Chapter IV.

Though the preceding argument, drawn from the character which unassisted reason cannot fail to ascribe to the Deity, seems amply sufficient to evince that the expected distribution of his favour and enmity is not such as to stimulate useful, and to discountenance pernicious conduct (regarding merely the present life); yet I shall subjoin a few considerations in addition, which may tend to corroborate and enforce my principles.

1. Suppose that by any peculiar perversion of reason, all belief in a God or in a future state should die away among the votaries of some Pagan system. Is it not perfectly unquestionable, that all which had been before conceived as the injunctions of natural religion, would at once be neglected and forgotten? We need not take any trouble to page 38 demonstrate this, partly because it is so obvious a consequence, partly because it is always implied in the outcry raised against atheistical writings.

But the sources of pleasure and of pain, in this community, would still remain unaltered with regard to the present life, even in the state of impiety into which they had just plunged. What had been useful or pernicious to them before, would still continue to be so. They would have precisely the same motive to encourage the former and to repress the latter. Can any reason be given why their rewards and punishments should be insufficient to effect this end? There will still, therefore, remain in the bosom of each individual, ample motive to behaviour beneficial to the society—ample motive against conduct injurious to it.

To select a particular example. He who was, before the influx of disbelief, a skilful and diligent tradesman or physician, will he on a sudden become imprudent or remiss? Will he become indifferent to the acquisition of emolument and importance? It will not surely be contended, that any such alteration of character or conduct is to be anticipated. Apply a similar supposition to the same man in other capacities—as a father, a husband, a trustee, or any other function in which the happiness of some among his fellows depends upon his conduct. In neither of these cases will there be any motive for him to deviate from his former behaviour, supposing that to have been valuable and virtuous. But all the transactions, in which a man's conduct affects his fellow-creatures, may be comprised under some relation of this sort—and in none of these situations will he have any motive to exchange a beneficial for a noxious course of action. Consequently the expiration of religious belief will leave perfectly sufficient motive for the maintenance of conduct really useful to mankind.

If the practices enjoined by natural religion would expire without its support, this must be because there is no motive left to perform them. But to say that there is no such motive, proves that the practices produce no temporal benefit whatever: E converso, therefore, he who would maintain that pious works are temporally beneficial, must also affirm, that there would be motive enough to perform them, supposing our earthly existence to terminate in anni- page 39 hilation. But no one ever thinks of asserting this: On the contrary, the vital necessity of implicit belief, as an incentive, is loudly proclaimed, and the certain extinction of all religious performances, if unbelief should become general, is announced and deplored. It is altogether inconsistent and contradictory, therefore, to maintain, that there is any temporal benefit annexed to these practices—since this, if true, must constitute a motive common both to believers and unbelievers.

2. If natural religion consisted in the practice of actions beneficial to mankind in the present life, the actions enjoined by it would be the same all over the earth. The sources of human pleasure and pain are similar everywhere, and therefore the modes of multiplying both one and the other will be similar throughout. Take, for example, any particular branch of behaviour which is justly extolled as highly conducive to human happiness: You will find justice, veracity, or prudence, precisely the same in their nature, although practised with very different degrees of strictness, both in the East, and in the West. If therefore piety consisted of a collection of qualities calculated to produce temporal benefit, you would discover the same identity between Pagan and Christian piety, as there is between Pagan and Christian justice or veracity.

But the very reverse is most notoriously the fact. The injunctions and the practices of one religion are altogether different from those of every other. Believers in any one of them will view the rest with abhorrence. A Christian who visits a country where his religion has never been heard of, will doubtless expect to meet with just or veracious men, varying in frequency according to circumstances: but he will never once dream of discovering any Christians there. Christianity therefore does not consist in the manifestation of qualities which confer temporal benefit on mankind, since these are capable of universal growth in every climate.

A mere inquiry into the meaning of words will suffice to corroborate this. When we describe an individual as belonging to any particular religion, the epithet implies that he entertains a certain set of persuasions, attested either by his own confession, or by a conformity, besides, to a page 40 peculiar class of ceremonial practices which characterize the system. But by merely indicating the religion to which he adheres, no information has been conveyed as to his moral qualities, or whether his conduct is beneficial or noxious to his fellows. It may be either one or the other, whatever be the religion he adopts or believes in. In order to state with which class it ought to be ranked, we must employ a very different language. We must describe him as a good Pagan or a bad Pagan—a just or an unjust Mussulman—veracious or a liar.

Consequently an adherence to the injunctions of religion is something entirely different from an habitual performance of beneficial actions. For the latter are everywhere uniform and identical, while the mandates of religion are infinitely various: And farther, in mentioning the system of religion to which any individual belongs, we do not at all state whether his conduct is beneficent or pernicious—therefore an adherence to the system is perfectly consistent either with friendship or enmity to mankind.

3. If the injunctions of piety inculcated performance or abstinence merely according as the action specified was beneficial or injurious in the present life, religion would be precisely coincident with human laws. For these latter are destined only to ensure the same end, employing temporal instead of posthumous sanctions. Religion would command and forbid the very same actions as the legislator, merely reinforcing his uncertain punishments with something more exquisite and more inevitable at the close of life. But it would give no new direction, of its own and for itself, to human conduct; It would originate no peculiar duties or crimes, but would appear simply as an auxiliary, to second and confirm that bias which the legislator would have attempted to imprint without it.

Such would have been the case had the mandates of natural religion a tendency to produce temporal happiness. How widely different is the state of the fact! Throughout the globe, under every various system, we observe the most innocuous of human pleasures criminated and interdicted by piety; pleasures such as the worst of human legislators never forbad, and never could discover any pretence for forbidding. We observe a peculiar path of merit and page 41 demerit traced out exclusively by religion—embracing numerous actions which the law has left unnoticed, and which we may therefore infer, are not recognized as deserving either reward or punishment with reference to the present life. It is altogether impossible, therefore, that the mandates of natural religion can be directed to the promotion of temporal happiness, since they diverge so strikingly from the decrees of the legislators. Whatever other end they have in view, it cannot be the same as his.

Indeed in modern times an express discussion has arisen, whether the civil magistrate can with propriety interfere at all in matters of religion. Among the more enlightened thinkers, the doctrine of toleration, or that of leaving every man to recommend himself to God by the methods which he himself prefers, so long as he abstains from injuring others, seems to be fully recognized. Scarcely any one now is found to vindicate the exaction of a forced uniformity of worship. But the very existence of the dispute decisively implies, that religion is not naturally coincident, in her injunctions, with laws—that no pious ritual is of a character, tending in itself to promote the happiness of society. The intolerant party attempted to enforce the propriety of giving to law an express extension over an apparently independent province; their opponents endeavoured to maintain this province still untouched and unregulated. If these acts could have been shown to be productive of temporal benefit or evil, this would have been the point on which the question would have been determined, as it is with regard to other cases of human conduct. No one would have contested the necessity, in the present times at least, of interdicting any acts of worship which might consist in wounding or plundering a neighbour. But the actual point in dispute was, whether out of a number of different rituals, perfectly on a level regarding temporal profit or injury, any particular one should be singly permitted and all the rest forbidden. The argument on one side was, that the Deity preferred the species of worship which they were advocating; the other side protested against this doctrine, as an unwarranted assumption of infallibility.

It is not my purpose to enter farther into this question, page 42 and I have only adduced it in order to evince, that the mandates of religion are altogether separate in their nature and application from those of law, and therefore cannot possibly be similar in the end which they are destined to ensure—and also that this separation is virtually implied in both sides of the dispute on freedom of worship.

4. We uniformly find religious injunctions divided into two branches, the first embracing our duty to God, the second our duty to man. However beneficial may be the tendency of this latter section, it is quite impossible that the former can produce any temporal happiness. For it is, by the very definition, a rule restrictive of our conduct on those occasions when the interests of other men are not at all concerned. On these occasions the legislator would have left us unfettered, since every man naturally selects that path which is most conducive to his temporal felicity. If any other course is thrust upon him from without, it must infallibly be a sacrifice of earthly happiness.

That branch therefore, at least, of religious injunctions, which is termed our duty to God, must be regarded as detrimental to human felicity in this life. It is a deduction from the pleasures of the individual, without at all benefiting the species. It must be considered, so far as the present life is concerned, as a tax paid for the salutary direction which the branch termed our duty to man is said to imprint upon human conduct, and for the special and unequalled efficacy, with which these sanctions are alleged to operate. Supposing also the operation of this latter branch to be noxious instead of salutary, the payment of the tax will constitute so much additional evil.

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