A27004:801
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.
And for the Atheists, they are more unhappy too, so far as they are rational and considerate. For they have no more happiness than the beasts to comfort them, while they look for none hereafter: and they have in all the way the foresight of their end: they fore-know their great probability of sickness, and painful tormenting diseases: they fore-know ⟨p. 143⟩the certainty of their death:1 they know how all their sport and pleasure will end, and leave them in dolour, and how their corps must be rotting and turn to dust: they fore-see abundance of crosses in their way: they are troubled with cares for the time to come. A beast hath none of this fore-knowledge, and none of the fore-thoughts of pain or dying, but only fearfully flieth from a present danger. Moreover the poor Atheist, having no certainty of the truth of his own opinion, (that there is no other life) is oft haunted with fears of it, and especially when approaching death doth awake both his reason and his fears: he then thinks, O what if there should be another world, where I must live in misery for my sin! In despite of him, some such fears will haunt him. Judge then whether the use of reason be not to make man a more deluded and tormented creature than the brutes, if so be there were no life after this?
And for the Atheists, they are more unhappy too, so far as they are rational and considerate. For they have no more happiness than the beasts to comfort them, while they look for none hereafter: and they have in all the way the foresight of their end: they fore-know their great probability of sickness, and painful tormenting diseases: they fore-know ⟨p. 143⟩the certainty of their death:1 they know how all their sport and pleasure will end, and leave them in dolour, and how their corps must be rotting and turn to dust: they fore-see abundance of crosses in their way: they are troubled with cares for the time to come. A beast hath none of this fore-knowledge, and none of the fore-thoughts of pain or dying, but only fearfully flieth from a present danger. Moreover the poor Atheist, having no certainty of the truth of his own opinion, (that there is no other life) is oft haunted with fears of it, and especially when approaching death doth awake both his reason and his fears: he then thinks, O what if there should be another world, where I must live in misery for my sin! In despight of him, some such fears will haunt him. Judge then whether the use of reason be not to make man a more deluded and tormented creature than the bruits, if so be there were no life after this?