preventing happiness in this. So artificially by this means is the nature of all human virtue and vice contrived, that their rewards and punishments are woven as it were into their very effence; their immediate effects give us a foretaste of their future; and their fruits in the prefent life are the proper famples of what they must unavoidable produce in another. We have Reafon given us to diftinguish these confequences, and regulate our conduct; and left that should neglect its poft, Confcience alfo is appointed as an inftitive kind of monitor, perpetually to remind us both of our intereft and our duty. When we confider how wonderfully the practice of Virtue is thus inforced by our great Creator, and that all which he requires of us under that title is only to be be happy, that is, to make each other fo; and when at the fame time we look round us, and fee the whole race of mankind thro' every fucceffive generation tormenting, injuring, and destroying each other, and perpetually counteracting the gracious defigns of their Maker, it is a moft aftonishing paradox how all this comes to pafs; why God fhould fuffer himself to be thus defeated in his best purposes by creatures of his own making; or why Man fhould be made with difpofitions to defeat them at the expence of his own prefent and future happiness; why infinite Goodness should form creatures inclined to oppose its own benevolent designs, or why infinite Power fhould thus fuffer itself to be opposed. There are fome, I know, who extricate themfelves from this difficulty very con cisely by afferting, that there is in fact no fuch original depravity, no fuch innate propensity to vice in human nature; but as this affertion is directly contrary to the express declaration of the Scriptures, to the opinion of the Philofophers and Moralifts of all ages, and to the most conftant, and unvariable experience of every hour; I think they no more deferve an answer,' than they who would affirm, that a stone has no tendency to the Center by its natural gravity, or that Flame has no inclination to afcend. But the ufual folution applied to this difficulty by the ableft Philofophers and Divines, with which they themselves, and most of their readers, feem perfectly fatisfied, is comprehended in the following reafoning: That Man came perfect out of the hands of his Creator, both in virtue and happiness, but it being more eligible that he fhould be a free-agent than a mere machine, God endued him with Freedom of will; from the abuse of which Freedom, all Mifery and Sin, that is, all natural and moral Evils, derive their exiftence: from all fuch therefore the Divine Goodness is fufficiently juftified, by reafon they could not be prevented without the lofs of fuperior Good; for to create Men free, and at the fame time compell them to be virtuous, is utterly impoffible. But whatever air of demonstration this argument may affume, by whatever fam'd Preachers it may have been used, or by whatever learned Audience it may have been approved, I will venture to affirm, that it is falfe in all its Principles, and in its Conclufion alfo ; and I think it may H be be clearly fhewn, that God did not make Man abfolutely Perfect, nor abfolutely Free: nor, if he had, would this in the leaft have juftified the introduction of Wickedness and Mifery. That Man came Perfect, that is indued with all poffible Perfections, out of the hands of his Creator, is evidently a falfe notion derived from the Philofophers of the first ages, founded on their ignorance of the Origin of Evil, and inability to account for it on any other Hypothefis: they understood not that the univerfal System required Subordination, and confequently comparative Imperfections; nor that in the Scale of Beings there must be some where fuch a creature as Man with all his infirmities about him that the total removal of thefe : would be altering his very Nature; and that |