prove. : God has not made man but to answer some end; and he cannot obviously, as a consistent being, suffer this end to be defeated with impunity. To counteract it therefore, must be a very great, and a very dangerous sin. Now we see that for an act which, more especially than all others, does counteract this end, I mean suicide, man cannot be punished in this world; he runs away from the possibility; rather than bear something which God has appointhim to bear, he flies, and by a single spasm delivers himself from what his less impatient, and audacious neighbours are forced to submit to. That God will not suffer all with impunity thus to run away from their posts is very clear; for then might creative power have been exerted in vain, and the universe become a void but if he suffers one to do so, he must, as an all-just being, suffer all, and therefore he will suffer none. To some sinful men then, future punishment must accrue and if to some, to all, unless it can be shewn that some expiate their crimes here. But if in this life good preponderate (which I think will be readily acknowledged, and which I will hereafter endeavour to shew) then sinners cannot expiate their offences here, for instead of wiping them out, they are continually adding to their stock of enjoyment; and therefore all sinful men must incur some future punishment. That this punishment is distant, in no wise lessens our danger; nor is that danger decreased by our not knowing the extent of this future evil. Το insist on our ignorance of its nature, as a plea for escaping it, is no more rational, than to declare ourselves untaught in the nature of fevers, would be a sufficient reason why we should escape their contagion, when we threw ourselves in its way. If the future punishment decreed to sinners be eternal, they will have no right to complain when it arrives, for they could not know that it was not eternal, and they were bound as rational beings to provide for the worst; for this end was their reason given them. The darkness of night would not make our falling from a precipice, with whose exact height and situation we were unacquainted, a hardship, when it was possible for us to have secured ourselves either by staying at home, or by taking a guide. The fair way however of considering the question, when God's mercy is the subject of debate, is to regard not any one order of intelligent beings alone, but the whole sum of intelligent creation. It is, as I have already said, absolutely necessary to our notions of an all-just, and impartial God, that he should have placed all his intelligent creatures originally on the same terms, so far, i, e. as relates to the nature of the service required from them, and their power of performing it. To all God must will the greatest degree of happiness that their natures are capable of, and to all have furnished the means best calcuJated to produce this end. Happiness cannot exist but where order prevails: order, the end of all other governments, is therefore also "heaven's first law." But no government can ensure universal order where the governed are free agents: to such it must always be possible to rebel Gód cannot prevent them he cannot do what involves a contradiction. To ensure the greatest : possible quantity of good to the greatest possible number of the governed, is the end which all good governments aim at, but it is an end which God's government alone (for that alone is perfect) can certainly effect. As I have above said however, no government can ensure universal good to free agents; for such may always sin. Now, to pardon sin in any one free agent, would with an all-just and impartial God, be to pardon it in all. If God should pardon a sinful individual in any one order of intelligent beings, he must, by his character of justice, pardon all that order, and if that, all other orders. If God pardoned a sinful man, he must, if he be really perfectly impartial, pardon all other sinners throughout the uni yielding to it. Again, if man may sin with impunity in this state of being, he can have no good reason for supposing that he may not sin with impunity in all those future gradations of being, which it is possible for him to pass through. Thus it is expedient to the happiness of the many that sin should be punished wherever it is found, and that it should be so, far from implying cruelty, is extreme mercy, inasmuch as it is the only means of confining evil to the narrowest possible bounds. He who affirms that any conceivable degree of punishment inflicted on man. for sin is cruel, must be prepared to shew that less punishment would have consisted as well with God's purpose of preserving throughout the universe, the greatest possible degree of order and obedience. Certainly to restrain sin and disorder then altogether in free agents is absolutely impossible; to make it ruinous and dreadful is all that the Almighty could do to check its progress, and this he has done, as the foregoing arguments, I trust, tend to shew. In spite of this however, sin abounds; what would it have done if it might have been committed with impunity? Where would confusion and disorder then have ended? Let us now inquire, how far the dealings of God with his creatures here, are reconcileable with our most proper notions of perfect mercy; how far, that is, those dispensations of providence, which at first view seem cruel, are calculated to produce the greatest possible quantity of good to a sinful race. To do this fairly, there are two things of which we must never for a moment lose sight; our own corruption, and the impossibility that, in the government of an universe whose benevolent ruler wills. the greatest possible quantity of order, unexpiated sin should escape punishment. God must wish that the E deavours; I mean the sufferings of infants. Bu main we may, by some attention to the subject, p that the severest of God's decrees are full of me they respect a race of beings fallen from that pu which they must have been created, and rushing that punishment which in a perfectly wise, and pe merciful government, must be the inevitable, ne consequence of sin. If individuals were not sometimes cut off in youth amongst the young would ever be prepared to die sinners were not sometimes called away in the m their sins, who would ever set himself about repentin we had no such warnings as these held out to us, w would grow old in sin, trusting to a late repentan repentance become difficult in proportion as long had wedded us to crime? If there were no natio stroyed or desolated by the hand of God, when would become a national concern, seeing that in spite of examples, we are what we are? "Thus runs death's dread commission: "Strike, but so, "As most alarms the living by the dead. "Hence stratagem delights him, and surprise "And cruel sport with man's securities; "And where least fear'd, there conquest triumphs most." Yo In civil laws we call that mercy, which sacrifices for the good of the many. In human government account that a merciful decree, which devotes a pro for the good of an empire, when nothing less coul fect its safety. In like manner, that is mercy in C government, which sacrifices one sinner for the good of the many, or one order of sinful beings to preserve all other orders of beings not sinful. Whilst sin exists some must be punished, that many may escape; nothing short of this can engage free agents to do right so long as they have any temptation to do wrong; coercion is out of the question. Some must be made miserable that all may not make themselves so; the breach of order must be productive of suffering to some, that disorder and confusion may not be endless. We never think it cruel to cut off an individual for the good of a nation; but small as is the proportion which one individual man bears to the whole sum of human-kind, it is immense, when compared with the proportion which any one order of intelligent beings bears to all the other orders, who exist throughout the immensity of space. CHAP. V. On Future Reward, as deducible by the inferences of Reason, from the necessary character of an all perfect Governor of free and intelligent beings. THAT there is a future state of retribution is suffi ciently obvious I think, both from the foregoing arguments, and from the imperfection of God's moral government here, that is from the disregard which in his distribution of temporal good and evil, he manifests for the comparative desert of his creatures.* That * I confess that I know of no other argument suggested by mere reason, which declares at all satisfactorily, the existence of a future state.. The universal expectation of it has been much insisted on. But, in the first place, such expectation has not been universal; the Sadducees of old had it not; the Sumatrans of the present day are said not to have it. St. Paul, whom all will allow to have been a clever man, seems to have found it so little universal, and to be so far from anticipating it in those |