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Wickedness never was happiness

Alma 41:10 has the non-Biblical phrase:

Do not suppose, because it has been spoken concerning restoration, that ye shall be restored from sin to happiness. Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness.

Scottish author Anne MacVicar Grant, in Popular Models, and Impressive Warnings for the Sons and Daughters of Industry, published in Boston, 1816. At the end of the chapter entitled “The History of Chippenham: Temperance, Industry, and Honesty: the Truest Worldly Wisdom,” Grant writes, regarding a moment of deathbed repentance of one Miss Barret, about to be executed for some serious crime:

She left a last speech in writing, where she demonstrated, by many arguments and proofs, that prosperous wickedness never can taste the happiness of which no misfortune can deprive virtuous poverty; that vice is folly and misery; and that the truest worldly wisdom consists in piety, industry, temperance and integrity.

In ch. 39–42, Alma admonishes his young son Corianton for leading a sinful, wayward life (going after the harlot Isabel), going on for a whole chapter about how vainly hoping for a Universalist salvation will not spare Corianton from the wrath of God’s judgement, that the seriousness of sexual sin is next to murder or denying the Holy Ghost; how Corianton cannot hide his crimes from God, to “seek not after riches nor the vain things of this world; for behold, you cannot carry them with you” (in death). Alma’s warning that “Wickedness never was happiness,” is used in the exact same context of deathbed repentance and judgement for a life of iniqiuity, repenting now to avoid later regretting not living a more virtuous life, looking back as death approaches.

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