AN ESSAY. 493 if net equallynecessary with God's own being. Let ussee now how such a proposition would sound, and with what aspect such a scheme of things would appear to our minds, if we enter into the detail of them. Then God could not have abstained from making this our world at all, nor frommaking it just such as it is, nor withheld his hand from creation one moment longer : then he could not have made one more planet or star, or one less thanhe has done : nay, not so much as one atom or dust more or less in any star or planet, nor have placed them in any other form. He could not have given the sun one more beam, nor any morning since the creation one more gleam of light, or one less shade of darkness. Then the ever-blessed God could not have been happy one moment longer in solitude; pr without crea- tures, nor begun to form any part of this universe, or this globe earlier or later than he did nor could he have caused one spire of grass to grow on this earth, nor one drop of water in the sea, nor one sand moreorless at the bottom of it. He could not con- tinue the material world, nor any atom of it a moment longer in existence, nor have fixed the periods even of the minutest beings any otherwise than he has done. Not a drop of rain could fall, not a particle of water flow, nor a dusky atom of smoke ascend in any other manner, nor at any other minute than it Both ; nor could the great God have decreed it other- wise in the least punctilio, so far as mere corporeal nature is concerned therein, because each of these was supremely fit, together with the original train of causes Which necessarily pro- duced them. But if it be allowed, that in any of these minute and incon- siderable things, God may determine freely and merely by his own will without superior fitness, why may he not determine ten thousand other things, which seem to us of greater importance, merely by his own will without superior fitness ? But on the contrary, if God cannot do any thing without the view of supe- rior fitness, this difficulty will extend to the affairs of human nature also, and to the works of providence, redemption and grace, as well as to the inanimate worldand God's creating influences. The Americans and the Hottentots could not have been formed otherwise than under such special disadvantages; nor could Great Britain have had the gospel withheld from it one moment longer. Nor indeed, according to this scheme, could God have withheld his Son from being sent to redeem the world, nor withheld his Spirit with all its gifts and in- fluences from the inhabitants of this globe, nor have omitted any one miracle towards the propagation of this gospel ; for the will of Godwas absolutely determined to do all this by its superior fitness. What strange doctrine is this, contrary to all our ideas of
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