In the foregoing observations, it has not been the writer's intention to discuss completely that copious subject, the love of worldly estimation. It would be to exceed the limits of a work like this, fully to investigate so large, and at the same time so important a topic. Enough however may have perhaps been said, to make it evident that this principle is of a character highly _questionable_; that it should be brought under absolute subjection, and watched with the most jealous care: That, notwithstanding its lofty pretensions, it often can by no means justly boast that high origin and exalted nature, which its superficial admirers are disposed to concede to it. What real intrinsic essential value, it might be asked, does there appear to be in a virtue, which had wholly changed its nature and character, if public opinion had been different? But it is in truth of base extraction, and ungenerous qualities, springing from selfishness and vanity, and low ambition; by these it subsists, and thrives, and acts; and envy, and jealousy, and detraction, and hatred, and variance, are its too faithful and natural associates. It is, to say the best of it, a root which bears fruits of a poisonous as well as of a beneficial quality. If it sometimes stimulates to great and generous enterprises, if it urges to industry, and sometimes to excellence, if in the more contracted sphere it produces courtesy and kindness; yet to its account we must place the ambition which desolates nations, and many of the competitions and resentments which interrupt the harmony of social life. The former indeed has been often laid to its charge, but the latter have not been sufficiently attended to; and still less has its _noxious_ influence on the vital principle, and distinguishing graces of the Christian character, been duly pointed out and enforced. To read indeed the writings of certain Christian moralists,[80] and to observe how little they seem disposed to call it in question, except where it raves in the conqueror, one should be almost tempted to suspect; that, considering it as a principle of such potency and prevalence, as that they must despair of bringing it into just subjection, they were intent only on complimenting it into good humour (like those barbarous nations which worship the evil Spirit through fear;) or rather, that they were making a sort of composition with an enemy they could not master, and were willing, on condition of its giving up the trade of war, to suffer it to rule undisturbed, and range at pleasure.