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/513

 What must be the anguish of such a man, when he becomes sensible of his own crimes! How will he bear the thought of having promoted the damnation of multitudes by the propagation of known delusions! What lasting contrition, what severe repentance, must be necessary for such deep and such accumulated guilt! Surely if blood be required for blood, a soul shall be required for a soul.

There are others who deride religion for the sake of displaying their own imaginations, of following the fashion of a corrupt and licentious age, or gaining the friendship of the great, or the applause of the gay. How mean must that wretch be who can be overcome by such temptations as these! Yet there are men who sell that soul which God has formed for infinite felicity, defeat the great work of their redemption, and plunge into those pains which shall never end, lest they should lose the patronage of villains, and the praise of fools.

I suppose those, whom I am now speaking of, to be in themselves sufficiently convinced of the truth of the Scriptures, and may, therefore, very properly, lay before them the threatenings denounced by God against their conduct.

It may be useful to them to reflect betimes on the danger of "fearing man rather than God;" to consider that it shall avail a man nothing, if he "gain the whole world, and lose his own soul;" and that whoever "shall be ashamed of his Saviour before men, of him will his Saviour be ashamed before his Father which is in heaven."

That none of us may be in the number of those unhappy persons who thus scoff at the means of grace, and relinquish the hope of glory, may God, of his infinite mercy, grant, through the merits of that Saviour who hath brought life and immortality to light!