them and Divine Perfection. All these stand by a voluntary obedience.

THERE are certain laws, by which they are all governed; by which they are all improving in their natures and encreasing in their enjoyments.

MAN, the loweft of thefe, by his body allied to the animals around him, and by his foul allied to fuperior intelligencies, has the noble profpect before him of rifing, by the culture of his moral capacities, into these nobler focieties according to the degrees of his improvement. Some men, fired with a noble ardor defpife this world and its pollutions; others are caught by its fnares, whom the common father, by various methods of difcipline, awakes from their error and trains by degrees for their defigned happiness. And others, impenitent and unreformed by all the efforts of his mercy, choose this bafer inheritance, and renounce all their greater privileges.

CAN we now fay, that it becomes Divine Goodness to establish no diftinction between creatures, making these contrary uses of his mercies? Can goodnefs in a governor will any thing contrary to order and the general welfare ?

LET us only take thefe two things along with us, that the gospel affures us that punishments will be greater or smaller in exact proportion to the degrees of guilt, and that none but impenitent and irreclaimable finners are to be finally punished; let us, I fay, take these two things along with us; and I am much mistaken, if, upon the common footing of nature, (to which the infidel confidently appeals) the future punishment of the wicked appears not to be a real act, I will not fay of juftice, but of goodness.

THE only conceivable engines of moral government, are rewards and punishments.

Now though there is no doubt, but

that

that happy spirits are confirmed in their ftate of beatitude beyond the danger of falling, yet their fafety cannot flow from any external irresistible impulse of the Deity's; (for this is inconfiftent with their free agency) but from one or both of the moral motives, mentioned before; which are only suited to their free-natures. The pleafures of goodnefs, the consciousness of being as happy as Almighty Power can make them, may be conceived as one powerful motive to their perfeverance. But this is not fufficient: many exalted spirits, we know, have already fallen; and what has happened may happen again without fome farther provifion. The miseries of apoftate angels has endeared the innocent state to the happy, and confirmed them in their obedience. And may not the punishment of the reprobate of human kind be equally neceffary to confirm the virtuous in that immutable state, which God has promised

F 2

mised them, and which can be immutable only under the force of moral motives?

THIS, then, being fuppofed, or rather indeed ascertained in the discoveries of GOD, who beft knows the fecrets of his future kingdom, let me ask you, how the perpetual continuance of this punishment can be inconfiftent with the goodness of GOD? What is goodness but a defire of doing all poffible good, of making happiness as general and diffufive, as the nature of things will admit? And is it not an act of this very perfection, to prefer the general welfare to that of individuals, when they happen to interfere; when thofe individuals have by their depravity rendered. themselves incapable of good, and when their punishment is neceffary to the general prefervation? *

WE

In his hominibus, qui nos, qui conjuges, qui liberos noftros trucidare voluerunt, &c. fi vehementiffimi fueri

mus,

WE may thus argue with thofe, who impioufly call the ways of GOD to the bar of human judgment. And upon

this footing, it is demonftrable, that there are better reafons for the punishment of the wicked than for their impunity. But, in truth, all his ways are founded in better reasons than what we can fuggeft or conceive. Our bufiness is to acquiefce in his revealed will, and to discharge our duty with patience: and if we only do this, with that degree of deference usually paid to earthly authority, we shall not want the neceffary proportion either of faith or obedience.

WE conceive a deal too highly of our own importance in the fcale of being. Look at the immenfity of GoD: Be

mus mifericordes habebimur: Sin remiffiores effe voluerimus, fumma nobis crudelitatis in patriæ civiumqe pernicie fama Subeunda eft, Cicero. Or. 4. Catil.