¡+! 126 The Favour of God obtained by wifdom. S E x M. the doctrine of the text, that the wife, or V. the religious, obtain faveur of the Lord. And in the firft place, it is to be obferved, that the prefent fiate is appointed by the wifdom of God to be a Bate of difcipline, and improvement, wherein, as all men are impeded in a moral fenfe, fo is their con- dition with refped to happihefs, mixed and impeded; a great deal of what is generally accounted affliction fuch as the inferiority of force men to others in refpet to the advan- tages of nature and outward eftate, a mean birth, a weak conflitution of body, poverty, and other things of a like nature ; a great deal of this, I fay, might be refolved into the mere fovereignty of the divine dominion. There is a vaft variety in the works of God even which we fee; the very kinds of them cannot be numbered, and herein doth his greatnefs and his wifdom appear. Now, furely in difpofing the feveral parts of his creation, in fettling the order of his king- dom, and affigning their different fictions to the fubjeéts of his providential rule, the great Creator and Governor is not accountable to any of his creatures; he doth whatever pleafeth him, and who can fay, What doll thou ? Will a man complain that he was not made an angel, or a brute that it is not railed to
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