The rewards and punishments of another life which the Almighty has established, as the enforcements of his law, are of weight enough to determine the choice against whatever pleasure or pain this life can show, where the eternal state is considered but in its bare possibility which nobody can make any doubt of.

He that will allow exquisite and endless happiness to be but the possible consequence of a good life here, and the contrary state the possible reward of a bad one, must own himself to judge very much amiss if he does not conclude,--That a virtuous life, with the certain expectation of everlasting bliss, which may come, is to be preferred to a vicious one, with the fear of that dreadful state of misery, which it is very possible may overtake the guilty; or, at best, the terrible uncertain hope of annihilation.

This is evidently so, though the virtuous life here had nothing but pain, and the vicious continual pleasure: which yet is, for the most part, quite otherwise, and wicked men have not much the odds to brag of, even in their present possession; nay, all things rightly considered, have, I think, even the worse part here.

But when infinite happiness is put into one scale, against infinite misery in the other; if the worst that comes to the pious man, if he mistakes, be the best that the wicked can attain to, if he be in the right, who can without madness run the venture?
Who in his wits would choose to come within a possibility of infinite misery; which if he miss, there is yet nothing to be got by that hazard?
Whereas, on the other side, the sober man ventures nothing against infinite happiness to be got, if his expectation comes not to pass.

If the good man be in the right, he is eternally happy; if he mistakes, he is not miserable, he feels nothing.