For there is a notion abroad in the world, as there is in all evil
times, that a man's chief duty is to save his own soul after he is
dead; that his business in this world is merely to see how he can
get out of it again, without suffering endless torture after his
body dies. This is called superstition: anxiety about what will
happen to us after we die.

Now if you look at the greater number of religious books, whether
Popish or Protestant, you will find that in practice the main thing,
almost the one thing, which they are meant to do, is to show the
reader how he may escape Hell-torments, and reach Heaven's pleasures
after he dies: not how he may do his Duty to God and his neighbour.
They speak of that latter, of course: they could not be Christian
books at all, thank God, without doing so; but they seem to me to
tell men to do their Duty, not simply because it is right, and a
blessing in itself, and worth doing for its own sake, but because a
man may gain something by it after he dies. Therefore, to help
their readers to gain as much as possible after they die, they are
not content with the plain Duty laid down in the Bible and in the
Catechism, but require of men new duties over and above; which may
be all very good if they help men to do their real Duty, but are
simply worth nothing if they do not.

Let me explain myself. I said just now that superstition means
anxiety about what will happen to us after we die. But people
commonly understand by superstition, religious ceremonies, like the
Popish ones, which God has not commanded. And that is not a wrong
meaning either; for people take to these ceremonies from over-
anxiety about the next life. The one springs out of the other; the