If there is danger,
there ought to be fear; but, if fear is an evil, why should there be
danger? His vindication of pain is of the same kind: pain is useful to
alarm us, that we may shun greater evils, but those greater evils must
be pre-supposed, that the fitness of pain may appear.
Treating on death, he has expressed the known and true doctrine with
sprightliness of fancy, and neatness of diction. I shall, therefore,
insert it. There are truths which, as they are always necessary, do not
grow stale by repetition
"Death, the last and most dreadful of all evils,
is so far from being one, that it is the infallible
cure for all others.
To die, is landing on some silent shore,
Where billows never beat, nor tempests roar.
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er.
GARTH.
For, abstracted from the sickness and sufferings usually attending it,
it is no more than the expiration of that term of life God was pleased
to bestow on us, without any claim or merit on our part. But was it an
evil ever so great, it could not be remedied, but by one much greater,
which is, by living for ever; by which means, our wickedness,
unrestrained by the prospect of a future state, would grow so
insupportable, our sufferings so intolerable by perseverance, and our
pleasures so tiresome by repetition, that no being in the universe could
be so completely miserable, as a species of immortal men.
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