The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…

Answ. In all this I speak according to experience: For, 1. Almost all the world believe a life to come: all the Christians, all the Mahometans, and all the Jews, and almost all or most of the known Idolaters and Heathens: their very ⟨p. 132⟩Idolatry intimateth this,¹ when they number their deceased Heroes with their gods. And though the power of this belief is debilitated with the most, (and therefore piety and virtue proportionably perisheth) yet that common dull belief of it which they have, being in a business of unspeakable consequence, doth restrain them so far as they are restrained.

1. 1Stoici dicunt esse Daemones quibus insit hominum miseratio, inspectors rerum humanarum: Heroas quoque solutas corporibus sapientum animas. Laert. in Zenone.Stoici dicunt esse Daemones quibus insit hominum miseratio, inspectores rerum humanarum: Heroas quoque solutas corporibus sapientum animas. Laert. in Zenone.

2. Those that believe it not, are yet in an uncertainty; and the possibility of rewards and punishments hereafter, keepeth up much of the order that is left.

3. Those few Countries which believe that there is no life to come, (or rather those persons in some Countries) do proportionably increase or excel in wickedness: they give up themselves to sensuality and lusts, to pride, and covetousness, and revenge, and cruelty; and are usually worse than others, as their belief is worse; what maketh Cannibals more savage than other people? What made a Nero, a Heliogabalus, &c. such swine? what made Rome it self at that pass, that Seneca saith, more died by poison of servants hands, (and secret murders) than by Kings: (even in days of such great and common cruelty.) All was, because mens consciences were from under the hopes and fears of another life: and if all were so, then all would live accordingly.