been doing? On such accounts did this dispensation appear very strange and scandalous to them: but St. Paul, being infallibly assured of its truth, doth undertake to vindicate it from all misprisions, rendering a fair account of it, and assigning for it many satisfactory reasons, drawn from the general equity of the case, from the nature of God, his attributes, and his relations to men; from the congruity of this proceeding to the tenor of God's providence, to his most ancient purposes, to the true intent of his promises, to his express declarations and predictions; to the state of things in the world, and the pressing needs of all mankind: such reasons (I say, which I have not time more explicitly to relate) doth the Apostle produce in favor of this great dispensation; the which did suffice to clear and justify it from all their objections: yet notwithstanding, after that he had steered his discourse through all these rocks, he thought it safe to anchor; winding up the contest in this modest intimation, that whatever he could say, might not perhaps exhaust the difficulty, or void all scruple; that therefore in this, and all such cases, for intire satisfaction we should have recourse to the incomprehensible wisdom of God, who frequently in the course of his providence doth act on grounds, and ordereth things in methods, transcending our ability to discover or trace: to consider some causes and reasons of which incomprehensibility, and to ground thereon some practical advices, will be the scope of my discourse: the reasons may be these :

1. As the dealings of very wise men sometimes are founded on maxims, and admit justifications, not obvious nor penetrable by vulgar conceit; so may God act according to rules of wisdom and justice, which it may be quite impossible by our faculties to apprehend, or with our means to descry.

As there are natural modes of being and operation, (such as God's necessary subsistence, his production of things from nothing, his eternity without succession, his immensity without extension, his prescience without necessitation of events, his ever-acting, but never changing; and the like,) so there may be prudential and moral rules of proceeding far above our reach; so God himself telleth us: As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts

than your thoughts.' Some of them we may be uncapable to know, because of our finite nature; they being peculiar objects of divine wisdom, and not to be understood by any creature: for as God cannot impart the power of doing all things possible, so may he not communicate the faculty of knowing all things intelligible; that being indeed to ungod himself, or to deprive himself of his peerless supremacy in wisdom; hence he is styled the only wise God;' hence is he said to 'dwell in light inaccessible;' hence he chargeth the angels with folly;' hence the most illuminate seraphims do veil their faces before him.

Other such rules we may not be able to perceive from the meanness of our nature, or our low rank among creatures: for beneath omniscience there being innumerable forms of intelligence, in the lowest of these we sit, one remove from beasts; being endowed with capacities suitable to that inferior station, and to those meaner employments, for which we were designed and framed; whence our mind hath a pitch, beyond which it cannot soar; and things clearly intelligible to more noble creatures, moving in a higher orb, may be dark and unexplicable to us: As an angel of God, so is my lord the king, to discern good and bad,' was an expression importing this difference, how these glorious creatures do overtop us in intellectual capacities.

Also divers notions not simply passing our capacity to know, we are not yet in condition to ken, by reason of our circum. stances here, in this dark corner of things, to which we are confined, and wherein we lie under many disadvantages of attaining knowlege. He that is shut up in a close place, and can only peep through chinks, who standeth in a valley, and hath his prospect intercepted, who is encompassed with fogs, who hath but a dusky light to view things by, whose eyes are weak or foul, how can he see much or far; how can he discern things remote, minute, or subtile, clearly and distinctly? Such is our case; our mind is pent up in the body, and looketh only through those clefts by which objects strike our sense; its intuition is limited within a very small compass; it resideth in an atmosphere of fancy, stuffed with exhalations from temper, appetite, passion, interest; its light is scant and faint, (for

sense and experience do reach only some few gross matters of fact; light infused, and revelation imparted to us, proceed from arbitrary dispensation, in definite measures;) our ratiocination consequently from such principles must be very short and defective; nor are our minds ever thoroughly sound or pure and defecate from prejudices; hence no wonder, that now we are wholly ignorant of divers great truths, or have but a glimmering notion of them, which we may and hereafter shall come fully and clearly to understand; so that even Apostles, the secretaries of heaven, might say, We know in part, and we prophecy in part; we now see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.'

In fine, those rules of equity or expedience, which we in our transactions with one another do use, (being derived from our original inclinations to like some good things, or from notions stamped on our soul when God made us according to his image, from common experience, from any kind of rational collection, from the prescription of God's word,) if they be applied to the dealings of God, will be found very incongruous, or deficient; the case being vastly altered, from that infinite distance in nature and state between God and us; and from the immense differences which his relations toward us have from our relations to one another.

Wherefore in divers inquiries about providence, to which our curiosity will stretch itself, it is impossible for us to be resolved; and launching into them, we shall soon get out of our depth, so as to swim in dissatisfaction, or to sink into distrust: Why God made the world at such an instant, no sooner or later; why he made it thus, not exempt from all disorder; why he framed man (the prince of visible creatures) so fallible and frail, so prone to sin, so liable to misery; why so many things happen offensive to him, why his gifts are distributed with such inequality? Such questions we are apt to propound and to debate; but the resolution of them our mind perhaps was not made to apprehend, nor in its most elevate condition shall attain it: however in this state we by no means can come at it; it at least being kept close from us among those things, of which it is said, the secret things belong unto the Lord our God,' in

distinction from others, about which it is added, but those that are revealed belong unto us, and to our children for ever.'

In such cases the absolute will, the sovereign authority, the pure liberality of God do supply the place of reasons; sufficient, if not to satisfy the minds of men fondly curious, yet to stop the mouths of those who are boldly peremptory: the which are alleged, not with intent to imply that God ever acteth unaccountably or without highest reason, but that sometimes his methods of acting are not fit subjects of our conception or discussion; for otherwile God appealeth to the verdict of our reason; when the case is such that we can apprehend it, and the apprehension of it may conduce to good purposes.

2. As the standing rules of God's acting, so the occasional grounds thereof are commonly placed beyond the sphere of our apprehension.

God is obliged to prosecute his own immutable decrees; 'working all things,' as the Apostle saith, according to the counsel of his own will;' which how can we anywise come to discover? Can we climb up above the heaven of heavens, and there unlock bis closet, rifle his cabinet, and peruse the records of everlasting destiny, by which the world is governed? No; Who knoweth his mind, or hath been his counsellor?' Who,' saith the prophet, 'hath stood in the counsel of the Lord; or hath perceived and heard his word?'

He doth search the hearts, and try the reins of men ;' he doth weigh their spirits, and their works;' he doth know their frame,' he doth understand their thoughts afar off;' he perceiveth their closest intentions, their deepest contrivances, their most retired behaviors: he consequently is acquainted with their true qualifications, capacities, and merits; unto which he most justly and wisely doth accommodate his dealings with them; the which therefore must often thwart the opinions and expectations of us, who are ignorant of those particulars, and can only view the exterior face or semblance of things: for (as Samuel, in the case of preferring David before his brethren, did say) ' 'God seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but God looketh on the heart.'

God also hath a perfect foresight of contingent events; he

seeth on what pin each wheel moveth, and with what weight every scale will be turned; he discerneth all the connections, all the entanglements of things, and what the result will be on the combination, or the clashing of numberless causes; in correspondence to which perceptions he doth order things consistently and conveniently; whereas we being stark blind, or very dim-sighted in such respects, (seeing nothing future, and but few things present,) cannot apprehend what is fit and feasible; or why that is done, which appeareth done to us.

God observeth in what relations, and what degrees of comparison, (as to their natures, their virtues, their consequences,) all things do stand, each toward others; so poising them in the balance of right judgment, as exactly to distinguish their just weight and worth: whereas we cannot tell what things to compare, we know not how to put them into the scale, we are unapt to make due allowances, we are unable to discern which side doth overweigh in the immense variety of objects our knowlege doth extend to few things eligible, nor among them. can we pick out the best competitors for our choice: hence often must we be at great losses in scanning the designs or tracing the footsteps of providence.

3. We are also uncapable thoroughly to discern the ways of providence from our moral defects, in some measure common to all men; from our stupidity, our sloth, our temerity, our impatience, our impurity of heart, our perverseness of will and affections: we have not the perspicacity to espy the subtile tracks and secret reserves of divine wisdom; we have not the industry, with steady application of mind, to regard and meditate on God's works; we have not the temper and patience to wait on God, until he discover himself in the accomplishment of his purposes; we have not that blessed purity of heart,' which is requisite to the seeing God' in his special dispensations; we have not that rectitude of will and government of our passions, as not to be scandalised at what God doeth, if it thwarteth our conceit or humor: such defects are observable in the best men; who therefore have misapprehended, have disrelished, have fretted and murmured at the proceedings of God: we might instance in Job, in David, in Elias, in Jonah, in the holy Apostles themselves, by whose speeches and deportments in