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The notions which commonly prevail as to a future state
are neither consolatory to benevolence nor encouraging to virtue.
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A future state, as commonly represented, no source of comfort.
Because few are to enjoy happiness in comparison of those who are
to suffer misery – therefore with respect to every man the presumption, antecedently to any examination
of the chance a man may have of placing himself in the former class by
means that are in his own power is on the side of misery.
Nor
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MS Ethics Vol. III. p.17
Nor is the matter prospect mended by the consideration of the power he may
have, by means dependent on his own will to enter himself ensure himself to be of the number
of the happy.
In the 1st. place. Upon the predestinarian School, he has no such
power – the matter is already determined, and was so before he was born:
his chance depends upon events he can know nothing of and that are out
of the reach of his influence: the chance therefore that he has for
escaping misery is simply in the ratio of the number of those who are
to be happy to that of those who are to be miserable: and suppose those
members are as one to ten it is ten to one in every man's case against
him being otherwise than miserable.
In the next place, upon any other Scheme than the Predestinarian Rejecting the predestinarian & admitting the commonly
received theory of future punishment what every power any given man has of avoiding future misery, the same
has every other man: and yet more, many more after all are to be
miserable than happy.
Again the means (such I mean as we hear commonly spoken
of as being in his power) of escaping misery, are represented as
consisting of faith and good works: either of faith alone, or of good
works alone, or of both together.
As to faith, after all the Sophisms and ..... and devices that have been employed
to conceal the truth of the matters, there is no one but has every now and
then perceived that the act of believing is not in his power, that in the
same manner as he is unable to believe that to be black which he sees to be
white, so is he unable to believe anything to be one way when he sees
another to believe it to
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