consent
to let his creatures remain constantly unhappy. Yet this grand
hypothesis, of the unalterable felicity of mankind hereafter, is
insufficient to justify the Divinity in permitting the present sleeting
and transitory marks of injustice and disorder. If God can have been
unjust for a moment, he has derogated, during that moment at least,
from his divine perfection, and is not unchangeably good; his justice
then is liable to temporary alteration, and, if this be the case, who
can give security for his justice and goodness continuing unalterable
in a future life, the notion of which is set up only to exculpate his
deviation from those qualities in this?

In spite of the experience, which every instant gives the lie to that
beneficence which men suppose in God, they continue to call him good.
When we bewail the miserable victims of those disorders and calamities
that so often overwhelm our species, we are confidently told that these
ills are but apparent, and that if our short-sighted mind could fathom
the depths of divine wisdom, we should always behold the greatest
blessings result from what we denominate evil. How despicable is so
frivolous an answer! If we can find no good but in such things as
affect us in a manner which is agreeable and pleasing to our actual
existence, we shall be obliged to confess that those things which
affect us, even but for a time, in, a painful manner, are as certainly
evil to us. To vindicate God's visiting mankind with these evils some
tell us, that he is just, and that they, are chastisements inflicted on
mankind to punish the wrongs he has received from men. Thus a feeble
mortal has the power to irritate and injure the almighty and eternal
Being who created this world. To offend any one is, to afflict him,
to diminish in some degree his happiness, to make him feel a painful
sensation. How can man possibly disturb the felicity of the
all-powerful sovereign of nature! How can a frail creature, who
has received from God his being and his temper, act against the
inclinations of an irresistable force which never consents to sin and
disorder? Besides justice, according to the only ideas which we can
have of it, supposes a fixt desire to render every one his due. But
theologians constantly preach that God owes us nothing, that the good
things he affords are the voluntary effects of his beneficence, and
that without any violence of his equity he can dispose of his creatures
as his choice or