- cover in ourselves, or others, that strife which springs from
envy, and ends in confusion.
That strife may well be supposed to proceed from some corrupt passion, which is carried on with vehemence disproportioned to the importance of the end openly proposed. Men naturally value ease and tranquillity at a very high rate, and will not, on very small causes, either suffer labour, or excite opposition. When, therefore, any man voluntarily engages in tasks of difficulty, and incurs danger, or suffers hardships, it must be imagined that he proposes to himself some reward, more than equivalent to the comforts which he thus resigns, and of which he seems to triumph in the resignation; and if it cannot be found that his labours tend to the advancement of some end, worthy of so much assiduity, he may justly be supposed to have formed to himself some imaginary interest, and to seek his gratification, not in that which he himself gains, but which another loses.
It is a token that strife proceeds from unlawful motives, when it is prosecuted by unlawful means. He that seeks only the right, and only for the sake of right, will not easily suffer himself to be transported beyond the just and allowed methods of attaining it. To do evil that good may come, can never be the purpose of a man who has not perverted his morality by some false principle; and false principles are not so often collected by the judgment, as snatched up by the passions. The man whose duty gives way to his convenience, who, when once he has fixed his eye upon a distant end, hastens to it by violence over forbidden ground, or creeps on towards it through the crooked paths of fraud and stratagem, as he has evidently some other guide than the word of God, must be supposed to have likewise some other purpose than the glory of God, or the benefit of man.
The evidence of corrupt designs is much strengthened, when unlawful means are used, in preference to those which are recommended by reason, and warranted by justice.
