greater than all the pleasures of sin, and all the sufferings of piety and virtue, there will not be force enough in our faith to persuade us; because those future goods and evils move against nature, and persuade us to a course of life we are extremely averse to; whereas these present ones join hands with our inclinations, and find a ready concurrence in our wills and affections; and a very small temptation will prevail against a great one, when it hath nature, that bosom orator, to solicit and plead for it. Wherefore, unless we believe the rewards and punishments of the future state to be such as infinitely outweigh these present goods and evils that tempt us to sin, they will never be able to prevail against them; because they must not only out-tempt them, but, which is the much harder task of the two, they must outtempt the reluctances of our degenerate nature; and yet for future goods and evils to out-tempt present ones is not so easy a matter neither; especially if those future ones are invisible and out of the ken of our sense; which is the case here. For futurity lessens all objects to the mind, even as distance doth to the eye, and makes things appear to us much smaller than they are in their own natures. So that the futurity of the rewards and punishments of the other life are a mighty disadvantage to them, when they stand in competition with present goods and evils; because the latter appear to us in their full proportion and magnitude, with all their tempting circumstances about them; whereas the former exhibit to us a dim and confused landscape of things afar off, of things which we never saw nor felt, and which by reason of their distance imprint very dark ideas on our minds. And as their futurity lessens their appearance, and renders it confused and indistinct, so their invisibility weakens their force and influence on our minds, which no objects can so nearly affect as those that strike upon our senses. So that unless by an immense magnitude they compensate for being future and insensible, it is impossible they should prevail with such minds as ours against present and sensible goods and evils. Wherefore, to render our belief of a future state effectual to reduce us to God and our duty, it is absolutely necessary we should believe the rewards and punishments of it to be infinitely greater than all the goods and evils that can tempt us to sin; and that not only because our natures are extremely averse to that which these rewards and punishments tempt us to, but because the goods, and evils which tempt us the contrary way have the prevailing advantages of being present and sensible. IV. And lastly, It is necessary we should believe that there is no other way for us to acquire these rewards, or avoid these punishments, but by submitting to the obligations of religion. For to be throughly convinced and persuaded of the immense rewards and punishments of the other life, is by no means sufficient to reduce us unto God, so long as we do but dream of any possible way to obtain those rewards, and to avoid those punishments, without submitting to him, to which, above all imaginable ways, our corrupt nature hath the greatest antipathy. So that though we were never so much convinced of the absolute necessity of escaping hell and purchasing heaven, yet if at the same time we have a prospect of any other way or means of effecting it, to be sure we shall shun this, this most ungrateful one, of And if forsaking our sins and returning to God. listing ourselves into godly parties, or putting on a demure and sanctified countenance; if being moped, dejected, or unsociable; if whining or fasting, or long prayers, or an affected club, or rigid observance of holy times; if consuming our lives in a barefooted pilgrimage, or wearing a hair-shirt, or whipping our bodies, or spending our estates on masses and indulgencies; if being made free of a holy confraternity, or visiting altars and shrines, or numbering prayers, like fagots, by a tally of beads; if these, or any of these, will but secure us of heaven, and from going to hell, we shall think them a thousand times more tolerable and easy, than to submit our wills to God in all the instances of true piety and virtue; in the doing of which we must strangle the corrupt inclinations of our nature, tear our beloved lusts from our hearts, rack off our earthly affections from their lees, and refine and spiritualize them into a divine zeal, and love, and devotion, than which there is nothing in the world more irksome to a degenerate nature. So that till we are reduced to an utter despair of reaping the rewards and escaping the punishments of the other life, by any other means than this of submitting ourselves to the obligation of religion, our faith will be altogether ineffectual. SECT. II. What evidence there is to induce us to believe these future rewards and punishments. THAT there are future rewards and punishments is a doctrine universally assented to by all ages, and nations, and religions, and there is scarce any first principle in philosophy, in which mankind are more generally agreed. Thus among the heathen poets, divines, and philosophers, there is an unanimous acknowledgment of these future states, although their descriptions of them are generally nothing but the dreams of an extravagant fancy. For so, as Josephus observes, speaking of the Essenes' doctrine concerning the future state of the blessed, Taïs μèv åyaθαῖς ψυχαῖς ὁμοδοξοῦντες πᾶσιν Ἑλλήνων, &c. i. e. “ They "teach, as all the Greek nations also do, that for 66 66 66 good souls there are blessed seats prepared beyond "the ocean in a region that is always free from "rain and snow, and excessive heats, being perpe"tually fanned with gentle breezes from the ocean;" which description he hath translated almost verbatim out of the fourth book of Homer's Ulysses, where he brings in Proteus thus bespeaking Menelaus: —σ ̓ ἐς ἠλύσιον πεδίον καὶ πείρατα γαίης, &c. i. e. “ The gods shall send thee to the fields of Elysium, which "lie on the utmost parts of the earth, where thou "shalt live secure and happy, there being neither "rain, nor snow, nor winter, but the blessed inha"bitants are perpetually refreshed with the gentle breathing of cool zephyrs from the ocean." Plato tells us of an easy law concerning men, καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ νῦν ἔτι ἐστὶν ἐν θεοῖς· τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸν μὲν δικαίως τὸν βίον διελθόντα καὶ ὁσίως, ἐπειδὰν τελευτήσῃ, εἰς μακάρων νήσους ἀπίοντα, οἰκεῖν ἐν πάσῃ εὐδαιμονίᾳ ἐκτὸς κακῶν· τόνδε ἀδίκως καὶ ἀθέως, εἰς τὸ τῆς τίσεως καὶ δίκης δεσμωτήριον, ὃ δὴ τάρ ταρον καλοῦσιν, ἰέναι, i. e. “ which was always and is "still in force among the gods; that those who lived just and holy lives should, after their death, go "into the isles of the blessed, where they should en 66 66 66 'joy all manner of happiness, without the least in "termixture of misery; but that those who lived "here unjustly and ungodly, should be sent into "that prison of just punishment which is called "hell." Plat. Gorg. p. 312. Thus also Tully, Tuscul. lib. i. Permanere animos arbitramur consensu nationum omnium, i. e. "We believe, as all nations "do, that the souls of men do survive their bodies;" and to name no more, Seneca, Epist. cxvii. tells us, Cum de animarum æternitate disserimus, non leve momentum apud nos habet consensus omnium aut timentium inferos, aut colentium, i. e. “When we "discourse of the eternity of souls, the general con"sent of all men either fearing or worshipping the "hellish powers is of very great moment." And indeed this belief of the future states being so generally imprinted on men's minds is a very probable argument of the reality of them, it being hardly conceivable, how the reason of all mankind should have so unanimously consented in it, had it not been extremely agreeable to the make and frame of our minds; and we cannot suppose any false proposition to be agreeable to the frame of our mind, without reflecting dishonourably upon the truth of him that framed it. And indeed this notion of a future state is such as hath been generally embraced by those persons who are least capable of deducing it by a logical dependence of one thing upon another; and therefore, since it hath no dependency in their minds on any other antecedent notion, how could it have been so generally entertained, did not the common dictate of nature and reason, acting alike in all men, move them to conspire in it, though they knew not one another's minds? For it hath been believed, with a kind of repugnancy to sense, which discovers |