Twenty-Third Argument.
V. “But if Cain sinned,” say our objectors, “and all mankind sin also, it is no more than Adam himself once did by his own free choice, though he was created as exempt from original depravity as an angel. What need is there then to suppose that he communicated to his posterity an inbred proneness to sin?”
To this I reply: It is not one accident or single event, but a continual repetition of the same event, that proves a proneness. If a man, who is perfectly in his senses, by some unforeseen accident falls into a fit of madness, we may account for his misfortune from that accident; and no certain judgment can be formed of the bodily habit of his family. But if all his children, through a hundred generations, are not only subject to the same mad fits, but also die in consequence of them, in all sorts of climates, and under all sorts of physicians; common sense will not allow us to doubt, that it is now a family disorder, incurable by human art. The man is Adam, the family mankind, and the madness sin. Reader, you are desired to make the application.
TWENTY-THIRD ARGUMENT.
“But all are not employed in sin and wickedness, for many go through a constant round of innocent diversions; and these, at least, must be innocent and happy.” Let us then consider the amusements of mankind; or, rather, without stopping to look at the wise dance of the Israelites round the golden calf, and the modest, sober, and humane diversions of the heathens, in the festivals of their lewd, drunken, and bloody gods; let us only see how far our own pleasures demonstrate the innocence and happiness of mankind.
How excessively foolish are the plays of children! How full of mischief and cruelty the sports of boys! How vain, foppish, and frothy the joys of young people! And how much below the dignity of upright, pure creatures, the snares that persons of different sexes perpetually lay for each other? When they are together, is not this their favourite amusement, till they are deservedly caught in the net which they imprudently spread? But see them asunder.
Here a circle of idle women, supping a decoction of Indian herbs, talk or laugh all together like so many chirping birds or chattering monkeys, and, scandal excepted, every way to as good purpose. And there a club of graver men blow, by the hour, clouds of stinking smoke out of their mouth, or wash it down their throat with repeated draughts of intoxicating liquors. The strong fumes have already reached their heads; and while some stagger home, others triumphantly keep the field of excess; though one is already stamped with the heaviness of the ox, another worked up to the fierceness and roar of the lion, and the third brought down to the filthiness of the vomiting dog.
Leave them at their manly sport to follow those musical sounds, mixed with a noise of stamping; and you will find others profusely perspiring and violently fatiguing themselves, in skipping up and down a room for a whole night, and ridiculously turning their backs and faces to each other a hundred different ways. Would not a man of sense prefer running ten miles upon a useful errand, to this useless manner of losing his rest, heating his blood, exhausting his spirits, unfitting himself for the duties of the following day, and laying the foundation of a putrid fever, or a consumption, by breathing the midnight air corrupted by clouds of dust, by the unwholesome fumes of candles, and by the more pernicious steam, that issues from the bodies of many persons, who use a strong exercise in a confined place.
In the next room, indeed, they are more quiet; but are they more rationally employed? Why do they so earnestly rattle those ivory cubes, and so anxiously study those packs of loose and spotted leaves? Is happiness graven upon the one, or stamped upon the other? Answer, ye gamesters, who curse your stars as ye go home with an empty purse and a heart full of rage!
“We hope there is no harm in taking an innocent game at cards,” reply a ridiculous party of superannuated old ladies; “gain is not our aim, we only play to kill time.” You are not then so well employed as the foolish heathen emperor who amused himself in killing troublesome flies and wearisome time together. The delight of rational creatures, much more of Christians on the brink of the grave, is to redeem, improve, and solidly enjoy time; but yours, alas! consists in the bare, irreparable loss of that invaluable treasure. O, What account will you give of the souls you neglect, and the talents you bury?
And shall we kill each day? If trifling kill,
Sure vice must butcher: O! what heaps of slain
Call out for vengeance on us! Time destroy’d
In suicide, where more than blood is spilt.
——YOUNG.
And are public diversions better evidences of our innocence and happiness? Let reason decide. In cities, some are lavish of the gold which should be laid by for the payment of their debts, or the relief of the poor, to buy an opportunity of acting under a mask an impertinent or immodest part without a blush; and others are guilty of the same injustice or prodigality, that they may be entitled to the honour of waiting upon a company of idle buffoons, and seeing them act what would make a modest woman blush, or hearing them speak what persons of true piety, or pure morals, would gladly pay them never to utter.
Are country amusements more rational and innocent? What shall we say of those Christian, or rather heathenish, festivals, called wakes, annually kept in honour of the saints to whom the parish church was formerly dedicated? Are they not celebrated with the idleness, vanity, and debauchery of the Floralia; with the noise, riots, and frantic mirth of the bacchanals; rather than with the decent solemnity, pious cheerfulness, and strict temperance, which characterize the religion of the holy Jesus?
The Assizes are held, the judge passes an awful sentence of transportation or death upon guilty wretches who stand pale and trembling before his tribunal; and twenty couple of gay gentlemen and ladies, as if they rejoiced in the infamy and destruction of their fellow mortals, hire, on the occasion, a band of musicians, and dance all night, perhaps in the very apartment where the distracted victims of justice, a few hours before, wrung their hands, and rattled their irons.
The races are advertised; all the country is in motion; neither business, rain, nor storm can prevent thousands from running for miles, and sometimes through the worst of roads, to feast their eyes upon the danger of their fellow creatures, and divert themselves with the misery of the most useful animals. Daring mortals hazard their necks upon swift coursers which are tortured by the severest lashes of the whip, and incessant pricks or tearing gashes of the spur, that they may exert their utmost force, strain every nerve, and make continued efforts even beyond the power of nature: whence (to say nothing of fatal accidents, which yet, alas! too frequently happen) they sometimes pant away their wretched lives in a bath of sweat and blood; and all this, that they may afford a barbarous pleasure to their idle, wanton, and barbarous beholders.
In one place the inhuman sport is afforded by an unhappy bird, fixed at some distance, that the sons of cruelty may long exercise their merciless skill in its lingering and painful destruction; or by two of them trained up and high fed for the battle. The hour fixed for the obstinate engagement is come; and as if it was not enough that they should pick each other’s eyes out with the strong bills that nature has given them; human malice, or rather diabolical cruelty, comes to the assistance of their native fierceness. Silver spurs or steel talons, sharper than those of the eagle, are barbarously fastened to their feet; thus armed, they are excited to leap at each other, and, in a hundred repeated onsets, to tear their feathers and flesh, as if they were contending vultures; and if at last one blinded, covered with blood and wounds, and unable to stand any longer the metallic claws of his antagonist, enters into the agonies of death; the numerous ring of stamping, clapping, shouting, eagerly betting, or horridly cursing spectators, is as highly delighted, as if the tortured, dying creature was the common enemy of mankind.
In another place a multitude of spectators is delightfully entertained by two brawny men, who unmercifully knock one another down, as if they were oxen appointed for the slaughter, and continue the savage play, till one, with his flesh bruised and his bones shattered, bleeding, and gasping as in the pangs of death, yields to his antagonist, and thus puts an end to the shocking sport.
But it is, perhaps, a different spectacle that recommends itself to the bloody taste of our baptized heathens. Fierce dogs are excited by fiercer men, with fury to fasten upon the nose, or tear out the eyes of a poor confined animal, which pierces the sky with his painful and lamentable bellowings, enough to force compassion from the heart of barbarians, not totally lost to all sense of humanity: while, in the meantime, the surrounding savage mob rends the very heavens with the most horrid imprecations, and repeated shouts of applauding joy; sporting themselves with that very misery which human nature (were it not deplorably corrupted) would teach them to alleviate.f38
These are thy favourite amusements, O England, thou centre of the civilized world, where reformed Christianity, deep-thinking wisdom, and