It begets
cheerfulness and activity and alacrity and a lively enjoyment of
every social and sensual pleasure: And during this state of mind,
men have little leisure or inclination to think of the unknown
invisible regions. On the other hand, every disastrous accident
alarms us, and sets us on enquiries concerning the principles whence
it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the
mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to
every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom
our fortune is supposed entirely to depend.
No topic is more usual with all popular divines than to display
the advantages of affliction, in bringing men to a due sense of
religion; by subduing their confidence and sensuality, which, in
times of prosperity, make them forgetful of a divine providence. Nor
is this topic confined merely to modern religions. The ancients have
also employed it.
, says
a G/REEK\ historian,[5] but with all her gifts has ever conjoined some disastrous
circumstance, in order to chastize men into a reverence for the
gods, whom, in a continued course of prosperity, they are apt to
neglect and forget>.
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