s, and their country are in any
period of time entirely indifferent.

And indeed the want of resemblance in this case so entirely destroys
belief, that except those few, who upon cool reflection on the
importance of the subject, have taken care by repeated meditation to
imprint in their minds the arguments for a future state, there scarce
are any, who believe the immortality of the soul with a true and
established judgment; such as is derived from the testimony of
travellers and historians. This appears very conspicuously wherever
men have occasion to compare the pleasures and pains, the rewards and
punishments of this life with those of a future; even though the case
does not concern themselves, and there is no violent passion to disturb
their judgment. The Roman Clatholicks are certainly the most zealous of
any sect in the Christian world; and yet you'll find few among the
more sensible people of that communion who do not blame the
Gunpowder-treason, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew, as cruel and
barbarous, though projected or executed against those very people, whom
without any scruple they condemn to eternal and infinite punishments.
All we can say in excuse for this inconsistency is, that they really do
not believe what they affirm concerning a future state; nor is there any
better proof of it than the very inconsistency.

We may add to this a remark; that in matters of religion men take a
pleasure in being terrifyed, and that no preachers are so popular, as
those who excite the most dismal and gloomy passions. In the common
affairs of life, where we feel and are penetrated with the solidity of
the subject, nothing can be more disagreeable than fear and terror; and
it is only in dramatic performances and in religious discourses, that
they ever give pleasure. In these latter cases the imagination reposes
itself indolently on the idea; and the passion, being softened by the
want of belief in the subject, has no more than the agreeable effect of
enlivening the mind, and fixing the attention.

The present hypothesis will receive additional confirmation, if we
examine the effects of other kinds of custom, as well as of other
relations. To understand this we must consider, that custom, to which
I attribute all belief and reasoning, may operate upon the mind in
invigorating an idea after two several ways. For supposing that in all
past experience we have found two objects to have been always conjoined
together, it i