408 RUIN AND RECOVERY, &C. annihilation and nothingness. It is this wise and dreadful guard which the blessed God has sét against self- murder, this terrible and eternal curse of hell and damnation, which constrains many miserable creatures to endure the sorrows of this life, and power- fully withholds them froto the destruction of themselves. Their many and wilful crimes and innumerable sins of which they are conscious, forbid their hopes of a happy hereafter, and therefore they rather chose to wear out life under their present and painful burdens, than plunge into an eternity. of unknown miseries. It is one of -these thepoet introduces, crying out pathetically " O that the everlasting had not fixt His cannon'gainst selt-marder!" If you shoùld tell me, the heathens have no knowledge of this heaven or this hell which Christianity and the bible acquaints us with, and yet they through many generations are fond of living, and strive to continue long in this life, notwithstanding all the pretended miseries of it ; I would cite some of the an- cients, as well as modern travellers, to make a reply forme': They would tell us that there is scarce any part of the heathen world, where they have not some notions and fears of punish- ment in a future state for the sins committed in this life, and par- ticularly in the more polite nations of heathenism, they tell us, how unhappy self-murderers are made in that unseen and future world. When Virgil has brought his hero into the world of ghosts, he particularly opens the scene before him, " Where Minos dooms the guilty souls. The next in place and punishment are they, Who prodigally throw their souls away. Fools, who repining at their wretched state, And loathing anxious lité have hurried on their fate : With late repentance, now they would retrieve The bodies they forsook, and wish to live ; Their pains and poverty desire to bear, To view the light of heav',,, and breathe the vital air: But fate forbids : The Stygian floods oppose ; And, with ninecircling streams, the captive souls inclose." Thtis you see the heathen writer makes this life miserable enough, though he shews their greater wretchedness and misery, who plunge themselves, at their own pleasure into the other world, in order to abolish and fly from the distress of the pre- sent life. But in the second place, I answer : II. Suppose this aversion to death, and this love of life to be very universal over all the world, and that without regard to any future state; suppose that all mankind had rather continue in existence in the midst of all their calamities and plagues, than venture into non- existence, andcease to be ; this will not prove that mankind is happy : For the God . of nature, for wise ends, hath wrought this love of life into our flesh and blood originally, and mingled it with all animal natures whatsoever, in order to ,
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