The fear of God arises from a view of the evils of life, from the threatenings of the Scriptures, from the sense of guilt, from the infinity of all God’s attributes, from prayer, meditation, reading, and conversation upon these and such like subjects, in a manner analogous to the love of God. When confined within certain limits, and especially when tempered with love, so as to become awe, veneration, and reverence, it remains in a natural state, i.e. suits our other circumstances; and, as before observed, has a considerable share in generating the love of God. When excessive, or not duly regarded, it degenerates either into superstition or atheism.
Superstition may be defined a mistaken opinion concerning the severity and punishments of God, magnifying these in respect of ourselves or others. It may arise from a sense of guilt, from bodily indisposition, from erroneous reasoning, &c. That which arises from the first cause, has a tendency to remove itself by regulating the person’s behaviour, and consequently lessening his sense of guilt. The other kinds often increase for a time, come to their height at last, and then decline again. They do also, in some cases, increase without limits during life. All kinds of superstition have been productive of great absurdities in divine worship, both amongst Pagans, and amongst Jews and Christians; and they have all a great tendency to sour the mind, to check natural benevolence and compassion, and to generate a bitter persecuting spirit. All which is much augmented where superstition and enthusiasm pass alternately into each other at intervals; which is no uncommon case.
Under atheism I here comprehend not only the speculative kind, but the practical, or that neglect of God, where the person thinks of him seldom, and with reluctance, and pays little or no regard to him in his actions, though he does not deny him in words. Both kinds seem in christian countries, where reasonable satisfaction in religious matters is easy to be had by all well-disposed minds, and gross ignorance uncommon except in ill-disposed ones, to proceed from an explicit or implicit sense of guilt, and a consequent fear of God, sufficient to generate an aversion to the thoughts of him, and to the methods by which the love might be generated, and yet too feeble to restrain from guilt; so that they may properly be considered as degenerations of the fear of God. What has been delivered already in these papers, concerning the connexion of fear, aversion, and the other uneasy passions, with each other, and also of the tendency of all pain to prevent the recurrency of the circumstances by which it is introduced, may afford some light here.
It appears upon the whole, that the theopathetic affections are, in some things, analogous to the sympathetic ones, as well as
