ness.

alterable is, because the supposition of aught else were quite inconsistent with the nature of that Supreme already demonstrated. He is, for example, necessarily consummately Happy.a And, so far as He produces anything like Himself, He must effect creaturely Happiness, only creaturely Happiness. That is, by the constitution of things established by GOD, the creature man, following the laws of its highest or inmost being, must be happy. Un-happiness is the un-like GOD; unhappiness, therefore, can only be the attribute of creatures unlike GOD. There will be no dispute as to whether the moral part of the nature of moral beings be the main seat of happiness, worthy of the name, and of unhappiTrue happiness, if not itself a moral quality, is necessarily associated with moral qualities. Perhaps it is an index to their state and condition: the greater the true happiness, the more the genuine moral qualities are in exercise. Happiness, in fine, if not a moral faculty, is at least a quasi moral faculty; and it is certainly a very important quality, whatever else it be. It follows, that moral creatures, unlike GOD as to happiness, presuppose a change to have taken place with regard to them since the time of their being created, Thus: Certain creatures are unhappy, that is, habitually SO. Being unhappy, they are unlike GOD. A race of moral creatures, unlike GOD, must in time have become so: that is, they must, in some way or other, have degenerated, or become sinners. GOD cannot be supposed to have for creatures, the direct work of His own hands,1 beings unlike a Div. III. Prop. I.

b See § 4 of Sub-Prop. under Prop. I. Div. IIJ.

1 Of course, the reader will understand that the use, whether here or elsewhere, of anthropomorphitic language, is only for effect. The course of this argument will prevent the possibility of any misunderstanding on such a point.

Himself, opposed to Himself, in their moral qualifications; as this would involve an effect without a cause; or, rather, it would involve an effect proceeding from an inadequate and impossible cause, a thing, if possible, even more absurd than the other. The creatures, therefore, as they came from GOD, at their creation, must have resembled GOD; in other words, they must have been in His image and likeness. They must have been, therefore, happy. That is, as moral beings, with their moral natures entire, and in legitimate exercise; which in other words is just saying, truly and thoroughly virtuous beings; they must have been happy. Being like GOD, being virtuous or innocent, man (very properly we shall by no means be allowed to call him the Adamic man) was necessarily very happy.

§ 12. All this is, unless I mistake the matter much, a demonstration, founded upon the nature, or the attributes, of GOD, of the real connection which exists between virtue and happiness, and, consequentially, between vice and misery; when one ascends to the source of things, where, only, things at their perfection can be seen. In Scholium II., the connection between imperfect virtue, and imperfect happiness, in man, as he at present is, is stated as a fact of experience : and herein we have been greatly busied with an enquiry as to human virtue and happiness as man must have existed when he came fresh from his Creator's hands.1 To this enquiry, the application of strict a priori reasoning is quite practicable and legitimate. And should any one deem it to be otherwise, in general, or in particular, he has no more to do than put his finger on the place where is the wrongness in what is advanced. An objector has only to shew, that a priori reasoning is totally inapplicable, or point out wherein it has been positively misapplied in the detail.

1 See last note on preceding page.

§ 13. And now to enforce that for which much of the foregoing is an excellent preparation. Goodness and happiness are intimately, yea inseparably, associated; as well as are the opposites, badness and unhappiness. When, therefore, GOD acts in relation to a good man,1 as such, He is in contact with a happy man.1 And when God manifests Himself towards a happy man, the man is, of course, made to be more happy. The good man is naturally happy moreover, he necessarily becomes more so, in the case where GOD, The Blessed Oneb (O Maкápios), in acting, just reveals or communicates Himself.

1

§ 14. In like manner, when the consummately Happy Being specially reveals Himself to a bad man,1 the man, naturally unhappy, is necessarily made to become more miserable. Just because, in the case supposed, a Nature diametrically opposite, and "contrary," is in contact with the evil of the bad man. It is, indeed, an awful thought— but one of the most pregnant with high consequences of any which deal in the great concernments of moral matters—that the mere contact of goodness and evil, where the goodness is over-poweringly influential, should result in misery, or, rather, an increase in misery, to the bad. But it is inevitably so. Such is the constitution of things: and it could not be otherwise. It could not be otherwise, simply because GOD is GOD, and cannot cease to be GOD.

a Schol. II. & Schol. III. to this Sect. b Div. III. Prop. I.

1

"A good man ;" "a happy man : a "miserable" man.

99 66

a bad man ;" an "unhappy," or

These expressions, and others coined after the same fashions, are, of course, to be taken in connection with their proper qualifications.

It can

not be deemed to be necessary to qualify, on every occasion, propositions, or expressions, which have been qualified once for all. See Scholium II., Sect. 5, 6, &c.

+See Note to this Scholium: Note A.

D

§ 15. Sinners (and no others need concern themselves about the contents of this section,) sinners, I say, may well hate God, because He increases their misery when He draws nigh unto them. Sinners, however, and sin, are not the same, and not every thing which is true of the one, is true of the other also. Sin (to personify), inasmuch as her domain is intensified, and so increased, by the contact of GOD with the nature in which sin reigns, may yet be imagined to rejoice herein. Sin, in becoming more conscious to herself of her 'exceeding sinfulness,'+ becoming enlarged, or intensified, by contact with God, may be imagined to rejoice at this the extension of her borders. Still, Sin, the monster-mother of all human anguish, should she, in portentous audacity, court for such reason the thought of God, should also remember, that she courts the contact of her bane: not wise, but foolish, to allow herself to be drawn within the vortex of that mighty influence which shall at last be her inevitable destruction. When Sin hath fully conceived, by reason of her visions of GOD, her offspring will assuredly be Death. And Death, once brought fairly forth, will have an insatiable maw, maw never to be satisfied until Sin herself, own mother of Death, shall be consumed. And then his occupation being entirely gone, and his subsistence no longer possible, but thoroughly impossible, Death himself shall die.‡

§ 16. If I may be allowed, for once, to indulge in a practical reflection, to which the subject almost irresistibly invites, I should remark, that it is pre-eminently sinners, "miserable siners," who yet madly cry, in their hearts, to GOD, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways,' who should desire the contact of the Good One, even though He approach as

See Note to this Scholium: Note B.
See Note to this Scholium: Note C.

the Just GOD; for in the increase, and the ever increase, of their misery, lies the direction of the only door of hope. In the increase of the misery, lies the direction of the only hope, so far as hope may be imagined to arise to the sinner, as only a sinner, from his own quarter: which is, after all, an imagination of a thing attended by real impossibilities. For there is, of a truth, no hope at all for the sinner from nature. The whole field of nature has not one ground of hope for the sinner, as such. To have hope, the sinner must be- -somewhat more than a sinner.

§ 17. To pursue this train of thought for a moment longer. To have hope, the sinner must forsake his way, and, as unrighteous, his thoughts, the very thoughts which constitute, as it were, his radical nature, as his nature has come to be. Then, indeed, repenting, or changing his mind; ceasing to do evil, and learning to do well; becoming, in fine, a new man; GOD can be the Just GOD to him, and yet a source of blessedness. This may be a comforting reflection to those whom it concerns.

§ 18. The preceding, if you kindly leave out the merely hortative part, if there be such, and the practical; is nothing but what is legitimately consistent with our doctrine, which deals only in a priori principles. But there is a terrible hitch in the progress. No a priori reasoning; neither a priori principle, nor application of any a priori principle; can tell how a man, being evil, is, in consistency with the strict rules of the attribute in question, to be changed into a good being: For this would involve a new creation, and, so, it would transcend the region of the laws of pure Justice. A priori reasoning, not ascending above the plane of this attribute of Justice, can do no more than tell how the Just or Righteous GOD acts towards the good and the bad, the happy and the unhappy, as such, and the results, in accordance with the established course of nature, in the first place, and, in the next, with the constitution of things, as related to each other by eternal fitnesses.