fual thing, arifing often from ambition, avarice, and an inordinate love of worldly enjoyments: reafon and judgment, the love of God, and a just sense of our duty to him, would have little efficacy in the bufinefs. Now, fince God has placed us here in order to our fitting ourselves for a better world, and has ordained this world for a state of trial only, it is abfurd to expect from his wisdom and justice fuch a procedure, as would contradict this great and main end of our creation. The pleasures and afflictions of life are ordained for trials of our virtue; and, according to the vifible courfe of providence, they really are fo: but if you introduce a new order, and, by another difpenfation of good and evil in this life, convert these trials into rewards and punishments, you invert the order of providence; this life will no longer be a state of trial, nor the next a ftate of rewards and punishments; for all future expectations would be in great measure fuperfeded by the immediate recompence beftowed in this life.

Upon this confideration we may go farther, and fay, that the condition of good men would be really worse than it is, were this world a place of rewards and punishments for virtue and vice. Were this to be the only place of rewards and punishments, the affertion would be too evident to be denied by any, but fuch mean wretched fpirits, as would be content to give up their hopes of immortality for the prefent enjoyment of the world. But take the cafe as it now ftands with us, fuppofing only this alteration, that virtue and vice received their due portions of good and evil here, would not good

men be sufferers by lofing one great fupport of their hopes and expectations in another world? The notions we have of good and evil, the conceptions we form of God by the exercise of reason, joined to the experience we have of the unequal diftribution of good and evil in this life, confpire to prove to us, that there is another and better ftate, in which the fufferings of the righteous fhall be fully compenfated. Now break this chain of reasoning, by introducing rewards and punishments into this life, and you deface the great hopes of the righteous, and present him with an empty scene of worldly pleasure, inftead of that weight of glory which he, upon fure grounds, expected. And what is it that you give him in lieu of his hopes? Honours, riches, power: but do you not know how little value true virtue has for fuch poffeffions? Together with these you give him new fears of death; your honours and riches will not purchase life, or length of days; and if he receives his good things here, what fecurity can you give him that he fhall have any thing due to him hereafter? Upon the whole, good men are in a much better state, taking, as they do, their chance in the world, and relying upon the justice and goodness of God for a juft recompence of their labour; they have more true comfort and fatisfaction in this condition, than if they had the world at command, and no hopes, or but faint hopes, of future happiness.

These reasons feem to me fufficient to induce us to think, that it is confonant to the wifdom and goodnefs of God to leave men freely to use the freedom he has given them: that having bestowed

on them an understanding to know him, and to diftinguish between good and evil, and fent them into this world, as a place proper for the trial of their virtue, he has left them in the main to the conduct of their own reafon to improve the uncertain events and casualties of life, and to glorify him either through honour or dishonour, through riches or poverty, or whatever other condition of life may fall to their share.

Though these reasons teach us not to expect from the hand of God the good things of this world in reward of virtue and obedience; yet they ought not to be carried, nay they cannot be carried fo far, as to exclude the providence of God from the care and government of the moral part of the world. It is one thing to turn a state of trial and probation into a state of rewards and punishments, by difpenfing good and evil to every man according to his work; and another thing to exercise acts of government fuitable to the ftate, and fubfervient to the ends of creation. If God thinks fit to profper any nation, or to afflict any people, he has a thousand ways of doing it, without interfering with the freedom and liberty of one man. Years of plenty are a great bleffing, but the fruitfulness of the feafon is no reftraint on you or me; it is a general bleffing, but it makes no diftinction between good or evil. Plague and peftilence are general calamities, they may and ought to awaken all the world to a fober sense of God and themselves: but their rage is not fo directed as to touch the finners only; the good perish with the bad, and he that called both out of the world will foon make a dif

ference; though in the fight of the world the end of both was taken to be mifery. The fame holds true with respect to private perfons: God can correct them without breaking in upon the ordinary courfe of his providence. If a man wants to be bowed down by afflictions, fevers and agues, and all the tribe of diftempers, ftand ready to obey the order of Providence: but there is no mark to know a fever fo fent from another; there is no appearance of the execution of judgment upon a person fo vifited; the phyfic may be fent, because it is wanted, but the hand that adminifters it does not appear.

Thus much is faid to prevent mistakes: but the forementioned reafons remain ftill in force against the expectations, which men are too apt to raise, of some immediate recompence to be bestowed on them by the interpofition of Providence upon account of their virtue and goodness.

Let us now proceed to confider what experience teaches in this cafe. That good and evil are not dispensed in this life in proportion to the merits of men, appears fo plainly to all men of fenfe and reason, that the fact, I think, has never been difputed. The world has never been without complaints upon this head. The righteous in all times have lamented their cafe; their hearts have been even ready to fail under the oppreffion of the ungodly. On the other fide, the wicked, feeing their own profperity, have been hardened, and grown fecure in their iniquity, upon the foolish prefumption, that God regarded not them, nor their doings. To abate these prefumptions on one hand, to

filence the fears and clamours on the other, has found work for good and wife men in all ages; yet none of them called in queftion the truth of the cafe, though all condemned the perverfe ufe made on all fides of this adminiftration of Providence. Becaufe fentence, fays the Preacher, against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the fons of men is fully fet in them to do evil. That the cafe was fo, he acknowledges: For all this I confidered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous and the wife, and their works, are in the hand of God: no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them. All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good, and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that facrificeth, and to him that facrificeth not as is the good, fo is the finner; and he that fweareth, as he that feareth an oath. But this is indeed a very plain thing, and needs not to be infifted on; we may leave it to every man to judge for himself by what he can obferve in the world, and he will foon find, that in fact God has not made this a place for diftributing rewards or punishments, but that one event happeneth alike to all.

Laftly, Let us inquire how far this experience is confirmed by what the Scripture teaches us to expect.

There are some paffages of holy writ, which at first hearing, and before they are duly weighed, may seem to promise more to the righteous in this life than we have been able to find either reafon or experience to justify. Let us hear the Pfalmift: I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not feen the righteous for