Fourthly, When the child hears, that God is the rewarder of good actions, and the punisher of evil ones, and that the most exquisite future happiness or misery (described by a great variety of particulars and emblems) are prepared by him for the good and bad respectively; he feels strong hopes and fears rise alternately in his mind, according to the judgment which he passes upon his own actions, founded partly upon the previous judgment of others, partly upon an imperfect moral sense begun to be generated in him.
And laying all these things together it will appear, that, amongst Jews and Christians, children begin probably with a definite visible idea of God; but that by degrees this is quite obliterated, without any thing of a stable precise nature succeeding in its room; and that, by farther degrees, a great variety of strong secondary ideas, i.e. mental affections, (attended indeed by visible ideas, to which proper words are affixed, as of angels; the general judgment, &c.) recur in their turns, when they think upon God, i.e. when this word, or any of its equivalents, or any equivalent phrase or symbol, strike the mind strongly, so that it dwells upon them for a sufficient time, and is affected by them in a sufficient degree.
Amongst heathen nations, where idolatry and polytheism prevail, the case is different; but this difference may easily be understood by applying the foregoing method of reasoning to the circumstances of the heathen world.
I will now inquire more particularly into the nature and origin of the affections exerted towards God. They may be ranked under two general heads, love and fear; agreeably to the general division of the sympathetic affections into benevolence and malevolence. However, the analogy here is not a complete one, as will be seen presently.
To the love of God may be referred gratitude, confidence, and resignation; also enthusiasm, which may be considered as a degeneration of it. To the fear, reverence (which is a mixture of love and fear); also superstition and atheism, which are degenerations of the fear of God.
The love of God, with its associates, gratitude, confidence, and resignation, is generated by the contemplation of his bounty and benignity to us, and to all his creatures, as these appear from the view of the natural world, the declarations of the Scriptures, or a man’s own observation and experience in respect of the events of life. It is supported, and much increased, by the consciousness of upright intentions, and sincere endeavours, with the consequent hope of a future reward, and by prayer vocal and mental, public and private, inasmuch as this gives a reality and force to all the secondary ideas before spoken of. Frequent conversation with devout persons, and frequent reading of devout books, have great
