Sixteenth Argument.
multiplied proof of my sad assertion: all miss the mark. Not one of them makes the supreme felicity to consist in the knowledge and enjoyment of God, the amiable and adorable Parent of all good.
True reason, alas! is as rare as true piety. The poor thing which, in spiritual matters, the world calls reason, is only the ape of that noble faculty. How partial, how unreasonablef29 is this false pretender! If it does not altogether overlook the awful realities of the Invisible, which is too frequently the case, how busy is it to reason away faith, and raise objections against the most evident truth,f30 even that which I now contend for! and when right reason has been worsted by sense, how ready is the impostor to plead against the faculty which it personates! How skilful in cloaking bad habits under the genteel name of “human foibles!” And how ingenious in defending the most irrational and dangerous methods of losing time, as “innocent sports and harmless diversions!”
These observations, which must appear self evident to all who know the world or themselves, incontestably prove the degeneracy of all our rational powers, and consequently the universality of our natural corruption. SIXTEENTH ARGUMENT.
When “the whole head is sick,” is not “the whole heart faint?” Can our will, conscience, and affections, run parallel to the line of duty, when our understanding, imagination, memory, and reason, are so much warped from original rectitude? Impossible! Experience, thou best of judges, I appeal to thee. Erect thy fair tribunal in the reader’s breast, and bear an honest testimony to the truth of the following assertions:— Our WILL, in general, is full of obstinacy. We must have our own way, right or wrong. It is pregnant with inconstancy. We are passionately fond of a thing one day, and are tired of it the next. We form good resolutions in the morning, and break them before night. It is impotent. When we see what is right, instead of doing it with all our might, we frequently remain as inactive as if we were bound by invisible chains; and we wonder by what charm the wheels of duty thus stop against our apparent inclinations, till we discover that the spring of our will is broken, or naturally works the wrong way. Yes, it is not only unable to follow the good that the understanding approves, but full of perverseness to pursue the evil that reason disapproves. We are prone to do, contrary to our design, those things which breed remorse and wound conscience; and, sooner or later, we may all say, with the heathen princess, who was going to murder her child,— Video meliora, proboque,
Deteriora sequor.f31
Nor is CONSCIENCE itself untainted. Alas! how slow is it to reprove in some cases! In others, how apt not to do it at all! In one person it is easy under mountains of guilt; and in another it is unreasonably scrupulous about mere trifles: it either “strains at a gnat,” or “swallows a camel.” When it is alarmed, in some it shows itself ready to be made easy by every wrong method; in others, it obstinately refuses to be pacified by the right. To-day you may with propriety compare it to a dumb dog, that does not bark at a thief; and to-morrow to a snarling cur, that flies indifferently at a friend, a foe, or a shadow; and then madly turns upon himself, and tears his own flesh.
If conscience, the best power of the unconverted man, is so corrupt, good God! what are his AFFECTIONS? Almost perpetually deficient in some, and excessive in others, when do they attain to, or stop at, the line of moderation? Who can tell how oft he has been the sport of their irregularity and violence? One hour we are hurried into rashness by their impetuosity; the next, we are bound in sloth by their inactivity. Sometimes every blast of foolish hope, or ill-grounded fear; every gale of base desire, or unreasonable aversion; every wave of idolatrous love, or sinful hatred; every surge of misplaced admiration, or groundless horror; every billow of noisy joy, or undue sorrow, tosses, raises, or sinks our soul, as a ship in a storm, which has neither rudder nor ballast. At other times we are totally becalmed; all our sails are furled; not one breath of devout or human affection stirs in our stoical, frozen breast; and we remain stupidly insensible, till the spark of temptation, dropping upon the combustible matter in our hearts, blows up again into loud passion; and then, how dreadful and ridiculous together is the new explosion!
If experience pronounces that these reflections are just, the point is gained. Our “whole heart is faint,” through the unaccountable disorders of our will, the lethargy or boisterous fits of our conscience, and the swooning or high fever of our affections; and we may, without hypocrisy, join in our daily confession, and say, “There is no health in us.”