taking the way, which (though it were most undesigned, or not aimed at as an end) could not fail to effect it. Nor are any attributes of the Divine Being more conspicuous than these; more testified by himself, or more generally acknowledged by all men that have not denied his existence. Or if any have done that violence to their own minds, as to erase and blot out thence the belief of any existing Deity, yet at least, while they deny it, they cannot but have this notion of what they deny, and grant that these are great perfections, and must agree to God, upon supposition that he do exist. If therefore he should do any thing repugnant to these, or we should suppose him to do so, we should therein suppose him to act below a God, and so as were very unworthy of him. And though it becomes us to be very diffident of our own reasonings concerning the counsels and designs. of that eternal Being; so as if we should find him to assert any thing expressly of himself, which we know not how to reconcile with our own preconceived thoughts, therein to yield him the cause, and confess the debility of our understandings: yet certainly, it were great rashness and void of all pretence, to suppose any thing which neither he saith of himself; nor we know how, consistently, to think. Nor are we, in judging of his designs, to bring him down to our model, or measure him by man, whose designs do for the most part bespeak only his own indigency, and are levelled at his own advantage and the bettering some way or other of his present condition. Whatsoever the great God doth towards his creatures, we must understand him to do, though with design, yet from an exuberant fulness of life and being, by which he is uncapable of an accession to himself. And hence that he can in reference to himself have no other inducement to such action, besides the complacency which he takes in diffusing his free communications, (for he exercises lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, because he delighteth in these things, Jer. 9. 24.) and the maintaining the just honor and reputation of his government over his creatures, who as they are of him, and through him, must be all to him, that he may have glory forever. Rom. 11. 36.

Now though it be most undoubtedly true, that the sovereignty of his power and dominion over his creatures (of which he hath no need, and to whom he so freely gave being) is so absolute and unlimited, that if we consider that only, we must acknowledge, he might create a man or an angel and annihilate him presently; yea, that he might, if he so pleased, raise up many thousand worlds of intelligent and innocent creatures into being in one moment, and throw them into nothing again the very next moment. Yet how unwarrantably should we maim the notion of God, if we should conceive of him only according to one attribute, secluding the consideration of the rest? How misshapen an idea should we bear of him in our minds? And how

would it deform the face of providence, and spoil the decorum of his administrations, if they should be the effects of one single attribute only, the other having no influence on the affairs of the world? If nothing but mercy should appear in his dispensations towards sinful man, so that every man might do what were good in his own eyes, without cause of fear to be called to account; if the most dissolute and profane were equally assured of his favor, with those who are most holy and strictly regular in all their conversation, what would be thought of God and religion? Or how should we savour the notion of an impure deity, taking pleasure to indulge the wickedness of men? And if justice alone have the whole management of affairs, and every act of sin be followed with an act of sudden vengeance, and the whole world become a flaming theatre, and held in a hopeless expectation of fiery indignation and of judgment without mercy, what would become of that amiable representation, and the consolatory thoughts we have of God, and of that love and duty which some souls do bear towards him? Or if power should affect daily to shew itself in unusual appearances and effects, in changing every hour the shapes of the terrestrial creatures in perpetual quick innovations of the courses of the celestial, with a thousand more kinds of prodigious events that might be the hourly effects of unlimited power, how were the order of the world disturbed, and how unlovely an idea would it beget in every intelligent creature, of him that made and rules it? Yet it is from no defect of mercy, that all men are not equally favored and blessed of God; nor of justice, that a speedy vengeance is not taken of all; nor of power, that the world is not filled with astonishing wonders every day; but rather from their unexcessiveness, and that they make that blessed temperature where they reside, and are exercised in so exact proportion, that nothing is ever done unworthy of him, who is, at once, both perfectly merciful, and just, and powerful, and wise, and hath all perfections eminently comprehended and united in his own most simple Being. It were therefore besides the purpose to insist only what sovereign power, considered apart, might do; but we are to consider what may be congruous to him to do, who is infinitely wise and good, as well as powerful.

(1.) Let it be weighed, how it may square with the divine wisdom, to give being to a world of reasonable creatures, and giving them only a short time of abode in being, to abandon them to a perpetual annihilation. Wisdom in any agent must needs suppose the intention of some valuable end of his action. And the divine wisdom, wherein it hath an end diverse from that which his pure goodness and benignity towards his creatures would incline him to, (which also we must conceive it most intent to promote and further,) cannot but have it chiefly in design; it being determined that his goodness should open itself and break forth

into a creation, and that of reasonable creatures, so to manage his government over these, (which indeed are the only subjects of government in the strict and proper notion of it,) as may most preserve his authority, and keep up his just interest in them, both by recommending him to their fear and love; to possess them with that pure and necessary reverence of him that may restrain them from contemptuous sinning; and so endear his government to them, as to engage them to a placid and free obedience. But how little would it agree with this design of the divine wisdom, to have made man only for this temporary state? For,

[1.] How little would it tend to the begetting and settling that fear of God in the hearts of men, that were necessary to preserve his authority and government from a profane contempt; whereas daily experience shews, that there is now no difference made between them that fear God and them that fear him not, unless wherein the former are worse dealt with and more exposed to sufferings and wrongs: that, at least, it is often (yea, for the most part) so, that to depart from iniquity is to make one's self a prey; that those who profess and evidence the most entire devotedness to God, and pay the greatest observance and duty to him, become a common scorn upon this very account, and are in continual danger to be eaten up as bread by those that call not upon God; while in the mean time the tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure, are not plagued as other men, nor in trouble as other men. And judgment is

not here executed for wicked works in this world. If also nothing is to be expected, either of good or evil, in another, who is likely to be induced, in this case, to fear God or to be subject to him? And how unlike is this to the wisdom of the supreme Ruler, to expose his most rightful and sovereign authority to the fearless and insolent affronts of his own revolted creatures, without any design of future reparation to it; as if he had created them on purpose, only to curse him and die?, But he hath prevented the occasion of so reproachful a censure, and thought fit to fill his word and the conscience of guilty sinners with threats and dreadful presages of a future judgment and state of punishment. To which he is no less concerned, both in point of wisdom and veracity, (and I may add of legal justice,) to make the event correspond, that he may neither be found to have omitted any due course for preventing or redress of so great an evil and that if the threatening do not effectually over-awe sinners, the execution may at least right himself: and that, in the mean time, he do not (that which would least of all become him, and which are most repugnant to his nature) make use of a solemn fiction to keep the world in order, and maintain his government by falsehood aad deceit, that is, by threatening what he knows shall never be.

[2.] Nor were there (in the case all along supposed) a more probable provision made, to conciliate and procure to the Divine Majesty the love which it is requisite he should have from the children of men. And this cannot but be thought another apt method for his wisdom to pitch upon, to render his government acceptable, and to engage men to that free and complacential subjection which is suitable to a God. For how can that filial and dutiful affection ever be the genuine product or impress of such a representation of the case between God and them; that is, that they shall be most indispensably obliged to devote their whole being and all their powers entirely to his service and interest; exactly to observe his strictest laws, to keep under the severest restraint their most innate, reluctant inclinations; and in the mean time expect the administrations of providence to be such, towards them, that they shall find harder usage all the days than his most insolent and irreconcilable enemies, and at last lose their very beings, they know not how soon, and therewith (necessarily) all possibilities of any future recompense. Is this a likely way to procure love, and to captivate hearts into an affectionate and free obedience? Or what is it probable to produce, but a sour and sullen despondency, the extinction of all generous affection, and a temper more agreeable to a forced enthralment to some malignant, insulting genius, than a willing subjection to the God of all grace and love? And every one will be ready to say, There is little of wisdom in that government, the administration whereof is neither apt to beget fear nor love in those that are subject to it; but either through the want of the one to be despised, or to be regretted through the want of the other. And this being the very case, upon supposition of no future state, it seems altogether unworthy of the divine wisdom, that such a creature should ever have been made as man, upon which no end is attainable (as the course of providence commonly runs in this world,) in comparison whereof, it were not better and more honorable to his Maker, (whose interest it is the part of his wisdom to consult,) that he had never been. And therefore, as to God and the just and worthy designs of his glory, he would seem upon this supposition, wholly made in vain. And

(2.) How congruous and agreeable would this supposition prove to the goodness of God? As the other attribute of wisdom doth more especially respect his own interest, so doth this the interest of his creatures: that is, if it be understood, not in a metaphysical, but in a moral sense; as it imports a propensity and steady bent of will unto benefaction, according to that of the Psalmist, Thou art good, and dost good. Psal. 119. 68. And this free and generous principle it is, which gives the first rise and beginning to all the designs any way respecting the well-being and happiness of creatures; which, then infinite wisdom"

forms and manages to their full issues and accomplishment, guiding (as it were) the hand of almighty power in the execution of

them.

That there should be a creation, we may conceive to be the first dictate of this immense goodness which afterwards diffuses itself through the whole, in communications agreeable to the nature of every creature. So that even this inferior and less noble part, the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. Psal. 33. 5. It creates first its own object, and then pours forth itself upon it with infinite delight, rewarding the expense with the pleasure of doing good. Now if we should suppose such a creature as man made only for that short time and low state which we see to be allotted to him in this world, it were neither difficult nor enough to reconcile the hypothesis with strict justice, which upon the ground of absolute dominion, may do what it will with its own: but the ill accord it seems to have with so large and abounding goodness, renders it very unlike the dispensation of the blessed God; no enjoyment being in that case afforded to this sort of creatures, agreeable to their common nature and capacity, either in degree or continuance.

Not in degree: for who sees not, that the nature of man is capable of greater things than he here enjoys? And where that capacity is rescued from the corruption that narrows and debases it, how sensibly do holy souls resent and bewail their present state, as a state of imperfection? With how fervent and vehement desires and groans do they aspire and pant after a higher and more perfect? We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, 2 Cor. 5. 4. (that is not enough, to be delivered out of the miseries of life, by laying down this passive part, is not that which will terminate their desires,) but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Theirs are not brutal groans, the complaint of oppressed sensitive nature under a present evil; but rational and spiritual, the expressions of desire strongly carried to pursue an apprehended suitable good. The truest notion we can yet have of the primitive nature and capacity of man, is by beholding it in its gradual restitution. And is it agreeable to the goodness of God, to put such a nature into any, and withhold the suitable object? As if it were a pleasure to him, to behold the work of his own hands spending itself in weary strugglings towards him, and vexed all the while it continues in being, with the desire of what it shall never enjoy; and which he hath made it desire, and therein encouraged it to expect?

Nor in continuance: for I suppose it already evident, that the nature of man is capable (in respect of his principal part) of perpetuity, and so of enjoying a felicity hereafter that shall be permanent and know no end. And it seems no way congruous to so large goodness, to stifle a capacity whereof it was itself