Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Cristian life, page 39 by Lady Damaris Cudworth (1659-1708) Masham
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less, Reason to apprehend that he would do so, They therefore (thinking him to be an exorable as well as an Omniscient, and Omnipotent Being) were hereby on These occasions taught to deprecate his Vengeance, and implore his Mercy: And hence the more Guilty and Fearful came to invent Attonements, Expiations, Penances and Purgations, with all that various Train of Ceremonies which attended those Things; Naturally imagining that the Divine Nature resembled their own; and thence believing that they should the more easily appease his Anger, and avert the effects of his Wrath, if by such means, as these, they did, as it were, in Gods behalf Revenge upon themselves their Disobedience to him. And as the Solemnity of these Matters requir'd peculiar Hands to Execute them; and Devotion exacted that such should be liberally rewarded, and highly respected for their Pious performances; from hence the profit which some reap'd by these things, as well as the satisfaction that others found therein, who were unwilling to be rigorously restrain'd by the Rule of their Actions, yet were uneasie under the reproaches of their Consciences when they transgressed against it, made these Inventions, and the value set upon them, to be daily improv'd; till Men at last have sought to be, and have effectually been perswaded that they might render themselves acceptable to God without indeavouring sincerely to obey the Rule by which they profess'd to believe they were oblig'd to live; and that even when they did think that this was a Law giv'n them by God himself.
Now the great practicers, and promoters of the abovesaid things, are every where Those who are generally esteem'd, and call'd Religious. Whence the Term Religion appears ordinarily to have stood for nothing else, but _some Expedient, or other, found out to satisfy Men that God was satisfied with them, notwithstanding that their Consciences reproach'd them with want of Conformity to the acknowledg'd Rule, or Law of their Actions._
Having premis'd thus m