fear, separates the love of God from the fear of him (§131); but because love of God consists in delight in the consideration of the divine perfections (§130); he therefore who fears God without any knowledge of his perfections, is called superstitious; and hence it follows, that a good man ought carefully to avoid <92> all superstition, because it proceeds from ignorant servile fear.†
SECTION CXXXIII
Its effects.
All superstition, internal and external, being inconsistent with just apprehensions of the divine perfections (§132), one who has just notions of them, will keep himself carefully from all slavish fear of created beings, and from those absurd errors, whereby God is represented as avaritious and placable by gifts; and likewise from magical arts and divinations, from idol-worship; and, in fine, from this absurd opinion, that God may be propitiated by mere external worship, tho’ not accompanied either with internal fear or love.* <93>
SECTION CXXXIV
And to repose our trust in God.
Further, since none can represent the divine perfections to himself without presenting to his mind the ideas of perfect wisdom, power and goodness; such a person cannot but place his confidence and trust in God, and be satisfied in his mind with the divine administration; and thus be disposed to submit to whatever may happen to him in the course of divine providence with a firm and cheerful soul; nor will he be stumbled because evils fall upon the good, and good things fall to the share of the wicked, but be persuaded that all things shall co-operate to the good of the virtuous, to good in the whole.
SECTION CXXXV
Of internal and external worship.
In these and the like offices does that internal worship of God consist, by which we understand the love, fear and trust, with which we embrace God in our pure minds. But man being so framed, that his affections naturally exert themselves in certain external actions, his internal love of God could not be thought sincere unless it exerted itself in external love; i.e. in such external acts as express love, fear, and resignation towards God.*<94>
SECTION CXXXVI
External worship ought to flow from the love of God.
Since therefore the external worship of God consists in actions flowing from love, fear, and resignation towards God (§135), but love must naturally exert itself in praising the Being in whose perfection and happiness we highly delight, it must be our duty always to speak honourably of God, and with due reverence, and to excite others by our actions to love him, to sing praises to him, and not to dishonour his name by rash swearing, by perjury, or by whatever irreverent discourse.
SECTION CXXXVII
As also from the fear of God.
From the fear and obedience we owe to God as the most perfect of Beings, we may justly conclude that all our actions ought to be conformed to his precepts, and that we ought always to have in mind his omnipresence and omniscience, by which he discerns our most secret thoughts; whence it follows, that all hypocrisy and dissimulation ought to be avoided, as being necessarily accompanied with injurious and contemptible apprehensions of God.* <95>
SECTION CXXXVIII
Confidence ought to be placed in God.
In fine, he who places his trust in God (§134), will never cease to send up pure devout prayers to him, and will cheerfully embrace every occasion of speaking well of and with God privately and publicly. For this is what right reason prescribes concerning the external worship of God. As for the external rites, it is likewise obvious, that public worship cannot be performed unless certain times and places be devoted to it; and a duty of such importance ought to be done with all decency; but as to the rites or ceremonies themselves, reason can lay down no other rule about them, but in general, that they ought to be in every respect such as are proper to recal to our minds those sentiments in which divine worship consists.
REMARKS on This Chapter
I have but little to add to what our Author hath said of Religion. Our Harrington justly lays down the following truths relative to religion as aphorisms. “Nature is of God: some part in every religion is natural; an universal effect demonstrates an universal cause; an universal cause is not so much natural, as it is nature itself; but every man has either to his terror or his consolation, some sense of religion: man may therefore be rather defined a religious than a rational creature; in regard that other creatures have something of reason, but there is nothing of religion.”2 So we frequently find ancient philosophers reasoning about human nature and religion, as I have shewn from several authorities in the 7th chapter of my Principles of Moral Philosophy, the whole of which treatise is designed to be a demonstration à posteriori, i.e. from the wisdom and goodness of providence, that the whole world is made and governed by an infinitely perfect mind, in the contemplation, adoration and imitation of whom the chief happiness of man consists, according to his make and frame. The arguments, à priori, for the proof of a God, are shewn in the conclusion of that essay not to be so abstruse as is said by some; and they are more fully explained in my Christian Philosophy. The end, the happiness, the duty of a Being (all which ways of speaking must mean the same thing) can only be inferred from its frame and constitution, its make and situation. But nothing can be more evident than, “That man is made to love order, to delight in the idea of its universal prevalence throughout nature, and to have joy and satisfaction from the <96> consciousness of order within his own breast, and in the conduct of his actions.” All the joys of which man is susceptible, which never nauseate or cloy, but are equally remote from grossness and disgust, or remorse, may be reduced to the love of order and harmony: nothing else can give him any pleasure in contemplation or in practice, but good order; the belief of good administration in the government of the world; the regular exercises of those generous affections which tend to public good; the consciousness of inward harmony; and the prevalence of good order and publick happiness in society, through regular and good government: to these classes are the principal pleasures for which man is framed by nature, reducible, as might be shewn, even from an analysis of the pleasures belonging to refined imagination or good taste in the polite arts: but whence such a constitution? Does it not necessarily lead us to acknowledge an infinitely perfect author of all things; an universal mind, the former and governor of the universe, which is itself perfect order and harmony, perfect goodness, perfect virtue? Whence could we have such a make? whence could we have understanding, reason, the capacity of forming ideas of general order and good, and of delighting so highly in it, but from such a Being? Thus the ancients reasoned. Thus the sacred writers often reason. And this argument is obvious to every understanding. It is natural to the mind of man. It is no sooner presented to it than it cleaves to it, takes hold of it with supreme satisfaction, and triumphs in it. And what part of nature does not lead us naturally to this conception, if we ever exercise our understanding, or if we do not wilfully shut our eyes? But having fully enlarged upon this and several other arguments for the Being of a God in my Principles of Moral Philosophy; I shall here only remark, 1. That Polybius, Cicero, and almost all the ancients, have acknowledged that a public sense of religion is necessary to the well-being and support of society: society can hardly subsist without it: or at least, it is the most powerful mean for restraining from vice, and promoting and upholding those virtues by which society subsists, and without which every thing that is great and comely in society, must soon perish and go to ruin. 2. That with regard to private persons, he who does not often employ his mind in reviewing the perfections of the Deity, and in consoling and strengthening his mind by the comfortable and mind-greatning reflexions to which meditation upon the universal providence of an all-perfect mind, naturally, and as it were necessarily lead, deprives himself of the greatest joy, the noblest exercise and entertainment
