SECTION V. Concerning a Future Retribution. I T has been already obferved, (Section II.) that the whole frame of nature bespeaks defign, each part being directed to answer some end; to which I here add, that there is one grand defign to which the whole is ultimately directed, and to which every leffer defign is made fubfervient, viz. a public or general good; and this, I apprehend to have been the great and ultimate end of the creation of this world. A public good is the most noble and excellent of all defigns; and therefore, is the most worthy of him who is the most perfect intelligence, goodness, and boundlefs power. God is moft compleatly happy in himself, independent of every thing external to him, as he is poffeffed of all natural and moral perfections; and therefore, he could not poffibly give exiftence to other beings with a view of answering any pur C c pote * pofe to himself. And as happiness is the moft defirable thing of all things that are defirable, or, perhaps, it is the only desirable thing, as all other defirable things are only defirable for it's fake; fo for God to give being to other things, in order to introduce public or general happiness, is to employ his perfect intelligence and boundless power in ferving the best of purposes. And as a public or general good plainly appears to have been the ultimate end which the creator propofed to obtain by the introduction of the present conftitution of things; fo there is only one fpecies of beings that inhabit this globe, (or at leaft this feems to be the cafe) viz. men, who are, by the author of nature, rendered capable defignedly and intentionally of promoting and forwarding, or of retarding and baffling this great and good end. Man is a creature endowed with a principle of intelligence, which renders him capable of difcerning the natural and effential difference in things, and alto of perceiving that law or rule of affection and action which natu * God cannot poffibly answer any purpofe to himself, by what he does to and for his creatures; any otherwife than as by acting properly by them, and communicating happiness to them, he may, as it were, heighten his own felicity, fuppofing fuch a thing can be. |