of those diseases, after the application of such remedies as nature has provided. For as it is certain on the one side, that those diseases are providential corrections of intemperance, it is as certain on the other, that the remedies are providential mitigations of those corrections, and altogether as much providential, when administered by the good hand of charity in the case of our neighbour, as when administered by self-love in our own. Thus the pain, and danger, and other distresses of sickness and poverty remaining, after all the charitable relief which can be procured, and the many uneasy circumstances which cannot but accompany that relief though distributed with all supposable humanity; these are the natural corrections of idleness and debauchery, supposing these vices brought on those miseries. And very severe corrections they are; and they ought not to be increased by withholding that relief, or by harshness in the distribution of it. Corrections of all kinds, even the most necessary ones, may easily exceed their proper bound; and when they do so they become mischievous; and mischievous in the measure they exceed it. And the natural corrections which we have been speaking of, would be excessive, if the natural mitigations provided for them were not administered.
Then persons, who are so scrupulously apprehensive of everything which can possibly, in the most indirect manner, encourage idleness and vice, (which, by the way, anything may accidentally do,) ought to turn their thoughts to the moral and religious tendency of infirmaries. The religious manner in which they are carried on, has itself a direct tendency to bring the subject of religion into the consideration of those whom they relieve; and, in some degree, to recommend it to their love and practice, as it is productive of so much good to them, as restored ease and health, and a capacity of resuming their several employments. It is to virtue and religion, they may mildly be admonished, that they are indebted for their relief. And this, amongst other
