as there always has been, and always will be, at least an equal number in this, as in the other state, it is proper that they likewise should be warned of the crimes to which the circumstances of their condition expose them, and furnished with such reflections as may enable them to avoid them; that one misery may not produce a greater, nor misfortune be the cause of wickedness.
There is no crime more incident to those whose life is imbittered with calamities, and whom afflictions have reduced to gloom and melancholy, than that of repining at the determinations of providence, or of "charging God foolishly." They are often tempted to unseemly inquiries into the reasons of his dispensations, and to expostulations about the justice of that sentence which condemns them to their present sufferings. They consider the lives of those whom they account happier than themselves, with an eye of malice and suspicion, and if they find them no better than their own, think themselves almost justified in murmuring at their own state.
But how widely they err from their duty, by giving way to discontent, and allowing themselves to dispute the reasonableness of those laws by which the great Creator governs the world, will appear,
First: By considering the attributes of God. And,
Secondly: By reflecting on the ignorance of man.
First: By considering the attributes of God.
Many of the errours of mankind, both in opinion and practice, seem to arise originally from mistaken notions of the Divine Being, or at least from want of attention to the nature of those attributes which reason, as well as the Holy Scriptures, teaches us to assign to him. A temporary forgetfulness has, for the time, the same effect as real ignorance, but has this advantage, that it is much more easily remedied; since it is much less difficult to recollect our own ideas, than to obtain new ones. This is, I suppose, the state of every man amongst us, who is betrayed by his impatience under afflictions to murmur at Heaven. He knows, when he reflects calmly, that the world is
