CONpEItENCE I. 445 difficulty. Could so wise, so righteous, and merciful a,God bring millions of creatures into being with such a prevision for their happiness, as not one in ten thousand should be likely to obtain it ? This is so near a-kin to an absolute insufficiency, that this doctrine of yours seems to bear too hard upon the perfec- tions of God. What ! has the blessed God dealt harder with his creature man than with any of the meaner works of his hands ? PITH. No, Sir, by no means : And ifyou couldhave known man in hisoriginal state of powers and blessings, furnishedwith a clear and sagacious mind, with reason bright and strong, and superior to all his lower appetites and passions, you would, doubtless, have acknowledged the transcendent advantages for elevated happiness, and the rich sufliciencies given to the crea- ture man. Youwould have confessed, they were such as became a magnificent, a wise, and a bountiful Creator to bestow upon his noblest piece of workmanship on this earthly globe. God Math not dealt worse with his creature man than with the rest ; but man has dealt worse with hisMaker than any of them. He has not followed the laws of his nature, but broke his allegiance to his God, bychusing evil instead of good : He has ruined his original happy state, and according to the constitution of things, his whole nature and race is tainted, so that he is become viler than the brutes that perish : He has forfeitedhis nativeblessings, and he, with his race, are become rebels, and obnoxious to their Maker's displeasure. This, as Sopatronius hinted in the first of our conferences, hasbeen the' sense of themore thinking heathens, as well as Jews and christians ; and without an eye to some such sort of original degeneracy, it is hard, if not impossible to give a satisfactory account for the poor, dark, stupid, and wretched cir- cumstances in which so great a part of mankind, are brought into this world, wherein they live and grow up, age after age, in gross ignorance and vice, thoughtless of their duty to the God that created them, or their truehappiness in the enjoyment of his favour. Loo. But since I am not yet so far convinced, nor so com- plaisant as to confess this original degeneracy, and since it would lead us, perhaps, too farfrom our present point of debate, pray, my friend, try ifyou cannot say something else to clear the justice and the goodness of God from the imputation of dealing sohardly with his creature man. PITH. I cannot wave this matter of some original degene- racy ; for I think it is so necessary to the solution of the difficul- ties which attend this point, that it is not to be done without it : Yet it is not the only answer to them neither; I will see what may be said from other topics also ; but 1 cannot promise you to avoid this.
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