Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/547

 irreversible and unerring judgment of Omniscience, has other motives of action, and other reasons of forbearance. He is equally restrained from evil, in publick life, and in secret solitude; and has only one rule of action, by which "he does to others, what he would that others should do to him," and wants no other enforcement of his duty, than the fear of future punishment, and the hope of future rewards.

The first duty, therefore, of a governour is to diffuse through the community a spirit of religion, to endeavour that a sense of the Divine authority should prevail in all orders of men, and that the laws should be obeyed, in subordination to the universal and unchangeable edicts of the Creator and Ruler of the world.

How religion may be most effectually promoted, is an inquiry which every governour ought diligently to make; and he that inquires, with real wishes for information, will soon know his duty; for providence has seldom made the same things necessary and abstruse.

That religion may be invigorated and diffused, it is necessary that the external order of religion be diligently maintained, that the solemnities of worship be duly observed, and a proper reverence preserved for the times and the places appropriated to piety. The appropriations of time and place are, indeed, only means to the great end of holiness; but they are means, without which the end cannot be obtained; and every man must have observed, how much corruption prevails, where the attention to publick worship and to holy seasons is broken or relaxed.

Those that have in their hands the disposal of riches or honours, ought to bestow them on persons who are most eminent for sanctity of life. For though no man ought to consider temporary goods as the proper rewards of religious duties, yet they, who have them to give, are obliged to distribute them in such a manner as may make them most useful to the publick; and they will be most useful, when they increase the beneficence, and enlarge the influence of piety.