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Those things are not what we call accidental, or to be met with only now and then; but they are things of every day's experience: they proceed from general laws, very general ones, by which God governs the world, in the natural course of his providence. And they are so analogous, to what Religion teaches us concerning the future punishment of the wicked, so much of a piece with it, that both would naturally be expressed in the very same words, and manner of description. In the book of Proverbs, for instance, Wisdom is introduced, as frequenting the most public places of resort, and as rejected when she offers herself as the natural appointed guide of human life. How long, speaking to those who are passing through it, how long, ye simple ones, will ye love folly, and the scorners delight in their scorning and fools hate knowledge? Turn ye at my reproof. Behold I will pour out my spirit upon you, I will make known my words unto you. But upon being neglected, Because I have called, and ye refused, I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at naught all my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me. This passage, every one sees, is poetical, and some parts of it are highly figurative; but their meaning is obvious. And the thing intended is expressed more literally in the following words; For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord-therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with, their own devices. For the security of the simple shall slay them and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. And the whole passage is so equally applicable to what we experience, in the present world, concerning the consequences of men's actions, and to what Religion teaches us is to be expected in another, that it may be questioned which of the two was principally intended. Indeed when one has been recollecting the proper proofs of a future state of rewards and punishments, no-thing methinks can give one so sensible an apprehension of the latter, or representation of it to the mind; as observing, that after the many disregarded checks, ad-monitions, and warnings, which people meet with in the ways of vice and folly and extravagance: warnings from their very nature; from the examples of others; from the lesser inconveniences which they bring upon themselves; from the instructions of wise and virtuous men: after these have been long despised, scorned, ridiculed: after the chief bad consequences, temporal consequences, of their follies, have been delayed for a great while; at length they break in irresistibly, like an armed force: re-pentance is too late to relieve, and can serve only to ag-gravate their distress, the case is become desperate: and poverty and sickness, remorse and anguish, infamy and death, the effects of their own doings, overwhelm them beyond possibility of remedy or escape. This is an account of what is in fact the general constitution of nature. It is not in any sort meant, that, according to what ap-pears at present of the natural course of things, men are always uniformly punished in proportion to their misbe-haviour: but that there are very many instances of misbehaviour punished in the several ways now mentioned, and very dreadful instances too; sufficient, to show what the laws of the universe may admit; and, if thoroughly considered, sufficient fully to answer all objections against the credibility of a future state of punishments, from any imaginations, that the frailty of our nature and external temptations, almost annihilate the guilt of human vices: as well as objections of another sort; from necessity; from suppositions, that the will of an infinite Being cannot be contradicted; or that he must be incapable of offense and provocation. Reflections of this kind are not without their terrors to serious persons, the most free from enthusiasm, and of the greatest strength of mind; but it is fit things be stated and considered as they really are. And there is, in the present age, a certain fearlessness, with regard to what may be hereafter under. the government of God, which nothing but an universally acknowledged demonstration on the side of atheism can justify; and which makes it quite necessary, that men be reminded, and if possible made to feel, that there is no sort of ground for being thus presumptuous, even upon the most skeptical principles. For, may it not be said of any person upon his being born into the world, he may behave so, as to be of no service to it, but by being made an example of the woeful effects of vice and folly? That he may, as any one may, if he will, incur an infamous execution, from the hands of civil justice; or in some other course of extravagance shorten his days; or bring upon himself infamy and diseases worse than death? So that it had been better for him , even with regard to the present world, that he had never been born. And is there any presence of reason, for people to think themselves secure, and talk as if they had certain proof, that, let them act as licentiously as they will, there can be nothing analogous to this, with regard to a future and more general interest, under the providence and government of the same God?

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