very immediate Last that necessarily determin'd the Understanding so to judge and the Will so to chuse The unaccountable Sence of which his shiftless distinction can never solve as when he averrs That though a Man can Do what he will yet that he cannot Will what he will For if the binding up the last and immediate Causes of the Action that is the judgment and will of Man to a necessity of judging and choice if it be not Non-sence to call it a judgment or a choice at all can give any rational Man leave to think that that Action can be an effect of true Liberty then may the natural motion of an Inanimate and the operations of a sensitive Being which do spontaneously yet nevertheless necessarily as necessity stands in opposition to rational Liberty follow that impulse which the Creator had put upon their several Natures be properly call'd an act of a free and voluntary Agent Now whosoever hath entertain'd such an opinion of the necessitation of all humane actions must suppose that the first Link of that Chain of Causes that moves or knocks the next to it and so every next successively his next till the last Cause drives the Will into a necessity of Choice I say that first Link of Causation must be soveraignly held in the hand of God as he is the first cause of all Motion as well as of all Being And then it must also be suppos'd that none of those intermedial or secondary Causes can break from the natural order of that train of Causations without an extraordinary intervention of the First Causes Will and Power till the Action be it good or evil be chosen and effected So that if there be any cause of the Action that is truly voluntary and by which it may be really denominated morally Good or Evil it must be the first only for all the other Causes are under a natural or fatal necessity of acting what they do and the Judgment and Will of Man which should make the moral distinction are under an impossibility of judging or chusing otherwise as Mr. Hobs asserts and therefore there being no other Will at liberty by which such an Action is to be freely chosen if there be any morality in the Action it must have it from the first Cause or no where and then what a piece of Blasphemy are we fallen upon For it makes God not only a cause but the only cause of all evil and immoral Actions as such which a bare spontaneity in the Will of Man can no more solve than it can make a necessary Agent when it 's any way instrumental to a mischievous Event really a Criminal so that I may be angry with the Stone that hits me and like a Dog in rage bite it as well as with the person that threw it if in both of them there were as much necessity of the Action as is consistent with a natural spontaneity And then how can GOD be concern'd in such Actions as to Rewards and Punishments any more than that they should be capable of Praise or Blame as Clemens Alexandrinus argues against such a necessity of acting in moral Agents These be the three Opinions that support the second Prejudice or mistaken Notion of GOD's being unconcern'd how Men live and act whether morally or immorally as to Rewards and Punishments But the very explaining of them with a consideration had of their intolerable consequences makes them sufficiently their own abhorrence and confutation There is one erroneous Notion more that concerns a lesser sort of People and now my hand is in it shall not pass unrebuk'd Section III. THis Section is design'd to over-rule the last prejudice which would also make void the sence of the Argument as it is stated And that must be done by making another enquiry Whether or no Almighty GOD if it be granted That He will be pleased to concern Himself as to Rewards and Punishments how Men live and act intended that men should think themselves oblig'd to live vertuously upon the account only of His own Sovereign Authority and absolute Command and that they should charge themselves with no other motive or reason but only that Or whether GOD design'd not also in that case as in all others to deal with Mankind as rational and voluntary Agents that is that they might propound to their own Minds some considerable Interest or Happiness upon the encouragement of which they should oblige themselves so to live and act And then on the other hand whether they might not also as reasonably propound to their own Thoughts a Consideration of the many Inconveniences at present and their certain Ruine in the event to disswade and deterr themselves from living immorally and vitiously Now the Reason Why I offer this case to enquiry before I further engage in the pursuit of my Argument is because it 's known that there be some Men even enough to make a party who being resolv'd not to be otherwise perswaded but that a proposal of Rewards to encourage Men to be Religious and to do good is a most dangerous approach to Popery the ordinary expedient us'd by such men to affright Minds where Reasons are wanting and that it can import nothing less than the Romish Merit and I know not what And then on the other side say they for men to suggest to themselves the dread of Future Punishments though for that reason they are propos'd as objects of the Christian Faith is nothing else but slavish Fear by which they falsely represent that religious Act of mind and that to avoid sinning on that account can no way be acceptable but rather distastful to Almighty GOD. But these mens prejudices in this point have yet further ends and little notions to serve For say they such a proposal of Rewards and Punishments do tempt men to give too much to the Creature it hinders the Advancement of free Grace and takes men off from bottoming themselves upon Christ as they phrase it and from rowling themselves by Faith inconditionately upon his Merits with many more such like humouring Notions Now such unhappy imposures as these have vulgar minds admitted to the vast prejudice of Vertue and an active Religion and all this because they would fain go to Heaven without any incumbring moralities such as are the Vertues and Graces of strict Justice Restitution and Satisfaction upon the Breach of it intire Loyalty to their Princes and Obedience to their Superiours of every kind Charity to their Enemies and doing Good to all Men as much as in them lay and the like And that instead of them they may go to Christ they think for Salvation by a shorter 〈◊〉 as by the force of an imaginary Faith or a delusive Reliance and the like which will not put them upon so much trouble and charge And now if such prejudic'd men would but consider how much such triflings with God and their own Souls are inconsistent with all solid
50. l. 16. add Scholastick P. 51. l. 2. r. a Rheiorick 〈◊〉 P. 59. l. 3. r. disposed P. 63. l. 12. r. thus P. 65. l. penult dele that P. 99. l. 1. add is Ibid. l. 20. r. Constitutives P. 102. l. 10. dele are P. 141. l. 18. add if P. 144. l. 5. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. 184. leave out all from Notion l. 19. to maketh l. 21. P. 189. l. 16. add a. P. 262. l. 28. r. Ingenuous P. 275. l. 3. r. to signifie their P. 278. l. 25. dele sense and. P. 378. l. r. dele and. P. 381. l. 7. for as r. at P. 382. l. 19. r. a Being P. 383. l. 14. for put P. 386. l. antepen add It 's certain P. 390. l. 4. for stout r. afflicted P. 401. l. 28. for Honour r. Fame P. 403. l. 27. r. Excesses P. 404. l. 19. for disease r. disgrace P. 413. l. 5. dele Happiness and. Ibid. Blot out from satisfaction l. 5. to concerning l. 8. inclusively Ibid. l. 8. dele Kind of Happiness P. 426. l. 12. r. were they First Argument The Summ of the FIRST ARGUMENT THE First Argument design'd to demonstrate the necessary Existence of a Future State is founded upon an obviously acknowledg'd Observation That there is not Universal Justice Judgment and Equity done to Mankind in this present World according to the different Qualifications of their Lives and Actions But that Good Men and their Righteous Causes are very frequently oppress'd and defeated and that Evil Men and their Unjust Undertakings and Practices as commonly prosper and succeed All which cannot but reflect upon the essential Goodness and Wisdom of Almighty GOD because those unequal Proceedings and Events could not be acted and brought to pass without His Divine Permission and also because it was always in His Power to have prevented them when he pleas'd Now if nothing else can solve that Reflection upon those Divine Attributes but only the belief and acknowledgment of a Future World to which God's impartial and compleat Administrations of Justice Judgment and Equity should be respited and adjourn'd That is if it shall appear that that Adjournment of it to that State can only secure the Universe in its naturally stated Order and then that no other season of its Administration can so sufficiently acquit GOD's gracious care of and love to Mankind according to the Nature he gave them Then it must needs follow That he hath ordain'd and constituted such a Future World and State. Now that this Argument may more fully attain its designed End and that I may take away all possible Exceptions against the Premises or what relates to them I shall divide the general Concern of it into Three Chapters or Heads of Discourse in order to the clearer Inference of the Conclusion at last In the first Chapter I shall offer to proof That what is just and equitable will by a Good and Just GOD be impartially administred to all sorts of Mankind according to the different Qualifications of their Lives and Actions at one time or another that is either here or here after In the Second Chapter it will be made evident That Almighty GOD doth not execute such an universal administration of Justice to Mankind in this present Life and then I shall take into consideration what an Influence that Omission had upon the Minds of the Heathen World. In the Third Chapter it will appear That GOD's respiting and adjourning the compleatly impartial Administration of His Divine Justice to a Future World can only solve the apprehensions we have That GOD intended to preserve the present Universe in the same Order that his Power and Wisdom had at first Created it especially as to his Divine Care of Mankind whether as socially or individually consider'd And if all these Three Premises shall upon sufficient Proof be found to be certainly true there will be no Cause at all to question the Conclusion for the undoubted Existence of another World. A FUTURE WORLD'S EXISTENCE Demonstrated by Rational Evidence CHAP. I. THE First Chapter is design'd to represent and prove That GOD Almighty will without doubt administer an impartial distribution of Rewards and Punishments to the Good and Evil according to the different Qualifications of their Lives and Actions at one time or another And the truth of this necessary presupposition is founded upon these Five Grounds or Reasons which make up so many Sections Section I. THe first Reason that I shall offer for the necessary belief of such an impartial distribution of Justice ar one time or another is alledg'd from the believed Existence of a God with a particular respect to his Natural and Essential Goodness which by a necessary consequence from his being acknowledg'd the World's Original Maker must be believed to be as infinitely Operative as any other of those Divine Perfections which the Creation of the World must necessarily suggest to belong to such an infinite First Cause and Independant Being And for the reasonableness of this deduction I appeal to the Philosopher Simplicius who upon the account of considering God as the Cause of Causes Begining of all Beginings presently as a necessary concomitant with such a conception of him concludes him to be Goodness of Goodnesses that is Good to all Perfection Now whatsoever Being is in any degree or sense a real Goodness in it self must be supposed to afford a reason of that denomination from a Good that is done according to its capacity where there be Objects that need it or Causes that require it And if the Goodness of God be such which no man can suspect without Blaspheming the Divine Nature and contradicting his own Reason the mind of man cannot possibly suggest a doubt but that it should express it self in the Case in hand That is that a God of infinite Goodness and Equity when it is always in his Power as to understand so to do all that is good and right should at some time or other vindicate and justify the innocent Causes of Good Men that is should recompense and reward their undeserved Sufferings especially when for their adherences to vertue they have been harassed and perplex'd by the malicious usages of unjust and unreasonable men I say if the verification of his infinite Goodness be not to be thus expressed What Cases are there by which the reason of man can be otherwise satisfied that that glorious Attribute hath a title to the same perfection which the rest are presumed to have or how otherwise in any kind of practical Notion can any reasonable Being understand for what end or purpose he is commanded or obliged to be good at all or how can a created moral Agent be so accounted either by God or Man upon such an omission To refuse to do Right Good when it is always in his capacity to do it would make but an untoward Character of such a Person by an indifferent Judge of what Goodness is And therefore to suppose God
with Epicurus to be so wholly unconcern'd in the Government of the World and especially at what happens amiss to good men in it so as to take no care at all of their vindications when they are unjustly used and oppressed would be reason enough not only to reproach God's infinite Goodness but upon a very reasonable consequence to tempt men to question his whole Existence This is the first Reason Section II. THE Second Reason is alledg'd from the Nature of Man as God was pleased to make him a free and voluntary Agent design'd to be left to the conduct and in the hand of his own Counsel that is because God gave him by his nature in distinction from all other visible Creatures who act necessarily by a soveraign Impulse from which they cannot depart a Power in himself to think deliberate and act Good or Evil at his own choise and as he should judge fit to determine his own Mind and Actions And the reason of this deduction is because either the same Wise God that form'd him into such an arbitrary Nature must have certainly provided and constituted for him some superiour Judge and common Arbiter by the dread of whose soveraign Authority and Justice he might ingage his mind and conscience to do what 's just and good and to whom he might be accountable for his actions whether good or evil or it must be presum'd that God made him possibly to be the most I may say the only lawless unsociable and ungovernable part of the whole Creation That is that he should live as it is manifestly seen men do where such a Judge is neither regarded nor sufficiently considered both to be his own folly and ruin and the world's trouble and misfortune Hence Athenagoras ingeniously observes That as it 's necessary to mans nature that having an appetite he should have meat to preserve his life and that as he is a mortal he should have posterity to preserve his species so as he is a rational Creature that he should have a common Judge of all his actions and from whom he might expect a reward and dread a punishment Now if such an Universal Judge and Arbiter must for that reason be thus necessarily supposed then it 's certain that there can none be believed to be so universally qualified for it as the same God that Originally gave man his being and who by the Title of Creator was invested with a natural Soveraignty over all his Creatures which he made and especially over Man to whom he had given such a figure of mind and being as naturally to need his Governing Dominion more than any other Creature besides if not only For none can be such a competent Judge but a Being that is Omniscient and so is capable of understanding all Causes Minds and Actions that is of an infinite goodness and so can love approve and bless all that is done well justly and worthily And lastly of an infinite power so as to be able to execute all his own judiciary purposes and determinations how and when he pleases No Being that wants any of these qualifications can possibly be a Competent Judge of Men and their Actions so that Universal right and equity may be compleatly and impartially done to the whole world of such Rational and Voluntary Agents And because God Almighty can only be qualified for such a Judge what can make a Suspicion that he should not execute that just necessary and soveraign Office at one time or another As for what concerns the committing his Judiciary Authority to soveraign human Powers it will be accounted for in the third Argument chap. 2. sect 3. that is how far thereby the Divine Care of administring universal Justice to the world is attain'd and discharg'd Section III. THe Third Reason that secures a Belief that God will at one time or other undertake the vindication of all righteous persons and causes and bring them all to a true balance of impartial Right is from a plea a just appeal and that upon most Rational Consequences which all that are unjustly oppressed may make to the holy and soveraign God in their own behalf First By alledging that the promiscuous world of Mankind in which good men are unavoidably subjected and exposed for reasons which a Future World can only solve to the hazard of such miscarriages and disadvantages was naturally so disposed by God's own Original pleasure and ordination as possibly to admit and produce such unequitable effects And therefore the evil usages of vertuous and good men in such a world must needs in that respect be the consequences of such causes and occasions which God might have prevented if he had pleased but which themselves could not controul when they would Secondly And more particularly good men that are so oppressed may further alledge that those very faculties and capacities by which unjust men as men are naturally empower'd to choose and act their evil designs against the innocenter part of Man-kind were not only the Issues of Gods own Workmanship when he was first pleased to Create Man but they must be still kept up in their natural Use and Operations by his Wife and Ordinative Permission And from hence it is that the Scriptures to whom an Atheist will permit an Appeal to illustrate such a natural truth do all along attribute to God and interest him in with expressions which bear a very near alliance to Causality the worst Actions which wicked men have most voluntarily and of their own evil minds contrived and acted against Himself his Church and choisest Servants Now the summ of these thoughts is That if there be any such thing as a righteous Cause or if any case may be reputed a causeless oppression if there were ever any such men as were good and vertuous and that in Abraham's sence might be adjudged in God's esteem righteous persons or if there were ever any such besides Zacharias and Elizabeth that walked in all the Commandments of God blameless that is acceptably so And yet if nevertheless such good and righteous Persons have been oftentimes unjustly oppressed and sometimes have passed away their whole mortal lives rack'd and worryed by the undeserved malice of evil men And then lastly if it be considered how much God himself was concern'd so far as I have represented the Case who can resist a belief or what good man can silence his complaint and expectation but that Almighty God who is so much more or less interested will at one time or other order a thorough justification of his innocency and redress his wrongs by some gracious method and in the most proper season which his own great wisdom and impartial equity shall think fit to choose in this Life or another This is the third Reason Section IV. THis fourth Reason that supports a belief that God will undertake at one time or other such an Administration of his Divine Justice is alledged
Divine Revelation Thus did the Jews most grosly prevaricate with God by their intolerable omissions of living vertuously that is by the Rules of Universal Justice and Goodness as His holy Prophets so often complain And for this did our Saviour in his time so severely reprove those strict Religionists the Scribes and Pharisees And it 's observ'd That the Wise men of almost every Age of the Church have engaged themselves in making such complaints of the Times they lived in And I wish heartily that I had not too just a cause which gave me the chief occasion of this Section to complain of a Religion of a later date in which Justice and Goodness have been so wonderfully laid aside as if they bore no part at all of the Profession of it And the better to solve that intolerable contradiction to the very design of Christianity they have taught themselves a most scandalous distinction between Grace and Vertue between Godliness and Justice between Saintship and all Moral Honesty in their notion and as we have seen practice of Religion to the great disparagement and dishonour of whatsoever bears that Sacred Name This the First Section II. THis Section will represent another very dangerous prejudice as to the manner of our stating the Argument And it 's to be done by making and answering an Enquiry whether or no Almighty GOD will be at all concern'd as to Rewards and Punishments how men live and act whether morally or immorally in this World. For if he be pleased to be so indifferent and unconcern'd the Argument is void and that because a Proposal of any such things as Rewards or Punishments to encourage and deterr would then be the most impertinent Concern of Mind that it is ordinarily capable of Now though it may be thought that there should be but a very few or none that acknowledge a Deity so desperately inconsiderate of His Divine Honour as to own and publish such a contradiction to His Essential Holiness and to that soveraign and wise Authority which he must be presum'd to have and exercise naturally over that Rational World which he created and made at his own choice For it were the same thing as to believe That he intended to licentiate men in all those horrid practices and confusions which should ever be acted and fall out to the World's end yet it 's certain that there have been and are opinions entertain'd which must imply such an indifferency and unconcernment in God howsoever men live and act And I doubt not but that they have been made use of by many thereby to encourage their continuance in their most immoral practices and vitious ways of Living Now the opinions which have brought forth that wretched effect in mens minds are three to be especially considered and rebuked The first which I shall take notice of is that which doth directly and professedly make God to be own'd as Author and Cause of Sin And then How can He be concern'd at all at that sinful action of which He himself should be really causal Of which horrid and blasphemous opinion Eusebius accounts one Florinus to be the first Promoter though Vincentius Lerinensis makes one more ancient and averrs Simon Magus as its first Patron And the Fathers did charge that Heresie afterward upon Cerdon Marcion and others as concurrent with their several Heterodoxies But the most remarkable Restores in this later Age of that abominable Principle were the late Libertines as the Historians and Divines of those Times call'd them in Germany that thereby they might go on with their intolerable Profanations and desperate Immoralities for their thorough-work as they call'd it of a more perfect Reformation with greater Liberty and Encouragement By whose Example and upon their Principles we have too great a reason to suspect that out late rebellious Reformers transcrib'd too resembling a Copy both in their minds and practices and for whose sakes I have taken occasion to offer at this representation The Second Opinion that must consequentially inferr an indifferency and unconcernment in God how Men act and live as to the Rewards and Punishments of another Life is that of an eternal and irrespective decree of some men to Salvation with the inevitable preterition of all the rest of Mankind And that because that Doctrine must in consequence suppose not that Man but that GOD Himself should be the efficient Cause and principal Agent in all the Good and Evil Actions that are done in the World and then How could the one be reasonably rewardable and the other punishable And first as to the Good and Vertuous Actions of them that are so absolutely elected to Salvation they cannot be suppos'd to be properly their own but God's because they are wrought in them as they commonly affirm by such an impulse of His Grace as which they have not a Liberty in themselves to resist or defeat And then as to the sinful actions of them that are under that fatal preterition How can they be morally their own but God's as Causa deficiens in necessariis est efficiens because they become unavoidable for want of that Grace by which it was only possible for those unhappy men to have escaped and prevented them And though our Opinionists dare impudently pretend That those men have all of them a sufficient Grace given them yet nevertheless they most senselesly mean That it is sufficient in it Self only but not as unto them so as possibly to effect upon their best endeavour any advantage to themselves And now How can God be reasonably concern'd to Reward the actions of the one or to Punish those of the other when neither of those actions were properly and voluntarily their own that is when neither of those sorts of men were ever allow'd to act by a Mind that had any truly-balanc'd Liberty of choice in its self And therefore in such a case the proposal of Rewards and Punishments upon which the Reason of the Argument is founded to encourage the Good or deterr the Evil were as impertinent as if a man were counsel'd to act an Adventure for an Estate when he is confirm'd in his opinion that either he hath had a fore-decree for an undefeizible Title to it or else of which he were assur'd to be depriv'd by an insuperable Bar long before put in against him I say If he were sure that one of those two unalterable causes were upon him though he did not know which it was What manner of encouragement is it that should reasonably induce him to do any thing for the securing or obtaining such an Estate And where lays the difference of that Case from this in debate I can make no conjecture The Third Opinion that necessarily implies That God should be indifferent and unconcern'd how men live and act as to Rewards and Punishments is from Mr. Hobs his Necessitation of all humane actions from a Chain of Causes link'd together at one anothers end to the
II. IN this Section we account That that acknowledg'd Deity may by further reasoning be represented to mens Minds not only as indefinitely good and kind as before but also as just that is impartially so and that as his Goodness may be apprehended in conjunction with his universal Equity And then say they such a notion of a Deity may influence men into a belief That he design'd that every man should be happy as well as any and so that no man that hath any veneration for him as so represented should presume to pursue his own private Interest and Well-being otherwise than is consistent with common Justice and Equity and with the safety of other mens Lives and Proprieties And in this Exception it may be further suggested That when there is at present but such an imperfect notion of a Deity it 's possible that in a short time there may arise men of clearer thoughts and apprehensions who may set up for Philosophers as Diogenes makes mention of the Gymnosophists Druids and Magi in the several barbarous Nations and may be able to form Digests and stated Rules of Justice and Goodness and may then suggest into Peoples minds That the same Just Deity would certainly be favourable to and reward them that shall observe those Rules and will be displeas'd with and severely punish the Transgressors of them And upon this possible Supposal our Exceptioners will alledge That there may be then a sufficient Expedient offer'd to oblige men to be Vertuous and Good and to over-rule them from immoral practices without a necessary consideration to be had of what relates to another World. In answering this Exception I shall contract my Reply to this latter period of it where there only doth appear whatsoever is cogent in it And then I say That whereas it 's suggested that those Philosophers might influence such mens minds into a Belief that God will be favourable to Good men and punish Offenders if they mean as they must except they own a future State that the executions of that Deity 's favour and displeasure are only to be acted in this World then is the pretended Expedient an unsufficient Subterfuge For if that Deity should not constantly keep up his favourable Providence to the Vertuous so as alwaies to answer their reasonable hopes and expectations or if he should not as constantly rebuke and punish the Offenders so as to secure their constant Fear of Him Men would not be affected with the uncertain hopes of the one nor dread of the other so as to decline any advantageous though the most unjust Adventure for their present ease profit or pleasure And that God Almighty doth not administer the exact Executions of His Favour to the Vertuous and of His Displeasure to the Vitious in this Life common experience doth sufficiently evince And it hath been the business of the First Argument to demonstrate the Truth of it But now suppose that it were certain to all as it falls out sometimes to some that that Deity would infallibly do that work in this world according to the merits and demerits of the one and the other yet would the Criminals easily avert those fears by considering that either the Divine Justice would strike them with an immediate death and as it is the sence of a Theist throw them into a present annihilation and then they would judge for themselves that such a a state of being nothing if I may be allow'd so to call it is a thousand times more preferrable than to live miserably or uneasily if those cases came at any time in competition or if their punishments were to be executed by the measures of some tedious calamity the severest case that can be suggested yet then they would also consider that at hardest it would but make it eligible for them to put a present period to their own miserable and vexatious Lives and in one instant be reduc'd to the same quiet nothing which they knew a few years or days might perhaps determine for them in some very sad and more afflictive Method And surely Socrates might upon these considerations averr to Simia and Cebes That if he did not think that he was going into another World the fear of dying should not have restrain'd him from doing any thing that were unjust And thus we see the defect of this Second exception though stated to the highest advantage But these are but light skirmishes before we engage in a war with others that are pretended to be more formidable Adversaries Therefore Section III. THis Third Section tenders us the exception of them that will alledge That God Almighty hath delegated the executions of his Providence in this Case to humane Powers and Authorities to make Laws Edicts which may keep the World in order and that the accountableness of mens lives and actions to their Cognizance and Umpire for the rewarding the Vertuous and punishing the Immoral thereby to oblige all men to act well and vertuously is all that the Great Creatour design'd or intended for the Administration of his justice on either hand in that Case so that there is no need of a consideration to be had of what concerns another world to work that effect To this exception I answer That it could not be the purpose of our Gracious God in his ordering the worlds Government in the manner and method it 's constituted that Mankind might universally for it must be so if there be any Sence in the Allegation offer themselves sufficient reasons and encouragements as to rewards and punishments to oblige themselves to be Good and Vertuous or restrain them from being immoral on that account without a consideration of a future State upon these two especial Grounds and Reasons First Because where there be the best Laws and Constitutions that ever were made and established it must suppose all Supreme Powers and Governours to have a sufficient Prospect of the merits and demerits of every individual Person and Action as they are to be balanc'd by the measures of all their various circumstances And then to be alwaies intent curious and constant in the performance of their rewarding and punishing Offices for the Interests of every such single Cause and Person as well as in Matters of general and publick import And again in this Case it must be further suppos'd That all the substituted Administrators of their Princes Laws and good Intentions the Work being impossible to be alwaies done in their own Persons must also be as knowing and faithful in their due subadministrations I say If it were possible to be presum'd that all Governments and their Subordinates were design'd of God to be alwaies thus qualify'd and disposed there might be a tolerable Plea and Pretence to believe that he intended no better or no other reasons to oblige men to be Good and Vertuous and to restrain them from being Evil But if common and sometimes woeful Experience can prove the contrary and if the Maxims