Tenth Argument.
All indeed do not go through the same toil; but all have their share of it, either in body or in mind. Behold the studious son of learning; his intense application hath wasted his flesh, exhausted his spirits, and almost dried up his radical moisture. Consider the man of fortune; can his thousands a year exempt him from the curse of Adam? No: he toils perhaps harder, in his sports and debaucheries, than the poor ploughman that cultivates his estate.
View that corpulent epicure who idles away the whole day between the festal board and the dozing couch. You may think that he, at least, is free from the curse which I describe: but you are mistaken. While he is living, as he thinks, a life of luxurious ease and gentle inactivity, he fills himself with crude humours, and makes way for the gnawing gout and racking gravel. See, even now, how strongly he perspires, and with what uneasiness he draws his short breath and wipes his dewy shining face: surely he toils under the load of an undigested meal. A porter carries a burden upon his brawny shoulders, but this wretch has conveyed one into his sick stomach. He will not work; let him alone, and ere long acute pains will bathe him in as profuse a sweat as that of the furnace man; and strong medicines will exercise him to such a degree that he will envy even the collier’s lot.
It is evident, therefore, that mankind are under a curse of toil and sweat,f23 according to the Divine sentence recorded by Moses; and that they are frequently condemned by Providence to as hard labour for life as wretched felons rowing in the galleys or digging in the mines.f24 But as it is absolutely incredible that a good God, who by a word can supply the wants of all his creatures, should have sentenced innocent mankind to these inconceivable hardships to procure or enjoy the necessaries of life, it is evident they are guilty, miserable offenders.
TENTH ARGUMENT.
Hard labour and sweat make up but one of the innumerable calamities incident to the wretched inhabitants of this world. Turn your eyes which way you please, and you will see some flying from others groaning under the rod of God; and the greatest number busily making a scourge for the backs of their fellow creatures or their own.
To pass over the misery of the brute creation: to say nothing of the subtlety and rapaciousness with which (after the example of men)f25they lie in wait for and prey upon one another; to cast a veil over the agonies of millions that are daily stabbed, strangled, shot, and even flayed, boiled, or swallowed up alive for the support of man’s life, or the indulgence of his luxury: and not to mention again the almost uninterrupted cries of feeble infancy, only take notice of the tedious confinement of childhood, the blasted schemes of youth, the anxious cares of riper years, and the deep groans of wrinkled, decrepit, tottering old age. Fix your attention on family trials; here a prodigal father ruins his children, or undutiful children break the hearts of their fond parents! There an unkind husband imbitters the life of his wife, or an imprudent wife stains the honour of her husband: a servant disobeys, a relation misbehaves, a son lies ill, a tenant breaks, a neighbour provokes, a rival supplants, a friend betrays, or an enemy triumphs. Peace seldom continues one day.
Listen to the sighs of the afflicted, the moans of the disconsolate, the complaints of the oppressed, and shrieks of the tortured. Consider the deformity of the faces of some, and distortion or mutilation of the limbs of others. To awaken your compassion,f26 here a beggar holds out the stump of a thigh or an arm: there a ragged wretch hops after you upon one leg and two crutches; and a little farther you meet with a poor creature using his hands instead of feet, and dragging through the mire the cumbrous weight of a body without lower parts.
Imagine, if possible, the hardships of those who are destitute of one of their senses: here the blind is guided by a dog, or gropes for his way in the blaze of noon; there the deaf lies on the brink of danger, inattentive to the loudest calls: here sits the dumb, sentenced to eternal silence; there dribbles the idiot, doomed to perpetual childhood; and yonder the paralytic shakes without intermission, or lies senseless, the frightful image of a living corpse.
Leaving these wretched creatures, consider the tears of the disappointed, the sorrows of the captives, the anxieties of the accused, the fears of the guilty, and terrors of the condemned. Take a turn through jails, inquisitions, houses of correction, and places of execution. Proceed to the mournful rooms of the languishing and wearisome beds of the sick: and let not the fear of seeing human wo, in some of its most deplorable appearances, prevent you from visiting hospitals, infirmaries, and bedlams:—
————————A place
Before our eyes appears, sad, noisome, dark,
A lazar house it seems, wherein are laid
Numbers of all diseased; all maladies
Of ghastly spasm or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all fev’rous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone, and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies and asthmas, and joint, racking rheums.
Dire is the tossing! Deep the groans! Despair
Attends the sick, busiest from couch to couch:
And over them triumphant death his dart
Shakes; but delays to strike, though oft invok’d
With vows, as their chief good, and final hope.
——MILTON.
To close the horrible prospect, view the ruins of cities and kingdoms, the calamities of wrecks and sieges, the horrors of sea fights and fields of battle; with all the crimes, devastations, and cruelties that accompany revenge, contention, and war; and you will be obliged to conclude with Job, that corrupt “man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward;” with David, that “the earth is full of darkness and cruel habitations;” and with every impartial inquirer, that our depravity and God’s justice concur to make this world a “vale of tears” as well as a field of toil and sweat. A vast prison for rebels already “tied with the chains of their sins,” a boundless scaffold for their execution, a Golgotha, an Aceldama, an immense field of torture and blood.
Some will probably say, “This picture of the world is drawn with black lines, but kinder Providence blends light and shade together, and tempers our calamities with numberless blessings.” I answer: it cannot be too thankfully acknowledged, that while patience suspends the stroke of justice, God, for Christ’s sake, restores us a thousand forfeited blessings, that his goodness may lead us to repentance. But, alas! what is the consequence where Divine grace does not prove victorious over corrupt nature? To all our sins do we not add the crime of either enjoying the favours of Providence with the greatest ingratitude, or of abusing them with the most provoking insolence?
Our actions are far more expressive of our real sentiments than our words. “Why this variety of exquisite food?” says the voluptuary, whose life loudly speaks what his lips dare not utter: “why this abundance of delicious wines, but to tempt my unbridled appetite and please my luxurious palate?” “Would God have given softness to says the self-silks, brightness to colours, and lustre to diamonds:” applauding smile of a foolish virgin who worships herself in a glass: “would he have commanded the white of the lily thus to meet the blush of the rose, and heighten so elegant a proportion of features, if he had not designed that the united powers of art, dress, and beauty, should make me share his Divine honours?” “Why are we blessed with dear children and amiable friends,” says the ridiculous behaviour of fond parents and raptured lovers, “but that we should suspend our happiness on their ravishing smiles, and place them as favourite idols in the shrine of our hearts?” “And why has Heaven favoured me both with a strong constitution and an affluent fortune,” says the rich slave of brutish lusts, “but that I may drink deeper of earthly joys and sensual delights?” Thus blessings, abused or unimproved, become curses in our hands. God’s indulgence encourages us to offend him: we have the fatal skill of extracting poison from the sweetest flowers, and madly turn the gifts of Providence into weapons to attack our benefactor and destroy ourselves. That there are then such perverted gifts does not prove that mankind are innocent; but that God’s patience “endureth yet daily,” and that a Saviour “ever liveth to make intercession for us.”
Should it be farther objected, that “our pleasures counterbalance our calamities;” I answer, The greatest part of mankind are so oppressed with want and cares, toil and sickness, that their intervals of ease may rather be termed “an alleviation of misery” than “an enjoyment of happiness.” Our pains are real and lasting, our joys imaginary and momentary. Could we exercise all our senses upon the most pleasing objects, the tooth ache would render all insipid and burthensome: a fit of the gout alone damps every worldly joy, while all earthly delights together cannot give us ease under it: so vastly superior is the bitterness of one bodily pain to the sweetness of all the pleasures of sense!
If objectors still urge that “sufferings are needful for our trial;” I reply, They are necessary for our punishment and correction, but not for our