EVIDENCES OF FORGIVENESS. 165 creatures, by the law of their creation. This was indis- pensably and absolutely necessary at first. The very being of God, and order of things, required that it should be so. Supposing that God had made such creatures as we are, it could not be but that moral obe- dience was due to him : that he should be believed in, trusted and obeyed, as the first cause, the great end and sovereign Lord of all. But the entrance of sin, laying the sinner absolutely under the curse of God, utterly put an end to this order of things. Man was now to have perished immediately. But here, in the sovereign will of God, an interposition was made between sin and the sentence ; and man was respited from destruction. All worship following this, even that which was before natural by the law of creation, is now resolved into an arbitrary act of God's will. All worship is designed to give glory to God. For, as God has said that he will be sanctified in all that draw nigh to him, that is, in his worship, and that there- in he will be glorified, Lev. 10 : 3, and that he that of- fereth him praise, that is, performeth any part of his worship and service, glorifieth him, Psalm 50 ; 23 ; so the nature of the thing itself declares that it can have no other end. 3. Consider, that God has not prescribed any wor- ship of himself to the angels that sinned. They are, in- deed, under his power, and he useth them as he pleas - eth, to serve the ends of his holy providence. Bounds he prescribes to them by his power, and keeps them in dread of the full execution of his wrath ; but he calls them not, as he does us, to repentance and faith, to the exercise of love, fear, delight, and all those inward affec- tions which are the proper worship of God. Such wor- ship they entirely cast off from them in their first sin. Now, as God dealt with the angels, so also would he have dealt with mankind, had he left them all under the curse
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