A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

xivINTRODUCTION.addicted to the investigation, his whole life would benearly consumed in adjusting his principles. As soonalmost as he began to act, he would be summoned out ofthe world. These disadvantages would be unavoidable,supposing that all mankind were devoted to the studyof morals, and anxiously bent upon discovering theirduty. But in the state of things which actually exists,wherein mankind arecompelled from the very natureof their circumstances to devote so much attention tothe cares of subsistence, and so few even of those whoare exempt from them seem inclined to habits ofserious thought of any kind, it is clear, that, uponthis supposition, acting right would be the privilegeonly of the contemplative few.The doctrine which we are now labouring to establishis attended with all the advantages which mankindso eminently need. It supposes man to befurnished with a faculty that enables him to discriminatethe nature of actions, attended with a susceptibilityso vivid and acute as to render regard to its dictatesessential to his happiness : that to obey itconverts existence into a pleasure and a blessing, andto have violated it entails upon him the severestwretchedness he can endure. At the same time theoperation of this faculty is directed to almost everyduty upon which the social happiness of mankind depends.It reaches a multitude of cases which thewisest human laws cannot include in their enactments.Human laws may prevent the grosser forms of fraudand violence, by setting against them penalties sosevere as to render them no longer desirable to thedepraved. But there ai'e ten thousand acts of cruelty,iinkindness, and dishonesty, which they cannot check.