Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe With His Vision of the Angelick World

SERIOUS REFLECTIONS DURING THE LIFE...

cieties against all revealed religion, thereby bringing on themselves the curse denounced in Scripture against those that do evil and teach men so to do; in a little time they grew so public that more company came in, and, which was worse, many joined with them in principle, or, as I should rather have said, in casting off all principles, and they began to be famous in the place, though to the offence of all good men, and were called “The Atheistical Club.”

They soon began to see sober, religious people shun them, and in some time, upon information given, they were obliged, by authority, to separate for fear of punishment, so that they could not hold their public disputations as they began to do, yet they abated nothing of their wicked custom; and this dreadful creature, who set up at the head of the rest, began to be so open in his blasphemies that he was at length obliged to fly from the university.

However, he went a great while before it came to that; and though he had been often admonished, yet, instead of reclaiming, he grew the more impious, making the most sacred things his jest and the subject of his ridicule. He gave out that he could frame a new gospel, and a much better system of religion than that which they called Christian; and that if he would trouble himself to go about it, he would not fail to draw in as great a part of the world to run after him as had been after any other. I care not to repeat any of his blasphemous words; it it not to be supposed there can be any blasphemous abominable thing that this set of wicked wretched young men did not run into,

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neither any wickedness of that kind within their reach which they did not commit.

It would be too long to enter into the particular history of these men, and how it pleased God to dispose of them; they might be in number, before they separated, about twenty-two in all; I shall tell you of some of them, however, who did not run such lengths as the rest. There was a young man who frequented their society, though, as he afterwards said, he was rather persuaded to be among them than to be one of them; he had, however, too much yielded to their delusions; and though they made him very much their jest, because they found he still retained some little sense of a God and of a future state in his mind, yet he had yielded dreadfully to them, and began to do so more and more every day.

It happened one day this young man was going to their hellish society, and not minding the weather, the clouds gathered over his head, and he was stopped by a sudden shower of rain in the street. It rained so very hard that it obliged him to stand up in the gateway of an inn for some time; while he was standing here a great flash of lightning more than ordinarily surprised him; it seems the fire came so directly in his face that he felt the very warmth of it, and was exceedingly startled; in the same moment almost, as is natural so the case, followed such a clap of thunder that perfectly astonished him. The rain continuing kept him in the gateway, as I said, for a good while, till he had time for such reflections as these: “Where am I going?

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What am I going about! Who is it has stopped me thus? Why are these thunders, these rains, and this lightning thus terrible? and whence are they?” And with the rest came in this thought, warm and swift as the lightning which had terrified him before, “What if there should be a God! what will become of me then?” Terrified with these things he starts out of the gateway into the street, notwithstanding the wet, and runs back through the rain, saying to himself as he went, “I will go among them no more!” When he came home to his chambers he fell into dreadful agonies of mind, and at length broke out thus: “What have I been doing! have I been denying the Power that made me? depising that God whose fire flashed just now in my face; and which, had not that mercy I have abused interposed, might have burnt me to death? What kind of creature am I?” While he was thus giving vent to his reflections a near relation of his — a pious, good man, who had often used to speak very plain!y to him of the horrid sin he was guilty of — happened to come to visit him.

The young man had thrown himself upon his bed, and had, with the deepest sense of his madness and most serious reproaches of himself for his horrid life, been expressing himself to his friend, and he had been comforting him in the best manner he could, when, after a while, he desired his friend to retire that he might be a little alone and might give vent to his thoughts with the more freedom; and his friend taking a book in his hand stayed in the outer room.

In this interval came another scholar to the door, who was one of the wicked company I mentioned just now. He came not

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to visit this first gentleman, but to call him to go with him to the usual meeting of their dreadful society; and knocking at his chamber door, this gentleman who was left in the chamber stepped to the door, and, looking through a little grate, not only knew the person, but knew him to be one of the wicked company I have been speaking of. Now, as he was very loath his friend should have such an interruption to the good disposition he was then in, so, above all, he was loath he should be persuaded to go any more among that miserable gang; wherefore he opened the door a little way, so as he was not very distinctly seen, and spoke aloud in the person of his friend thus: “O sir, beseech them all to repent; for, depend upon it, there is a God; tell them I say so;” and with that he shut the door upon him violently, giving him no time to reply, and, going back into his friend’s room, took no notice of anybody having been at the door at all.

The person who knocked at the door you may suppose was one of the leaders of the company, a young scholar of good parts and sense, but debauched by that horrid crew, and one that had made himself eminent for his declared opposition to all the common notions of religion; a complete atheist, and publicly so, without God or the desire of God in the world. However, as he afterwards confessed, the repulse he met with at the door, and which

he thought came from his friend, gave him a strange shock at first and filled him with horror. He went down the college stairs in the greatest confusion imaginable, and went musing

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along a good way, not knowing where he was or whither he went, and in that embarrassment of thought went a whole street out of the way. The words had made an unusual impression upon his mind, but he had his other surprises too; for he thought his friend, for he believed firmly that it was he that had spoken to him, had treated him very rudely.

Sometimes he resented it, and reflected upon it as an affront, and once or twice was upon the point of going back again to him to know the reason of his using him so, and to demand satisfaction; but still the words, “There is a God,” dwelt upon his mind. “And what if it should be so?” says he, “what then?” Upon this question to himself, the answer immediately occurred to his mind. “What then? Why, then, I am undone! For, have not I declared war against the very notion, denied all the pretenders to it as mere enthusiasts and men of whimsey?” However, after these thoughts his mind cooled a little again, and it offered to him, no doubt injected by an evil spirit, that he should not trouble himself with inquiring into it one way or another, but be easy.

This pacified him for a little while, and he shook off the surprise he was in; the hardened temper seemed to return, and he kept on his way towards the hellish society that he was going to before. But still the words returned upon him, “There is a God,” and began to bring some terror with it upon his mind; and the last words of his friend came into his mind often, “tell them I say so.” This filled him with a curiosity which be could not withstand, viz., of going back to his friend and inquiring of

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him what discoveries he had made of this kind? How he came to have changed his mind so suddenly? And, especially, how he was arrived to a certainty of the thing?

I told you that there had been a great shower of rain, which had stopped the first young gentleman in his way out; it seems the day still still showery, and a little rain happening to fall again as this gentleman went by a bookseller’s shop, he stops at the door to stand up a little out of the wet.

There happened to be sitting in the shop reading a book a gentleman of his acquaintance, though far differing from him in his principles, being a very sober, studious, religious young man, a student in divinity of the same college, who, looking up, called him in, and after a few common salutes he whispers in his ear.

Student. I was looking in an old book here just now, and began the following short dialogue; and I found four lines written on the back of the title-page which put me in mind of you.

Atheist Me! why did they put you in mind of me!

Stud. I’ll tell you presently; come hither. [He retires into a

back room, and calls the other after him.] Ath. Well, now tell

me.

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Stud. Because I think they are very fit for such an atheistical wretch as you to read.

Ath. You are very civil.

Stud. You know you deserve it.

Ath. Come, let me see them, however.

Stud. Let me look in your face all the while, then.

Ath. No, you shan’t.

Stud. Then you shan’t see them.

Ath. Well, let it alone, then.

Stud. Come, give me your hand; you shall see them if you will promise to read them over three times.

Ath. There’s my hand, I’ll read them out to you.

Stud. I’ll hold your hand all the while, because I’ll be sure of your performance.

Ath. I’ll warrant you I’ll read them, [He reads.] “But if it should fall out, as who can tell,

There there may be a God, a heaven, and hell,* Had I not best consider well, for fear

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’T should be too late when my mistakes appear?”

[*He held him by the hand till that word, and then let it go, pressing gently one of his fi ngers.

Stud. Well, what do you say to them?

Ath. I’ll tell you my thoughts farther by-and-by, but first tell me, what did you press my hand for when you let it go?

Stud. Did you feel no motion within you when you read those words, “there may be a God”?

Ath. What motion? What do you talk of?

Stud. Come, do not deny it, for I am a witness against you.

Ath. Witness, for what? I have killed nobody, I have robbed nobody; if you would turn informer, I value not your evidence.

Stud. No, no, I shall not turn informer of that kind, but I am a witness in your Maker’s behalf.

Ath. What can you witness?

Stud. I’ll tell you what I can witness; I can testify that your own conscience is against you in your impious denying the

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existence of that God that gave you life; you could not conceal it; I tell you I felt it.

Ath. How do you pretend to know what my conscience dictates to me, or what the result of secret reflections may be in the mind? You may be mistaken; have a care, you know you are not to bear false witness.

Stud. ‘Tis in vain to struggle with it — ‘tis not to be concealed; you betrayed yourself, I tell you.

Ath. How betrayed myself? you are mighty dark in your expressions.

Stud. Did I not tell you I would look in your face all the while you read? Did I not see into the distraction of your soul? Did you not turn pale at the very words, when your tongue said, “there may be a God”? Was there not a visible horror in your countenance when you read the word HEAVEN? a horror which signified a sense of your having no share in it, or hope about it? And did I not feel a trembling in your very joints, as I held you by the hand, when you read the word HELL?

Ath. And was that it you held me by the hand for?

Stud. Indeed it was; I was persuaded I should find it, for I could never believe that an atheist had always a hell within him, even while he braved it out against a hell without him.

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Ath. You speak enough to fright one; how can you say so positively a thing which you cannot be sure of?

Stud. Never add sin to sin; ‘tis in vain to deny it.

Ath. Well, well, it’s none of your business; who made you my father confessor? [He is a little angry.]

Stud. Nay, do not be angry with your friend; and though you are, do but take the hint, and be as angry as you will.

Ath. What hint? What is it you aim at? Your hints are all so general, I can make nothing of them.

Stud. I aim at nothing but your eternal felicity; I thought those lines very apposite to your case, and was willing you had them before I happened to see you. I thought that such a reflection in the case of atheism, so natural, so plain, especially blessed from Him whose secret voice can effectually reach the mind, might be some means to open your eyes.

Ath. Open my eyes! — to what?

Stud. To something that I am persuaded you see already in part, though I find you struggle hard against your own convictions.

Ath. What is this something you speak of?

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