Thus, when the old world became abandoned to wickedness, he only fent Enoch and Noah to preach to men; but he thought proper to deftroy them all, perhaps by a proper miracle, rather than reform them, as he might have done, by his own immediate agency.

When the Ifraelites fell into idolatry, and the many horrid vices at that time infeparable from idolatry, he fent prophets from time to time to admonish them of various impending calamities. But when thofe admonitions had no good effect, he always thought proper that the threatened calamities, as famine, peftilence, war, or captivity, should actually overtake them, rather than give (as with a volition he might have done) a fupernatural effect to the warnings and expoftulations of his fervants, by his own influence upon their minds.

So alfo when God had compaffion on the whole world lying in wickedness, and irrecoverably funk in fuperftition and vice, all

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that he did to reclaim them was to fend the gofpel among them. And whatever moral good has been produced in the world by it, has been by natural means, and, to all appearance, by no other means whatever; these being fully adequate to the effect: and whereever the publication of the gofpel, and of the great truths and motives of it, has failed to produce good effects, they have not been produced at all, but men continue wicked and abandoned, doomed to certain deftruction.

Our Lord even wept over Jerusalem, defiring, with the greatest affection and earnestnefs, to reclaim the inhabitants of it, and prevent their impending calamities; but his labours, and those of the apostles, failing of fuccefs (that infatuated people continuing in their obftinate impenetency and unbelief) God did not interpofe any farther; and tho' the Jews are stiled his peculiar people, he gave them up to the vengeance of the Romans, and made their calamities the most dreadful, and of the longest continuance, of any that are recorded in hiftory.

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Thus, when the old world became abandoned to wickedness, he only fent Enoch and Noah to preach to men; but he thought proper to destroy them all, perhaps by a proper miracle, rather than reform them, as he might have done, by his own immediate agency.

When the Ifraelites fell into idolatry, and the many horrid vices at that time infeparable from idolatry, he fent prophets from time to time to admonish them of various impending calamities. But when thofe admonitions had no good effect, he always thought proper that the threatened calamities, as famine, peftilence, war, or captivity, should actually overtake them, rather than give (as with a volition he might have done) a fupernatural effect to the warnings and expoftulations of his fervants, by his own influence upon their minds.

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So alfo when God had compaffion on the whole world lying in wickedness, and irrecoverably funk in fuperftition and vice, all

that

that he did to reclaim them was to fend the gofpel among them. And whatever moral good has been produced in the world by it, has been by natural means, and, to all appearance, by no other means whatever; these being fully adequate to the effect: and whereever the publication of the gospel, and of the great truths and motives of it, has failed to produce good effects, they have not been produced at all, but men continue wicked and abandoned, doomed to certain deftruction.

Our Lord even wept over Jerufalem, defiring, with the greatest affection and earnestness, to reclaim the inhabitants of it, and prevent their impending calamities; but his labours, and those of the apostles, failing of fuccefs (that infatuated people continuing in their obstinate impenetency and unbelief) God did not interpofe any farther; and tho' the Jews are stiled his peculiar people, he gave them up to the vengeance of the Romans, and made their calamities the most dreadful, and of the longest continuance, of are recorded in history.

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We may affure ourselves, therefore, that God, notwithstanding the love that he bears to men, as his offspring, will certainly suffer them to perish, and undergo the pains of hell, whatever they are, rather than fave them from that punishment when they die impenitent; and also, that he will fuffer them to die impenitent, rather than employ any other than the ufual natural means of their repentance and reformation. So facred with him are his established laws of nature.

We read of our Lord's giving fight to the blind, limbs to the maimed, and the use of reason to those who were deprived of it; but never of his giving a found mind, in a moral fense, to those who were deftitute of that. For this, though the greatest of all purposes, he made use of nothing but instruction and admonition. He used no other means either to disarm the malice of his enemies, or to correct the imperfections of his best friends. Otherwise Judas would never have betrayed him, nor would Peter have denied him.

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