But the worst product of this epidemic error is, the fashion of either denying or undervaluing the evidence of a future state and the survival of individual consciousness, derived from the conscience, and the holy instinct of the whole human race. Dreadful is this:--for the main force of the reasoning by which this scepticism is vindicated consists in reducing all legitimate conviction to objective proof: whereas in the very essence of religion and even of morality the evidence, and the preparation for its reception, must be subjective;--'Blessed are they that have not seen and yet believe'. And dreadful it appears to me especially, who in the impossibility of not looking forward to consciousness after the dissolution of the body ('corpus phoenomenon',) have through life found it (next to divine grace.) the strongest and indeed only efficient support against the still recurring temptation of adopting, nay, wishing the truth of Spinoza's notion, that the survival of consciousness is the highest prize and consequence of the highest virtue, and that of all below this mark the lot after death is self-oblivion and the cessation of individual being. Indeed, how a Separatist or one of any other sect of Calvinists, who confines Redemption to the comparatively small number of the elect, can reject this opinion, and yet not run mad at the horrid thought of an innumerable multitude of imperishable self-conscious spirits everlastingly excluded from God, is to me inconceivable. Deeply am I persuaded of Luther's position, that no man can worthily estimate, or feel in the depth of his being, the Incarnation and Crucifixion of the Son of God who is a stranger to the terror of immortality as ingenerate in man, while it is yet unquelled by the faith in God as the Almighty Father. Book I. Part I. p. 2. But though my conscience would trouble me when I sinned, yet divers sins I was addicted to, and oft committed against my conscience; which for the warning of others I will confess here to my shame. 1. I was much addicted when I feared correction to lie, that I might scape. 2. I was much addicted to the excessive gluttonous eating of apples and pears, &c. 3. To this end, and to concur with naughty boys that gloried in evil, I have oft gone into other men's orchards, and stolen their fruit, when I had enough at home, &c. There is a childlike simplicity in this account of his sins of his childhood which is very pleasing. Ib. p. 5, 6.