and justice adapted to the very merits of the cafe, all the pleas for mercy had been prevented, and confequently there had been no room for mercy; for mercy without reafon is a mere effect of arbitrary power, and not of goodnefs. But now that all cafes are judged by laws made long before the cafes happened, and which cannot confider the alleviations or aggravations of particular facts, it comes to pass fometimes, that the law is a very inadequate rule of juftice in cafes that fall under it. Shall the perfon then fuffer according to the rule of justice against all reafon of juftice? No; he ought to have the benefit of mercy, and to be relieved against the rigour of the law. What then, because the punishment of the law is too heavy for his crime, ought he therefore to go unpunished? because this punishment is unreasonable, fhall he therefore escape that which is reasonable? No; for though mercy ought to take off the rigour of juftice, yet it ought not to deftroy juftice itself. It is evident then, that it is the proper work of mercy to correct the rules of juftice by the reason of justice; and, confequently, were all judgments formed upon the true reasons of justice, justice and mercy would be one and the fame thing.

Hence, perhaps, we may be able to account for a difficulty, which is apt mightily to difturb men when they ponder the judgments of God: they confider him as effentially juft, and effentially merciful, from whence they rightly conclude, that he can never be otherwise than merciful, never otherwise than juft; and yet how to reconcile these attributes in every cafe they fee not. In human judgments, it is plain,

where mercy prevails, juftice fleeps; where justice acts, mercy is filent: but this cannot be the cafe in divine judgments, becaufe God can neither cease to be juft or merciful. But, if we confider that the acts of mercy and juftice, as they are diftinguished from one another, are relative to ftated rules and laws, and that they are both the fame with respect to the reafon of juftice; we fhall eafily difcern how God, who always acts by the purest reason, that is, by his own, may be faid in every judgment to do juftly and mercifully. For when God does that which is perfectly reasonable, all circumstances weighed, in every cafe, there is no cafe in which any one can complain for want either of mercy or juftice; for, if there be any reafon to complain, it must be because the thing, in fome respect, is not reasonable; and therefore, when the reason of juftice is exactly pursued, you have the true point, where mercy and juftice meet together: and this is the point in which all the judgments of God do centre. I fpeak here of the judgments of God properly fo called; for thofe acts of goodnefs which he exercifes in right of his fupreme fovereignty and dominion are not within our prefent view. And that this account is true, you may partly collect from the inftance in which the text is concerned our Saviour does not justify God for delaying the punishment of the wicked, by diftinguishing between the mercy and justice of God, and fhewing how mercy triumphed over juftice in this delay; but he appeals to the reafon of the case, and fhews that God did what was fit and becoming a wife judge and governor; and that the thing

complained of as a defect of juftice, was, all its circumstances confidered, the height of justice and equity and this will plainly appear in the application we are to make of what has been faid to this particular cafe.

The parable, of which the text is part, is evidently intended as an answer to the common objection against Providence, drawn from the prosperity of finners, or rather, in the prefent cafe, from the impunity of offenders. If you examine upon what principles the objection proceeds, and upon what principles the anfwer, you will find that the objection is founded upon one of the common and general maxims of juftice, which, as I have already fhewn, do often misguide our judgments in particular cafes; and that our Saviour's anfwer is drawn from the reafon of all law and equity, which can never fail. Afk the man, who makes this objection against God's government, why he thinks it unbecoming the wifdom of God to delay the punishment of finners? he will readily answer, because it is contrary to his juftice; and, to support his reafon, he will farther add, that it is an undoubted maxim of justice, that all finners deferve punishment. And here, I think, he muft ftop; for he cannot enter into particular cafes, unless he knew more of men than he does, or can know. In anfwer to this, our Saviour owns the truth of the general maxim, as far as it relates to the defert of finners; and therefore teaches us, that God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world: but then he fhews, from fuperior reasons of justice, that the applica tion of the principle in the prefent

cafe is wrong; for though it be just to punish all finners, yet to punish them immediately would deftroy the very reason, which makes it juft to punish them. It is juft to punish them, that there may be a difference made between the good and the bad according to their deferts, that their punishment may be a difcouragement to vice, an encouragement to virtue. Now our Lord fhews in this parable, that the immediate punishment of the wicked would quite deftroy these ends of juftice; for the righteous and the wicked, like the wheat and tares growing together in one field, are fo mixed and united in intereft in this world, that, as things ftand, the wicked cannot be rooted out, but the righteous muft fuffer with them: confequently, the immediate deftruction of the wicked, fince it must inevitably fall upon the righteous alfo, would make no proper diftinction between the good and the bad; could be no encouragement to virtue, for the virtuous would fuffer; could be no difcouragement to vice, for vice would fare as well as virtue: and therefore it is not only reasonable to delay the punishment of the wicked, but even neceffary to the obtaining the ends of juftice, fince they cannot be obtained in their immediate deftruction.

This then is a full juftification of God in his dealings with men; and fhews his juftice, as well as his mercy, in not executing wrath and vengeance as foon as finners are ripe for them. But if this be the height of justice in God, how is it not the height of injuftice in men to deal with one another quite otherwife? Temporal punishments, even those which are capital, are executed immediately; though

often it happens that many innocents fuffer in the punishment of one injurious perfon. The law does not confider who fhall maintain the children, when it feizes the father's eftate as forfeited; nor does juftice relent for fear fhe fhould make a miferable widow, and many wretched orphans, by the fevere blow which cuts off the guilty husband and father. Nay, farther; this very method of justice is ordained by God, and magiftrates are not at liberty totally to fufpend the execution of justice; and how comes God to purfue one method of justice himself, and to prescribe another to his vicegerents? The plain anfwer is, becaufe the reafon of these two cafes is very different. The punishments of this world are not the final punishments of iniquity; but are means ordained to fecure virtue and morality, and to protect the innocent from immediate violence. Offences which difturb the peace of fociety, and the fecurity of private perfons, will not bear a delay of juftice; for the end of justice, in this cafe, is to fecure peace: but this end can never be served by permitting thieves, and murderers, and rebels, to go unpunished; and though, whenever they fuffer, many innocents may fuffer with them, yet many more would fuffer in their impunity; and this world would be scarcely habitable, were fuch crimes as thefe to wait for their punishment till another world fucceeded this. Our Saviour's reasoning, when applied to this cafe, leads to another conclufion; that the righteous may not fuffer, God delays the final punishment of the wicked; for the fame reason, that the righteous may not fuffer, he has commanded the magiftrate