The Religion of Nature Delineated

to their vices and passions, their old impressions and parties, and so their reason is not general, nor has its due extent or influence. Others, whose reason is uncultivated and weak, though they have virtuous inclinations, many times fall into superstition and absurdities: misled by authorities and overawed by old, or formal, modes of speaking, and grave nonsense. Many, if not the most, seem to have scarce any notion of reason or virtue at all, but act fortuitously, or as they see other folks act: moved either by bodily propensions or by example. Some few there are who endeavor to improve their understandings, to discover what is agreeable to reason, and to fix their opinions⁠—and conduct their lives accordingly. And in all these several kinds there are various degrees of elevation in knowledge and virtue and of immersion in vice and ignorance, and new differences arising endlessly. All this is visible.

Now the soul, reflecting, finds in itself two general faculties: one by which it understands, and judges, and reasons (all which I comprehend under the term “rational faculties,” or “reason”); and another, by which it wills, or determines to act, according to the judgments and conclusions made in the upper part of it. And the more perfectly it performs these operations (i.e. the more truly it reasons, and the more readily it wills and executes the decisions of reason), the more perfect, certainly, it must be in its kind; and the more imperfectly, the more imperfect. The accomplishments, therefore, and perfections of human souls, and the contrary, must be in proportion to the forementioned differences.

XII. According to these differences, then, it is reasonable to think the souls of men will find their stations in the future world.640 This is but a corollary from what goes before.

Objection: Why should we think that God causes things to be in such a manner as that in the future state, men shall be placed and treated according to their merit and the progress they have made in reason and virtue, when we see the case to be widely different in this? Answer: It must be remembered that this is one of those very reasons on which the belief of the soul’s immortality is founded. Now, if it be reasonable to believe there is a future state, because things are dealt unequally now, upon that very score it will be reasonable to think that they are dealt equally641 in that other state.

Here, bodily wants and affections, and such things as proceed from them, do intermix with human affairs, and do confound merit with demerit, knowledge with ignorance: and hence it comes to pass, many times, that bad men enjoy much and good men suffer, and both are, if there is no other state, in their wrong places. But, when the corporeal causes of misplacing shall be removed, spirits (or spirits and their σώματα πνευματικὰ642) may be supposed more regularly to take their due posts and privileges: the impudent and vicious will have no such opportunities of getting into circumstances of which they are unworthy, nor improved and virtuous minds find such obstructions to keep them down in circumstances unworthy of them. Be sure: the more advanced and pure any state is, the more properly will the inhabitants be ranked, and the juster and more natural will the subordination of its members be.

Even here we commonly find men in that kind of business for which they are educated and prepared, men of the same professions generally keeping together, the virtuous and reasonable desiring to be (though they not always can be) with their like,643 and the vicious (as they scarcely cannot be) with theirs. And why should we not think that an association and communion of souls with those of their own size, disposition, and habits may be more universal and complete, when those things which in great measure hinder it, here, shall be no more? If we may think this, certainly those fields or states in which the virtuous and wise644 shall meet must be different from those in which the foolish and wicked shall herd together.645 The very difference of the company will itself create a vast difference in the manner of their living.

XIII. The mansions and conditions of the virtuous and reasoning part must be proportionably better than those of the foolish and vicious. The proposition cannot be inverted, or the case be otherwise, if the constitution of things depends upon a reasonable cause⁠—as I have endeavored to show it does.

Corollary: Hence it follows that the practice of reason (in its just extent) is the great preparative for death, and the means of advancing our happiness through all our subsequent duration. But moreover,

XIV. In the future state, respect will be had not only to men’s reasoning and virtues, or the contrary, but also to their enjoyments and sufferings here.646 Because the forementioned inequalities of this world can by no means be redressed, unless men’s enjoyments and sufferings, taken together with their virtues and vices, are compared and balanced. I say “taken together” because no reason can be assigned why a vicious man should be recompensed for the pains and mischiefs and troubles which he brings upon himself by his vices, as the natural consequences of them; nor, on the other side, why any deductions should be made from the future happiness of a good man upon the score of those innocent enjoyments which are the genuine fruit of his moderation, regularity, other virtues, and sound reasoning.

Corollary: Wicked men will not only be less happy than the wise and virtuous, but be really unhappy in that state to come. For when all the happiness, that answers to those degrees of virtue which they had, and those sufferings which they underwent, above what was the natural effect of their wickedness⁠—I say, when that is subtracted, what remains upon