7. If you ask what it is that has secured _Negotius_ from all _scandalous vices_, it is the same thing that has kept him from all _strictness of devotion_, it is his great business. He has always had too many important things in his head: his thoughts are too much employed, to suffer him to fall either into a course of _rakery_, or to feel the necessity of an _inward, solid_ piety. For this reason he hears of the pleasures of debauchery, and the pleasures of piety with the ♦same indifferency; and has no more desire of living in the one than in the other, because neither of them consists with that turn of mind, and multiplicity of business, which are his happiness. ♦ inserted omitted word ‘same’ *If _Negotius_ was asked, what it is which he drives at in life? He would be as much at a loss for an answer, as if he was asked, what any other person was thinking of. For though he always seems to himself to know what he is doing, and has many things in his head, which are the motives of his actions; yet he cannot tell you of any _one general end_ of life that he has chosen with deliberation, as being truly worthy of all his labour and pains. He has several confused notions in his head, which have been a long time there: such as these; that it is _something great_ to have more business than other people, to have more dealings upon his hands than a hundred of the same profession, to grow continually richer and richer, and to raise an immense fortune before he dies. The thing that seems to give _Negotius_ the greatest life and spirit, and to be most in his thoughts, is an expectation that he shall die richer than any of his business ever did. 8. The generality of people when they think of happiness, think upon _Negotius_; in whose life every instance of happiness is supposed to meet, sober, prudent, rich, prosperous, generous and charitable. Let us now look at this condition in another, but truer light. *Let it be supposed, that this same _Negotius_ was a painful, laborious man, very deep in variety of affairs; that he neither drank, nor debauched, but was sober and regular in his business. Let it be supposed, that he grew old in this course of trading, and that the _end_ and _design_ of all his labour, and care, and application to business, was only this, that he might die possessed of more than an hundred thousand pair of _boots_ and _spurs_. Let it be supposed that the sober part of the world say of him when he ♦is dead, that he was a great and happy man, a thorough master of business, and had acquired an hundred thousand pair of _boots_ and _spurs_ when he died. ♦ ‘his’ replaced with ‘is’