process of reasoning does he prove, that the attribute of perfect justice belongs to God?

Can he prove the point by any thing, which passes under his eyes in this present world? I think not for it is obvious, that the mere occasional good health and prosperity of the virtuous, and the mere occasional sickness and adversity of the vicious, will be very far from proving that God is a perfectly just being. To bring out the result of perfect justice, their proper moral consequences, in the way of reward and punishment, ought uniformly to follow virtue and vice. But, that such is actually the case in the present constitution of things, no one will pretend to assert. Therefore it is but lost labour for the deist to attempt to demonstrate the perfect justice of God from the present constitution of the world.

Will he seek then to prove the point, by calling in a future state of retribution, when all the moral irregularities of this world, for whatever cause permitted by its governor, will be rectified and compensated?

With respect to such a solution, when propounded on deistical principles, it lies open to two very palpable objections.

In the first place, if we concede to the deist that God will administer a future world with perfect justice, this circumstance will not do away the previous circumstance, that (on deistical principles) he has confessedly administered this present world with injustice. Would the deist prove that the attribute of perfect justice belongs to God, he must establish his justice not only in the next world but in this present world also. Yet, by the very turn of the argument, he quite

gives the matter up, so far as this present world is concerned. Therefore, allowing his premises, we must still contend, that he has wholly failed of establishing the perfect justice of God.

But, in the second place, we cannot allow to the deist, on his principles, the validity of his premises. His premises are the existence of a future state of retribution. But how does the deist establish these premises themselves without the aid of revelation? How does he know, that there is a future state of retribution? Before he can be allowed to argue from it, he must prove its existence. How then does he prove, that any such state exists at all? On his principles, it is clearly incapable of proof: unless we admit the circulating syllogism to be sound reasoning. The deist may indeed prove a future state of retribution from the perfect justice of God: but then he cannot be allowed also to prove the perfect justice of God from a future state of retribution. What he is at present called upon to demonstrate is the perfect justice of God. But this he can only do through the medium of a future state of retribution. And it is utterly impossible for him to demonstrate a future state of retribution except through the medium of the perfect justice of God. Therefore he is quite unable to prove, that God is a perfectly just being. He may indeed choose to assert the perfect justice of God: but, in his case, it is bare assertion and nothing else. His reasoning, in short, when thrown into a scholastic form, will run as follows. Unless there be a future state of retribution, God is not a God of perfect justice. But God is a God of perfect justice. Therefore there is a future state of retribution. Here a fu

ture state of retribution is demonstrated through the medium of God's perfect justice: but, unfortunately, the deist has to demonstrate God's perfect justice itself also. What then is to be done in this emergency? Invert the terms of the syllogism, or, in other words, reason in a circle; and the business will be accomplished. If there be no future state of retribution, then God is not a God of perfect justice. But there is a future state of retribution. Therefore God is a God of perfect justice. Here God's perfect justice is demonstrated through the medium of a future state of retribution.

2. The deist alike and the Christian, I believe, further maintain, that God is a God of mercy no less than a God of justice. But how, upon his own principles, can the deist vindicate his belief?

If he beheld a fellow-mortal, racking and torturing another fellow-mortal by every refinement of the most ingenious cruelty; not forthwith bringing his misery to a termination, but industriously prolonging it through days and through weeks and through months and through years: he would certainly, without hesitation, prononuce the disposition of that man to be strongly and indisputably characterized by cruelty. Now he need not cast his eyes very far abroad, in order to behold precisely the same deeds performed by God and that too, not once merely and as it were accidentally, but repeatedly and perpetually. Let him consider the case of a man, labouring for years under the torment of the stone, or gradually devoured by a cancer, or wasting away inch by inch under the baleful influence of

the scrophula. The bitter sufferings of such a. man are plainly both caused and prolonged by the immediate hand of God. Did it suit his good pleasure, he might either have never caused themat all, or he might bring them to a speedy termination through the agency of death, or he might grant instantaneous relief to the sufferer. Not one of these, however, is the line of conduct, which he thinks fit to adopt. On the contrary, he places a miserable being upon the rack, and there he retains him. It is true indeed, that bodily sufferings inflicted by the hand of God, and bodily sufferings inflicted by the hand of man, do not with equal force strike upon our imagination: because, on the scaffold, we actually behold the executioner straining and tearing the sinews of his victim; while, in the chamber of languishing pain and sickness, the mysterious Being, who inflicts the torment, is to mortal eyes invisible. But the agent of misery is not more real, because he is seen; neither is he less real, because he is unseen. Many men have been found, who appear to delight both in the infliction and in the view of the most horrid corporeal sufferings: these the deist pronounces to be palpably merciless. The Supreme Being perpetually condemns his creatures to bodily torment, no less severe and much more prolonged than any tortures of human invention him the deist pronounces to be doubtless a God of mercy. Now why does he come to two such directly opposite conclusions from the very same premises? Upon his own principles, he can know nothing of the moral attributes of God, save what he can collect from the divine operations. Why then does he call him a God

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of mercy, when yet he is observed to perform the identical actions which procure for a human being the undisputed character of the most revolting cruelty?

Probably the deist may reply, that the cruelty of an action depends upon its intent: for the very same deed, which under some circumstances is horribly cruel, under other circumstances will present an aspect wholly the reverse. Thus the tyrant, who delights wantonly to torture his victims and to feast upon their groans, we denominate cruel but the skilful practitioner, who inflicts even the most acute pain upon a diseased patient, we respect as a man both of science and humanity. On this principle, we are not to suppose that God sends bodily suffering upon his creatures because he has any abstract delight in their misery but he sends it, as a powerful instrument of moral discipline, to reclaim them from error and to draw them more closely to himself.

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Such an answer (and, I think, we may safely assert it to be the only possible answer to the present difficulty) is perfectly valid and conclusive in the mouth of a Christian*: but it is not quite so easy to conceive the propriety of its appearance in the mouth of a deist, who systematically discards revelation. If the life of man be

*Heb. xii. 5-11. The same answer, when given by a Christian, is perfectly conclusive also in regard to the absolute justice of God both in this world and in the next, as discussed under the last head: for, when the doctrine of moral discipline is introduced (a doctrine, taught explicitly in Scripture, but incapable of any legitimate proof on deistical principles); we readily perceive, that the trials of the good, and the prosperity of the bad, during the present state of things, are no impeachment of the divine justice.