rath, but also as an engine of divine justice, to crush the martyr on its
wheels, because he refuses to lie to his own soul and to his God? Nature
itself recoils from such a conclusion. Not one of the writers in question
would adopt it. Hence, they should not advocate a principle from which it
necessarily flows.

Indeed, they all argue the necessity of a future state of retribution,
from the unequal distribution of natural good and evil in this life. But
Lord Bolingbroke has refuted this argument by reasoning from their own
principles. He insists that such is the justice of God, that there can be
no suffering or natural evil in this life, except such as is proportioned
to the demerits of men; and hence he rejects the argument from the
apparent unequal distribution of pleasure and pain in this world in favour
of the reality of a future judgment. He resents the imputation that God
could ever permit any suffering which is not deserved, as warmly as it is
resented by Dr. Dick himself, and proclaims it to be dishonourable to God.
All rewards and punishments, says he, are equal and just in this life; and
to say otherwise, is to take an atheistical view of the divine character.
Learned divines proceed on the same principle, as we have seen, when they
contend for the imputation of sin; but they forget and overlook it, when
they come to prove the future judgment to the infidel. Thus, in their zeal
to establish their own peculiar dogmas, they place themselves and their
cause in the power of the infidel.

But if suffering be not always inflicted, under the administration of God,
as a punishment for sin, for what other end is it inflicted? We answer, it
is inflicted for these ends: 1. Even when it is inflicted as a punishment
for sin, this is not the only end, or final cause of its infliction. It is
also intended to deter others from the commission of evil, and preserve
the order of the world. 2. In some instances, nay, in very many instances,
it is intended to discipline and form the mind to virtue. As Bishop Butler
well says, even while vindicating the moral government of the world: "It
is not pretended but that, in the natural course of things, happiness and
misery appear to be distributed by other rules, than only the personal
merit and demerit of character. They may sometimes be distributed by way
of mere discipline." And in his profound chapter on a "State of probation,
as intended for moral discipline and improvement," he sho