knowlege certain, it is this, that we owe our life to that power by the influence of which the functions of life are performed : search diligently for this power, and you will not fail of finding God. If any man be otherwise minded, let him account for the first principle of motion in animal bodies, and he shall have leave to doubt of all the rest. But this is not our point; the question now is, since God has made man a reasonable creature, and endowed him with a liberty of acting, how far he has thought fit to leave him to his liberty, and to give him up here to the issues and consequences of his own doings? Of his power we doubt not; we know he can overrule every action of man, and every thought of his heart: our search is not what he can do, but what he has been pleased to do, and what method he has prescribed to himself, with respect to the actions of men, and the consequences which flow from them in this life. To come at any knowlege in this case there are but these three ways to consider what reason requires, what experience teaches, what Scripture confirms.

Let us consider what reason requires. It has pleased 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 so doing? Or was it that God might overrule them, and render them in every particular instance useless and insignificant? 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 interposition of power? Who can account for the wisdom of God in making so 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 case were rewards and punishments to be punctually administered in this world; and that for this plain reason: the temporal prosperity of men depends on their own actions, and the natural consequences of them, and on the actions and natural consequences of the actions of others with whom they live in society. Now to secure 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, so as to

conspire in making him prosperous; that is, he and all about him must lose the freedom of acting in order to secure his welfare here. If a righteous man must 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 suffer, must be withheld; and if none designed him harm enough, somebody must be employed to do the work. Carry this reflexion abroad into the world, where the fortunes and interests of men are mixed and complicated so variously together, that one man's temporal prosperity depends on the actions of many besides himself, and it will be very clear that there must be an end of all freedom, on supposition that rewards and punishments are to be equally dispensed in this world.

This consideration leads to another of still greater weight: for if the freedom of human actions cannot be maintained on this supposition, neither can the distinction of virtue and vice. There is no morality or immorality where there is no choice or freedom: consequently were the actions of men under an absolute control, they would no more be answerable for their doings, than a clock is for its motions: and therefore to call on God to make all things work by immediate interposition of his power, for the present reward of virtue and punishment of vice, is a request not consistent with itself; it is desiring God to do that for the sake of virtue, which would destroy virtue, and leave no room for the exercise of it, no ground on which to distinguish it from vice and iniquity.

But to leave these considerations, let us observe farther, that was virtue to be constantly attended with success in worldly affairs, and vice certainly pursued with misery, there would be no room for that trial of our faith and obedience, which is requisite to prepare us for the greater blessings of another life, On this supposition, virtue would not be what it now is; it would be a kind of sensual thing, arising often from ambition, avarice, and an inordinate love of worldly enjoyments: reason and judgment, the love of God, and a just sense of our duty to him, would have little efficacy in the business. Now, since 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 absurd to expect from his wisdom and justice such a procedure, as would contradict this great and main end of our creation. The pleasures and afflictions of life are ordained for trials of virtue; and, according to the visible course of Providence, they really are so but if you introduce a new order, and, by another dispensation 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 state of rewards and punishments; for all future expectations would be in great measure superseded by the immediate recompense bestowed in this life.

On this consideration we may go farther, and say 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 assertion would be too evident to be denied by any but such mean wretched spirits as would be content to give up their hopes of immortality for the present enjoyment of the world. But take the case as it now stands with us, supposing only this alteration, that virtue and vice received their due portions of good and evil here, would not good men be sufferers by losing one great support 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 distribution of good and evil in this life, conspire to prove to us that there is another and better state, in which the sufferings of the righteous shall be fully compensated. Now break this chain of reasoning, by introducing rewards and punishments into this life, and you deface the great hopes of the righteous, and present him with an empty scene of worldly pleasure, instead of that weight of glory which he on sure grounds expected. And what is it that you give him in lieu of his hopes? Honors, riches, power: but do you not know how little value true virtue has for such possessions? Together with these you give him new fears of death; your honors and riches will not purchase life or length of days; and if he receives his good things here, what security can you give him that he shall have any thing due to him hereafter? On the whole, good men are in a much

better state, taking, as they do, their chance in the world, and relying on the justice and goodness of God for a just recompense of their labor; they have more true comfort and satisfaction in this condition than if they had the world at command, and no hopes, or but faint hopes, of future happiness.

These reasons seem to me sufficient to induce us to think that it is consonant to the wisdom and goodness of God to leave men freely to use the freedom he has given them that having bestowed on them an understanding to know him, and to distinguish between good and evil, and sent 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 honor or dishonor, 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 state of trial and probation into a state of rewards and punishments, by dispensing good and evil to every man according to his work; and another thing to exercise acts of government suitable to the state, and subservient 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 Years of plenty are a great blessing, but the fruitfulness of the season is no restraint on you or me; it is a general blessing, but it makes no distinction between good or evil. Plague and pestilence are general calamities; they may and ought to awaken all the world to a sober sense of God and themselves; but their rage is not so directed as to touch the sinners only; the good perish with the bad, and he that called both out of the world will soon make a difference; though in the sight of the world the end of both was taken to be misery. The same holds true with respect to private persons: God can correct them without breaking in on the ordinary course of his providence. If a man wants to be bowed down by afflic

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tions, fevers and agues, and all the tribe of distempers, stand ready to obey the order of Providence: but there is no mark to know a fever so sent from another; there is no appearance of the execution of judgment on a person so visited; the physic may be sent because it is wanted, but the hand that administers it does not appear.

Thus much is said to prevent mistakes: but the forementioned reasons remain still in force against the expectations which men are too apt to raise, of some immediate recompense to be bestowed on them by the interposition of Providence on account of their virtue and goodness.

Let us now proceed to consider what experience teaches in this case. That good and evil are not dispensed in this life in proportion to the merits of men, appears so plainly to all men of sense and reason, that the fact, I think, has never been disputed. The world has never been without complaints on this head. The righteous in all times have lamented their case; their hearts have been even ready to fail under the oppression of the ungodly. On the other side, the wicked, seeing their own prosperity, have been hardened, and grown secure in their iniquity, on the foolish presumption that God regarded not them nor their doings. To abate these presumptions on one hand, to silence the fears and clamors on the other, has found work for good and wise men in all ages; yet none of them called in question the truth of the case, though all condemned the perverse use made on all sides of this administration of Providence. 'Because sentence,' says the Preacher,' against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.' That the case was so, he acknowleges: For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God: no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them. All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good, and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.' But this is indeed a very plain thing, and needs not to be insisted on; we may leave it to every man to judge for himself by what he can observe in

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