are here apt to gratify them, they will naturally become their own tormentors, and cherish in themselves thofe painful habits of mind which are called in fcripture-phrase, the worm which never dies. This notion of heaven and hell is fo very conformable to the light of nature, that it was difcovered by several of the most exalted heathens. It has been finely improved by many eminent divines of the laft age, as in particular by archbishop Tillotson and Dr. Sherlock, but there is none who has raised fuch noble Speculations upon it as Dr. Scott, in the first book of his Chriftian Life, which is one of the finest and most rational fchemes of divinity, that is written in our tongue, or in other. That excellent author has fhewn how every particular custom and habit of virtue will, in its own nature, produce the heaven, or a state of happiness in him who fhall hereafter practise it: As on the contrary, how every cuftom or habit of vice will be the natural hell of him in whom it fubfifts.

any

SPECTATOR, NO 195.

Of Temperance.

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Here is a story in the Arabian Nights
Tales, of a king who had long lan

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guished under an ill habit of body, and had taken abundance of remedies to no purpose. At length, fays the fable, a phyfician cured him by the following method: He took an hollow ball of wood, and filled it with feveral drugs; after which he clos'd it up fo artificially that nothing appeared. He likewife took a mall, and after having hallowed the handle, and that part which ftrikes the ball, he enclosed in them feveral drugs after the fame manner as in the ball itself. He then ordered the fultan, who was his patient, to exercise himself early in the morning with these rightly prepared inftruments, till fuch time as he fhould fweat. When, as the ftory goes, the virtue of the medicaments perfpiring through the wood, had fo good an influence on the fultan's conftitution, that they cured him of an indifpofition which all the compofitions he had taken inwardly had not been able to remove. This eaftern allegory is finely contrived to fhew us how beneficial bodily labour is to health, and that exercise is the most effectual phyfick. I fhall recommend another great prefervative of health, which in many cafes produces the fame effects as exercife, and may in fome measure fupply its place, where opportunities of exercife are wanting. The prefervative I am speak

ing of is Temperance, which has those particular advantages above all other means of health, that it may be practised by all ranks and conditions, at any feason, or in any place. It is a kind of regimen into which every man may put himself, without interruption to business, expence of money, or lofs of time. If exercife throws off all fuperfluities, temperance prevents them; if exercise clears the veffels, temperance neither fatiates nor overstrains them; if exercife raifes proper ferments in the humours, and promotes the circulation of the blood, temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert her felf in all her force and vigour; if exercise diffipates a growing diftemper, temperance starves it.

Phyfick, for the most part, is nothing elfe but the fubftitute of exercise, or temperance. Medicines are indeed abfolutely neceffary in acute diftempers, that cannot wait the flow operations of these two great inftruments of health; but did men live in an habitual courfe of exercise and temperance, there would be but little occafion for them. Accordingly we find that those parts of the world are the most healthy where they fubfift by the chace; and that men lived longeft when their lives were employed in hunting, and when they had little

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little food befides what they caught. Blif tering, cupping, bleeding, are feldom of ufe but to the idle and intemperate; as all those inward applications which are so much. in practice among us, are for the most part nothing else but expedients to make luxury confiftent with health. The apothecary is perpetually employed in countermining the cook and the vintner. It is faid of Diogenes, that meeting a young man who was going to a feaft, he took him up in the ftreet and carried him home to his friends, as one who was running into imminent danger, had not he prevented him. What would that philofopher have faid, had he been prefent at the gluttony of a modern meal? Would not he have thought the mafter of a family mad, and have begged his fervants to tie down his hands, had he seen him devour fowl, fifh and flesh; fwallow oyl and vinegar, wines and fpices; throw down fallads of twenty different herbs, fauces of an hundred ingredients, confections & fruits of numberless sweets & flavours? What unnatural motions and counterferments muft fuch a medley of intemperance produce in the body? For my part, when I behold a fashionable table fet out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I fee gouts and dropfies, feyers and lethargies, with other

innumerable diftempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes.

Nature delights in the moft plain and fimple diet. Every animal but man, keeps to one difh. Herbs are the food of this fpecies, fifh of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon every thing that comes in his way, not the fmalleft fruit or excrefcence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him.

It is impoffible to lay down any determinate rule for temperance, because what is luxury in one may be temperance in another; but there are few that have lived any time in the world, who are not judges of their own conftitutions, fo far as to know what kinds, and what proportions of food do beft agree with them. Were I to confider my readers as my patients, and to prefcribe fuch a kind of temperance as is accommodated to all perfons, and fuch as is particularly fuitable to our climate and way of living, I would copy the following rules of a very eminent phyfician.' Make your whole repast out of one difh. If you indulge in a fecond, avoid drinking any thing ftrong 'till you have finish'd your meal; at the fame time abftain from all fauces, or at least fuch as are not the most plain and simple. A man could not well

be