Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those Doctrines.. Finch Richard
follow, he is morally capable of doing any thing, in its own Nature, immoral or unjust. All religious Debates are allowed to be best determinable by the divine Attributes; and yet nothing is more common, than to single out, and lay the greatest Stress on, that Attribute alone, which appears best to suit our own particular Opinions: which, however innocent our Intention may be, is, I think, in itself, a very erroneous and unwarrantable Procedure; for as God is all-wise and good, as well as almighty and independent, it is, in the Nature of Things, impossible (and therefore we should never admit it possible) he should be capable (in a moral Sense, I mean) of exerting any one particular Attribute in Opposition to, or Diminution from, another. A Sovereign he is, nor can any Creature whatever dispute his unlimited and uncontroulable Power over his whole Creation. But Power alone, without Wisdom and Goodness to make a right Use and Application of it, may be perfect Frenzy, and run into the greatest Latitude of Folly and Tyranny. It is, if I may be allowed the Comparison, like a Vessel that has lost its Helm, continually exposed to the tossing of Winds and Waves. To talk, therefore, of mere Sovereign Pleasure, without Regard to the proper Reason or Fitness of Things, so far operating and bring in the Divine Mind (and which is nothing more than the Presence and Operation of his own Wisdom) in order to prefer what, in its own Nature, is best, and fittest to be done, is excluding from the Deity, those more blessed and valuable Perfections of Wisdom and Goodness, and establishing in their room, and at their Expence, mere Sovereign Power alone. Physically speaking indeed, we allow God can do Evil itself; but the moral Perfections of his Nature, are to us an infallible and unshaken Security, that he never will do it. Man being an impotent and fallible Creature, liable, not only to mistake the true Nature and importance of Things, but when he does understand his Duty rightly, liable also, thro’ the Prevalence of Habit and Passion, to be very backward and defective in performing it, must necessarily be subject to such Laws, as contain in them Rewards and Punishments, proper to influence his Hopes and his Fears.
But as God, on the contrary, is a Being of all possible and infinite Perfections; an exact Knowledge of what we call Right and Wrong, Just and Unjust, ever hath, and always will exit in the Divine Mind, and be to him a perfect, constant, and invariable Rule of Action, in relation to his Creatures. He that is infinite in Knowledge, cannot but know, at all Times, and under the most (to us) difficult and perplex’d Circumstances of Things, what in its own Nature is best, and fittest to be done; and, being void of all Bias, Prejudice, and Passion, cannot but approve of what is right and best; and being likewise Almighty, no Power can possibly interrupt, or prevent what he determined to accomplish: So that it is morally impossible, that God should do an evil Thing, These Truths are so deducible from each other, and in themselves so evident, to all unbiassed and inquisitive Minds, that one would wonder to find Men, of Learning and Integrity, give into the contrary Sentiments; which, in Effect they do, who hold Doctrines naturally subversive of these fundamental Truths, as all certainly do, who depart from the moral Good and Fitness of Things, and resolve all into mere sovereign Pleasure alone, independent of Wisdom and Goodness; which must ever be at hand to cooperate with, and govern the Exertion of, their favourite Attribute, sovereign Power itself; or, if they do not expressly affirm this, they do by another Method the very same thing; and that is, by denying, in Effect, the intrinsick Difference of Good and Evil, which, according to them, has no Foundation in the Nature and Relations of Things, but takes its Rise, only, from the mere Will and Appointment of the Deity. But if all Things are in themselves equally Good, where is the Use to appoint, or the Sense of talking about it? Wisdom and Goodness must, according to this Notion, be idle and unmeaning Sounds, without Sense or Service. But alas! the natural Consequence of maintaining Tenets, so repugnant to common Sense, is seldom less than running into and embracing other Absurdities, in themselves equally great with what they are brought to defend, And here, as some of these Gentlemen are exalted, and I hope deservedly, to the Dignity of Teachers in the Christian Church, they will, I hope, permit me to ask them a Question or two, which I should, on almost any other Occasion, blush to ask any rational Man, viz. If they do not perceive an intrinsic Beauty and Excellence in Virtue, as opposed to Vice; independent of all positive or arbitrary Appointment, tho’ of the Deity itself; and whether, besides the Commands of God, (which to be sure are of high Importance, and ought ever to be urged with great Strength and Energy) they do not also press upon their Hearers, the Practice of Virtue, and endeavour to recommend, and inforce it on the Mind, from its own native Charms? But to make this Matter, still, if possible, more evident; let us suppose the present excellent Order of Things inverted, and that God, of his own mere Pleasure, had given Mankind quite contrary Laws, and commanded Rebellion, Murder, Ingratitude, and all Manner of Intemperance and Debauchery, instead of their opposite virtues; would the same Fitness, Beauty, and Propriety, appear to these Gentlemen, as there now does, in Virtue? If not, from whence the Difference arises, let them answer.
As God is an infinite Mind or Spirit, perfectly acquainted, at every Instant of Time, with whatever hath been, is, or shall be; and all Things possible to be; ’tis evident, that all possible Relations of Persons and Things are fully known to him; and that all moral and divine Obligations, arising from the Relation we stand in to God, and to each other, did, in their own Nature, previous to actual Law or Commandment, exist; because the one was in Time, and the other Eternal; one commenced only (at best) with the Being and Beginning of Creatures, the other was from all Eternity, co-existent with the Divine Wisdom itself; and such an inseparable Concomitant therewith, that, in regard to the Divine Being, himself, it was absolutely impossible, but that, on his creating such a Rank of Beings as we are, moral and religious Obligations must have been invariably and unalterably the same; and if, as these Men teach, God’s having commanded the Practice of Virtue, be its peculiar Sanction, and that alone which distinguishes it from Vice or Evil; then, by the same or as good an Argument, his commanding Light in the Beginning, is all the Reason we have for esteeming Light and Darkness different, (as they really are) the one being the actual Pretence of a real Body, and the other a mere Name, to signify its Absence; not that Vice is therefore a mere Name, to signify the Absence of Virtue, for Comparisons seldom hold good in every minute Particular; but there is a Parity between the two Cases, sufficient to justify my bringing in the one, as an Illustration of the other. There is no Knowledge more certain, than what Mankind commonly have of Good and Evil; and he who, in order to serve any private Scheme of Religion, goes about to depreciate this Knowledge, robs Mankind of all Truth and Certainty whatever, and in the End subjects his own darling Schemes to the same Uncertainty; for if we cannot judge of the Fitness, of plain moral Truth and Duty, neither can we of any Scheme of Religion; especially such as hang together more by Art and human Contrivance, than by Reason or Revelation.
Being very desirous to get all the Information I could, concerning the Matter in Debate; I have attentively read over Mr. Cole’s Treatise on the Sovereignty of God. I know ’tis thought an unanswerable Performance; and, so far as it regards general Christianity, it is worth every Christian’s serious Notice: But as to the Doctrine it was wrote to support, it leaves it (in my Judgment) no better than it found it; but is miserably weak, and defective, as to any Thing that looks like sound Reason, or true Argument; and amounts to no more than this poor Assertion, That because God is a Sovereign, he may do what he pleases: And, from the Instances he brings from Scripture, ’tis plain, that Mr. Cole himself pays as little Regard to the intrinsick Worth and Excellence of Things, as is done by many of his Brethren. The manner in which he has been pleased to give us the Story of Jacob and Esau, proves the Truth of this Observation, I have no great Inclination to spend Time in explaining hard Passages of Scripture, (tho’ if any thing of that kind can be serviceable, or deem’d excellent, ’tis Mr. Taylor of Norwich his Book on Original Sin,) or to trespass on the Reader’s Patience, by throwing one Text of hard and uncertain Meaning against another; for by this means the Controversy hath been needlessly prolonged. Where the Scriptures are plain, positive and reasonable, their Authority ought to be conscientiously adhered