But He, who knew what human hearts would prove,
How slow to learn the dictates of his love,
That, hard by nature and of stubborn will,
A life of ease would make them harder still,
In pity to the souls his grace design'd
For rescue from the ruin of mankind,
Call'd forth a cloud to darken all their years,
And said, "Go, spend them in the vale of tears."--COWPER.

Chapter I.

God Desires And Seeks The Salvation of All Men.

Love is the root of creation,--God's essence.
Worlds without number
Lie in his bosom, like children: he made them for this purpose
only,--
Only to love, and be loved again. He breathed forth his Spirit
Into the slumbering dust, and, upright standing, it laid its
Hand on its heart, and felt it was warm with a flame out of
heaven.--TEGNER.

The attentive reader has perceived before this time, that one of the
fundamental ideas, one of the great leading truths, of the present
discourse is, that a necessary holiness is a contradiction in terms,--an
inherent and utter impossibility. This truth has shown us why a Being of
infinite purity does not cause virtue to prevail everywhere, and at all
times. If virtue could be necessitated to exist, there seems to be no
doubt that such a Being would cause it to shine out in all parts of his
dominion, and the blot of sin would not be seen upon the beauty of the
world. But although moral goodness cannot be necessitated to exist, yet
God has attested his abhorrence of vice and his approbation of virtue, by
the dispensation of natural good and evil, of pleasure and pain. Having
marked out the path of duty for us, he has made such a distribution of
natural good and evil as is adapted to keep us therein. The evident design
of this arrangement is, as theologians and philosophers agree, to prevent
the commission of evil, and secure the practice of virtue. The Supreme
Ruler of the world adopts this method to promote that moral goodness which
cannot be produced by the direct omnipotency of his power.

Hence, it must be evident, that although God desires the happiness of his
rational and accountable creatures, he does not bestow happiness upon them
without regard to their moral character. The great dispensation of his
natural providence, as well as the express declaration of his word,
forbids the inference that he desires the happiness of th