A discourse concerning the Redeemer's dominion over the invisible world, and the entrance thereinto

'Tis so much the more a deplorable and monstrous thing, that so many, not only against the light of their own Reason, but of Divine Revelation, are so industrious to unman themselves. And having so effectually in a great degree done it really, and in practice, aim to do it in a more compendious way notionally, and in principle too. And make use (or show) of Reason to prove themselves not to be reasonable Creatures: or to divest themselves of the principal dignity, and distinction of the Rational Nature. And are incomparably herein more unnatural than such as we commonly count […] upon themselves, who only act against their own bodily life, but these ⟨p. 46⟩against the much nobler life of their Soul; They against the life of an individual; These against their own whole species, at once. And how deplorable is their case, that count it their interest, to be in no possibility of being happy! when yet their so great dread of a future state, as to urge them upon doing the most notorious violence to their own faculties to rid themselves of it, is a very convictive Argument of its reality. For their dread still pursues, and sticks close to them. This shows it lies deep in the nature of things which they cannot alter. The terrible Image is still before their Eyes; and their principal Refuge lies only in diverting, in not attending to it. And they can so little trust to their own Sophistical reasonings against it, that when they have done all they can, they ⟨p. 47⟩must owe what they have of ease and quiet in their own Minds, not so much to any strength of reason they apprehend in their own thoughts, as in not thinking. A bold jest may sometimes provoke others laughter, when it doth not extinguish their own fear. A suspicion a formido oppositi will still remain, a misgiving, that they cannot nullify the great Hades, pull down the spacious Fabric of Heaven, or undermine the profound Abyss of Hell by a profane scoff. They will in time discern the difference between the evanid passion of a sudden fright, that takes its rise from imagination, and the fixed dread which is founded in the Reason of things. As one may between a fright in a dream, and the dread of a condemned Criminal, with whom, sleeping, and waking, the ⟨p. 48⟩real state of his case is still the same.