XXXV.

THE GOODNESS OF GOD PROVED FROM THE LIGHT OF NATURE AND REVELATION.

(PART 1.)

PSALM XXXIII. 5.

The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.

Of all the great and glorious attributes of the being whom we worship, whose we are, and on whom we depend, none is so endearing or so important to us as his goodness; that magnificent power which laid the foundation of the earth, which spread abroad the heavens as a curtain, which assigned for the sea its channels and its bounds, saying it should not pass them; who hath brought into being ten thousand worlds like our own, rolling in the firmament, all of which are put in motion and sustained in their orbs by his Almighty hand; that consummate wisdom which created universal nature, which drew such regularity as this out of chaos and confusion; which contrives, with such exquisite skill, the largest as well as the least part of creation, from globes of immeasurable magnitude down to the limbs of insects too small for our eyes to perceive.

Although such are a just and never-to-be-exhausted subject of astonishment and adoration, yet neither of them is of that immediate concern and consequence to ourselves as the benevolence, and kindness, and good

ness of his disposition; because, if we ever find that these illustrious qualities are under the direction of a good and gracious will, then, but not till then, they become a solid ground of love, and confidence, and resignation to all who are to depend upon them besides. If God be not good, what reason have we to believe that by doing good we please him? So that the subject of the divine goodness lies at the root of all morality and religion of all our rules of conduct, and all our hopes of happiness. Now no man hath seen God at any time; we can know him only by his works and his word: his works are to be taken into consideration, both from this being the natural order, and because it is from his works we collect that his word is to be relied We will therefore state, as briefly as we can, upon. the argument by which is made out the divine goodness and benevolence to his creatures: for the main thing wanted, in an argument of this sort, is, that it be short and intelligible, that every one may retain and revert to it in his own thoughts. When God created the human species, either he wished their happiness, or he wished their misery, or he was indifferent and unconcerned about either: no other supposition is to be made. he had wished our misery, he might have made sure of his purpose by framing our senses to be so many sores and pains to us, as they are now instruments of gratification and enjoyment, or by placing us amidst objects as ill suited to our perceptions as to have continually offended us, instead of ministering to our refreshment and delight. He might, for example, if he had pleased, have made every thing we tasted bitter, every thing we saw loathsome, every thing we touched a sting, every smell a stench, and every sound a discord.

If

If he had been indifferent about our happiness or

misery, we must impute to our good fortunes (as all design by this supposition is excluded), both the capacity of our senses to receive pleasure, and the supply of external objects fitted to excite it; but either of these, and still more both of them, being too much to be attributed to accident, nothing is left for it but the first supposition, that God, when he created the human species, wished their happiness, and made for them the provision he has made, with that view and for that purpose.

This is the argument in brief; but it deserves to be displayed somewhat more at large; for, I trust, the more it is considered, the more satisfactory it will be found. The world about us was certainly made, and made by God; and there are three suppositions, and only three possible suppositions, as to the disposition and design with which he made it—either from a delight in the misery and torment of his creatures, or with a total unconcern what became of them one way or the other, or with the good and gracious will and wish that they should enjoy and be happy in the existence which he was giving them. If these are the only three possible suppositions, and the first two can be made out incredible, it will follow that the third is the true one. Now the supposition of a malicious purpose, like what we sometimes hear of in eastern tyrants, a pleasure in the sufferings of others, may, without any conceivable end and advantage to be answered to themselves, though it be possible he can do such a thing, is actual mischief-is the perverseness and corruption of the human heart. Yet it is absolutely excluded from being the case here; because the same power which framed and contrived our several faculties, and made us susceptible of so many pleasures, and placed so

many pleasing objects within our reach, could, if he had been so minded, have converted any one of these into instruments of torment and disgust. The power cannot be questioned, because he who could do one could do the other he who could make a creature happy, or capable of happiness, could make it miserable and destined to inevitable misery. The first supposition, therefore, I think, is clearly out of the question. Some may think that there is more probability in the second, namely, that our Creator was unconcerned and indifferent about either our happiness or misery. I believe, upon inquiry, it will be found that there is not much more likelihood in this than in the other; for suppose the divine Being to have had no regard, or affection, or solicitude for the happiness of the creatures he was producing, there was nothing but chance for it, or good fortune as I may say, that we are so well as we are; for, as to design in our favour, you say there was none. Now reflect for a moment how the chances stand: what likelihood was there that such an organ as the eye, for instance, fitted and contrived for so many valuable purposes both of convenience and pleasure, should have been the effect of chance? That is, can we imagine that the Author of all things, when he planned and fabricated the useful and exquisite mechanism of this precious sense, did not foresee and contemplate the uses it was to serve, and did not mean and intend that the creature to whom he gave it should receive happiness and enjoyment from it? Was there but this instance in the world, it would be sufficient to confute the notion that God meant and intended nothing about our happiness and enjoyment at all. But the eye is but one sense of five-seeing is but one faculty out of many: our hearing, speech, hands, feet,

together with the several endowments of our minds and understandings, all admit of the same observation. If this alone was so small that we could accidentally receive one such important faculty, how out of all proportion and calculation is it, that we should thus find ourselves in possession of so many? Nor is this all. Suppose we had the several senses, still they had stood us in little stead, if we had not been placed amidst objects precisely suited to them; our eyesight, for instance, might as well have been denied us, if the objects which constantly surround us had been too great or too small, too near or too distant to be perceived-our taste and smell had better have been out of the composition, if the meats that had generally been presented to the one had been nauseous or insipid, and the odours which exhaled from objects had continually offended us. It is only particular things that can, from their nature, please and gratify our senses; and out of the infinite variety which the capacity of nature allowed us, how extraordinary is it (suppose intention and design to have us happy to be laid out of the case), that the particular things should have been created, and still more that we should find ourselves in the midst of them. These instances appertain to the human species, because it is the disposition of the Deity towards his rational creatures which we are inquiring after, and precisely concerned in: but all nature speaks the same language. Every animal may, to the lowest reptile, possess some faculty or other, some means of gratification, which would not have been given it by a malevolent being, who delighted in misery, and which it would not have received without a degree of good fortune, of which we see no example, from a being who produced it without any concern about its happiness or misery at