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ART. fign of goodness is the making us truly good; and when I. any perfon falls below that poffibility, he is no more the object of pity or pardon, because he is no more capable of becoming good. Pardon is offered on defign to make us really good; fo it is not to be fought for, nor refted in, but in order to a further end, which is the reforming our natures, and the making us partakers of the divine nature. We are not therefore to frame ideas of a feeble goodness in God, that yields to importunate cries, or that melts at a vaft degree of mifery. Tenderness in human nature is a great ornament and perfection, neceffary to difpofe us to much benignity and mercy: but in the common adminiftration of juftice, this tenderness must be reftrained; otherwife it would flacken the rigour of punishment too much, which might diffolve the order and peace of human focieties. But fince we cannot fee into the truth of men's hearts, a charitable difpofition and a compaffionate temper are neceffary, to make men fociable and kind, gentle and humane. God, who fees our hearts, and is ever affifting all our endeavours to become truly good, needs not this tenderness, nor is he indeed capable of it; for after all its beauty with relation to the state wherein we are now put, yet in itself it implies imperfection. Nor can the miferies and howlings of wicked beings, after all the feeds and poffibilities of goodness are utterly extinguifhed in them, give any pity to the Divine Being. These are no longer the object of the primary act of his goodnefs, and therefore they cannot come under its fecondary acts. It is of fuch great confequence to fettle this notion right in our minds, that it well deferves to be fo copioufly opened; fince we now fee in what refpects God's goodness is without bounds, and infinite; that is, it reaches to all men, after all fins whatfoever, as long as they are capable of becoming good. It is not a limitation of the divine goodnefs to fay, that fome men and fome ftates are beyond it; no more than it is a limitation of his power to fay, that he cannot fin, or cannot do impoffibilities: for a goodness towards perfons not capable of becoming good, is a goodnefs that does not agree with the infinite purity and holinefs of God. It is fuch a goodnefs, that if it were propofed to the world, it would encourage men to live in fin, and to think that a few acts of homage offered to God, perhaps in our laft extremities, could fo far please him, as to bribe and corrupt him.

This is that which makes idolatry fo great a fin, fo often forbid by God, and fo feverely punished, not only as it is injurious to the majefty of God, but because it cor

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rupts the ideas or notions of God. Thofe ideas rightly ART. formed are the bafis upon which all Religion is built. The feeds and principles of a new and godlike nature fpring up in us as we form ourselves upon the true ideas or notions of God. Therefore when God is proposed to be adored by us under a visible shape or image, all the acts of Religion offered to it are only fo many pieces of pageantry, and end in the flatterings and the magnifyings of it with much pomp, cruelty, or lafcivioufnefs, according to the different genius of feveral nations. So the forming a falfe notion of the goodness of God, as a tenderness that is to be overcome with importunities and howlings, and other fubmiffions, and not to be gained only by becoming like him, is a capital and fundamental error in religion.

The next branch of this article is, God's creating and preferving of all things; and that both material fubftances, which are visible, and immaterial and fpiritual fubftances, which are invifible. God's creating all things has been already made out. If matter could neither be eternal, nor give itfelf a being, then it must have its being from God. Creating does naturally import infinite power; for that power is clearly without bounds, that can make things ont of nothing: a bounded power, which can only fhape and mould matter, muft fuppofe it to have a being, before it can work upon it. We cannot indeed form a diftin&t thought of creation, for we cannot apprehend what nothing is. The nearest approach we can bring ourfelves to a true idea of this, is, the confidering our own thoughts; efpecially our ideas of mathematical proportions, and the other affections of bodies: thofe ideas are the modes of a fpiritual fubftance; and there is no likeness nor refemblance between them and the modes of material fubftances, which are only the occafions of our having thofe ideas, and not in any wife the matter out of which they are formed. Here feems to be a fort of beings brought out of nothing; but, after all, this is vastly below creation, and is only a faint refemblance of it,

With the power of creating we muft alfo join that of annihilating, which is equal to it, and muft neceffarily be fupposed to be in God, because we plainly perceive it to be a perfection. The recalling into nothing a being brought out of nothing, is a neceffary confequence of infinite power, when it thinks fit fo to exert itself. There is a common notion in the world, that things would fall back into nothing of themselves, if they were not preferved by the fame infinite Power that made them: but without question

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ART. queftion it is an act of the fame infinite Power to reduce a being to nothing, that it is to bring a being out of nothing fo whatever has once a being, muft of its nature continue ftill to be, without any new caufality or influence. This must be acknowledged, unlefs it can be faid, that a tendency to annihilation is the confequent of a created being. But as this would make the prefervation of the world to be a continued violence to a natural tendency that is in all things; fo there is no more reason to imagine that beings have a tendency to annihilation, than that nothing had a tendency to creation. It is abfurd to think that any thing can have a tendency to that which is effentially oppofite to itself, and is deftructive of it.

The prefervation of things, is the keeping the frame of nature and the order of the univerfe in fuch a state as is fuitable to the purposes of the Supreme Mind. It is true, natural agents muft ever keep the courfe in which they are once put; and the great heavenly orbs, as well as all fmaller motions, muft ever have rolled on in one constant channel, when they were once put into it; fo in this respect it may seem that confervation by a special act is not neceffary. But we perceive a freedom in our own natures, and a power that our minds have, not only to move our own bodies, but by them, and by the help of fuch engines as we can invent, we make a vaft change in this earth from what it would be, if it were left unwrought. In a courfe of fome ages, the whole world, by the natural progrefs of things, would be a foreft: both earth and air are very much different from what they would be, if men were not free agents, and did not cultivate the earth, and thereby purify the air. The working of mines, minerals, and other foffils, makes alfo a great change in its bowels; it gives vent to fome damps which might much affect the air, and it frees the earth from earthquakes. Thus the industry of man has in many refpects changed both earth and air very fenfibly from what it would have been, if the world had not thofe inhabitants in it. Nor do we know what natural force other fpirits inhabiting in or about it, or at leaft ufing fubtiller bodies, may have, or in what influences or operations they may exert that force on material fubftances. Upon all thefe accounts it is, that the world could not be preferved in a conftant and regular ftate, if the Supreme Mind had not a direction both of men's wills and actions, and of the course of nature : for unless it is thought that man is really no free agent, but acts in a chain as certainly as other natural agents do, it must be acknowledged, that by the interpofition of men's

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minds, together with their power over matter, the courfe ART. of the first motion that was given to the universe is fo changed, that if there is not a conftant providence, the frame of nature must go out of the channel into which God did at first put it. The order of things on this earth takes a great turn from the wind, both as to the fruitfulnefs of the earth, and to the operations on the fea, and has likewife a great influence on the purity of the air, and, by confequence, on men's good or ill health; and the wind, or the agitation of the air, turns so often and fo quick, that it feems to be the great inftrument of Providence, upon which an unconceivable variety of things does naturally depend. I do not deny, but that it may be faid, that all thofe changes in the air arife from certain and mechanical, though to us unknown caufes; which may be fupported from this, that between the Tropics, where the influence of the heavenly bodies is ftronger, the wind and weather are more regular; though even that admits of great exceptions: yet it has been the common fenfe of mankind, that, befides the natural caufes of the alterations in the air, they are under a particular influence and direction of Providence and it is in itfelf highly probable, to say no more of it. This may either be managed immediately by the acts of the Divine Mind, to which nature readily obeys, or by fome fubaltern mind, or angel, which may have as natural an efficiency over an extent of matter proportioned to its capacity, as a man has over his own body, and over that compafs of matter that is within his reach. Which way foever God governs the world, and what influence foever he has over men's minds, we are fure that the governing and preferving his own workmanship is fo plainly a perfection, that it muft belong to a Being infinitely perfect and there is such a chain in things, thofe of the greateft confequence arifing often from fmall and inconfiderable ones, that we cannot imagine a Providence, unless we believe every thing to be within its care and view.

The only difficulty that has been made in apprehending this, has arifen from the narrownefs of men's minds, who have measured God rather by their own measure and capacity, than by that of infinite perfection, which, as foon as it is confidered, will put an end to all further doubtings about it. When we perceive that a vast number of objects enter in at our eye by a very finall paffage, and yet are fo little jumbled in that crowd, that they open themselves regularly, though there is no great fpace for that neither; and that they give us a distinct apprehen

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ART. fion of many objects that lie before us, fome even at a vaft diftance from us, both of their nature, colour, and fize; and by a fecret geometry, from the angles that they make in our eye, we judge of the diftance of all object's both from us, and from one another. If to this we add the vast number of figures that we receive and retain long and with great order in our brains, which we eafily fetch up either in our thoughts or in our difcourfes; we shall find it lefs difficult to apprehend how an infinite mind fhould have the univerfal view of all things ever present before it. It is true, we do not fo easily conceive how free minds are under this Providence, as how natural agents fhould always move at its direction. But we perceive that one mind can work upon another. A man raises a found of words, which carry fuch figns of his inward thoughts, that by this motion in the air another man's ear is fo ftruck upon, that thereby an impreffion is made upon his brain, by which he not only conceives what the other man's thought was, but is very powerfully inclined to consent to it, and to concur with it. All this is a great way about, and could not be easily apprehended by us, if we had not a clear and conftant perception of it. Now fince all this is brought about by a motion upon our brains, according to the force with which we are more or less affected, it is very reasonable for us to apprehend that the Supreme Mind can, befides many other ways to us lefs known, put fuch motions in our brain, as may give us all fuch thoughts as it intends to imprefs upon us, in as ftrong and effectual a manner as may fully anfwer all its purposes.

The great objection that lies against the power and the goodness of Providence, from all that evil that is in the world, which God is either not willing or not able to hinder, will be more properly confidered in another place; at prefent it is enough in general to obferve, that God's providence muft carry on every thing according to its nature; and fince he has made fome free beings capable of thought, and of good and evil, we must believe, that as the course of nature is not oft put out of its channel, unlefs when fome extraordinary thing is to be done, in order to fome great end; fo in the government of free agents, they must be generally left to their liberty, and not put too oft off their bias: this is a hint to refolve that difficulty by, concerning all the moral evil, which is, generally speaking, the occafion of moft of the physical evil that is in the world. A providence thus fettled, that extends itfelf to all things both natural and free, is

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