Thirtieth Argument.
The following testimony is so much the more striking, as it comes from one of the greatest poets, philosophers, and Deists, of this present free-thinking age:—”Who can, without horror, consider the whole earth as the empire of destruction? It abounds in wonders, it abounds also in victims; it is a vast field of carnage and contagion. Every species is, without pity, pursued and torn to pieces, through the earth, and air, and water. In man there is more wretchedness than in all other animals put together: he smarts continually under two scourges which other animals never feel; anxiety and listlessness in appetence, which makes him weary of himself. He loves life, and yet he knows that he must die. If he enjoys some transient good, for which he is thankful to Heaven, he suffers various evils, and is at last devoured by worms. This knowledge is his fatal prerogative: other animals have it not. He feels it every moment rankling and corroding in his breast. Yet he spends the transient moment of his existence in diffusing the misery that he suffers; in cutting the throats of his fellow creatures for pay; in cheating and being cheated, in robbing and being robbed, in serving that he may command, and in repenting of all that he does. The bulk of mankind are nothing more than a crowd of wretches, equally criminal and unfortunate, and the globe contains rather carcasses than men. I tremble upon a review of this dreadful picture, to find that it implies a complaint against Providence, and I wish that I had never been born.” (Voltaire’s Gospel of the Day.”)f54
THIRTIETH ARGUMENT.
And yet, O strange infatuation! Vain man will be wise, and wicked man pretends to be righteous! Far from repenting in the dust, he pleads his innocence, and claims the rewards of imaginary merit! Incredible as the assertion is, a thousand witnesses are ready to confirm it. Come forth, ye natural sons of virtue, who with scornful boasts attack the doctrine of man’s depravity. To drown the whispers of reason and experience, sound each your own trumpet: thank God “you are not as other men:” inform us you “have a good heart” and “a clear conscience:” assure us you “do your duty, your endeavours, your best endeavours,” to please the Author of your lives: vow you never “were guilty of any crime, never did any harm:” and tell us you hope to mount to heaven on the strong pinions of your “good works and pious resolutions.” When you have thus acted the Pharisee’s part before your fellow creatures, go to your Creator and assume the character of the publican. Confess with your lips you are “miserable sinners,” who “have done what” you “ought not to have done, and left undone what” you “ought to have done:” protest “there is no health in” you: complain “that the remembrance of your sins is grievous unto you, and the burden of them intolerable:” but remember, O ye self righteous formalists, that, by this glaring inconsistency, you give the strongest proof of your unrighteousness. You are, nevertheless, modest, when compared with your brethren of the Romish Church.
These, far from thinking themselves “unprofitable servants,” fancy they are, literally, “righteous overmuch.” Becoming meritmongers, they make a stock of their works of supererogation, set up shop with the righteousness they can spare to others, and expose to sale indulgences and pardons out of their pretended treasury. Nor are there wanting sons of Simon, who with ready money purchase, as they think, not livings in the Church below, but, which is far preferable, seats in the Church above, and good places at the heavenly court.
Was ever a robe of righteousness (I had almost said a fool’s coat) so coarsely woven by the slaves of imposture and avarice; and so dearly bought by the sons of superstition and credulity?
O ye spiritual Ethiopians, who paint yourselves all over with the corroding white of hypocrisy, and after all, are artful enough to lay on red paint, and imitate the blush of humble modesty; ye that borrow virtue’s robes to procure admiration, and put on religion’s cloak to hide your shameful deformity: ye that deal in external righteousness, to carry on with better success the most sordid of all trades, that of sin; of the worst of sins, pride; of the worst pride, that which is spiritual: ye numerous followers of those whom the Prophet of Christians called crafty “serpents,” and soft “brood of vipers;” ye to whom he declared that “publicans and harlots shall enter the kingdom of heaven before you;” if I call you in last, to prove the desperate wickedness of the human heart, it is not because I esteem you the weakest advocates of the truth I contend for, but because you really are the strongest of my witnesses.
And now, candid reader, forget not plain matter of fact; recollect the evidence given by reason; pass sentence upon these last arguments, which I have offered to thy consideration; and say whether man’s disposition and conduct toward his Creator, his fellow creatures, and himself, do not abundantly prove that he is by nature in a fallen and lost estate.