friends to Virtue, who would deprive it of any thing which serves to enforce or strengthen it; they are like the Wolves in the Fable, who enter’d into a Treaty with the Sheep, wherein it was stipulated, that they should dismiss the Dogs; and then they tore the flock to Pieces. These Men have so far interwoven their darling Appetites with every Thought, that their most refined Judgments on Things become but Gratifications to a favourite Passion, and all the Actions resulting from thence, tho’ agreeable to their System of Morality, are not less opposite to Religion than right Reason, for herein they coincide, as those two only produce Actions which are called good and wise. Formerly an affectation of Singularity caused such Opinions; but now, to have no Taint of them, is almost as Singular, they have since got a Reason more substantial, they form a Set of Rules at one to indulge their Passions and lull their Conscience. Thus they sometimes deceive Men of Sense thro’ the hardiness of their Notions, and the Vulgar very often, from an Ability to talk more against Religion, than they can for it, and flush’d with this Appearance of Success, attribute that to a Defect in the Cause, which was merely in the Defender.
    The two greatest Enemies of Religion are the above-mentioned Infidelity and Blind Zeal, the former attacks it like an open Enemy, and the latter like an indiscreet Friend, does it more Harm than Good; the first gives rise to the Free-Thinkers, the latter to our Sectaries, a truly religious Life has the same Efficacy to the prevention of both. This would soon convince Unbelievers of the superior Power of Religion towards a Moral Life, and shew at the same time how much it exceeds all Systems of Philosophy, in supporting us under Misfortunes as that teaches us only to bear; but this to rejoice in them, by fastening our Thoughts on something indeed past our Comprehension, but not our Hopes: And even this Appearance of Religion would hinder many from throwing themselves into the Arms of the first false Teacher that offers, who with the Advantage of a Shew of Zeal, promises that Comfort they could not find before.
    The Practice of Virtue and Religion is indispensible at all Times; but never more than at this, when we commemorate the Time our Creator became our Redeemer, and for our sake manifested in the highest manner the highest Attributes of his Divinity, his Love and his Power, the one in dying for us, and the other in conquering Death, by giving that glorious Proof of our Immortality, and being himself the first Fruits of the Resurrecdon.

A Notebook of Edmund Burke
    Only in the middle of the twentieth century was a notebook of early Burke writings found in Burke’s papers belonging to Earl Fitzwilliam and deposited in the public library of Sheffield, England. The notebook sheds important light on Burke’s thinking in his first years in England, since the essays in it are assumed to have been written between 1750 and 1756. Included here are two short pieces in which Burke describes his ideal of a “gentleman” and of a “wise man.” In a third sketch from the notebook he