5. Nor yet do any affirm that it is by enforcement necessary to God; either violentiæ, for that is only in natural agents; or coactionis, which is on free agents, for none can force God against his will.

6. Whereas some talk de necessitate determinationis among men, as when the will is determined by God, and the practical intellect, (habits and objects concurring,) and thereupon raise disputes, whether answerably in God, his eternal wisdom and communicative nature may not be said to determine his will, to create the world in time, and do whatever is done, and so whether there were not necessitas determinationis? And also, whether there were not necessitas ad finem; that is, whether it were not best that God's glory should be attained, and thus attained, and no other way would have been so well, and whether all this be declared by the event? I suppose these be arrogant, presumptuous disputes, which I dare not offer to determine. Only

I

say, that I suppose, as to man, they lay a false ground; seeing the intellect doth not properly determine the will, but only necessarily concur as a propounder of the object, (which is but a moral cause of the determination,) that so the will may determine itself. And of God's own determination of our wills, yea, in gracious acts, a reverend divine, in a late writing, (Mr. Capel, Part 4 of Tempt. p. 38,) saith, "We do not determine God's will, nor doth God immediately determine our wills, but by infusing a life and soul, as it were, of grace. By an habit of grace, deserved for us by Christ, God makes our wills determine themselves to follow him; and this the Scripture calls, not a forcing, but a drawing of us, not as we draw a man to the gibbet, but as we draw a man to a wedding who hath the wedding garment, or as we draw a sheep after us with a bush of ivy, as we draw children after us with nuts and apples, by way of persuasion, indeed, which is so forcible, that Scripture calls it a kind of constraining."

7. But let us suppose, for I shall not contradict it, that the common determination is right, that God created the world, not necessarily, but freely; not only as freedom is opposite to coaction, and to any extrinsic, imposed necessity, which are unquestionable, but also to an intrinsical necessity, so that his wisdom, and communicative nature, or glory, did not necessitate the creation of the world, but that he so willed to create it, that consideratis considerandis, he might have nilled it, and in this sense did freely create it. I say on this common ground

supposed we shall proceed, though I fear such high inquiries 'myself.

8. God having freely created the world, and made man as he is, a reasonable creature, it followed, by a necessary resultancy from the nature of man, and compared with God, that man was God's subject, and to be ruled by him, and God was his sovereign Ruler. This necessity is the same as there is of every relation, a positione subjecti, fundamenti, termini. It is a contradiction for a rational creature to be made by God with a capacity of, and inclination to, an immortal felicity in the fruition of God; and yet that this creature should not be God's own, and his subject, and God be to him, by right of that creation, both Proprietary and sovereign Rector.

9. When God is once become the Rector of mankind, it is necessary that he actually rule him (supposing that he continue his being, nature, and so that relation). To be a ruler, is to be one to whom it belongeth to rule actually. It is necessary, therefore, from God's natural perfection, that he do the work of that relation which he hath himself assumed, and thereby undertaken to do; both justice and veracity, wisdom and goodness, require it. If God should say, 'I will be man's ruler,' but will not rule him, it would imply some contradiction or unfaithfulness. And therefore to do so would be the same as to say so.

10. If God must necessarily rule, he must necessarily give laws, and execute them; for legislation and execution, whereto judgment is usually necessary, are the parts of government: at least let us first conclude the necessity of legislation; for it is a contradiction to rule the rational creature without a law.

11. As we know no necessity of creation, so know we no necessity of God's making positive laws; but that God did it so freely that he might have done otherwise, or not done it, while man was in innocency; though some think that even then, supernatural revelation and positive precepts were of necessity ad finem.

12. The whole law of nature, which was such to innocent man, did necessarily result from the nature of man, as related to God and his fellow-subjects, and as placed in the midst of such a world of objects; and so is legible in rerum natura. It is a contradiction for man to be man, so related to God and the creatures, and not to be obliged to esteem and love God above all, and to obey all his commands, to love one another, and other duties of the law of nature.

13. There are some duties that are founded in the relation of our very rational nature to the holy, perfect nature of God, as to esteem him and believe him to be most powerful, wise, good, &c.; to reverence, love, and obey him, &c.; and some duties that are founded in the relation of our natures one to another, and some from the inseparable, innocent principle of self-love. All these have their necessary original with our natures, by resultancy therefrom; and God cannot (that is, he will not, because he is perfect) dispense with them: nor yet reverse them but by destroying our natures, which stand so related, and are the foundation thereof. But yet those are not absolutely necessary for the future; because it is not absolutely necessary that God should continue those natures in being. He may annihilate them, supposing that he had not declared that he will not, and then these natural duties cease upon the cessation of the subject; but while man is man, it is contradictory and impossible that such natural good should not be good, and such natural evil as is contrary to it be evil.

14. There are some duties of the law of nature founded in natural, but mutable, accidents, relations, moods. These are indispensable duties, while these relations or other accidents remain, which are the foundation of them; but God can destroy the obligations, by changing and destroying those relations and accidents: so he did warrant the Israelites to take the Egyptians' goods, by changing the proprietary; and so he can dissolve most of the obligations of the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments, as to this and that particular person, by a change of the person or thing, but not dispense with it rebus sic stantibus.

15. By what hath been said, the great question may be determined, whether any thing be eternally good or evil; or any thing indispensably good or evil; or whether God wills things because they are good, and nills them because they are evil, or they are good and evil because God willeth and nilleth them? for it being from the relation of the human nature to the Creator and fellow-creatures, that natural duty doth result, it is impossible that it should quoad existentiam be a duty before the creation. All duty is some one's duty; but when there was no subject it could be no one's duty: therefore no duty; but quoad essentiam in esse cognito, we may say, that this or that was good or evil from eternity; which is no more but this, that if there had been such creatures in being, from eternity, this or that

would have been their duty, and so that it was a true proposition from eternity, (had propositions been then framed,) that such duty would be due from such creatures. But, in time, the bare creation of man in such a world doth constitute these principal, natural duties, without any further constituting will of God; and duties they will be, while man is man; so that God could not continue man in his nature and place in the world, and yet cause these duties to cease: it being a contradiction. And so as to all the approbatory, exhortatory, remunerative will of God, it may truly be said that he wills these natural duties because they are good, and not that they are good because he wills them. As, also, that there is no further free act of his will necessary to make them good, or duty, besides this making man and the nature of creatures; but as to God's creating will, which laid the foundation of this duty, it may truly be said, that all such duties are duties because he willeth them; for he might have chosen to have made man, or have made him not man, but somewhat else. On the contrary, we may see how to judge of evil, and how to understand those passages of the ancients, that God nilleth evil because it is evil. As Athenagoras de Resurrect. Mort. For what God willeth not, he therefore willeth not, either because it is unjust or because it is unmeet.

16. Duty being once constituted, the dueness of punishment to the sinner resulteth from the sin and law, and the nature and relation of God and man, by unavoidable necessity. It cannot be ne per divinam potentiam, that there should be a sin which makes not punishment naturally due to the sinner; or a sin which deserveth not punishment. Every law doth oblige aut ad obedientiam, aut ad pœnam; and this is so essential to a law, that if duty only were expressed without any penalty, yet, by the law of nature, penalty would be due to the offender. The common light of nature manifested in correcting children and servants, and punishing subjects, and in all government through the world, doth put this out of doubt, besides the law of God.

17. It is not, therefore, to the breach of natural precepts only, but to the breach of positive precepts also, that punishment is naturally due. For though God do freely make positive laws, yet punishment necessarily is due to the breach of them: nothing in morality is more clear to the light of nature, than that all sin against God deserveth some punishment.

18. Law doth not, as such, or by its essential act, preceptive or comminatory, determine that the duty shall eventually be

performed, or the punishment on the disobedient eventually executed. Nor doth it so oblige the law-giver to punish as that he may in no case dispense with it; but obligeth the offender to suffer, if he executeth it, by constituting the dueness of the penalty.

19. Yet two ways do such laws speak de eventu, as well as de debito pœnæ. First in that they are given as norma judicii, as well as officii: this is one of the known ends and uses of the law. So that when God made his first laws for mankind, in the promulgation of them he did as much as say to the world of mankind, 'According to these laws shalt thou live; and according to these laws will I judge you :' which comprehendeth in it two assertions de eventu. 1. That God will so ordinarily execute his own laws, that the people to whom they are given have great cause to expect it. 2. That he will not at all miss of the ends of them in respect of such execution; and therefore, though he have not parted with his supra legal power; yet will he never relax his laws, but upon valuable considerations in political respects; that is, on such terms as the ends of those laws (or of the legislator in making them) may be as well, or better, attained, as by the proper execution of them. So that some prediction de eventu is implied in the very nature and end of the law, in that it was made to be norma judicii. Secondly, and to the law of grace there is also affixed a peremptory commination, which doth not only constitute, as all laws, the debitum pœnæ, but also doth predict the certain execution, and foretel that there shall never be any remedy; and so the legislature is, in point of veracity, as it were, obliged to execute; that is, he hath revealed that he will so do.

20. As God, having thus necessarily made the law of nature, on supposition of nature itself, doth, by that law, also necessarily determine of the dueness of punishment to every sinner, and that this shall be the course of judgment, so this justice will give to all their due, and will make a difference by rewards and punishments between them that differ as righteous and unrighteous; and his wisdom cannot suffer the frustration of his legislation, or the missing of the ends of government, nor those great evils that would follow the non-execution of justice according to its evident natural tendency.

21. If God, having necessarily given man a law agreeable to his nature, should permit him, without punishment, to violate that law, it would naturally produce, or necessarily tend to,