cept when turned out of their common course by incidental causes. Every touch would have felt like the rubbing of a wound. Every taste would have been a bitter, and every sound a scream. Our imaginations would have presented nothing but frightful spectres to us. Our thoughts would have been the seat of a deep and constant melancholy, and our reason would have served only to show us our wretchedness. What we now call gratification would have been nothing but a relaxation of torment, and we should have been driven to the offices necessary for self-preservation, by an increase of sufferings occasioned by neglecting them. Or, if at any time any feelings of delight were granted us, they would have been, as the paroxysms of pain are at present, transient and rare, and intended only to set a keener edge on misery, by giving a taste of its contrary.

In the present state of the world, our pains, when they become extreme, soon make an end of either themselves or us. But, in the state of things we are imagining, there could have been no such merciful appointment; for our bodies, probably, would have been so made as to be capable of bearing the severest pains, and at the same time we might have been deterred from selfviolence, by knowing that the consequence of hastening death would be getting sooner into a state of misery still more dreadful, and which would never come to an end."*

It is impossible to contrast our actual condition with that which is here imagined, without a deep and joyful feeling, that he who gave us life, and all things richly to enjoy, is a Being of infinite benevolence.

But, if he be really so, whence is misery? He is almighty, and therefore he can have been controlled by no superior power. He is absolute wisdom; to him are known the true natures of all things; he must therefore be perfectly benevolent. And because he is pure reason, he can have no tendencies opposed to benevolence; for reason cannot be the ground of approbation of beneficence, and at the same time of biases inconsistent with

* Dr. Price's Sermon, p. 283.

it. Whence, then, is evil? It is impossible, even while contemplating the most satisfactory evidence of the divine goodness, not to ask this question. To have a clear and just conception of the answer to it, is to be happy under almost all the events of life, and secure and resigned under its worst ills; and, though the true answer to it may be collected from what has been already advanced, yet this subject is of such unspeakable importance, that it demands a more particular consideration.

SECTION II.

OF THE EVIL OF DEFECT, AND OF NATURAL AND MORAL EVIL.

THE origin of evil has occupied the attention of the most profound and pious minds, from the earliest periods of which we have any record, and the investigation of it still continues to exercise the highest faculties of the most intelligent and enlightened men. It must be confessed, that we do not comprehend it. Perhaps our present faculties are not capacious enough to take in that vast extent, and that various kind of knowledge, which are necessary to a full understanding of the subject. It is at least certain that we do not possess this knowledge, and probable that we shall never attain to it in the present state. Much, however, is known-sufficient to remove all reasonable doubt and apprehension, and to afford peace to the mind.

That this difficulty was perceived by the ancient philosophers, and by the primitive believers and defenders of the Christian religion, is certain, for it is stated by them in its full force. The supposed Maker of the world, it was long ago said, was either willing to abolish all evils, but not able, or was able and not willing, or he was neither willing nor able, or, lastly, he was both able and willing. This latter is the only thing that answers fully to the notion of a God. Now, that the supposed Creator of all things was not thus both able and willing to abolish all evils, is plain, because then there would have been no evils at all left. Wherefore, since there is such a deluge of evils overflowing all, it must needs be that either he was willing and not able to remove them, and then he was impotent, or else he was able and not willing, and then he was envious, or, lastly, he was

neither able nor willing, and then he was both impotent and envious.*

If, it was argued, there be but one Author of all things, the origin of all evil must be referred to him. But how can infinite goodness become the origin of evil? If God could not hinder it, he is not powerful; if he could and would not, he is not good. If it be said that evil necessarily adheres to some particular natures, since these too must owe their being to God, it would surely have been better not to have given them existence, than to have debased his workmanship with these concomitant evils.

A full and complete answer to these objections it is not in the power of the human faculties, with their present knowledge, perhaps with their present means of knowledge, to give; but an answer, sufficient to produce in the considerate and candid mind an undoubting conviction of the perfect benevolence of the Creator, can be rendered.

All the kinds of evil of which we can conceive may be comprehended under three, namely, the evil of imperfection, natural and moral evil.

The evil of imperfection is the absence of perfection; natural evil is pain produced by natural causes; moral evil is pain produced by wrong volitions.

In regard to the evil of imperfection, it is impossible that it should have been avoided; it is the necessary property of created being. Omnipotence itself could not have removed it, because Omnipotence could not effect that which in the nature of things is impossible to be effected-could not produce a contradiction. But a creature possessed of absolute perfection is a contradiction; for self-existence is essential to absolute perfection; but a self-existent creature is a plain contradiction, since it supposes a creature to exist of itself, and not of itself at the same time. It is implied in the very notion of a

*This is the famous objection of Epicurus, quoted and answered by Lactantius-De Ira Dei, sect. xii. p. 435. See also Cudworth's True Ibtellectual System, pp. 78, 79, and Dean Clarke's Inquiry into the Cause and Origin of Evil.

creature, that it is dependent-dependent for its existence and all its properties on the Being who created it. However exalted may be the qualities imparted to it, it must always be inferior to its Creator; an effect must be inferior to its cause. Absolute perfection, therefore, is peculiar to that Being who is self-existent and independent. Whatever powers and excellencies it may please him to communicate, it is impossible that he should communicate, in their original perfection, his own attributes. These are incommunicable.

We can

not, indeed, but conceive of such a Being as almightythat is, as able to do all that is possible to be done; but to communicate his own attributes in their original perfection, is a thing impossible to be done, since to render a creature self-existent, or absolutely independent, implies a direct contradiction.

The evil of imperfection must therefore of necessity exist, supposing there is a creation. It follows, that it is not incompatible with almighty power and infinite goodness to produce imperfect creatures, or, rather, that it is not compatible with these attributes, that it is not possible in the nature of things, to produce perfect creatures. God might indeed have refrained from creating; and, had it been wiser and better to produce no creatures than imperfect creatures, he would have remained eternally alone, without witnesses and without participators of his happiness. But if there be a creation, there must be imperfection, and all the other evils necessarily resulting from this great and original evil are absolutely unavoidable.

Nor in strictness does this evil of imperfection arise from the Creator, but from the original nonentity of the creature. Every created thing was a negation or nonentity before it had a primitive being, and, when it had a primitive being communicated to it, it had just so much of its primitive negation taken away from it. So far as it is, its being is to be attributed to the Sovereign Cause that produced it; so far as it is not, its not being is to be attributed to the original nonentity out of which it was produced. That which was once nothing would still