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to keep out melancholy from the many serious thoughts it is engaged in, and to hinder its natural hatred to vice from souring into severity and unseriousness. If Virtue is of this amiable nature, what can we think of those who can look upon it with an eye of hatred and ill-will, or can suffer their-- aversion for a party to blot out all the merit of the person who is engaged in it. A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no Virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles. Men may oppose one another in some particulars, but ought not to carry their hatred to those qualities which are of so amiable a nature in themselves, and have nothing to do with the points in dispute. Men of Virtue, though of different interests, ought to consider themselves as more nearly united with one another, than with the vicious part of mankind, who embark with them in the same civil concerns. We should bear the same love toward a man of honour, who is a living antagonist, In short, we should esteem Virtue though in a foe, and abhor Vice though in a Friend. I speak this with an eye to those cruel treatments which men of all sides are apt to give the characters of those who do not agree with
