582 GOD'S 000DNESS VINDICATED. whole, and their worth to be valued for the whole, or for-the com- mon ends? Must every pin in a watch, or every stitch in your garment, or every part of your house, or every member of your body, and every humor or excrement in it, have that excellency which may simply dignify itself in a compared or separated sense? ' Or rather must it not have that excellency which belongeth to it as a part of the whole for the common end of all together? Is not that best, that is best to the order, beauty, and usefulness of the universal frame ? Quest. 7. ' Is it necessary to this end,or to prove God'sgoodness, that all individuals, or species ofcreatures, must be of the highest rank or excellency ?' Is God wanting in goodness, if every man be not an angel, or every angel made unchangeable, or every un- learned man a doctor, or every star a sun, or every cloud or clod a star, or every beast a man, or every worm an elephant, or every weed a rose, or every member a heart or head, or every excre- ment blood and spirits ? Will you think that a man doth reason like a man, who thus disputeth, ' He that doth not do that which is best when he can do it, is not perfectly good, and therefore is not God. But he that maketh toads and serpents, and maketh the guts the passage of filthy excrements, when he could have made them equal with the heart, doth not do that which is best, when he can do it. Therefore he is not perfectly good ; therefore he is not God ; . therefore there is no God ; therefore there is no Creator; therefore the world hath no cause, or made itself, and preserved' itself. Therefore I made myself, and must rule and preserve myself.' Conclude next, ' Therefore I will never suf- fer nor die; and thus prove the wisdom of such reasoning, if you can. Quest. 8. If God made man and all things, ' did he not make them for himself, for the pleasure of his own will ? Must he not needs in reason be the end of all, who is the beginning and cause of all ?' And is not that means the best which is aptest to the end? And doth not the proper goodness of a means consist in itg aptitude to promote the end ? And then is not that the goodness of all creatures (partly to be what the Creator efficiently maketh them, andpartly) to fulfill his will? And what creature bath not this goodness, as to the absolute will of his decrees, which all fulfill ? Quest. 9. ' Are not now both these conclusions of infallible certainty, and therefore not at all contradictory ?' 1. That God is most good, because he is the cause of all the good in the whole creation? 2. And yet that there are toads, serpents, darkness, death, sickness, pains, &e., which, therefore, are no whit inconsistent
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