A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soul of man With the…A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soule of man With the…

Their very terrors and troubles make them more zealous in acknowledging some Deity and in the worship of it. Hic Pietatis h•s? would not this easily have melted their Religion into nothing, and quite diverted their minds from so fruitless a severity, had they not had a strong and indelible persuasion fastened in their souls, that a state would come, where in both their Patience should be rewarded, and the insolencie of ⟨p. 410⟩their Adversaries repaid with the just Vengeance they had deserved?

Their very terrors and troubles make them more zealous in acknowledging some Deity and in the worship of it. Hic Pietatis h•s? would not this easily have melted their Religion into nothing, and quite diverted their minds from so fruitlesse a severity, had they not had a strong and indeleble perswasion fastned in their soules, that a state would come, where in both their Patience should be rewarded, and the insolencie of ⟨p. 410⟩their Adversaries repayed with the just Vengeance they had deserved?

As for that Atheistical conceit, that Religion is only grounded on Policy, and maintained by Princes for the better Tranquillity and Settledness of their States, making it to be only Imperiorum Vinculum, a Bond of Government, that the Common-weal might not suffer from the fury of minds secure from all Religion, it is a fancy no less absurd, than it is impious. For that which hath not only been observed and honoured by those who have scarce had any form of a civill Regiment amongst them, but even generally assented unto by the opinions and practice of the whole world, is not a Law of Policy and civill Institution, but an inbred and secret Law of Nature dictated by the consciences of men, and assented unto, without and above any humane imposition. Nor else is it possible for Legal institutions, and the closest and most intricate conveyances of Humane Policy so much to entangle the hearts of men (of themselves inclinable to liberty) nor to fetter their consciences, as thereby only to bring them to a regular conformity unto all government for fear of such a God, to whose Infiniteness, Power and Majesty they Assent by none but a civill Tradition. It must be a visible character of a Deity acknowledged in the Soul, an irresistible Principle in Nature, and the secret witness of the heart of man, that must constrain it unto those sundry religious ceremonies (observed among all Nations) wherein even