term the course of nature, or the established order of the universe. Thus it is decreed by God, that all men should die; and, therefore, the death of each man may justly be ascribed to God, but the circumstances and time of his death are very much in his own power, or in the power of others. When a good man falls by the hand of an assassin, or is condemned by the testimony of false witnesses, or the sentence of a corrupt judge, his death may in some measure be called the work of God, but his murder is the action of men. That he was mortal, is the effect of the Divine decree; but that he was deprived of life unjustly, is the crime of his enemies.
If we examine all the afflictions of mind, body, and estate, by this rule, we shall find God not otherwise accessory to them, than as he works no miracles to prevent them, as he suffers men to be masters of themselves, and restrains them only by coercions applied to their reason. If God should, by a particular exertion of his omnipotence, hinder murder or oppression, no man could then be a murderer or an oppressor, because he would be withheld from it by an irresistible power; but then that power which prevented crimes would destroy virtue; for virtue is the consequence of choice. Men would be no longer rational, or would be rational to no purpose, because their actions would not be the result of free-will, determined by moral motives; but the settled and predestined motions of a machine impelled by necessity.
Thus it appears, that God would not act as the Governour of rational and moral agents, if he should lay any other restraints upon them than the hope of rewards or fear of punishments; and that to destroy or obviate the consequences of human actions, would be to destroy the present constitution of the world.
When, therefore, any man suffers pain from an injury offered him, that pain is not the act of God, but the effect of a crime, to which his enemy was determined by his own choice. He was created susceptible of pain, but not necessarily subjected to that particular injury which he
