1821 March 2.

Jug Util & True

B

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Plan of the Work

Part II. Natural Verity considered

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II. In Part the second, the question of Verity, —apparent Verity—is brought upon the carpet: apparent verity, that is to say of the future existence of the same man after death in a state susceptible of reward and punishment for conduct maintained in the course of his life: apparent

verity, to wit in the eyes of all those, with relation to whose interest it can possess any degree of usefulness: apparent in contradistinction to real. By means of this distinction, the advocates of Revealed Religion are left at liberty, under all that deficiency in the article of apparent Verity, to ascribe to the retributory state in question real verity: receiving to themselves the satisfaction of seeing a sufficient proof of such verity in that Revelation which as yet remains unquestioned.

On the part of Natural Religion the absence of apparent verity is deduced /shewn to result/ from the absence of all evidence, Revelation apart in favour of two indispensable conditions: 1. on the part of those human beings, whose existence in the present state is made known by experience, the capacity of existing without prejudice to their identity: in a state of which the least imaginable difference from their own would be sufficient to render each future man more different from his present self than in his present state any man is from any other. 2. in this other part the existence of a supernatural being, indeed at one with the power and the will to place them in such retributory state, in the description of which a self-contradictory supposition is, as above, involved.

After this demonstration the advocate of Revealed Religion is still left at liberty to retain his persuasion of the existence of these same indispensable conditions: the evidence by which this existence is regarded by him as sufficiently proved, remaining as yet unimpeached.