Page:On the providence of God in the government of the world.pdf/6

 +ed him the end of his creation, and expects from him a reasonable service, and hath set before him good and evil, life and death, that he may chuse either obedience and its reward, or sin and its punishment.

This is man's nature, and God's way of governing it. And tho' sometimes he changes the hearts of men, alters their inclinations, makes them chuse and resolve as it seems expedient to him, by an influence of their understanding and will, which they neither discern nor can resist; yet the reason of this argument is still the same, because this secret and effectual operation of God doth not take away the natural liberty of man's will, but only over rule and determine it in some particular cases. In others he leaves men to themselves. He commands them to worship him, and suffers them to worship idols; he requires them to be obedient to superiors, and just to one another, and permits them to be guilty of disobedience, reblelion [sic], murder, adultery, robbery, false witness, and all the malice and fraud, and violent perverting of judgment and justice that men are tempted to by ambition and covetousness

Since therefore a great part of men's calamities happen to them by the wickedness of their neighbours, and wealth and greatness oftentimes are procured by their own wickedness and usurpation, which tho' God disapprove and strictly forbid, and declares that he will punish, yet, if he doth not interpose his irresistable power to hinder, it evidently follows, that sin of the oppressor may make him rich and prosperous, and the innocent oppressed man poor and afflicted; and that these things may fall out as uncertainly as we see they do, because they depend upon so uncertain a thing as the will of man

2. There must be 'one event to the righteous and to the wicked,' because a great deal of prosperity or affliction befals men, not as the reward or the effect of any thing done by themselves, but by descent from their parents, whose virtues and vices have great influence upon the persons and fortunes of their children, by the Providence of God, and by the laws of men, and by the course of nature.

First, Prosperity, or affliction happens to the children