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/512

 not incident to human nature. But experience taught them, and teaches us, that wickedness may swell beyond imagination, and that there are no limits to the madness of impiety.

For a man to revile and insult that God whose power he allows, to ridicule that revelation of which he believes the authority divine, to dare the vengeance of Omnipotence, and cry, "Am not I in sport!" is an infatuation incredible, a degree of madness without a name. Yet there are men who, by walking after their own lusts, and indulging their passions, have reached this stupendous height of wickedness. They have dared to teach falsehoods which they do not themselves believe; and to extinguish in others that conviction which they cannot suppress in themselves.

The motive of their proceeding is sometimes a desire of promoting their own pleasures by procuring accomplices in vice. Man is so far formed for society, that even solitary wickedness quickly disgusts; and debauchery requires its combinations and confederacies, which, as intemperance diminishes their numbers, must be filled up with new proselytes.

Let those who practise this dreadful method of depraving the morals, and ensnaring the soul, consider what they are engaged in! Let them consider what they are promoting, and what means they are employing! Let them pause, and reflect a little, before they do an injury that can never be repaired, before they take away what cannot be restored; before they corrupt the heart of their companion by perverting his opinions, before they lead him into sin, and by destroying his reverence for religion, take away every motive to repentance, and all the means of reformation!

This is a degree of guilt, before which robbery, perjury, and murder, vanish into nothing. No mischief, of which the consequences terminate in our present state, bears any proportion to the crime of decoying our brother into the broad way of eternal misery, and stopping his ears against that holy voice that recalls him to salvation.