to impart to us his righteoufnefs, but to recommend righteousness to us in the most powerful manner, to deter us from fin, to display to us the odiousness of its form, &c. When all that he did and suffered is confidered in this way, particularly in a moral view, we are actually saved from our fins, through faith in his righteousness and death. How they have made this poffible in general may be left undetermined. It is fufficient that all parties admit that our faith actually muft do fo, inafmuch as we are thereby placed in a fituation to attain our imperfect righteoufnefs, or to be as good, and as obedient to God as is poffible in the prefent ftate of things. Our author farther places the advantage of faith in this, that it is proposed by the fcriptures as the means appointed by God for rendering imperfect righteousness equivalent, in bis figbt, to perfect, and even of transforming it into perfect. Where God perceives in man the active principle of obedience, and the elements of righteoufnefs, that is, faith in our prefent ftate, he fees the inevitable good confequences which will extend to all eternity. So far is true faith, in his fight, equivalent to perfect righteoufnefs; as it contains the principle, feed, and origin of it. Its confequences will ftill continue to increafe and extend themfelves. Thus virtue, proceeding from faith, and founded on the infallible knowledge and just direction of God, muft ever be growing more perfect ; especially as faith tends to increase and rectify our practical judgment, and to bring both it, and the will joined with it, more nearly to coincide with the judgment and will of God. The more this happens, the more are we capable of loving and doing, from our own knowledge, that good which we had hitherto loved and practifed from confidence in God; and our advancement towards perfection will be more speedy, and our propenfity to virtue more

firm and unalterable, when we no longer walk by faith, but by fight.

Sixthly Faith improves righteoufnefs, and again every degree of righteousness is a proportional preparative for faith; and, if it do not produce faith, will end in Self-righteoufness, and fatanical pride. That faith improves righteoufnefs is obvious, as, in want of practical knowledge, the knowledge of God made ours by faith, not only improves righteousness and religious virtue, but produces them. But as faith moves and excites us to follow the divine precepts; in proportion as we practise the obedience excited by faith, we fhall experience, and feel an inward conviction, how neceffary and advantageous it is to us to have fuch an active confidence in God. If, however, we be not more difpofed to faith by fuch experience, and more strongly moved to truft in God, and give ourselves up to his direction; we cannot acknowledge him to be a good and trufty leader: we must fall into felf-righteoufnefs; oppofe our judgment to his; imagine that we are capable of directing ourfelves; rebel against his will; and, with fatanical pride, feek to be independant of him.

PROP. XCV. p. 426.

General Reflections on the final Happiness of Mankind.

OUR author, in his endeavour to prove the probability of the final happiness of all mankind from the fcriptures, notices the most important paffages that tend to support his argument. Avoiding a fimilar inquiry into particular texts of fcripture, I fhall content myself with adding fome general remarks. on the fubject; preferving the fame impartiality, as

when,

when, in an addition to a former propofition, I exhibited the arguments that might be deduced from reafon both for and against the ultimate happiness of all men, without offering any decifion of my own.

I fhall firft obferve that particular paffages of fcripture appear abfolutely to favour the common opinion of the total rejection, and endless mifery, of those who leave this world unbelieving and unamended; and that these paffages appear to be more weighty, as well as more numerous, than thofe which favour the oppofite opinion. Thus whilft both fides reft their proof an particular paffages, the advocates of the common opinion have fome advantage over their opponents, and the latter can act only on the defenfive, seeking to ward off the blows that they cannot return. On the other hand, if the difputants add to their inquiry into particular paffages, the confideration of the general purport of the christian revelation, the fcriptural representations of the univerfal benevolence aud paternal love of God, the defign of our redemption by Chrift, &c; or if the ftrength of the expreffions be brought to the test of reason, by it to be confirmed or foftened; the oppofers of that opinion will have the vantage ground. Probably the queftion might ultimately be decided in their favour, if they could prove that the general purport of revelation, and the fundamental notions it gives of God, his attributes, defigns, and relation to man, muft avail more than particular paffages, in reconciling contradictions not eafy to be removed. In this cafe, the paternal relation of God to man, which is the foundation of all chriftianity, would feem a fufficient ground for rejecting the ftrict literal fenfe of paffages militating against it, and facrificing them to the general purport of the fcripture. God promises, would the defender of the final happiness of all men say to himfelf, to fhew infinitely more mercy,

man,

mercy, patience, grace, and forgiveness to than the most affectionate father can ever fhew to his child. How can I reconcile this paternal love and mercy with the threats of eternal punishment, and total rejection? Can I fuppofe that fuch a father as God declares himfelf to be to mankind, will allow his fon, who is all his life-time under his eye, and the influence of his paternal authority, not a few years, but at moft a few days of probation; his good or bad conduct during which is to decide the whole of his future fate, which depends on his father? Can I imagine that he has fo limited to the fhorteft period his fon's poffibility and capability of meriting his father's love and reward, or hatred and punishment, and in a certain measure his whole moral nature, that beyond it no change of his heart to good or bad can follow, or, if it did, could produce no alteration in his fate? Can I believe that a wife father would thus permit the total happiness or mifery of his fon to depend on a fingle trial, or at most a few ?

This cafe is not drawn too unlike, or is it an unapt comparifon. For what is the life of man, confidered as a ftate of probation, when compared with an eternity, in which no farther trial takes place, and no alteration can be made, but his difpofition, conduct and fate are immutably fixed? Probably the advocate of final happiness will avail himself of this circumftance too in the comparifon, that, to make every thing equal in both cafes, ignorant, unthinking, inexperienced childhood must be confidered as the time of probation, our earthly life being but the beginning and infancy of our existence. Befides, in comparing the two cafes, he would find this much harder, that in the latter there is no determinate time of probation, no certain number of years on which the fon may fafely reckon, where at leaft he would have opportunity for repeated trials.

But

1

But unquestionably the hardest of all would be, when the father irrevocably rejects his fon on the first failure, without giving him a chance for repairing it, or behaving himself better and we frequently find the young and thoughtless finner fuddenly taken off in his firft crime. To this indeed it may be replied that the father, who has made this ftrict determination with refpect to his fon's fate, is free from reproach, as he had already given his fon warning: the latter, therefore, knowing he had a. rigid father, fhould have been more cautious; if he were not, he can blame nothing but his own imprudence. But it may be answered, though I must leave the inconfiderate fon to his fate, as the fruits of his own folly, I perceive no love, kindness or mercy in the father's conduct to his rafh, but unhappy fon. If I cannot fully juftify the fon's conduct, this does not justify the ftrict refolve of the father, according to human notions. The ignorance, inexperience, and giddinefs of youth, are at least some excufe for the former: but what foftening circumstances can be advanced in justifying the rigour of the latter? If it be said that a paternal love, incompatible with fuch fevere refolves, is not that true paternal love which God bears his rational creatures, and which is fuitable to his nature, but human frailty and imperfection: this is cutting the knot, instead of untying it: and it may be faid that what is confidered as human, and unfuitable to God, in this idea, is the effence of paternal love, which feeks the happiness of its object as much and as long as poffible. If this be taken away, nothing more remains of God's paternal love to man; regarded as fo affectionate, and we are totally deprived of all ideas of it; or rather it is changed into its oppofite, according to that analogy by which alone we are able to form any conception of this, as well as of the other attributes of God.

They