The Life of Faith. 179 do therefore dcbafc God, and deifie his creature, who make the creature the ultimate end of GOD and it Pelf; and not God the ultimate end of the creature. And they might as well make the creature the Beginning alto ofit fclfand God : (And yet this fottifh notion takcth much with many half-witted Novclifls in this Age, who account themfelvcs the men of ingenuity.) And thcy have alto falfe thoughts of the Goodnefs of God, who think that there is nothing of communicative Benignity in it at all. For all the good which God doth, he doth it from the Goodnefs of his dature : Thou art good, and theftgood, Hat,. 119.68. And his doing good is ufualty expref cd by the phrafc of being good to them : The Lord is good to all, Pfal. 145. 9, Pfal. 25. 8. & 86. 5. Objet}. But ifcommunicative Benignity be natural t3 God as hip Effential Goodnefs i', then be muff do good per modum na- tuEá, & ad ultimursn potentiæ; and then the world was from Eternity, and as good as God could make it. Anfrc. r. Thofe Chrifiian Divines who do hold that the Vniverfe was from Eternity, and that it is as good as God can make it ; do not yet hold that it was its own original, but an eternal emanation from God, and therefore that God who is the beginning of ir, is the ultimateend, and eternally and vo- luntarily, though naturally and neceffarily produced it for bimfelf, even for the pleafure ofhis will : And therefore that Gods Effential Goodnefs as it is in it felf, is much higher than the fame as terminated in, or productive of the üniverfc. And that no mixt bodies which do oriri eir interire, are gene- rated and corrupted, were from eternity ; and confcqucntly, that this prcfent fyficmc called the world, which is within our fight, was not from eternity : But that as (piing and fall doth revive the plants, and end their tranfitory life ; fo it hath been with thefe particular fyflcmes; the fimpler and nobler parts of theUniverfe continuing the fame. And they held that the world is next to infinitelygood; and as good as it is poffibie to be without being God; and that for God to produce ano- ther God, or aninfinitegood, is a contradi# ion : And that all the bafar, and pained, and miferable parts of the world, arc belt recaively to theperfefioa of the whole, thoughnotbell A a 2 in
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