and to turn them away from their own flesh; that happiness, which appears greater by being compared with his own misery, and which he admires the more because he cannot approach it. He that finds in himself every natural power of enjoyment, will envy the tables of the luxurious, and the splendour of the proud; he who feels the cold of nakedness, and the faintness of hunger, cannot but be provoked to snatch that bread which is devoured by excess, and that raiment which is only worn as the decoration of vanity. Resentment may easily combine with want, and incite him to return neglect with violence.
Such are the temptations of poverty; and who is there that can say, that he has not sometimes forsaken virtue upon weaker motives? Let any man reflect upon the snares to which poverty exposes virtue, and remember how certainly one crime makes way for another, till at last all distinction of good and evil is obliterated; and he will easily discover the necessity of charity to preserve a great part of mankind from the most atrocious wickedness.
The great rule of action, by which we are directed to do to others whatever we would that others should do to us, may be extended to God himself; whatever we ask of God, we ought to be ready to bestow on our neighbour; if we pray to be forgiven, we must forgive those that trespass against us; and is it not equally reasonable, when we implore from Providence our daily bread, that we deal our bread to the hungry? and that we rescue others from being betrayed by want into sin, when we pray that we may not ourselves be led into temptation?
Poverty, for the greatest part, produces ignorance; and ignorance facilitates the attack of temptation. For how should any man resist the solicitations of appetite, or the influence of passion, without any sense of their guilt, or dread of the punishment? How should he avoid the paths of vice, who never was directed to the way of virtue?
For this reason, no method of charity is more efficacious
