Here’s a Reproof to the Practices of Ungrateful Men, under the Figure of
a Grateful Beast: A Grateful, and I might have said a Generous Beast, in
being kind to those in their Distress, that had been so to Him in His.
How much Worse then Brutes are those Men then, that owe the Best Blood
in their Veins to the Bounty of their Friends and Patrons, and yet after
Raising them from the very Dunghil to Honours and Fortunes, are the
forwardest to Insult upon their Supporters and Masters, when they see ’em
in any Calamity; and to add Affliction to Affliction! Now to Pursue the
Fable, Here’s a Common Enemy in Appearance, at the Mercy of the People
about him; some Beat him, others take pity of him: He comes afterward
to make his Escape, and Distinguishes his Enemies from his Friends,
by Destroying the One, and Sparing the Other. Shall we call the One a
Judgment now, and the other a Providence; as if the Outrage had been a
Fault, and the Pity a Meritorious Act of Good Nature? the _Moral_ will
hold in both Respects; for, let the Judgment or the Execution of Death be
never so Just, it is yet Barbarous, Inhuman and Unwarrantable to Agravate
the Suffering with Insolence, Contumely, Malice and Reproche: And so for
the Tenderness on the other hand, ’tis a Softness Inseparable from the
Genuine Impulse of Reasonable Being: For the Compassion is a Laudable
Benignity of Disposition, though Exercis’d upon a Beast.