' UnXvs rapayfjios h ti roTg 9-ioT; hi. — Eurip. Iphig. in Taur. 572.
* Or justice. — Tr.
496 A DISSERTATION ON DIVINE JUSTICE, [PART I.
We think proper to divide this dissertation into two parts. In the FIRST PART, which contains the body of our opinion, after having premised some general descriptions of divine justice, I maintain sin- punishing justice to be natural, and in its exercise necessary, to God. The truth of this assertion forms a very distinguished part of natural theology. The defence of it, to the best of my abilities, both against SocLnians, who bitterly oppose it, as well as against certain of our own countrymen, who, in defiance of all truth, under a specious pre- text, support the same pernicious scheme with them, shall be the subject of the latter part.
In almost all ages there have existed some who have denied the being of a ,God, although but very few, and these the most aban- doned.^ And as mankind, for the most part, have submitted to the evidence of a divine existence, so there never has existed one who has ever preferred an indictment of injustice against God, or who hath not declared him to be infinitely just.^ The despairing com- plaints of some in deep calamities, the unhallowed expostulations of others at the point of death, do not bespeak the real sentiments of the man, but the misery of his situation: as, for instance, that expos- tulation of Job, chap. X. 3, " Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress?" and among the Gentiles, that of Brutus, " 0 wretched virtue ! how mere a nothing art thou, but a name ! " and that furi- ous exclamation of Titus when dying, related by Suetonius,^ " who, pulling aside his curtains, and looking up to the heavens, complained that his life was taken from him undeservedly and unjustly." Of the same kind was that late dreadful epiphonema* of a despairing Italian, related by Mersennus,^ who, speaking of God and the devil, in dread contempt of divine justice, exclaimed, " Let the strongest take me.''
But as " the judgments of God are unsearchable, and his ways past finding out," Rom. xi. 33, those who have refused to submit to his absolute dominion and supreme jurisdiction (some monstrous human characters) have been hardy enough to assert that there is no God, rather than venture to call him unjust. Hence that common couplet : —
" Marmoreo tumulo Licinus jacct, at Cato parvo, Pompeius nullo ; crcdimus esse dcos ? "
" Licinus lies buried in a marble tomb, Cato in a mean one, Pompey has none; — can we believe that there are gods?"
* " Nullos unquam fuisse aut esse posse aSUvs proprie dictos et speculative, sen plenc pcrsuasos, agnoscunt penc omncs." — Vid. Voet. Disp. de Atheismo. Ps. xiv. 1. _ 'jNou est potcstas Dei in terris." — Chal. Par. "Eorum qui autiquitus horrendi criminis rei existimabantur vindicias instituerunt inulti." — Vid. Vos. dc Idol. li. cap. 1. 'fi,- raw ■rtuv yi, Kou ipayiTv ml (p' ■/i/^ipxv, Ziu; oZro; avffcLvoiffi Tolirt auiffoffi. — Jiurip. in I yclop. 66i>.
2 " Veritatisjirgumcntuin est omnibus aliquid vidcri tanquam doos eese.quod omnibus de diis opinio insita sit, ncque ulla gens usquam est, adeo extra leges moresque posita ut non aliquos Deos credat." — Seneca, Epist. iii.
3 Sueton. in Vit^ Titi, cap. x.
* A sudden, unconnected exclamation. — Tii. » Merscn. ad Dcistns Gall.
GENERAL VIEW OF DIVINE JUSTICE. 497
And hence Ulysses is introduced by Euripides, expressing his horror of the gormandizing of the man-devouring Cyclops, in these verses:—^
" 0 Jupiter, behold such violations of hospitality ; for if thou regardest them not, Thou art in vain accounted Jupiter, for thou canst be no god."
Beyond any doubt, the audacity of those abandoned triflers, who would wish to seem to act the mad part with a show of reason, is more akin to the madness of atheism than to the folly of ascribing^ to the God whom they worship and acknowledge such attributes as would not only be unworthy but disgraceful to him. Protagoras,^ therefore, not comprehending the justice of God in respect of his government, hath written, " With regard to the gods, I do not know whether they exist or do not exist." Yet, even among the Gentiles themselves, and those who were destitute of the true knowledge of the true God (for they, in some sense, were without God in the world), writers, of whom Seneca'* and Plutarch were the most dis- tinguished, have not been wanting who have endeavoured, by seri- ous and forcible arguments, to unravel the difficulty respecting the contrary lots of good and bad men in this life. Our first idea, there- fore, of the Divine Being, and the natural conceptions of all men, demand and enforce the necessity of justice being ascribed to God.^ To be eloquent, then, in so easy a cause, or to triumph with argu- ments on a matter so universally acknowledged, we have neither leisure nor inclination. What, and of what kind, the peculiar quality and nature of sin-punishing justice is, shall now be briefly explained. And that we may do this with the greater perspicuity and force of evidence, a few observations seem necessary to be premised concern- ing justice in general, and its more commonly received divisions.