When melancholy and dejected, he has nothing to do but brood upon
the terrors of the invisible world, and to plunge himself still
deeper in affliction. It may indeed happen, that after he has, in
this manner, engraved the religious opinions deep into his
thought and imagination, there may arrive a change of health or
circumstances, which may restore his good humour, and raising
cheerful prospects of futurity, make him run into the other
extreme of joy and triumph. But still it must be acknowledged,
that, as terror is the primary principle of religion, it is the
passion which always predominates in it, and admits but of short
intervals of pleasure.
Not to mention, that these fits of excessive, enthusiastic
joy, by exhausting the spirits, always prepare the way for equal
fits of superstitious terror and dejection; nor is there any
state of mind so happy as the calm and equable. But this state it
is impossible to support, where a man thinks that he lies in such
profound darkness and uncertainty, between an eternity of
happiness and an eternity of misery. No wonder that such an
opinion disjoints the ordinary frame of the mind, and throws it
into the utmost confusion. And though that opinion is seldom so
steady in its operation as to influence all the actions; yet it
is apt to make a considerable breach in the temper, and to
produce that gloom and melancholy so remarkable in all devout
people.
It is contrary to common sense to entertain apprehensions or
terrors upon account of any opinion whatsoever, or to imagine
that we run any risk hereafter, by the freest use of our reason.
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