A27004:799
The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…
The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural evidence the being of God ... : the second part, of Christianity, proving by evidence supernatural and natural, the certain truth of the Christian belief ... / by Richard Baxter ... ; also an appendix defending the soul's immortality against the Somatists or Epicureans and other pseudo-philosophers.
London: printed by R. White for Fran. Titon, 1667
Part 1 › Chapter 14: That there is a Life of Retribution after this.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
§. 13. XIII. If there were no Life of Retribution hereafter, Man were more vain and miserable than the Brutes by far, and his Reason would but more delude him, and torment him: But the Consequent is absurd: Ergo, so is the Antecedent.
§. 13. XIII. If there were no Life of Retribution hereafter, Man were more vain and miserable than the Bruits by far, and his Reason would but more delude him, and torment him: But the Consequent is absurd: Ergo, so is the Antecedent.
The Major is easily proved by our great experience: for the world consisteth partly of men that believe another life, and partly of them that do not: and Reason maketh them both the more miserable. For the former sort, which is the most of the world, their Reason telleth them, that it is their duty to labour for a happiness hereafter, and to fear and prevent a future misery:1 and so their expectation would be their mere delusion, and their lives would be all spent and ordered in delusion: Like a company of men that should run up and down to prepare for a transplantation into the Moon, and should cut down timber to build there, and provide a stock of cattle to store the grounds there, and buy and sell Lands there;2 such would be the life of man in preparing for another world: and he would be under a double calamity: One, by all this fruitless labour, and another by his fear of future misery, if his labour by temptations should be frustrate, and he should miscarry. To have Reason to lead a man in such a delusory life, and to torment him with the fears of what may befall him after death, is sure to be by reason more unhappy than the beasts, that have none of this.
The Major is easily proved by our great experience: for the world consisteth partly of men that believe another life, and partly of them that do not: and Reason maketh them both the more miserable. For the former sort, which is the most of the world, their Reason telleth them, that it is their duty to labour for a happiness hereafter, and to fear and prevent a future misery: