The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

emperors, more bloody than Lybic lion or Hyrcanian tiger⁠—even some of the Christian emperors not excepted. Read the direful and unjust executions reported by Ammianus Marcellinus; among hundreds of others that of Eusebius.601 Every whisper in those times, or light suspicion, brought upon men the question and tortures inconceivable. Men’s very dreams were once interpreted to be treason, and they durst scarce own that they had ever slept.602 What inhuman punishments were used among the Persians,603 in an arbitrary manner too, and many times extended to whole families and all the kindred, though not concerned?604 But instead of enumerating here burnings, crucifixions, breakings upon the wheel, impalings, σκαφισμοὺς,605 etc. I choose to refer you to those authors who have designedly treated of the torments and questions of the ancients. Look into the history of the Christian Church, and her martyrologies; examine the prisons of the inquisition, the groans of which those walls are conscious, and upon what slight occasions men are racked and tortured by the tormentors there; and, to finish this detail (hideous indeed, but too true) as fast as I can, consider the many massacres, persecutions, and miseries consequent upon them, which false religion has caused, authorized, sanctified. Indeed the history of mankind is little else but the history of uncomfortable, dreadful passages: and a great part of it, however things are palliated and gilded over, is scarcely to be read by a good-natured man without amazement, horror, tears. One can scarce look into a newspaper, or out at his window, but hardships and sufferings present themselves in one shape or other. Now, among all those millions who have suffered eminently, can it be imagined that there have not been multitudes whose griefs and pangs have far outweighed all their enjoyments, and yet who have not been able, either by their innocence, their prudence, or any power in them, to escape that bitter draught which they have drunk? And then, how can we acquit the justice and reasonableness of that Being upon whom these poor creatures depend, and who leaves them such great losers by their existence, if there be no future state where the proper amends may be made? So that the argument is brought to this undeniable issue: if the soul of man is not immortal, either there is no God upon whom we depend, or He is an unreasonable Being, or there never has been any man whose sufferings in this world have exceeded his enjoyments without his being the cause of it himself. But surely no one of these three things can be said. Ergo⁠ ⁠…

That which aggravates the hard case of the poor sufferers mentioned above⁠—if there be no future state in which their past sufferings may be brought into the account and recompensated⁠—is that many times their persecutors and tormentors pass their lives in plenty and grandeur: that is, the innocent have not only the portion that properly belongs to the criminal and unreasonable part of mankind, but the guilty have that which belongs rather to the innocent.606 Such a transposition of rewards and punishments, ending in itself, without any respect to something which is to follow hereafter, can never consist with the nature of a Governor who is not very much below rational: a thought which God forbid anyone should dare to admit of Him. To suppose the virtuous and wise left ultimately but in the same state with the unjust and profligate is to suppose such a constitution of nature as never can flow from a principle of reason, a God of truth and equity; and therefore, such a constitution as leaves the former in a worse condition than the other, can much less be supposed.

Objection: It has been said that virtue tends to make men’s lives happy even here, etc., and how then can the virtuous be supposed ever to be so very miserable? Answer: In ordinary cases virtue does produce happiness; at least it has indeed a natural tendency to it, is the mean by which it is most likely to be attained, and is therefore the way which a wise man would choose for his own sake. But then it does not follow from hence that there are no perturbations in human affairs: no cases in which the usual effect of virtue may be overpowered by diseases, violence, disasters. It does not render men invulnerable, cannot command the seasons, nor prevent many great calamities under which virtue and vice must fall undistinguished. (There may be a direct road to a place, and such a one, as he who sets out for that place ought to be found in, and yet it is possible he may meet with robbers or accidents in it, that may incommode, or hurt him in his journey.) On the other side, vice and wickedness may be so circumstantiated as to be attended with much greater pleasure than pain, contrary to the tendency of its nature; that is, a wicked man may be of a healthful make, born to riches or power, or fortunately placed for attaining them, and from the advantage of a strong body, an ample fortune, many friends, or lucky hits, he may derive pleasures which shall exceed the present inconveniences and sufferings naturally following from his vices.607

Men’s circumstances have a natural influence with respect to the present pleasures or sufferings, as well as their virtue or vice. Nobody, sure, ever said that all depends only upon these; nor, when the natural tendence of them is asserted, is the natural tendence or effect of the other denied. Therefore indeed, when it is said that virtue naturally tends to make men happy even here, the meaning only is that it tends to make men happy in proportion to their circumstances; and vice does the contrary. It is naturally productive of that part of happiness which is in our own power