a slightly edited version of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion said:
And so will all religion, said Philo, except the philosophical and rational kind. Your reasonings are easier to escape from than are my facts. ‘Because finite and temporary rewards and punishments have so great influence, therefore infinite and eternal ones must have so much greater’—this reasoning is not sound. Consider, I beg you, how much we care about present things, and how little concern we express for objects as remote and uncertain ·as the rewards or punishments promised in the after-life·. When preachers declaim against the common behaviour and conduct of the world, they always represent this principle ·of concern for what is close· as the strongest imaginable (which indeed it is); and they describe most of mankind as lying under
its influence, and sunk into the deepest lethargy and lack of concern for their religious interests. Yet these same religious spokesmen, defending religion against attacks, take the motives of religion to be so powerful that civil society couldn’t survive without them; and they aren’t ashamed of this obvious contradiction. Experience shows us, for sure, that •the smallest grain of natural honesty and benevolence has more effect on men’s conduct than •the most grandly inflated views suggested by theological theories and systems. A man’s natural inclination works on him all the time; it is always present to his mind, and mingles itself with every view and consideration; whereas religious motives, where they act at all, operate only by fits and starts, and it is scarcely possible for them to become altogether habitual to the mind. The force of the greatest gravitational pull, say the physicists, is incomparably smaller than the force of the least push; yet it is certain that the smallest gravity will eventually prevail over a large push, because no strokes or blows can be repeated with such constancy as attraction and gravitation.
Another advantage that inclination has ·in the tussle with duty·: it brings into play on its side all the sharpness and ingenuity of the mind, and when it is placed in opposition to religious principles it seeks every method and device for eluding them—and it nearly always succeeds! Who can explain the heart of man, or account for those strange special-pleadings and excuses with which people let themselves off when they are following their inclinations in opposition to their religious duty?
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We must further consider that philosophers, who cultivate reason and reflection, have less need of such ·religious· motives to keep them under the restraint of morals; and that common people—the only ones who may need religion ·to keep them in order·—can’t possibly have a religion so pure that it represents God as being pleased with nothing but virtue in human behaviour. Pleas for God’s favour are generally understood to be either frivolous observances, or rapturous ecstasies, or a bigoted credulity ·and therefore not to reflect or to encourage moral seriousness·. We needn’t
go back to ancient times, or wander into remote places, to find instances of this degeneracy ·of religion divorced from morality·. Amongst ourselves some people have been guilty of something atrocious that ·even· the Egyptian and Greek superstitions were not guilty of, namely, speaking out explicitly against morality, saying that if one puts the least trust or reliance in morality one will certainly lose favour with God.