"In this piece it was my design to explain and enforce this doctrine; that vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful, the nature of man alone considered; that it was, therefore, every one’s interest to be virtuous who wish’d to be happy even in this world; and I should, from this circumstance (there being always in the world a number of rich merchants, nobility, states, and princes, who have need of honest instruments for the management of their affairs, and such being so rare), have endeavored to convince young persons that no qualities were so likely to make a poor man’s fortune as those of probity and integrity.”
It is interesting that the style of writing is reminiscent of the Book of Mormon. The long complex sentences being one of the things that make it difficult to read. This was written in the mid to late 1700s not many years before Joseph Smith was born and the prevailing style of writing was probably very similar in Joseph Smiths day.
