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niences, cares and difficulties, quickly start up before us, to oppose our progress, and to render neceffary the utmost exertions of our prudence, circumfpection, induftry, and perfeverance. Even those irreligious and licentious writings that do fo much mischief, give occafion, at the fame time, to the friends of religion, to manifeft their zeal and their abilities in the defence of infulted decency, and of divine truth. That unequal allotment alfo of worldly bleffings, which is fo conftant a subject of discontent and complaint, is only à part of the fame general plan of moral improvement and probationary difcipline. The wealthy and the indigent, the high and the low, the powerful and the weak, are brought together on the fame great theatre of action, in order to "provoke one another to good works," and to be the mutual inftruments of drawing forth the good qualities fuited to their respective stations. And in the fame manner, throughout the whole intercourfe of human life, the collifion of oppofite tempers, fituations, employments, interefts, paffions, and pursuits, strikes out of our fouls those sparks

of

I

of virtue, which would otherwife, probably, never have been called forth to view *.

It is a fact, then, which will admit of no difpute, that we are actually tried, here, almoft every moment of our lives. We ourfelves, in common fpeech, call our afflictions trials; and we feel, to our coft, that they are really fo. If this be granted, it follows that this world is confeffedly a state of probation; the neceffary confequence of which is, a ftate of retribution. For, it would be as abfurd to fuppofe, that we should be tried, without being rewarded or punished, as that we fhould be rewarded or punished without giving any proofs that we deserve either. These two things are correlatives, and mutually infer each other. They are evidently parts of the fame defign, the beginning and the end of one wife plan of government, which we cannot fuppofe to be left imperfect or incomplete, without arraigning the wisdom and the juftice of its divine author. It is not his custom to do his work by halves. Whatever he enters upon he will accomplish. Every thing we know of him, and his

See Dr. Horbery's Sermons, D. 15.

proceedings,

proceedings, convinces us that he muft, and he himself declares to all the world that he " I will

will. "When I begin," fays he,

"alfo make an end *.”

VII. Strong as thefe arguments are in themselves in favour of a future ftate, it is no fmall confirmation of them, that there has been a general propenfity and inclination in almost all mankind, in every period and every country of the world, to believe the existence of the foul after death, and to entertain some notions, however imperfect and confused, of a future recompence. With regard to the antient Heathens, we have the teftimony of one of the greateft men amongst them, that there was an univerfal agreement of all people upon the earth, in this great point; and he makes this common consent one of his chief proofs of the immortality of the foul. And from that time to this, amidst all the difcoveries that have been made, in every part of the globe, there has never yet, I believe, been found one fingle nation, however favage or barbarous, that has not had fome apprehenfions or fufpicions of another

* Sam. iii. 124 + Cicero. Tufc. Quæft. 1. i.

ftate

state of being after this. Even those that are faid (though but on very doubtful evidence) to have no notion of a Supreme Being, and to be deftitute, not only of religious principle, but also, in fome refpects, of moral fentiment; yet all concur in believing the exiftence of the foul after death *. It is true, indeed, that there were, among the antient Pagans, fome fects of philofophers who doubted, and others who denied, a future retribution. But the number of thefe, in comparison of the whole clafs of the common people who believed it, was but fmall. And nothing ought to be concluded against the prevalence of a natural fentiment, from the fanciful notions of a few conceited fophifts; whose pride it has ever been to fhow their ingenuity in combating the plainest truths, merely because they were plain, and to check the voice of reafon and of nature, by perplexing fubtleties, and

See Locke's Effay on Hum. Und. b. i. c. 3. f. 9. Robertfon's Hift. of America, b. iv. p. 389. Account of Voyages to the fouthern Hemisphere, published by Hawkesworth, vol. ii. p. 236-239, 4to. 1st ed. Tillotfon, ferm. 174. It is remarkable, that the immortality of the foul is believed by all the favage tribes of America, from one end of that immenfe continent to the other.

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unintelligible refinements. But the human understanding left to itfelf, and free from all artificial bias and constraint, has a very strong propenfity to the belief of a future judgement. And, although in the notions both of the antient Heathens, and of our modern favages, concerning it, there is great obfcurity, uncertainty, and confufion, with a ftrange mixture of the most abfurd and fabulous imaginations, fo as to produce little or no effects upon their hearts and lives; yet ftill they all tend to evince the natural tendency of the human mind to this opinion. And the happy regions of the Thracian *, the sensual paradise of Mahomet, the elyfium of the Greeks, and the pleasant mountains of the Indians, all agree in one common principle, the continuation of our being after death, and the diftribution of certain rewards and punishments in another life.

* See Herodotus, 1. iv. p. 252. ed. Gronov.

SERMON

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