this end he has created moral beings, giving them laws to place them under responsibility, and following this with a strict inquest upon their conduct, and with an allotment of happiness or misery corresponding thereto. Now, though this government is constituted in a certain order, and its features are to be exhibited with greater clearness; yet it is one perfect system, and all its principles are constantly acting out before our eyes.

It is essential to the very nature of a moral government, that there should be first a moral constitution of creatures, rendering them fit subjects of government; then, laws adapted to this constitution; and, last of all, a righteous distribution of rewards and punishments.— These three great principles of the divine government are all before us at once. We are conscious of a moral constitution; the law of God, by its very announcement, is imprinted upon our hearts;--and conscience gives us premo-. nitions of a judgement, and the righteous providence of God, brings it home to our very sense and feelings. Now, we say, a moral government cannot exist without these three principles; indeed these principles are the very elements of which government is composed. If we were destitute of a moral constitution, like the brutes, we could never be subjected to laws, nor exposed to punishment. If we were destitute of all perceived moral relations, and moral precepts, we could never possess the least idea of authority, or obligation, or ill desert. And though we possessed a nature suited to obligation, and were placed under laws, yet obligation would not be felt, nor laws become efficacious, only in so far as their penal sanctions were ap

prehended as jixed & absolutely certain. The whole force of the Divine government, therefore, depends upon the visible certainty of rewards and punishments. But how is the absolute certainty of rewards and punishments to be fixed in the minds of men? An examination of the Providence of God will answer the inquiry. It is by an actual display of mercy and justice. We look to the plain teachings of the scriptures as the only positive and clear proof of the doctrine of future and eternal punishment, but the Providences of God towards the righteous and the wicked, have, unquestionably, contributed greatly to impress this doctrine upon the minds of men.

Let it be understood, then, that we do not rely upon an argument drawn from Divine Providence to prove the doctrine of eternal punishment-we produce it only to confirm a doctrine which we have shown in our first Lecture is faught with great explicitness in the scriptures.

Before proceeding to our argument, let it be observed, once more, that the government of God, so far as it is exhibited in this world, is incomplete; that is, strict justice is not here rendered to individuals. Nations and communities, and public characters, are in most instances, treated according to their conduct; yet this course is not so fully pursued, in regard to private persons. Hence you find in the scriptures, numerous threatenings of temporal calamities against nations, and churches, and kings, while private persons in general, are warned of a general judgement. Egypt and Sodom, Babylon and Ninevah, and Tyre, and Sidon, and Jerusalem, fell under deserved judgements. So the kings and rulers of different nations, were,

at different times punished for their public crimes. Individuals in a private capacity however, have flourished like the green bay tree, while living in sin. With respect to the condition of such, David could see no consistency in the divine government, till he saw their end.Solomon also, was led to expect a future judgement from the fact that wickedness was not always punished in this life. I saw under the sun, says he, the place of judgement that wicked-L ness was there, and the place of righteousness that iniquity was there: I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked.

From these last statements it is evident, that whatever we learn about the nature of the divine government from the providence of God, must be learned from those dispensations which respect the general interests of his church, and the conduct of communities, or of individuals in a public capacity. In such dispensations, the Messiah appears travelling in the greatness of his strength, mighty to save. It is then, that he tramples his enemies in his fury; their blood is sprinkled upon his garments, and he stains all his raiment, for the day of vengeance is in his heart, and the year of his redeemed is come.Let us return now to our first position.

When Christ bestows signal blessings upon his church, he does at the same time, execute signal judgement upon his enemies.

When the promise of redemption was made to our first parents, giving assurance that an incarnate Saviour should bruise the head of our Adversary, though it was a promise upon which rested all the sweetness of divine mercy, yet it came accompanied with curses, and a flaming sword.

This first intimation of the na

ture of the Divine government, might teach us to expect that justice and mercy should hereafter be set over against each other.

No sooner had our race multiplied sufficiently to exhibit a community of a mixed character, than God appeared and made a distinction between the precious and the vile; smiling upon the sacrifice of Abel, and crowning his saint with the glory of martyrdom ; and, at the same time, branding the first enemy of God among men, the first persecutor of piety with an abiding curse. This very distinction certainly accords with the notion, that it is a principle of the Divine government, to make a difference continually between the righteous and the wicked. Hence the Apostle Jude, applies an admonition from this very history in his day, to those who rejected the gospel and perished in.their sins. This language is-Woe unto them! for they have gone into the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.

The same principle was brought out more fully in the first great deliverance of the church. When the world had become populous, it became corrupt also before God, and the earth was filled with violence. But the Lord raised up a preacher of righteousness; and when he had thus warned an ungodly world, he prepared for the deliverance of his people ;-But how was this deliverance effected? The fountains of the great deep were broken up; the floodgates of heaven were opened; and the ungodly were ingulphed in the very billows which safely buoyed up the little remnant of the church, and purified her earthly habitation. The day of vengeance was in his heart, and the year of his

The whole transaction

redeemed had come. accords with a general principle of the divine government; a principle, according to which, whenever God bestows signal blessings upon the church, he executes also, signal judgements upon his enemies. Hence we read, in the 24th of Mathew, As the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be, for as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not till the flood came and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.

The next signal interposition in behalf of the church is characterized by the same course of treatment towards the ungodly. When the

people of God were reduced to a very small number, and the righteous Lot had been long vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked, angels of mercy appeared for his deliverance, and a flame of wrath came down from the throne of Judgement, overwhelming the cities of the plain, and setting forth the guilty inhabitants thereof as an ensample suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Now we plead that these dispensations, so numerous and so similar, go to establish it as a principle that belongs to the very nature of the divine government, that the wicked shall have judgements, when the righteous have blessings, and, of consequence, that mercy and justice shall eternally be set over against each other. Hence the Apostle Peter, in speaking of some who denied the Lord that bought them, whose judgement of a long time lingered not, and whose damnation slumbered not, adduces a train of the very facts which we