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CHRISTIAN MORALITY, VIZ. JUSTICE,
&C.
[SEAM. XXV.
who would
not injure
their
fellow
-
creatures,
may
be
guarded
in
the enjoyment
of
their
own
property,
and
their
peace, and
may have them
secured
from
the sons
of
in
justice.
And besides all the
punishment
that
such sinners justly
receive
from men on
earth, God,
the
great Governor of
the world,
has
often revealed
his
wrath from heaven
against
all the
unrighteousness
of
men,
as well
as
their
ungodliness.
He
has hereby proclaimed
his
public
appro-
bation of justice,
and
his
hatred of
all iniquity.
His
terrors
have sometimes
appeared
in signal and severe
instances against those
who have
been notoriously
un-
righteous,
and
who
have
broken
all
the rules
of
equity
in the .treatment
of
their
fellow
-
creatures.
This
the
heathens
themselves have
taken notice
of.
And they
thought
this to be
so
necessary for the
government
of
the
world,
that
theirpriests
have
invented
a
sort of
goddess
palled Nemesis, whose
office is
to avenge
the
practice
of
fraud
or
violence,
and
to
bring
down curses on the
head
of
this kind
of
criminals.
As
the
ancient records
of
the
heathen
world give us
some
histories
of
divine vengeance,
so
the
bible
abounds
with more
awful
and illustrious instances
of
this
kind;
which
leads
me to
The fourth
head
of
my
discourse
;
and
that
is,
to con-
sider what
forcible
arguments and
motives the
christian
religion
affords
for
the
practice
ofjustice
among
men.
If
I
were to
speak
of
distributive justice, or
that
which
:belongs
to
the
practice
of
the magistrate, never
was
it
wore
gloriously manifest
than
in
and
by
God
the
Father,
when
he
refused
to pass by
our
iniquities without
punish-
ment,
and
laid the
dreadful
weight
of
it upon
the bead
and
soul
of
his own Son.
Never
could magistracy re-
ceive
such a
glory,
as
when
our Lord
Jesus
Christ,
the
Son
of
God, hung and died upon the
cross, suffering
the
penalty that
the
law
of
God, the supreme
magistrate,
had
denounced against
sinners.
And
as
punishing
justice
was
glorified
in
all
its
terrors,
so
rewarding
justice
also
appeared
most illustrious.
Be-
cause our Lord
Jesus
Christ
had fulfilled obedience not
only
to
the broken
law which
we
lay
under, but
to those
peculiar
laws
which
God
the.
Father
also gave
him as
a
Mediator;
therefore
it
pleased
God
highly to
advance