imaginable, without setting up Fear, instead of Love, as the ruling
principle in the blessed. And what was the moral tendency of the
doctrine? I had never borne to dwell upon it: but I before long
suspected that it promoted malignity and selfishness, and was the real
clue to the cruelties perpetrated under the name of religion. For he
who does dwell on it, must comfort himself under the prospect of his
brethren's eternal misery, by the selfish expectation of personal
blessedness. When I asked whether I had been guilty of this
selfishness, I remembered that I had often mourned, how small a part
in my practical religion the future had ever borne. My heaven and my
hell had been in the present, where my God was near me to smile or to
frown. It had seemed to me a great weakness in my faith, that I never
had any vivid imaginations or strong desires of heavenly glory: yet
now I was glad to observe, that it had at least saved me from getting
so much harm from the wrong side of the doctrine of a future life.

Before I had worked out the objections so fully as here stated, I
freely disclosed my thoughts to the friend last named, and to his
wife, towards whom he encouraged me to exercise the fullest frankness.
I confess, I said nothing about the Unitarian book; for something told
me that I had violated Evangelical decorum in opening it, and that I
could not calculate how it would affect my friend. Certainly no Romish
hierarchy can so successfully exclude heretical books, as social
enactment excludes those of Unitarians from our orthodox circles.
The bookseller dares not to exhibit their books on his counter: all
presume them to be pestilential: no one knows their contents or dares
to inform himself. But to return. My friend's wife entered warmly into
my new views; I have now no doubt that this exceedingly distressed
him, and at length perverted his moral judgment: he himself examined
the texts of the Old Testament, and attempted no answer to them.