favourable fide, you would fee a man of great addrefs-popular in his behaviour-generous, prince-like in his entertainments and expences, and in a word fet off with all fuch virtues and fhewy properties as bid high for the countenance and approbation of the world.

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View him in another light, he was an ambitious, defigning man,-fufpicious of all the world,-rapacious,-implacable in his temper, without fense of religion, or feeling of humanity. Now in all fuch complex characters as this, the way the world ufually judges, is-to fum up the good and the bad against each other,-deduct the leffer of thefe articles from the greater, and (as we do in paffing other accounts) give credit to the man for what remains upon

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upon the balance. Now, though this feems a fair, yet I fear it is often a fallacious reckoning,-which though it may serve in many ordinary cafes of private life, yet will not hold good in the more notorious inftances of mens lives, especially when fo complicated with good and bad, as to exceed all common bounds and proportions. Not to be deceived in fuch cases we muft work by a different rule, which though it may appear lefs candid,-yet to make amends, I am perfuaded will bring us in general much nearer to the thing we want, which is truth. The way to which is in all judgments of this kind, to distinguish and carry in your eye, the principal and ruling paffion which leads the character-and feparate that from the other parts of it,and then take notice, how far his other qualities, good

and

and bad, are brought to serve and fupport that. For want of this distinction, we often think ourselves inconfiftent creatures when we are the farthest from it, and all the variety of fhapes and contradictory appearances we put on, are in truth but fo many different attempts to gratify the fame governing appetite.

With this clew, let us endeavour to unravel this character of Herod as here given.

The first thing which strikes one in It is ambition, an immoderate thirst, as well as jealoufy of power;-how inconfiftent foever in other parts, his character appears invariable in this, and every action of his life was true to it. From hence we may venture to conclude, that

this was his ruling paffion,-and that most, if not all the other wheels were put in motion by this firft fpring. Now let us confider how far this was the cafe in fact.

To begin with the worst part of him, I faid he was a man of no sense of religion, or at leaft no other fenfe of it, but that which ferved his turn-for he is recorded to have built temples in Judea, and erected images in them for idolatrous worship-not from a perfuafion of doing right, for he was bred a Jew, and confequently taught to abhor all idolatry, but he was in truth facrificing all this time to a greater idol of his own, his ruling paffion; for if we may truft Jofephus, his fole view in fo grofs a compliance was to ingratiate himfelf with Auguftus, and the great

men

men of Rome, from whom he held his power. With this he was greedy and rapacious-how could he be otherwise, with fo devouring an appetite as ambition to provide for?-He was jealous in his nature, and fufpicious of all the world-Shew me an ambitious man that is not fo; for as fuch a man's hand, like Ishmael's, is against every man, he concludes that every man's hand in course is against his.

Few men were ever guilty of more aftonishing acts of cruelty-and yet the particular inftances of them in Herod were fuch as he was hurried into, by the alarms this waking paffion perpetually gave him, He put the whole Sanhedrim to the fword-fparing neither age, or wifdom, or merit-one

cannot