If the too scrupulous reader should at first view condemn these notions concerning the origin of moral virtue, and think them perhaps offensive to Christianity, I hope he will forbear his censures, when he shall consider, that nothing can render the unsearchable depth of the Divine Wisdom more conspicuous, than that man, whom Providence had designed for society, should not only by his own frailties and imperfections, be led into the road to temporal happiness, but likewise receive, from a seeming necessity of natural causes, a tincture of that knowledge, in which he was afterwards to be made perfect by the true religion, to his eternal welfare. REMARKS. Line 45. Whilst others follow'd mysteries, To which few folks bind 'prentices. In the education of youth, in order to their getting of a livelihood when they shall be arrived at maturity, most people look out for some warrantable employment or other, of which there are whole bodies or companies, in every large society of men. By this means, all arts and sciences, as well as trades and handicrafts, are perpetuated in the commonwealth, as long as they are found useful; the young ones that are daily brought up to them, continually supplying the loss of the old ones that die. But some of these employments being vastly more creditable than others, according to the great difference of the charges required to set up in each of them, all prudent parents, in the choice of them, chiefly consult their own abilities, and the circumstances they are in. A man that gives three or four hundred pounds with his son to a great merchant, and has not two or three thousand pounds to spare against he is out of his time to begin business with, is much to blame not to have brought his child up to something that might be followed with less money. There are abundance of men of a genteel education, that have but very small revenues, and yet are forced, by their reputable callings, to make a greater figure than ordinary people of twice their income. If these have any children, it often happens, that as their indigence renders them incapable of bringing them up to creditable occupations, so their pride makes them unwilling to put them out to any of the mean laborious trades, and then, in hopes either of an alteration in their fortune, or that some friends, or favourable opportunity shall offer, they from time to time put off the disposing of them, until insensibly they come to be of age, and are at last brought up to nothing. Whether this neglect be more barbarous to the children, or prejudicial to the society, I shall not determine. At Athens all children were forced to assist their parents, if they came to want: But Solon made a law, that no son should be obliged to relieve his father, who had not bred him up to any calling.