are less active, and more passive than others; are not so capable of enjoyments delectable unto, and more subject to impressions distasteful to, their particular nature; which passivities and displeasures are not simply wills, because they do suit the degree of the particular natures of those subjects, being also ever overbalanced with other pleasing activities and enjoyments: so have things different measures of excellency; but nothing, as it comes from God's hand, or stands in its rank in nature, is positively imperfect, or void of that perfection which is due to its kind; much less is any creature absolutely bad, that is, ugly, or noxious, or troublesome, or cumbersome to the universe; so that it were better away out of it, than in it. God,' saith the Hebrew Wise Man, created all things, that they might have their being, and the generations of the world were healthful, and there is no poison of destruction in them.' Every thing contributes somewhat to the use and benefit, or to the beauty and ornament of the whole: no weed grows out of the earth, no insect creeps on the ground, which hath not its elegancy, and yields not its profit; nothing is abominable or despicable, though all things are not alike amiable and admirable: there is therefore nothing in all the compass nature unfit or unworthy to have proceeded from God; nothing which he beseemingly, without derogation to his excellencies, may not own for his work; nothing which in its rank and degree doth not confer to the manifestation of his glorious power, admirable wisdom, and excellent goodness: O Lord,' (cried the devout psalmist on particular survey and consideration of them,) ⚫ how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all the earth is full of thy riches.' That which we call poison, is such only relatively, being noxious or destructive to one part, but innocent, wholesome, and useful to some other part; and never prejudicial to the whole body of things: yea, even to that part itself it is commonly beneficial in some case or season; affording, if not continual alimony, yet sometime physic thereto, and serving to expel another poison or mischief more imminently dangerous. That which we call a monster is not unnatural in regard to the whole contexture of causes, but ariseth no less methodically, than any thing most ordinary; and it also hath its good end and use, well serving to illustrate the

of

beauty and convenience of nature's usual course. As for pain and grief incident to the natures of things; without regard to any demerit or justice, they are not properly evils, but adherences to the less perfect natures of things; in a state liable to which God not only justly, but wisely, according to his pleasure, might constitute things, for the reasons and ends before insinuated; for no reason obliged him to confer on every thing extreme perfection; he might dispense his liberalities in what kind and measure he thought good. In fine, the reason of offence we take at any thing of this kind, seeming bad or ugly to us, ariseth from our defect of knowlege and sagacity, we not being able to discern the particular tendency of each thing to the common utility and benefit of the world.

2. But as for those real imperfections and evils, truly so called, (which alone, as St. Paul speaketh, are properly evil, and most worthy of the appellation of evils,') habitual distempers of soul, and irregular actions; errors, and vices, and sins; we need not search for any one eternal or primitive cause of them although order, uniformity, beauty, and perfection, do, yet disorder, confusion, deformity, and defect do not, argue any unity of cause whence they should spring; the true causes of them are sufficiently notorious; not the will or power of a Creator, but the wilfulness and impotency of creatures are the fountains of them. They are no substantial beings, and so do not need an infinite power to create them; they do hardly need a positive cause; being themselves rather defects than effects; privations of being, than positive beings: Let no man,' saith St. Austin,seek an efficient cause of a bad will; for there is no efficient, but a deficient thereof; for that itself is not an effection, but a defection:' and, An evil will,' saith he again, is the efficient cause of an ill work; an evil will hath no cause ;' that is, none beside itself, or its own deficiency. And again: Evil hath no nature, but the loss of good hath received the name of evil:' however, most certainly, the rise and root of sin is our free will and choice ;' it is κακὸν βλάστημα προαιpérews, as Cyril Hier. saith, a bad sprout from our choice.' Men, or other intellectual and free agents, their voluntarily averting themselves from the supreme true good to inferior appearing goods; their wilfully declining from the way which

God doth show and prescribe to them; their rejecting the advice, and disobeying the laws of God; their thwarting the dictates of that reason which God did put in them; their abusing their natural faculties; their perverting and corrupting themselves, and others also, by ill example, persuasion, allurement, violence; these causes of such evils are most visible and palpable: we need not go far, nor rise to the top of things, to find an author on whom we may charge our evils; they are most truly called our ways, our works, our imaginations, our inventions, and devices; they are the children of our affected stupidity and our naughty sloth; of our precipitant choice, of our stubborn will, of our unbridled passion; they are wholly imputed to us; we are blamed, we are condemned, we are punished for them: as it is horrible blasphemy to ascribe them to the most good God, so it is vain to imagine any other necessary principle, any uncreated mischievous Arimanius, any spiteful Cacodæmon, any eternal Fate, to father them on.

The mischiefs also of pain and grief consequent on those distempers and misdemeanors (that unwilling brood of wilful evils," as Damascene calls them) have very discernible originals they are partly to be imputed to us, and partly attributed to God: we by our faults deserve and draw them to ourselves: God in justice and wisdom doth inflict them on us: Perditio tua ex te ; O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself;' and, 'Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves :' so doth God charge the cause of such evils on us; and, Shall there be any evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it?' 'Doth not evil and good proceed out of the Most High ?' I am the Lord, and there is none else; I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil:' so God assumes the causality of them to himself. We need therefore not to inquire after any other cause of these evlis, (mala pœnæ,) so called because they are displeasing to sense or fancy; although considering the needfulness and usefulness of them in respect to public benefit (as they are exemplary and monitive,) and their wholesomeness for particular correction and cure, (for, No chastening,' as the Apostle saith, for the present seemeth to

* De Orth. F. iv. 20.

be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby,') in such respects they may rather be called good things: however, as they have any thing bad in them, they proceed from us; as they contain somewhat good, they are from God: which sufficiently confuteth those heretical opiniators, and decideth the controversy; it being vain to suppose any other, beside these most apparent causes of such evils: our bad desert and God's just providence. It is considerable that even vice (although the worst thing in the world, and bad to the subject thereof) is yet in some respects useful: it in regard to the whole is not unprofitable; it serveth to the illustration of God's holy attributes; it is a foil to virtue, and setteth off its lustre. But let thus much suffice concerning the objects of the creation.

I shall next touch a consideration or two concerning the manner how, and the reason why, God did make the world; which will commend to us his doing it, and intimate some grounds of duty, and both direct and excite our practice in respect thereto. The manner of God's producing the world was altogether voluntary, and absolutely free; it did not issue from him a poαupérws, without counsel or choice, not (as some philosophers have conceited) by natural or necessary emanation or result; as heat from fire, or light from the sun, or shadow from a body; but from a wise free choice: he so made the world, that he could wholly have abstained from making it, that he could have framed it otherwise, according to an infinite variety of ways. He could not be fatally determined, there being no superior cause to guide him, or to constrain him anywise; (to do or not to do; to do thus, or otherwise ;) he could not be obliged to impart any perfection, being absolute master of all things possible, and debtor unto none on any account; it is his privilege therefore and property to perform all things karà ßovλὴν τοῦ θελήματος αὐτοῦ, “ according to the counsel of his will, or according to his wise pleasure, as St. Paul expresseth it; and accordingly we hear the Elders in the Revelation acknowleging, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and power; for thou hast created all things, kaì dià rò Deλnμá and for thy will they are and were created:' they do affirm

σου,

God's pleasure to be the cause of his creating things, and they imply its being so to be the ground of our due veneration, gratitude, and all devotion; these being tributes due unto free goodness and bounty: if he made all things fatally, no praise or thanks were due to him; if he doeth things so, there is no reason to offer thanks to him, to seek his aid, or implore his favor; no devotion toward him hath a ground, or can subsist. It is also evident, if the world had been produced in way of necessary emanation, that it should have been eternal; as if the sun had been eternal, his light had been eternal also; if fire had been, its heat likewise had been from eternity: but that the world was produced in time, not long since, within six or seven thousand years, not only faith and divine chronology do assure us, but reason also shows, and all history conspires to persuade us; there being no plain monument, or probable memory of actions beyond that time; and by what progressions mankind was propagated over the world; how, and when, and where nations were planted, empires raised, cities built, arts invented or improved, it is not very hard to trace near the original times and places. The world therefore in respect of time conceivable by us is very young, and not many successions of ages, or lives of men, have passed between its beginning and ours; whence it plainly appears that it was freely produced by God.

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And how he produced it, the Scripture farther teacheth us. It was not with any laborious care or toil; not with the help of any engines or instruments subservient; not by inducing any preparatory dispositions or aptitudes, but ψιλῷ τῷ βούλεσθαι, by his mere willing, as Clemens Alexandrinus speaks; his will and word were, as Tertullian expounds it, the hands, by which it is said that God made the heavens; at his call they did all immediately spring up out of nothing; at his command they presently ranged themselves into order: it was not a high strain of rhetoric in Moses, as Longinus deemed, thus to describe the creation, but a most proper expression of that incomprehensible efficacy, which attends the divine wiil and decree.

But since God did not only make the world freely, but

* Adv. Hermog. 45.