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pleafed God to make us reasonable creatures, that is, to endow us with a power of judging, and a liberty of acting. Why were these powers given? Was it that we might use and exercise them, and give proof of our virtue or vice in fo doing? Or was it that God might overrule them, and render them in every particular inftance useless and infignificant? If this is the case, had he not much better have made us machines at first, than have created us free agents, and then make us machines by an arbitrary interpofition of power? Who can account for the wisdom of God in making fo great a thing to no use or purpose; in filling this lower world with free agents, and then excluding all freedom by immediate acts of his power? Now this would in great measure be the cafe were rewards and punishments to be punctually adminiftered in this world; and that for this plain reafon: the temporal profperity of men depends upon their own actions, and the natural confequences of them, and upon the actions and natural confequences of the actions of others, with whom they live in fociety. Now, to fecure the happiness of a man, not only his own actions, but the actions of all others with whom he is any way concerned, must be determined, fo as to confpire in making him profperous; that is, he and all about him must lose the freedom of acting in order to secure his welfare here. If a righteous man muft never suffer in this world, all the wicked about him must be restrained from doing him violence. If a wicked man must be punished according to his merit, all who would do him more harm than he deserves to fuffer, muft be withheld; and if none

defigned him harm enough, fomebody must be employed to do the work. Carry this reflection abroad into the world, where the fortunes and interefts of men are mixed and complicated fo varioufly together, that one man's temporal profperity depends upon the actions of many befides himself, and it will be very clear, that there must be an end of all freedom, upon fuppofition that rewards and punishments are to be equally difpenfed in this world.

This confideration leads to another of still greater weight: for, if the freedom of human actions cannot be maintained upon this fuppofition, neither can the diftinction of virtue and vice. There is no morality or immorality where there is no choice or freedom: confequently were the actions of men under an abfolute controul, they would no more be anfwerable for their doings, than a clock is for its motions: and therefore to call upon God to make all things work by immediate interpofition of his power, for the present reward of virtue, and punishment of vice, is a requeft not confiftent with itself; it is defiring God to do that for the fake of virtue, which would destroy virtue, and leave no room for the exercise of it, no ground upon which to dif tinguish it from vice and iniquity.

But, to leave these confiderations, let us observe farther, that was virtue to be conftantly attended with fuccefs in worldly affairs, and vice certainly pursued with mifery, there would be no room for that trial of our faith and obedience, which is requifite to prepare us for the greater bleffings of another life. Upon this fuppofition, virtue would not be what it now is; it would be a kind of fen

fual thing, arifing often from ambition, avarice, and an inordinate love of worldly enjoyments: reafon and judgment, the love of God, and a juft fense of our duty to him, would have little efficacy in the bufinefs. Now, fince God has placed us here in order to our fitting ourselves for a better world, and has ordained this world for a state of trial only, it is abfurd to expect from his wifdom and juftice fuch a procedure, as would contradict this great and main end of our creation. The pleasures and afflictions of life are ordained for trials of our virtue; and, according to the vifible courfe of providence, they really are fo: but if you introduce a new order, and, by another difpenfation of good and evil in this life, convert these trials into rewards and punishments, you invert the order of providence; this life will no longer be a state of trial, nor the next a ftate of rewards and punishments; for all future expectations would be in great measure fuperfeded by the immediate recompence beftowed in this life.

Upon this confideration we may go farther, and fay, that the condition of good men would be really worse than it is, were this world a place of rewards and punishments for virtue and vice. Were this to be the only place of rewards and punishments, the affertion would be too evident to be denied by any, but fuch mean wretched fpirits, as would be content to give up their hopes of immortality for the prefent enjoyment of the world. But take the cafe as it now ftands with us, fuppofing only this alteration, that virtue and vice received their due portions of good and evil here, would not good

men be sufferers by lofing one great fupport of their hopes and expectations in another world? The notions we have of good and evil, the conceptions we form of God by the exercise of reason, joined to the experience we have of the unequal diftribution of good and evil in this life, conspire to prove to us, that there is another and better ftate, in which the fufferings of the righteous fhall be fully compenfated. Now break this chain of reasoning, by introducing rewards and punishments into this life, and you deface the great hopes of the righteous, and prefent him with an empty scene of worldly pleasure, inftead of that weight of glory which he, upon fure grounds, expected. And what is it that you give him in lieu of his hopes? Honours, riches, power: but do you not know how little value true virtue has for fuch poffeffions? Together with these you give him new fears of death; your honours and riches will not purchase life, or length of days; and if he receives his good things here, what fecurity can you give him that he fhall have any thing due to him hereafter? Upon the whole, good men are in a much better state, taking, as they do, their chance in the world, and relying upon the justice and goodness of God for a juft recompence of their labour; they have more true comfort and fatisfaction in this condition, than if they had the world at command, and no hopes, or but faint hopes, of future happiness.

These reasons feem to me fufficient to induce us to think, that it is confonant to the wisdom and goodness of God to leave men freely to use the freedom he has given them: that having beftowed

on them an understanding to know him, and to distinguish between good and evil, and fent them into this world, as a place proper for the trial of their virtue, he has left them in the main to the conduct of their own reason to improve the uncertain events and casualties of life, and to glorify him either through honour or dishonour, through riches or poverty, or whatever other condition of life may fall to their share.

Though these reasons teach us not to expect from the hand of God the good things of this world in reward of virtue and obedience; yet they ought not to be carried, nay they cannot be carried so far, as to exclude the providence of God from the care and government of the moral part of the world. It is one thing to turn a ftate of trial and probation into a state of rewards and punishments, by difpenfing good and evil to every man according to his work; and another thing to exercise acts of government suitable to the ftate, and fubfervient to the ends of creation. If God thinks fit to prosper any nation, or to afflict any people, he has a thousand ways of doing it, without interfering with the freedom and liberty of one man. Years of plenty are a great bleffing, but the fruitfulness of the season is no restraint on you or me; it is a general bleffing, but it makes no diftinction between good or evil. Plague and peftilence are general calamities, they may and ought to awaken all the world to a fober sense of God and themselves: but their rage is not fo directed as to touch the finners only; the good perifh with the bad, and he that called both out of the world will foon make a dif

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