Page:On the providence of God in the government of the world.pdf/9

 superior to their private right, and reserved, either implicitly or expressly, in the laws of all nations.

There is another consideration of human laws in this argument of prosperity or affliction by descent, viz. That laws make not a man's virtue his title to his estate, but inheritance, or gift, or purchase, or any just way of acquiring it; nor doth a man forfeit what he hath by the most common vices: so that a foolish and riotous heir of a provident father justly possesses that wealth and plenty which he abuses and surfeits upon, and wastes prodigally, till it be all gone, and leaves, perhaps, to a wife and good son all the calamities of poverty, and more; for mere poverty is not so great an affliction, as poverty after riches, and want after Abundance.

To conclude, there is a descent of good and evil by the course of nature. A riotous man may have received from his temperate and healthful parents such a vigorous and firm constitution as will endure great, and long, and frequent debauches before it be quite broken, and this man's sober and temperate son, notwithstanding all his care and good government of himself, may be sick for those debauches and feel those pains and aches which his father's excess deserved; for, in this sense too, 'the iniquity of the fathers is visited upon the children.'

Now, if parents, being evil themselves; may have good children, and, being good themselves, may have evil children, and may have children like themselves, whether they be good or evil, and yet prosperity or affliction shall befal these children by the actions of their parents; it must necessarily follow, that these things are uncertain, and that there must be 'one event to the righteous and to the wicked.

3. There must be 'one event to the righteous and to the wicked,' because they are so mixt together in their persons, and interests, and employments, and places of abode, that they cannot be distinguished in the events that befal them. They march and fight in the same army, and fare alike in danger or safety, abundance or famine, conquest or defeat. They live together in the city, and must breathe in the same wholesome or infected air. They sail in the same ships, and the hazards of the sea,