Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/125

 Rh as to run away from a Snail, and very ruefully and frightfully to look back, as being afraid she would follow him, as Erasmus more largely and pleasantly tells the whole Story?

14. But that Nature should implant in Man such a strong propension to Religion which is the Reverence of a Deity, there being neither God nor Angel nor Spirit in the world, is such a Slur committed by her, as there can be in no wise excogitated any Excuse. For if there were a higher Species of things to laugh at us as we do at the Ape, it might seem more tolerable. But there can be no end, neither ludicrous nor serious, of this Religious property in Man, unless there be something of an higher Nature then himself in the world. Wherefore Religion being convenient to no other Species of things besides Man, it ought to be convenient at least for himself: But supposing there were no God, there can be nothing worse for Man then Religion.

15. For whether we look at the External Effects thereof, such as are bloody Massacres, the disturbance and subversion of Commonweals, Kingdoms and Empires, most savage Tortures of particular persons, the extirpating and dispossession of whole Nations, as it hath hapned in America, where the remorseless Spaniards, in pretence of being educated in a better Religion then the Americans, vilified the poor Natives so much, that they made nothing of knocking them on the head merely to feed their dogs with them; with many such unheard of Cruelties: Or whether we consider the great affliction that that severe Governess of the life of Man brings upon those Souls she seises on, by affrighting horrours of Conscience, by puzling and befooling them in the free use of their Reason, and putting a bar to more large searches into the pleasing knowledge of Nature, by anxious cares and disquieting fears concerning their state in the Life to come, by curbing them in their natural and kindly enjoyments of the Life present, and making bitter all the pleasures and contentments of it by some checks of Conscience and suspicions that they doe something now that they may rue eternally hereafter; besides those ineffable Agonies of Mind that they undergoe that are more generously Religious, and contend after the participation of the Divine Nature, they being willing, though with unspeakable pain, to be torn from themselves to become one with that Universal Spirit that ought to have the guidance of all things, and by an unsatiable desire after that just and decorous temper of Mind (whereby all Arrogancy should utterly cease in us, and that which is due to God, that is, all that we have or can doe, should be lively and sensibly attributed to him, and we fully and heartily acknowledge our selves to be nothing, that is, be as little elated, or no more relish the glory and praise of Men, then if we had done nothing or were not at all in being) do plunge themselves into such damps and deadness of Spirit, that to be buried quick were less torture by far then such dark privations of all the joys of life, then such sad and heart-sinking Mortifications: I say, whether we consider these inward pangs of the Soul, or the external outrages caused by Religion (and Religious pretence will animate men to the committing such violences as bare Reason and the single Passions of the Mind unback'd with the fury of Rh