AS there are few Controversies more important, so there are not many, that have been more curiously and warmly disputed, than the Question, Whether a publick or a private life be preferrable? But perhaps this may be much of the nature of the other Question, Whether a marri’d life or a single ought rather to be chosen? that being best determinable by the Circumstances of particular cases. For though indefinitely speaking, one of the two may have advantages above the other, yet they are not so great, but that special Circumstances may make either of them the more eligible to particular persons. They that find themselves furnish’d with Abilities to serve their Generation in a publick capacity, and Vertue great enough to resist the Temptations, to which such a condition is usually expos’d, may not onely be allow’d to embrace such an Employment, but oblig’d to seek it. But he whose parts are too mean to qualifie him to govern others, and perhaps to enable him to govern himself, or manage his own private Concerns, or whose Graces are so weak, that ‘tis less to his Vertues or to his ability of resisting, than to his care of shunning the occasions of sin, that he ows his escaping the Guilt of it, had better deny himself some opportunities of doing Good, than expose himself to probable Temptations. For there is such a kind of difference betwixt Vertue shaded by a private, and shining forth in a publick life, as there is betwixt a Candle carri’d aloft in the open air, and inclosed in a Lanthorn; in the former place it gives more light, but in the latter ‘tis in less danger to be blown out.
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