Tread softly and circumspectly in this funambulous Track, and narrow Path of Goodness: pursue Virtue virtuously; be sober and temperate, not to preserve your Body in a sufficiency to wanton Ends; not to spare your Purse; not to be free from the Infamy of common Transgressors that way, and thereby to ballance or palliate obscure and closer Vices; nor simply to enjoy Health: By all which you may leaven good Actions, and render Virtues disputable: but in one Word, that you may truly serve God; which every Sickness will tell you, you cannot well do without health. The sick Man's Sacrifice is but a lame Oblation. Pious Treasures laid up in healthful Days, excuse the Defect of sick Non-performances; without which we must needs look back with Anxiety upon the lost Opportunities of Health; and may have cause rather to envy than pity the Ends of penitent Malefactors, who go with clear Parts unto the last Act of their Lives; and in the Integrity of their Faculties return their Spirit unto God that gave it. Consider whereabout thou art in _Cebes_ his Table, or that old philosophical Pinax of the Life of Man; whether thou art still in the Road of Uncertainties; whether thou hast yet entred the narrow Gate, got up the Hill and asperous Way which leadeth unto the House of Sanity, or taken that purifying Potion from the Hand of sincere Erudition, which may send the clear and pure away unto a virtuous and happy Life. In this virtuous voyage let not Disappointment cause Despondency, nor Difficulty Despair: Think not that you are sailing from _Lima_[313] to _Manillia_, wherein thou may'st tye up the Rudder, and sleep before the Wind; but expect rough Seas, Flaws, and contrary Blasts; and 'tis well if by many cross Tacks and Veerings thou arrivest at thy Port. Sit not down in the popular Seats, and common Level of Virtues, but endeavour to make them Heroical. Offer not only Peace-Offerings but Holocausts unto God. To serve him singly to serve our selves, were too partial a Piece of Piety, nor likely to place us in the highest Mansions of Glory. [313] Through the Pacifick Sea, with a constant Gale from the East. He that is chaste and continent, not to impair his Strength, or terrified by Contagion, will hardly be heroically virtuous. Adjourn not that Virtue unto those Years when _Cato_ could lend out his Wife, and impotent _Satyrs_ write Satyrs against Lust: but be chaste in thy flaming Days, when _Alexander_ dared not trust his Eyes upon the fair Daughters of _Darius_, and when so many Men think there is no other Way but _Origen's_.[314] [314] Who is said to have castrated himself.