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that degree of free will and free agency chooses man should possess, and which indeed is the sine quâ non of his character, human conduct on the part of a king, in common with the rest of the species, must be left to the free will of the agent. God has in short told all classes of men, without exception, how they should regulate their conduct towards him, their neighbour, and them→ selves, so as to promote their own temporal and eternal happiness, and that of others: he has informed the whole species, that he requires it to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with him; and if princes wilfully neglect to obey his commandments, are guilty of acts of oppression and injustice, or engage in war merely from ambitious motives, and in consequence the prince and the people suffer, this suffering ought not to be laid to the charge of God, since it is plain that his will is, and has always been, that each man should act, and motives sufficiently strong have been urged and propounded to the mind of every man to act, agreeably to the laws of justice, mercy, and piety and if man would attend to this will of God, which he now may, and ever might have done, the misery arising from injustice, cruelty, and

impiety, would not exist in the manner we find it does. As to the trite and common-place argument, that things have always been so from time immemorial, this is a petitio principii: the true point at issue is, whether when God, the Lord and Creator of man, has plainly and incontestibly required him as a free agent to act in one way, and he will nevertheless act in another, whether the evil which arises from this disobedient conduct is or is not chargeable on the providence of God, or is any fair and just argument for an inference, that the world is governed by chance? I am perfectly convinced it is not, and that it cannot be so considered in the judgment of impartial, candid reason. We are to have splendid and magnificent ideas of the providence of God, not mean and abject ones; and if the information we derive from astronomers is to be depended on, that in the immensity of the universe the non-existence even of our whole solar system would scarcely be missed, we ought not to consider our little planet and its concerns of such importance, as to induce God to work perpetual miracles on our account: surely it is quite sufficient on his part, if he has decidedly and unambiguously made his will known, as to the

conduct he orders and requires his creature man to observe. Princes therefore, as well as other men, having good and evil set before them, are left to themselves as to the means their free agency enables them to adopt in the exercise of the power with which they are invested; and if they are guilty of unnecessary cruelties, or adopt any other course of conduct than that which reason, conscience, and Scripture sanctions, both the letter and spirit of Solomon's observation in Ecclesiastes strictly applies to them in these words, "Know thou, that for all these things "God will bring thee into judgment:" like all other men they will be accountable and punished for their conscious violation of that conduct God has ordered them to observe. But nothing but a very wrong, a very narrow, and illiberal way of thinking can induce any man to imagine, that the providence of God is in any degree liable to be impugned, if, on his part, he has made his will clearly known to a free agent, as to the conduct he requires him to observe, and that free agent presumes rashly and audaciously to act in direct defiance and disobedience to that will, and to that course of conduct he is peremptorily ordered to obey.

But there is another view in which the objection should be considered, a view which strongly infers the providence of God and his interference in human affairs, from the very circumstance of tyrants being occasionally seated on thrones; and this view is, that they may be purposely placed on them to accomplish the will of God to punish men and nations who have grossly and daringly set him and his laws at defiance. Suppose three great monarchs, who, as the representatives of God on earth, ought to set an example of mercy, justice, and piety to their subjects; and, as Henry the Fourth of France observed, in whose bosoms virtue and honour ought to reign, though banished from those of all other men: suppose these monarchs, instead of setting this example, should meet together for the sole and detestable purpose of dividing between them the dominions of a neighbouring monarch, who had given them no offence, and from whom they did not even pretend to have received any: suppose them actually to put this wicked design in execution, and, not having the fear of God in their hearts, to accomplish this execrable undertaking; an enterprise so flagitious in its nature, the commission of which was so

wantonly oppressive and unjustifiable; the perpetration of it was so extremely wicked, bloody, audacious, and daring; so directly setting the will and commands of God, and all laws, human and divine, at defiance: if God, to punish this gross act of oppression and injustice, this shameful violation of his laws, and which, if generally practised in private life, under the sanction and example of these monarchs, would go to the length of destroying all confidence, good faith, and justice, between man and man: if the Almighty, to punish such nations, should raise up for that purpose an unfeeling, sanguinary tyrant, a reason sufficiently strong and satisfactory appears why such a tyrant should occupy the throne he does; and the natural inference to be drawn from his doing so is in favour of God's superintendance of human concerns, and that the events of this life are by no means left to chance. From what we observe of the animal, vegetable, and solar systems of God, we can discern the utmost perfection in them; and we may be very certain there is the same perfection in his moral and intellectual system, though the depth of its wisdom so infinitely exceeds the penetration of human sagacity, that we very often