Suspicious in the principle which produces it. For, how has this uncertainty of a future state been formed in the mind of the unbeliever? It requires only to trace the origin of an opinion, to know whether the interests of truth, or the passions, have established it on the earth.
At his birth, the impious man bore the principles of natural religion common to all men: he found written on his heart a law which forbade violence, injustice, treachery, and every action to another, which he would not have done to himself. Education fortified these sentiments of nature: he was taught to know a God, [to love and fear him: virtue was shown to him in the rules; it was rendered amiable to him in the examples; and though, within himself, he felt inclinations in opposition to duty, yet, when he yielded to their seductions, his heart secretly espoused the cause of virtue against his own weakness.
Thus did the impious man at first live on the earth. With the rest of mankind, he adored a Supreme Being, respected his laws, dreaded his chastisements, and expected his promises. Whence comes it, then, that he no longer acknowledges a God; that crimes appear to him as human policies; hell a vulgar prejudice; a future state a chimera; and the soul a spark which is extinguished with the body? By what exertion has he attained to the knowledge of things so new and so surprising? By what means has he succeeded to rid himself of these ancient prejudices, so rooted among men, so consistent with the feelings of his heart and the lights of reason? Has he searched into, and maturely examined, them? Has he adopted every solid precaution, which an affair, the most important in life, requires? Has he withdrawn himself from the commerce of men, in solitude, to allow leisure for reflection and study? Has he purified his heart, lest the passions may have misled him? What anxious attentions and solicitude to investigate the truth are required, to reject the first feelings which the soul has imbibed!
Listen, my brethren, and adore the justice of God on these corrupted hearts whom he delivers up to the vanity of their own judgment. In proportion as his manners become dissolute, the rules have appeared suspicious; in proportion as he became debased, he has endeavoured to persuade himself that man is like the beast. He is become impious only by shutting up every avenue which might lead him to the truth; by no longer regarding religion as an important concern; by searching into it only for the purpose of dishonouring it by blasphemies and sacrilegious witticisms. He is become impious only by seeking to steel himself against the cries of his own conscience, and delivering himself up to the most infamous gratifications. It is by that path that he has attained to the wonderful and sublime science of unbelief; it is to these grand efforts that he owes the discovery of a truth, of which the rest of men before him had either been ignorant, or had detested.
Behold the source of unbelief, the corruption of the heart. Yes,
