Pray let no quibbles of lawyers, no refinements of casuists break into the plain notions of right and wrong which every man’s right reason and plain common sense suggest to him. To do as you would be done by is the plain, sure, and undisputed rule of morality and justice. Stick to that; and be convinced that whatever breaks into it, in any degree, however speciously it may be turned, and however puzzling it may be to answer it, is, notwithstanding, false in itself, unjust, and criminal. I do not know a crime in the world which is not, by the casuists among the Jesuits (especially the twenty-four collected, I think, by Escobar) allowed in some, or many cases, not to be criminal. The principles first laid down by them are often specious, the reasonings plausible; but the conclusion always a lie; for it is contrary to that evident and undeniable rule of justice which I have mentioned above, of not doing to any one what you would not have him do to you. But, however, these refined pieces of casuistry and sophistry being very convenient and welcome to people’s passions and appetites, they gladly accept the indulgence without desiring to detect the fallacy of the reasoning; and indeed many, I might say most people, are not able to do it; which makes the publication of such quibblings and refinements the more pernicious. I am no skilful casuist nor subtle disputant; and yet I would undertake to justify and qualify the profession of a highwayman step by step, and so plausibly as to make many ignorant people embrace the profession as an innocent, if not even a laudable one; and to puzzle people of some degree of knowledge to answer me point by point. I have seen a book entitled “Quidlibet ex Quolibet,” or the art of making any thing out of any thing; which is not so difficult as it would seem, if once one quits certain plain truths, obvious in growth to every understanding, in order to run after the ingenious refinements of warm imaginations and speculative reasonings. Doctor Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, a very worthy, ingenious, and learned man, has written a book to prove that there is no such thing as matter, and that nothing exists but in idea; that you and I only fancy ourselves eating, drinking, and sleeping; you at Leipsic, and I at London; that we think we have flesh and blood, legs, arms, etc., but that we are only spirit. His arguments are, strictly speaking, unanswerable; but yet I am so far from being convinced by them that I am determined to go on to eat and drink, and walk and ride, in order to keep that _matter_, which I so mistakenly imagine my body at present to consist of, in as good plight as possible. Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of; abide by it; it will counsel you best. Read and hear for your amusement, ingenious systems, nice questions, subtlely agitated, with all the refinements that warm imaginations suggest; but consider them only as exercitations for the mind, and return always to