"Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die!"
This quotation, when applied to the case in question, the Deists maintain to be unjust, and are for making a new reading, as being rather more applicable, viz.
"Men may live wisely, but fools they often die!"
"Shame!" the Deists cry, "forbear to disturb the departing moralist with your strange dogmas! His sole trust is in his Creator, therefore let his last hours be spent in peace! Your interference is useless, and as it adds to the sufferings of expiring humanity, may well be termed impious and cruel. And further, what conviction can be gained from making public the imbecile and terror-extorted confessions made by the dying; for as Rousseau rightly observes, it is 'our reason that determines our belief, and when, through sickness, that faintly becomes impaired, what dependence can be placed on any opinion we may then adopt?'" All this seems at the first glance very striking and imposing, but is easily refuted. I shall confine myself, however, to only answering the latter part of the above. I maintain, then, that even shouting our dogmas in the ears of the dying,1 and thereby disturbing their last moments, is a mere trifle, when put in competition with the eternal advantages that may by this means accrue to their souls. It is well known, that Christians formerly, more generally than at present, did not scruple to compel men to become converts; and when the heretics, as they were termed, obstinately held out, they actually burnt them for _the love of Christ!_ This manner of proceeding Dr. Paley has, in some measure, justified, 2 by affirming, that as the salvation of the soul is a matter of infinitely more importance than the well-being of the body, so these _converters_, who actually believed salvation to exclusively depend on the reception of their dogmas, may be said to be in some sort excusable, for endeavouring by all the means within their power to save a man's soul, though his body, in consequence, might be devoted to the flames.
2 Vide Haley's Evidences of Christianity, Part III. Chap. vii.
Some, I know, would go further, and urge, that even the burning of those who _were_ converted by the threats of the holy fathers, was not impolitic, since it may be justified as the above principle, of preferring the welfare of the soul to that of the body. For might not a new-made convert, made so against the evidence of his own reason, recant, and thus render all the pious zeal of those _soul-preservers_ quite abortive? Nothing more likely, and therefore to make sure of his eternal felicity, they were equally excusable in committing him to the flames. A similar principle influenced the pious Monk towards the unfortunate Jew, as related in a well-known but somewhat ancient story, concluding with these lines:
