518 THE UNLAWFULNESS 0.F SELF-MURDER. hereafter be deemed a just sacrifice of divine wrath, and for ever unworthy of pardoning grace. SECT. II.Sonze general Dissuasions from Self -murder, by spewing the Folly and Danger of it. WHEN this bloody practice bas been proved to be highly criminal in the sight of God, we canhardly suppose that any other considerations should be more effectual to deter a man who pro- fesses christianity from the guilt of so aggravated a sin: Yet it may be possible to set the dangerous and dreadful consequences of this practice in a fuller view, a more diffusive and affecting light ; for ifyou turn it on all sides it has still some new appear- ances of terror, and furnishes out new dissuasives from the exe- cution of it. I. Consider that it is too dangerous an attempt to venture upon itunless you had a full assurance of its lawfulness. Now suppose the power of your own iniquities, the artifices of the tempter, and the prevailing ill humours of animal nature should join together so fatally as to blind your eyes against the full con- viction of its sinfulness, yet you can never prove that self-mur- der is certainly a lawful thing. The furthest you can go is to suppose, that possibly it may be lawful ; but on the other hand, if you should be under, a mistake, it is a dreadful, it is a fatal, it is, an eternal one. You put yourself beyond all possibility of rectifying this error through all the long ages of futurity. Whatsoever vain fancies some of the heathens have indulged who knew not God, and had very little and dark apprehensions of a future state, yet in the christian world the utmost that the most sanguine or most melancholy among this tribe can well pre- tend is, that perhaps it may be lawful, or at least that it is a little and a very pardonable crime ; and they have been forcedto wink their eyes against the light to arrive at this perhaps. But if it be not pardonable, then nothing remains for the criminal but everlasting. punishment: That terrible word, eternal, eternal, eternal misery, carries such a long doleful accentwith it, and includes such au immeuse train of agonies without hope, that it is infinitely better to bear the sorrows, the trials and uneasinesses of this life for a few short and uncertain years, than rashly to venture upon such a practice, whosepretended and doubtful ad- vantages bear no proportion at all to the infinite and extreme hazard of an endless state of torment. II. Suppose you could by any false reasonings persuade your consciences that the act of self-destruction was no sin, yet are you so sure of the present goodness of your state towards God, and that all your other sins are pardoned, that you could plunge yourself this moment into eternity? It is generally wader a fit of impatience that persons are tempted to destroy
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