And their impetuous passions give them no rest. What keen anguish of mind arises from pride, and envy, and resentment? What tortures does ambition, or disappointed love, or wild jealousy infuse into their bosoms? Meanwhile the poor, together with inward vexations and corroding maladies of the mind, sustain likewise endless drudgeries in procuring their necessary subsistence. And how many of them cannot after all, procure even food to eat and raiment to put on? (p. 366.)

66

Survey man through every stage. See first what a figure he makes, at his entrance into life! This animal,' says Pliny, who is to govern the rest of the creatures, how he lies bound hand and foot all in tears, and begins his life in misery and punishment.' If we trace the education of the human race, from the cradle to mature age, especially among the poor, who are the bulk of all nations, the wretchedness of mankind will farther appear. How are they every where dragged up in their tender age, through a train of nonsense, madness, and miseries? (p. 367.) What millions of uneasy sensations do they endure in infancy and childhood by reason of those pressing necessities, which for some years they can tell only in cries and groans, and which either their parents are so poor they cannot relieve, or so savage and brutish that they will not? How wretchedly are these young generations hurried on through the folly and weakness of childhood, till new calamities arise from their own ungoverned appetites and impetuous passions? As youth advances, the ferments of the blood rise higher, and the appetites and passions grow much stronger, and give more abundant vexation to the race of mankind, than they do to any of the brutal creation. And whereas the allwise God, for kind reasons, has limited the gratification of these appetites by rules of virtue; perhaps these very rules through the corruption of our nature irritate mankind to greater excesses. (p. 368.)

Would the affairs of human life in infancy, childhood, and youth, have ever been in such a sore and painful situation, if man had been such a being as God at first made him, and had continued in the favour of his Maker? Could divine wisdom and goodness admit of these scenes, were there not a degeneracy through the whole race, which by the just permission of God, exerts itself some way or other in every stage of life? (p. 370.)

Follow mankind to the age of public appearance upon the stage of the world, and what shall we find there but infinite cares, labours, and toil, attended with fond hopes almost always frustrated with endless crosses and disappointments, through ten thousand accidents that are every moment flying across this mortal stage? As for the poor, how does the sultry toil exhaust their lives in summer, and what starving wretchedness do they feel in winter? How is a miserable life sustained among all the pains and fatigues of nature with the oppression, cruelty, and scorn of the rich? (p. 371.)

"Let us follow on the track to the close of life. What a scene is presented us in old age? How innumerable and how inexpressible are the disasters and sorrows, the pains and aches, the groans and

wretchedness, that meet man on the borders of the grave, before they plunge him into it?

"And indeed is there any person on earth, high or low, without such distresses and difficulties, such crossing accidents and perplexing cares, such painful infirmities in some or other part of life, as must pronounce mankind upon the whole a miserable being? Whatever scenes of happiness seem to attend him, in any shining hour, a dark cloud soon casts a gloom over them, and the pleasing vision vanishes as a dream!

"And what are the boasted pleasures which some have supposed to balance the sorrows of life? Are not most of them owing in a good degree, to some previous uneasiness? It is the pain of hunger which makes food so relishing; the pain of weariness that renders sleep so refreshing. And as for the blessings of love and friendship, among neighbours and kindred, do they not often produce as much vexation as satisfaction? Not indeed of themselves; but by reason of the endless humours and follies, errors and passions of mankind. (p. 373.)

"Again. Do not the very pleasures of the body prove the ruin of ten thousand souls? They may be used with innocence and wisdom; but the unruly appetites and passions of men, continually turn into a curse, what God originally designed for a blessing. (p. 374.)

"Think again how short and transient are the pleasures of life in comparison of the pains of it! How vanishing the sweetest sensations of delight! But in many persons and families, how many are the days, the months, the years, of fatigue, or pain, or bitter sorrow? What pleasure of the animal frame is either as lasting, or as intense as the pain of the gout or stone? How small is the proportion of sensible pleasure, to that of pain or trouble, or uneasiness? And how far is it over-balanced by the maladies or miseries, the fears or sorrows of the greatest part of mankind?

"As for intellectual pleasures, how few are there in the world, who have any capacity for them? And among those few, how many differences and contentions, how many crossing objections, bewildered inquiries, and unhappy mistakes are mingled with the enjoyment? So that he who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow,' saith the wisest of men, and upon the whole computation, he writes on this also, Vanity and vexation of spirit.'

6

"To talk then of real happiness to be enjoyed in this life (abstracted from the foretaste of another) is contrary to all the common sense and experience of every thinking man. Without this' taste of the powers of the world to come,' I know not what wise man would willingly come into these scenes of mortality, or go through them with any patience. (p. 376, 377.)

"What, to be trained up from infancy under so many unavoidable follies, prejudices, and wretched delusions through the power of flesh and sense? To be sunk into such gross ignorance both of our souls, our better selves, and of the glorious Being that made us? To lie under such heavy shades of darkness, such a world of mistakes

and errors, as are mingled with our little faint glimpses, and low notices of God our Creator? What, to be so far distant from God, and to endure such a long estrangement from the wisest and best of Beings, in this foolish and fleshly state, with so few and slender communications with or from him?

"What, to feel so many powerful and disquieting appetites, so many restless and unruly passions, which want the perpetual guard of a jealous eye, and a strong restraint over them? Otherwise they will be ever breaking out into some new mischief.

"What, to be ever surrounded with such delights of sense, as are constant temptations to folly and sin? To have scarce any joys, but what we are liable to pay dear for, by an excessive or irregular indulgence? Can this be a desirable state? For any wise being who knows what happiness is, to be united to such a disorderly machine of flesh and blood, with all its uneasy and unruly ferments? (p. 378.)

"Add to this another train of inbred miseries which attend this animal frame. What wise spirit would willingly put on such flesh and blood as ours, with all the springs of sickness and pain, anguish and disease in it? What, to be liable to the racking disquietudes of gout and stone, and a thousand other distempers? To have nature worn out by slow and long aches and infirmities, and lie lingering many years on the borders of death, before we can find a grave?

"Solomon seems to be much of this mind, when after a survey of the whole scheme of human life, in its variety of scenes, (without the views of hereafter,) he declares, I praised the dead who were already dead, more than the living who were yet alive.' And indeed it appears, that the miseries of life are so numerous as to overbalance all its real comforts, and sufficiently to show, that mankind now lie under evident marks of their Maker's displeasure as being degenerated from that state of innocence, wherein they were at first created. (p. 380.)

SECT. III.

Objections answered.

"But it is objected If human life in general is miserable, how is it, that all men are so unwilling to die?' (p. 381. 383.)

"I answer, 1. Because they fear to meet with more misery in another life than they feel in this. See our Poet:

"The weariest and most loathed worldly life,

That pain, age, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, 'tis a paradise

To what we fear of death."

And in another place,

"If by the sleep of death we could but end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'twere a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. O who would bear

The oppressor's wrongs, the poor man's contumely,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
With all the long calamities of life;

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would bear such burdens,

And groan and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

That undiscover'd country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others which are all unknown."

"If you say, But the Heathens knew nothing of a future life: and yet they too, in all their generations have been unwilling to die. Nor would they put an end to their own life were it ever so miserable.' (p. 384.) I answer, Most of the ancients (as well as the modern) Heathens, had some notions of an after-state, and some fears of punishment in another life, for sins committed in this. And in the politer nations they generally supposed self-murderers in particular would be punished after death.

Proxima deinde tenent masti loca, qui sibi lethum
Insontes peperére manu, lucemque perosi
Projecere animas, Quam vellent æthere in alto
Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores!
Fala obstant: tristique palus inamabilis unda
Alligat, et novies Styx interfusa coercet.

The next in place and punishment are they
Who prodigally threw their lives away

Fools, who repining at their wretched state,

And loathing anxious life have hurried on their fate.
With late repentance now they would retrieve

The bodies they forsook, and wish to live:

All pain and poverty desire to bear,

To view the light of heav'n, and breathe the vital air.

But fate forbids: the Stygian floods oppose,

And with nine circling streams the captive souls enclose.

"I answer, 2. Suppose this love of life and aversion to death are found, even where there is no regard to a future state, this will not prove that mankind is happy; but only that the God of nature hath wrought this principle into the souls of all men, in order to preserve the work of his own hands. So that reluctance against dying is owing to the natural principles of self-preservation, without any formed and sedate judgment, whether it is best to continue in this life or not, or whether life has more happiness or misery. (p. 386.)

"It may be objected, secondly, If brutes suffer nearly the same miseries with mankind, and yet have not sinned, how can these miseries prove that man that man is an apostate being? (p. 389.)

"I answer, it is by reason of man's apostacy, that even brute animals suffer. The whole creation groaneth together' on his account, and travaileth together in pain to this day.' For the brute 'creation was made subject to vanity,' to abuse, pain, corruption,

death, not willingly,' not by any act of its own, but by reason of him that subjected it:' of God who in consequence of Adam's sin, whom he had appointed Lord of the whole lower world, for his sake pronounced this curse (not only on the ground, but) on all which was before under his dominion.

"The misery, therefore, of the brute creation, is so far from being an objection to the apostacy of man, that it is a visible standing demonstration thereof. If beasts suffer, then man is fallen.

SECT. IV.

The Apostacy of Man proved by Scripture and Reason

"But whether or not the miseries of mankind alone will prove their apostacy from God, it is certain these together with the sins of men are an abundant proof, that we are fallen creatures. And this I shall now endeavour to show, both from the express testimony. of Scripture, from the necessity of renewing grace, and from a survey of the Heathen world.' (p. 409, 410.)

"First, The Scripture testifies, that an universal degeneracy and corruption, is come upon all the sons and daughters of Adam. (p. 410.) Every imagination of the thoughts of the heart of man is only evil continually,' (Gen. vi. 5:) yea 'evil from his youth." (Ch. viii. 21.) The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand and seek God. They are gone out of the way: there is none that doth good, no not one.' (Psm. xiv. 2.) There is not a just man upon earth, who doth good and sinneth not.' (Eccl. vii. 20.) All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way:' (Isa. liii. 6.) different wanderings, but all wanderers. There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that doth good, no not one. Every mouth is stopped, and all the world become guilty before God. All are fallen short of the glory of God, because all have sinned.' (Rom. iii. 10. 12. 19. 23.) If one died for all, then were all dead; that is, spiritually dead, dead in trespasses and sins.' (2 Cor. v. 14.)

C

"Now can we suppose, that all God's creatures would universally break his law, run into sin and death, defile and destroy themselves, and that without any one exception, if it had not arisen from some root of bitterness, some original iniquity which was diffused through them all, from their very entrance into the world? It is utterly incredible, that every single person, among the millions of mankind should be born pure and innocent, and yet should all, by free and voluntary choice, every one for himself, for near six thousand years together, rebel against him that made them, if there were not some original contagion spread through them all at their entrance into life!