The Muse has stray'd, and much of sorrow seen.
O'er friends deceas'd full heartily she wept;
Of love divine the wonders she display'd;
Prov'd Man immortal; shew d the source of joy;
The grand tribunal rais'd; assign'd the bounds
Of human grief. In few, to close the whole,
The moral Muse has shadow'd out a sketch,
Tho' not in form, nor with a Raphael stroke,
Of most our weakness needs believe or do,
In this our land of travail and of hope,
For peace on earth, or prospect of the skies,

NIGHT IX.

LONDON:

Printed for, and under the Direction of,

G. CAWTHORN, British Library, STRAND.

DCC XC VI.

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THE COMPLAINT.

NIGHT VII.

THE INFIDEL RECLAIMED.

PART II.

Containing the

Nature, Proof, and Importance of Immortality.

PREFACE.

As we are at war with the power, it were well if we were at war with the manners of France. A land of leviy is a land of guilt. A serious mind is the native soil of every virtue, and the single character that does true bonour to mankind. The soul's inmortality has been the favourite theme with the serious of all ages. Nor is it strange; it is a subject by far the most interesting and important that can enter the mind of man. Of biguest moment this subject always was, and always will be: yet this its bigbest moment seems to admit of increase at this day; a sort of occasional importance is superadded to the natural weight of it, if that opinion, which is advanced in the Preface to the preceding Night, be just. It is there supposed, that all our infidels, whatever scheme, for argument's sake, and to keep themselves in countenance, they patronize, are betrayed into their deplorable errour by some doubt of their immortality at the bottom: and the more I consider this Volume II.

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point, the more I am persuaded of the truth of that opinion." Though the distrust of a futurity is a strange errour, yet it is an errour into which bad men may naturally be distressed; for it is impossible to bid defiance to final ruin, without some refuge in imagination, some presumption of escape. And what presumption is there? there are but two in Nature; but two within the compass of human thoughi; and these are---That either God will not or cannot punish. Consisidering the divine attributes, the first is too gross to be digested by our strongest wishes; and since Omnipotence is as much a divine attribute as holiness, that God cannot punish, is as absurd a supposition as the former. God certainly can punish as long as wicked men exist. In nonexistence, therefore, is their only refuge; and, consequently, nonexistence is their strongest wish: and strong wishes have a strange influence on our opinions; they bias the judgment in a manner almost incredible. And since on this men.ber of their alternative there are some very small appearances in their favour, and none at all on the other, they catch at this reed, they lay held on this chimera, to save themselves from the shock and borrour of an immediate and absolute despair.

On reviewing my subject, by the light which this argument,

and others of like tendency, threw upon it, I was more inclined than ever to pursue it, as it appeared to me to strike direc ly at the main root of all our infidelity. In the following pages, it is, accordingly, pursued at large, and some erguments for immortality, new at least to me, are ven

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tured on in them. tempt to set the gross absurdities and borrours of annibilation in a fuller and more affecting view than is (I think) lo be met with elsewhere.

There also the writer has made an at

The gentlemen, for whose sake this attempt was chiefly made, profess great admiration for the wisdom of Heathen antiquity: what pily it is they are not sincere! If they were sincere, bow would it mortify them, to consider with what contempt and abborrence their notions would have been received by those whom they so much admire? What degree of contempt and abhorrence would fall to their share, may be conjectured by the following matter of fact (in my opinion) extremely memorable. Of all their Heathen worthies, ocrates ('tis well known) was the most guarded, dispassionate, and composed; yet this great master of temper was angry, and angry at his last hour; and angry with his friend; and angry for what deserved acknowledgment; angry for a right and tender instance of true friendship towards him. Is not this surprising? what could be the cause? The cause was for his honour; it was a truly noble, though, perhaps, a too punctilious regard for immortality: for his friend asking him, with such an affectionate concern as became a friend, "Where be should deposit bis remains?" it was resented by Socrates, as implying a disbonourable supposition, that he could be so mean as to have regard for any thing, even in bimself, that was not immortal.

This fact, well considered, would make our Infidels with