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YOU, who must have observed the inclination which almost every man, however unactive or insignificant, discovers of representing his life as distinguished by extraordinary events, will not wonder that Captator thinks his narrative important enough to be continued.
He flattered himself that, after he had formed an intimate connection with the Spanish monarch, by means of his son's marriage, the restitution of the Palatinate might be procured from the motive alone of friendship and personal attachment. He perceived not, that his unactive virtue, the more it was extolled, the greater disregard was it exposed to.
The court is splendid, but the treasury is empty; and, at the beginning of every war, advantages are gained against them, before their armies can be assembled and equipped. The English money was to the Austrians, as a shower to a field, where all the vegetative powers are kept unactive by a long continuance of drought.
Why then, my lords, is the nation condemned to support, at once, a double burden; to pay at home an army which can be of no use, and to hire auxiliaries, perhaps, equally unactive; to make war, if any war be intended, at an unnecessary expense, and to pay, at once, a fleet which only floats upon the ocean, an army which only awes the villages from which it is supported, and a body of mercenaries, of which no man can yet conjecture with what design they have been retained.
Matter, say they, is in itself entirely unactive, and deprived of any power, by which it may produce, or continue, or communicate motion: But since these effects are evident to our senses, and since the power, that produces them, must be placed somewhere, it must lie in the DEITY, or that divine being, who contains in his nature all excellency and perfection.
Pomfret: A man not destitute either of erudition or genius, of unexceptionable morals, though exposed to the malice of antagonists. As he was a prudent man, and educated to a profession, he was not subject to the usual necessities of the poets, but his sphere being somewhat obscure, and his life unactive, there are few incidents recorded concerning him.
Under unactive and jealous princes the Roman legates seldom dared to push the advantages they had gained far enough to produce a dangerous reputation. They wisely stopped, when they came to the verge of popularity. And these emperors fearing as much from the generals as their generals from them, such frequent changes were made in the command that the war was never systematically carried on.
The painful, hence unactive, emotions of pity and repentance may impel to actions whose accomplishment is better than their omission. Emotion caused by sympathy for others and contrition for one's own guilt, both of which increase present evil by new ones, have only the value of evils of a lesser kind.
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