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I answer, This is apparently false: For,

(1.) Sovereign princes are exempted from temporal penalties, yet their faults are of the greatest malignity by the contagion of their examples, and the mischief of their effects. Their actions are more potent to govern than their laws. Innumerable perish by the imitation of their vices. Now to leave the highest rank of men unaccountable, would cause a great disorder in the conduct of the reasonable creature, and be a spot in the divine providence.

(2.) Many sins directly opposite to reason, and injurious to the divine honour, are not within the compass of civil laws. Such are some sins that immediately concern God, the disbelief and undervaluing his excellencies; and some that immediately respect a man's self, as sloth, luxury, &c. And all vicious principles that secretly lodge in the heart, and infect it with deep pollutions, and many sins that break forth, of which the outward acts are not pernicious to the public.

(3.) Many eminent virtues are of a private nature, as humility, meekness, patience, a readiness to forgive, gratitude, for which there are no encouragements by civil laws; so that they are but a weak instrument to preserve innocence, and restrain from evil.

CHAP. XI.

The justice of God an infallible argument of future recompences. The natural notion of God includes justice in perfection. In this world sometimes virtue and vice are equally miserable. Sometimes vice is prosperous. Sometimes good men are in the worst condition. The dreadful consequences of denying a future state. God's absolute dominion over the reasonable creature, is regulated by his wisdom, and limited by his will. The essential beauty of holiness, with the pleasure that naturally results from good actions, and the native turpitude of sin, with the disturbance of the mind reflecting on it, are not the complete recompences that attend the good and the wicked.

2. THE second argument arises from the divine goodness and justice. God as universal sovereign is supreme judge of the

world. For judicature being an essential part of royalty, these rights are inseparable. And the natural notion of the Deity includes justice in that perfection, as infinitely excels the most just governors on the earth. This gives us convincing evidence for recompences hereafter. For there is no way of proof more certain, than by such maxims as are acknowledged by all to be undoubtedly true by their own light. In the motives of intellectual assent, the mind must finally rest on some that are selfevident, without depending as to their clearness on any superior proof; and are therefore called first principles, the fountains of discourse. Now that God is most righteous and equal in his judgment, before whose throne man must appear, that he will by no means condemn the innocent, nor justify the guilty; that he is so pure and holy that he cannot suffer sin unrepented of, to go unpunished, is a prime truth, declared by the voice of nature. The weakest twilight of reason discerns the antipathy of this connexion, an unjust God indifferent to good or evil. Never any sect of idolaters formed such an unworthy deity, that was absolutely careless of virtue and vice, without distinguishing them in his affections and retributions: this were to debase him beneath the most unreasonable men, for there is none of such an impure mind, so perfect a despiser of moral goodness, but has some respect for virtue, and some abhorrence of vice in others, especially in their children. From hence it certainly follows, that as virtue and the reward, sin and the punishment, are allied in a direct line by a most wise constitution; so it is just that the effects should truly correspond with the quality of men's actions. If they reverence God's laws, it is most becoming his nature and relation to make them happy: if they abuse their liberty, and violate his commands, it is most righteous that they should feel the effects of their chosen wickedness. Now if we look only to things seen, we do not find such equal distributions as are suitable to the clear light wherewith God has irradiated the understanding of man, concerning his governingjustice.

1. Sometimes virtue and vice are equally miserable here. In common calamities is there a difference between the righteous and the wicked? Is there a peculiar antidote to secure them from pestilential infection? Or a strong retreat to defend them from the sword of a conquering enemy? Have they secret pro

visions in times of famine?

Are not the wheat and tares bound

in a bundle and cast into the same fire.

2. Many times the most guilty offenders are not punished here. They not only escape the justice of men, by secrecy, by deceit or favour, by resistance or flight, but are under no conspicuous marks of God's justice. Nay, by wicked means they are prosperous and happy.

3. The best men are often in the worst condition, and merely upon the account of their goodness. They are oppressed because they do not make resistance, and loaden with sufferings, because they endure them with patience. They are for God's sake made the spectacles of extreme misery, whilst the insolent defiers of his majesty and laws enjoy all visible felicities. Now in the judgment of sense, can holiness be more afflicted if under the displeasure of heaven, or wickedness more prosperous if favoured by it? But this is such a monstrous incongruity, that unless we abolish the natural notions of the divine excellencies, it cannot in the least degree be admitted. If therefore we confine our thoughts to human affairs in this life, without taking a prospect into the next world, where a new order of things presents itself, what direful consequences will ensue? This takes away the sceptre of providence from the hands of God, and the reverence of God from the hearts of men, as if the present state, were a game wherein chance reigned, and not under the inspection and disposure of a wise, just and powerful governor. If there be no life after death, then natural religion in some of its greatest commands, as to selfdenial, even to the suffering the greatest evils, rather than do any unjust, unworthy action, and to sacrifice life itself when the honour of God and the public good require it, is irreconcileable to that natural desire and duty, that binds and determines man to seek his own felicity in conjunction with the glory of his Maker. But it is impossible that the divine law should foil itself, that contrary obligations should be laid on man by the wise and holy lawgiver. And what terrible confusion would it be in the minds of the best men? What coldness of affection to God, as if they were not in the comfortable relation of his children, but wholly without his care? What discouragements in his service? What despair in suffering for him? What danger of their murmuring against providence, and casting off religion as a sour unprofitable severity, and saying, "Surely I have cleansed my heart

in vain, and washed my hands in innocency;" or exclaiming with Brutus in a desperate manner, when he was overcome in battle, and defeated of his design to recover Rome from tyranny; O infælix Virtus! itane, cum nihil nisi nomen esses, ego te, tanquam rem aliquam exercui?

And the enemies to holiness restrained by no respects to a superior power, will obey their brutish lusts as their supreme law; and if such diseases or troubles happen that the pleasant operations of life cease, they may release themselves by a voluntary easy death, and fall into a sleep never to be disturbed; so that they would be esteemed the only happy persons.

In short, if we only regard things as they pass in the sensible. world, we shall be in danger of being over-tempted to atheism, and to rob God of his glory and worship, and that faith, fear, love and obedience that are due to him. Of this I will produce only two examples. Diagoras saw a servant of his stealing from him, and upon his denial of the theft, brought him before the statue of Jupiter thundering, and constrained him to adjure Jupiter for the honour of his Deity, and of justice and fidelity, to strike him dead at his feet with thunder, if he were guilty of the fact, and after three times repeating the dreadful oath, he went away untouched without harm. Upon the sight of this Diagoras cried out, as in the Poet;

———Audis

Jupiter hæc, nec labra moves, cum mittere vocem
Debueras vel marmoreus, vel ahæneus? *

-Do'st hear

This Jove, not mov'st thy lips, when fit it were
Thy brass or marble spoke?

And whereas he should have been convinced that a statue could not be a god, he impiously concluded that God was nothing but a statue; and from that time was hardened in irreclaimable atheism. So that other † atheist reports of some of the Romans,

* Juvenal. Satyr. 13.

+ Alii in ipso capitolio fallunt, & fulminantem pejerant Jovem; & nos scelara juvant. Plin. lib. 2.

that they successfully deceived by false oaths, even in their most sacred temple in the presence of their supreme deity, the repugnant avenger of perjury. And because vengeance did not immediately overtake guilt, he acknowledged no other god but the world and nature, unconcerned in the governing human affairs. The disbelief of the future state strikes through the vital principles of religion, that there is a God, the rewarder of men's good or evil actions.

It may be objected, that God's dominion over the reasonable creature is absolute: for man owes to him entirely his being, and all that his faculties can produce, so that without reflection on justice, God may after a course of obedience, annihilate him.

To this I answer. The sovereign dominion of God in its exercise towards men is regulated by his wisdom, and limited by his will, that is holy, just, and good. Hence though the creature can challenge nothing from God as due to its service, yet there is a justice of condecence that arises from the excellencies of his own nature, and is perfectly consistent with the liberty of his essence, to bestow the eminent effects of his favours on his faithful servants. His holiness inclines him to love the image of it in the creature, and his goodness to reward it. His government is paternal, and sweetened by descending love in many favours and rewards to his obedient children. There is a resemblance of our duty to God, and his rewards to us in the order of nature among Parents may require of their children entire obedience, as being the second causes of their natural life. And children may expect from their parents what is requisite for their welfare. Now God, who is the father of men will be true to his own rules, and deal with them accordingly, but in a manner worthy of his infinite greatness. There is not the least obligation on him, but his unchangeable perfections are the strongest assurances, that none of his shall obey him to their final prejudice. It is a direct contrariety to his nature, that men for conscience of their duty should part with temporal happiness in hopes of eternal, and lose both.

men.

It may be objected, that such is the essential beauty of holiness that it should ravish our affections without ornament or dowry, that it is its own reward, and produces such a sweet agreement in the rational faculties, as fully compensates the loss of all lower delights, and sweetens the troubles that befal a vir

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