XXX. I do not mean to insinuate, that just men are insensible, for this would savour of the extravagance of the Stoics, who pretend, that in the workshops of virtue you may transform men to marble. The virtuous have their sufferings, but they don’t sit so heavy on them, as they do on the delinquents, and the inquietudes which they both experience are felt by the delinquents in their full vigour; by the virtuous only partially. You may distinguish the spirit of the just man and the sinner, as you would the elements of air and earth. The earth in all its regions, is exposed to the injuries of the other elements. The inferior portion of the air only is so exposed; which is the theatre of vapours and exhalations; but the sensible alterations, do not reach what is called the superior region of the air. There the temperature is observed to be always equal, there the Heavens are displayed in a constant serenity, and there is always enjoyed an atmosphere, crystalline and pure. SECT. VII. XXXI. But let us scrutinize with the greatest exactness, the temporal conveniences of virtue. Health, honour, and property, which essentially contribute to temporal felicity, are of great importance in this matter, if the whole of it does not consist in the enjoyment of them; and considered with respect to these contingents, the virtuous man has much the advantage of the vicious one. No one is ignorant, that honour is the legitimate offspring of virtue; for which reason the Romans, when they built them, joined the temples together, that were appropriated to the adoration of those endowments, which they worshipped as deities; so that the only way by which you could enter the Temple of Honour, was through the Temple of Virtue. The very people who shun the practice of virtue, esteem and reverence it; and the blessings of health and long life, on account of the regularity with which he lives, are more likely to be attained by the virtuous man, than by the vicious one, who, by his debaucheries, ruins his health, and curtails his existence. Property finds a good steward in the œconomy of virtue, who takes care of and preserves it, by avoiding superfluities. Solomon expressed the whole, when he said, that the obedient to the divine mandates held long life in one hand, and in the other honour and property: _Longitudo dierum in dextra ejus; & in sinistra illius, divitiæ & gloria._ (Prov. 3.) Now, even supposing the just man to enjoy no other advantages over the vicious one, is not his condition much to be preferred?