Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/412

 to happen to the good and to the evil, will, at last, certainly distinguish them, by allotting them different conditions beyond the grave; when it will appear, in the sight of men and of angels, how amiable is godliness, and how odious is sin; by the final sentence, which shall bring upon man the consequences of his own actions, so as, that "whatsoever a man shall sow, that shall he reap."

The ancient heathens, with whose notions we are acquainted, how far soever they might have carried their speculations of moral or civil wisdom, had no conception of a future state, except idle fictions, which those who considered them treated as ridiculous; or dark conjectures, formed by men of deep thoughts and great inquiry, but neither, in themselves, capable of compelling conviction, nor brought at all to the knowledge of the gross of mankind, of those who lived in pleasure and idleness, or in solitude and labour; they were confined to the closet of the student, or the school of the lecturer, and were very little diffused among the busy or the vulgar.

There is no reason to wonder, that many enormities should prevail where there was nothing to oppose them. When we consider the various and perpetual temptations of appetite within, and interest without; when we see, that on every side there is something that solicits the desires, and which cannot be innocently obtained; what can we then expect, but that, notwithstanding all the securities of the law, and all the vigilance of magistrates, those that know of no other world will eagerly make the most of this, and please themselves whenever they can, with very little regard to the right of others?

As the state of the heathens was a state of darkness, it must have been a state, likewise, of disorder; a state of perpetual contest for the goods of this life, and by consequence of perpetual danger to those who abounded, and of temptation to those that were in want.

The Jews enjoyed a very ample communication of the Divine will, and had a religion which an inspired legislator had prescribed. But even to this nation, the only