8. I have just touched upon these absurd characters, to convince you in the plainest manner, that religion is so far from rendering a life dull, anxious, and uncomfortable, that on the contrary, all the miseries, vexations, and complaints that are in the world, are owing to the want of religion; being directly caused by those absurd passions, which religion teaches us to deny.
9. Most people indeed confess, that religion preserves us from many evils, and helps us in many respects to a more happy enjoyment of ourselves; but then, they imagine, this is only true of such a moderate share of religion, as restrains us from the excesses of our passions. They suppose that the strict rules of piety must make our lives dull and uncomfortable.
This objection supposes, that religion, moderately practised, adds to our happiness; but that heights of religion have a contrary effect.
*It supposes therefore, that it is happy to be kept from the excesses of envy, but unhappy to be kept from other degrees of envy; that it is happy to be delivered from a boundless ambition, but unhappy to be without a moderate ambition. It supposes also, that the happiness of life consists in a mixture of virtue and vice, of ambition and humility, charity and envy, heavenly affection and covetousness. All which is as absurd, as to suppose that it is happy to be free from excessive pains, but unhappy to be without moderate pains; or that the happiness of health consisted in being partly sick, and partly well.
But if humility be the peace and rest of the soul, then no one has so much happiness from humility, as he that is the most humble. If excessive envy is a torment of the soul, he is most happy who extinguishes every spark of envy.
Thus it is in every virtue: the more you act up to every degree of it, the more happiness you have from it. And so of every vice: if you only abate its excesses, you do but little for yourself; but if you reject it in all degrees, then you feel the true ease of a reformed mind.
10. And, as to those enjoyments which piety requireth us to deny ourselves, this deprives us of no real comfort.
For, 1st, Piety requires us to renounce no ways of life, where we can act reasonably, and offer what we do to God. All ways of life, all enjoyments that are within these bounds, are no way denied us by the strictest rules of piety. Whatever you can do, or enjoy, as in the presence of God, as his servant, as his rational creature; all that you can perform conformably to a rational nature, is allowed by the laws of piety. And will you think that your life will be uncomfortable, unless you may displease God, and act contrary to that reason and wisdom which he has implanted in you?
As for those satisfactions, which we dare not offer to a holy God, which are only invented by the folly and corruption of the world, which inflame our passions, and sink our souls into grossness and sensuality, and render us incapable of the divine favour either here or hereafter, surely it can be no uncomfortable thing to be rescued by religion from such self-murder, and to be rendered capable of eternal happiness.
11. *Let us suppose a person placed somewhere alone, in the midst of a variety of things which he did not know how to use; that he has by him bread, wine, water, golden dust, iron chains, gravel, garments, fire. Let it be supposed, that he has no knowledge, nor any directions from his senses, how to quench his thirst, or satisfy his hunger, or make any use of the things about him. Let it be supposed, that in his drought he puts golden dust into his eyes; when his eyes smart, he puts wine into his ears: that in his hunger, he puts gravel in his mouth; that in pain, he loads himself with iron chains; that feeling cold, he puts his feet in the water; that being frighted at the fire, he runs away from it; that being weary, he makes a seat of his bread. Let it be supposed, that thro’ his ignorance of the right use of the things that are about him, he will vainly torment himself whilst he lives; and at last die, blinded with dust, choaked with gravel, and loaded with irons. Let it be supposed, that some good being came to him, and shewed him the nature and use of all the things that were about him, and gave him such strict rules of using them, as would certainly, if observed, make him the happier for all that he had, and deliver him from the pains of hunger, and thirst, and cold.