At tne same time, these evils serve both as punish ments and correctives; their evident design being to obviate the evil tendency of our appetites, passions and affections ; and whatever uneasiness they may cause, roan, as his nature is now constituted, is undoubtedly happier than he would be without them.
But we do not pretend wholly to remove the difficul ties connected with this question, when we endeavour to show that the outward arrangements of Providence are adapted with infinite wisdom to the present condi tion and circumstances of man. For the question is, How the condition of man came to be as we now find it ; and why evil and suffering are permitted to find a place •among the works of a good and merciful God ? We will perhaps be fully as near our purpose to say at once, " Such is the will of Him who orders all things well and wisely." But men are not disposed to rest here; and they have anxiously laboured to separate the exist ence of evil from the ordinations of Heaven, affirming that though God foresaw the introduction of evil, yet he neither willed nor appointed it. This, however, will perhaps not appear to many quite satisfactory; for, as every thing depends on the Almighty, it may be said that his prescience, or knowledge of what is to happen, must have the same effect as an absolute decree.
There is one way of getting rid of this difficulty ; but we fear it will riot mend the matter much. It is affirm ed, for instance, that prescience actually does not belong to God, and that any idea, implying either Post or Prce, must be totally inapplicable to a Being who fills eternity with his presence, with whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years. This is, no doubt, true; but if it is available for any thing, it is to silence, rather than to satisfy our reason, and to show us our utter incompetency to comprehend the things of God. It is of no tbe as an explanation, unless it could be shown that the actions of men are altogether inde pendent on God, and that he could not prevent them front being what they are: but this would be vindicat ing his justice at the expense of his omnipotence, and exalting his mei cy by denying his power.
We must not suppose that the Almighty has been di rected in his determinations or decrees by any thing resembling the late which the ancients represented as binding gods and men: we must conceive him to be perfectly free in his determinations and his actions ; and though evil is permitted. we have reason to conclude that it could not be prevented, without the obstruction of a greater good. Hence the observation of Augustine, quoted with approbation by Thomas Aquinas and Leib nitz, Dcum permittere gue:danz mala fieri, ne multa bona impediantur. The latter author observes, that thing whose contrary implies a contradiction has a ne cessary existence ; but eve' y thing that might be other wise than it is, though determined to be what it is, for sufficient and infallible reasons, is contingent. " Cela pose, l'on volt comment nous pouvons dire, avec plu sieurs philosophes et theologians eelebres, que Is sub stance qui pense est portee a sa resolution par la repre sentation prevalente du bicn ou du mal, ct cela certainc ment et infailliblement, mais non pas necessairement: c'est 3 dire, par des raisons qui l'inclinent sans la neces siter. C'est pourquoi les futurs contingens, prevus et en eux-nemes et par leur raisons, demeurent contin gens; et Dieu a ate porte infailliblement, par sa sagesse et par sa bonte, a erecr he monde par sa puissance, et 11. lui donner la ',oakum forme possible ; mais it n'y etoit point porte necessairement; et he tout s'est passe sans aucune diminution de sa liberte parfaits ct souveraine. Et sans consideration que nous venons de Lire, je ne sais s'il seroit aise to resoudre le nceud Gordien de la contingence et de la liberte." Rtfmarques stir le Livrc
de I'Orig. du life!. And with regard to the existence of evil, under the administration of a Being powerful, wise and good, it is.to be observed, that theme is a wide differ ence between causing or appointing evil, and merely permitting it. This subject is illustrated by Jonathan Edwards by a striking analogy. " There is a vast dif ference," says he, " between the sun's being the cause of the lightsomeness and warmth of the atmosphere and brightness of gold and diamonds, by its presence and positive influence, and its being the occasion of darkness and frost in the night, by its motion, whereby it descends below the horizon." " If the sun were the proper cause of cold and darkness, it would be the fountain of these things, as it is the fountain of light and heat; and then something might be argued from the nature of cold and darkness to a likeness of nature in the sun; and it might be justly inferred, that the sun itself is dark and cold, and that his beams are black and frosty. But, from its being the cause no otherwise than by its departure, no such thing can be inferred, but the contrary : it may justly be argued, that the sun is a bright and hot body, if cold and darkness are found to be the consequence of its withdrawment ; and the more constantly and necessa rily these effects are connected with and confined to its absence, the more strongly does it argue the sun to be the fountain of light and heat. So, inasmuch as sin is not the fruit of any positive agency or influence of the Most High, but, on the contrary, arises from the with holding of his action and energy, and, under certain circumstances, necessarily follows on the want of his influence; this is no argument that lie is sinful, or his operation evil, but, on the contrary, that lie and his agen cy are altogether good and holy, and that lie is the foun tain of all holiness. It would be strange arguing, indeed, because men never commit sin, but only when God leaves them to themselves, and necessarily sin when he does so, and therefore their sin is not from themselves, but from God, and so that God must be a sinful Being: as strange as it would be to argue, because it is always dark when the sun is gone, and never dark when the sun is present, that therefore all darkness is from the sun, and that his disk and beams must needs be black." But even the moral evils which are in the world, how ever destructive they may be to those with whom they originate, are productive of good, on the whole. In a state like the present, where man has to learn almost revery thing by experience, instruction, or example, the aberrations of the wicked, and the obvious consequences of their sins, afford a useful lesson, and supply demon strations of the danger of deviating from the plain path of rectitude, as pointed out by the ordinations of Hea ven. Besides, we receive a clearer proof of the super intending providence of God in overruling the disorderly passions of men, and making them subservient to the purposes of his will, than if all wer,t on regularly and smoothly, without a single jarring or discordant princi ple to disturb the harmony of the universe. Every man has his own centre towards which he would gravitate, or his own rrght line in which he would move, were he not drawn from it by some superior force which connects him I‘ith the general system of society. In short, the intention of the Almighty, both in the natural and mo ral world, seems to be, to produce regularity and order out of materials which are naturally inert or perverted; and so much of the discordia semina rerun: is still to be seen, both in the elements of nature and in the constitu tion of human society, as to bespeak a present Deity to regulate and adjust them.