If you could inspire her with _Christian humility_, you need do no more to make her happy. This virtue would make her thankful to God for half so much health as she has had, and help her to enjoy more for the time to come. This would keep off _tremblings_ and _loss_ of appetite, and her blood would need nothing else to sweeten it. 8. I have just touched upon these absurd characters, to convince you in the plainest manner, that religion is so far from rendering a life _dull_, _anxious_, and _uncomfortable_, that on the contrary, all the miseries, vexations, and complaints that are in the world, are owing to the want of religion; being directly caused by those absurd passions, which religion teaches us to deny. 9. Most people indeed confess, that religion preserves us from many evils, and helps us in many respects to a more happy enjoyment of ourselves; but then, they imagine, this is only true of such a _moderate share_ of religion, as restrains us from the excesses of our passions. They suppose that the _strict rules_ of piety must make our lives _dull_ and _uncomfortable_. This objection supposes, that religion, _moderately_ practised, adds to our happiness; but that heights of religion have a contrary effect. *It supposes therefore, that it is happy to be kept from the _excesses_ of envy, but unhappy to be kept from _other_ degrees of _envy_; that it is happy to be delivered from a _boundless_ ambition, but unhappy to be without a _moderate_ ambition. It supposes also, that the happiness of life consists in a _mixture_ of virtue and vice, of ambition and humility, charity and envy, heavenly affection and covetousness. All which is as absurd, as to suppose that it is happy to be free from excessive pains, but unhappy to be without moderate pains; or that the happiness of _health_ consisted in being partly sick, and partly well. But if humility be the peace and rest of the soul, then no one has so much happiness from humility, as he that is the most humble. If excessive envy is a torment of the soul, he is most happy who extinguishes every spark of envy. Thus it is in every virtue: the more you act up to every degree of it, the more happiness you have from it. And so of every vice: if you only abate its excesses, you do but little for yourself; but if you reject it in all degrees, then you feel the true ease of a _reformed_ mind. 10. And, as to those enjoyments which piety requireth us to deny ourselves, this deprives us of no real comfort.