for Jesus Christ, during his adoption of human nature with its temptations and infirmities; or, to go no farther, as it appears to be for good men when they approach the termination of their course, after a long perseverance in the habit and practice of virtue. If any one denies that this might have been, to our rational apprehensions, a better state, such a one must be led by force of consequence to deny that it would have been happier for mankind, if our first parents, and all their subsequent posterity, had withstood the temptation to which they were exposed, and remained with the liability to err, but without the error. Yet the description which might have suited the state of man, if he had never fallen into moral evil, represents a brighter scene than the face of the world, such as we now live in, can realize. "Then there would have been no desertion on God's part, because no apostacy on man's; no clouds in his mind, no tempest in his breast, no tears, nor cause for any; but a continual calm and serenity of soul, enjoying all the innocent delights that God and nature could afford, and all this for ever. The whole world had been but a higher heaven and a lower; earth had been but heaven a little allayed: and Adam had been as an angel incarnate, and God all in all and all this to be enjoyed eternally, without diminution, without period. O how great a happiness may we conceive the state of upright man to be; which nothing can resemble, nothing exceed; unless it be the happiness and bliss to which fallen man shall be restored!"* The fact, I conceive, must be admitted, notwithstanding all the ingenious arguments which some very excellent persons have adduced to prove the contrary, that mankind is not, at present, in the best possible, or intelligibly conceivable state; and it must be equally conceded, that the Deity did not intend he should be. The infinite wisdom of God supposes * Hopkins's Doctrine of the two Covenants, p. 1. + This is allowed by King, Origin of Evil. "Moral evils cannot be excused by necessity, as the natural ones, and those of imperfection, are. It is plain that created nature an infallible prescience of all future events; and must have clearly seen, that a being, liable to vice and temptation in the degree to which man was liable, would inevitably fall into it: we cannot, therefore, either argue otherwise concerning such error, than as happening with his permission; or concerning such liability, than as forming a part of his general scheme in the creation of man. * That general scheme, as is evident to reason as well as declared by revelation, was to place man in a state of probation. How we came to be placed in it, is a question more profound than our faculties can pretend to fathom. "Whether it be not beyond those faculties, not only to find out, but even to understand, the whole account implies imperfection in the very terms of its being created; either, therefore, nothing at all must be created, or something imperfect. But the evils incident to free agents are permitted by God voluntarily, since neither the nature of things nor the good of the universe require the permission of them; i. e. the world would have been as well without them." * Epicurus's dilemma (Bayle, article Marcionites; King, p. 400) is to this purpose, and has been already quoted. Chap. i. Thus of this; or though we should be supposed capable of understanding it, yet whether it would be of service or prejudice to us to be informed of it; it is impossible to say."* much is certain; that those who have adventured upon so deep a speculation, have left little encouragement for others to follow them on a subject of so great difficulty. Some reasoners endeavour to account for the imperfection of man, as if it were necessary to preserve the connexion between the higher and inferior orders of created beings, or imagine‡ that God having created, out of pure benevolence, as many immaterial beings of the noblest kind as were suited to the order and convenience of his system, added others of the mixed and imperfect nature which belongs to the inhabitants of our world, since even such imperfect beings were better than none at all. It is not to be supposed that this view of the * Butler's Analogy, p. 107. + Soame Jenyns' Inquiry into the Origin of Evil. subject can satisfy or silence those who are inclined to argue it. * In reply it may be unanswerably urged, that, of three orders of beings, it does not appear what advantage the first and third receive from the imperfection of the second; or that indeed they might not equally exist if the second had never been, or should cease to be. Neither can it be main tained, that a world, imperfect both in its own organization, and in that of the creatures its inhabitants, formed a necessary part in the system of a Being whose omnipotence to prevent is as unlimited as his wisdom to foresee. The conclusion to which Bayle † brings his free inquiry into the permission of moral evil is, that "these are unsearchable depths in which reason is swallowed up, and only faith can support us." This seems to convey an insinuation, that the phænomena are not only above our reason, but contrary to it: and the inevitable consequence of such a conclusion is, * See Johnson's Review of Jenyns. + Article, Marcionites. |