But now that all cases are judged by laws made long before the cases happened, and which cannot consider the alleviations or aggravations of particular facts, it comes to pass sometimes that the law is a very inadequate rule of justice in cases that fall under it. Shall the person then suffer according to the rule of justice against all reason of justice? No; he ought to have the benefit of mercy, and to be relieved against the rigor 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, shall he therefore escape that which is reasonable? No; for though mercy ought to take off the rigor of justice, yet it ought not to destroy justice itself. It is evident then that it is the proper work of mercy to correct the rules of justice by the reason of justice; and, consequently, were all judgments formed on the true reasons of justice, justice and mercy would be one and the same thing.

Hence perhaps we may be able to account for a difficulty which is apt mightily to disturb men when they ponder the judgments of God: they consider him as essentially just and essentially merciful, from whence they rightly conclude that he can never be otherwise than merciful, never otherwise than just ; and yet how to reconcile these attributes in every case they see not. In human judgments it is plain, where mercy prevails, justice sleeps; where justice acts, mercy is silent: but this cannot be the case in divine judgments, because God can cease neither to be just nor merciful. But if we consider that the acts of mercy and justice, as they are distinguished from one another, are relative to stated rules and laws, and that they are both the same with respect to the reason of justice; we shall easily discern how God, who always acts by the purest reason, that is, by his own, may be said in every judgment to do justly and mercifully. For when God does that which is perfectly reasonable, all circumstances weighed, in every case, there is no case in which any one can complain for want either of mercy or justice; for if there be any reason to complain, it must be because the thing in some respects is not reasonable; and therefore, when the reason of justice is exactly pursued, you have the true point, where mercy and justice meet together and this is the point in which all the judgments of God do centre. I speak

here of the judgments of God properly so called; for those acts of goodness which he exercises in right of his supreme sovereignty and dominion are not within our present view. And that this account is true, you may partly collect from the instance, in which the text is concerned: our Saviour does not justify God for delaying the punishment of the wicked, by distinguishing between the mercy and justice of God, and showing how mercy triumphed over justice in this delay; but he appeals to the reason of the case, and shows that God did what was fit and becoming a wise judge and governor; and that the thing complained of as a defect of justice was, all its circumstances considered, the height of justice and equity: and this will plainly appear in the application we are to make of what has been said to this particular case.

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 sinners, or rather, in the present case, from the impunity of offenders. If you examine on what principles the objection proceeds, and on what principles the answer, you will find that the objection is founded on one of the common and general maxims of justice, which, as I have already shown, do often misguide our judgments in particular cases; and that our Saviour's answer is drawn from the reason of all law and equity, which can never fail. Ask the man who makes this objection against God's government, why he thinks it unbecoming the wisdom of God to delay the punishment of sinners? he will readily answer, because it is contrary to his justice; and to support his reason he will farther add, that it is an undoubted maxim of justice that all sinners deserve punishment. And here, I think, he must stop; for he cannot enter into particular cases, unless he knew more of men than he does or can know. In answer to this, our Saviour owns the truth of the general maxim, as far as it relates to the desert of sinners; and therefore teaches us that God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world: but then he shows from superior reasons of justice, that the application of the principle in the present case is wrong; for though it be just to punish all sinners, yet to punish them immediately would destroy the very reason which makes it just to punish them. It is just to punish them that

there may be a difference made between the good and the bad according to their deserts, that their punishment may be a discouragement to vice, an encouragement to virtue. Now our Lord shows in this parable that the immediate punishment of the wicked would quite destroy these ends of justice; for the righteous and the wicked, like the wheat and tares growing together in one field, are so mixed and united in interest in this world, that, as things stand, the wicked cannot be rooted out, but the righteous must suffer with them: consequently the immediate destruction of the wicked, since it must inevitably fall on the righteous also, would make no proper distinction between the good and the bad; could be no encouragement to virtue, for the virtuous would suffer; could be no discouragement 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 necessary to the obtaining the ends of justice, since they cannot be obtained in their immediate destruction.

This then is a full justification of God in his dealings with men; and shows his justice as well as his mercy in not executing wrath and vengeance as soon as sinners are ripe for them. But if this be the height of justice in God, how is it not the height of injustice in men to deal with one another quite otherwise? Temporal punishments, even those which are capital, are executed immediately; though often it happens that many innocents suffer in the punishment of one injurious person. The law does not consider who shall maintain the children, when it seizes the father's estate as forfeited; nor does justice relent for fear she should make a miserable widow, and many wretched. orphans, by the severe blow which cuts off the guilty husband and father. Nay, farther; this very method of justice is ordained by God, and magistrates are not at liberty totally to suspend the execution of justice; and how comes God to pursue one method of justice himself, and to prescribe another to his vicegerents? The plain answer is, because the reason of these two cases is very different. The punishments of this world are not the final punishments of iniquity: but are means ordained to secure virtue and morality, and to protect the innocent from immediate violence. Offences which disturb the peace of society, and the security of private persons, will not bear a

delay of justice; for the end of justice, in this case, is to secure peace: but this end can never be served by permitting thieves, and murderers, and rebels, to go unpunished; and though, whenever they suffer, many innocents may suffer with them, yet many more would suffer in their impunity; and this world would be scarcely habitable, were such crimes as these to wait for their punishment till another world succeeded this. Our Saviour's reasoning, when applied to this case, leads to another conclusion; that the righteous may not suffer, God delays the final punishment of the wicked; for the same reason, that the righteous may not suffer, he has commanded the magistrate to cut off all the sons of violence, all disturbers of the public peace and quiet. And in so doing he has followed the same reason in both cases, namely, that the righteous may be preserved and protected in one case preserved from the violence of the wicked; in the other from the contagion of their punishment. In a word, offences against men must be corrected and discouraged by present punishment, or else this world will be a scene of great woe and misery to the best of men: violence will prevail, and the meek, far from inheriting the earth, will be rooted out of it. Offences against God, though of a deeper dye, yet have not in them the same call for immediate vengeance: for God suffers not from the wickedness of men; the ends of justice are best served by the delay, and his goodness is at present displayed in his forbearance; and his honor will soon be vindicated in a more public theatre than that of this present world, in the sight of all the dead as well as of all the living.

SUMMARY OF DISCOURSE XLI.

MATTHEW, CHAP. XXVI.-VERSE 41.

FOR the better understanding of these words we must reflect a little on what occasion they were spoken, &c. The time of our Saviour's crucifixion was now at hand, and he had foretold to his disciples that they should all be offended because of him on which St. Peter made a forward profession of constancy, as did they all but it does not appear that they fully understood our Saviour, or were apprehensive that they should so soon lose him: if they had, they could not have been so negligent and unconcerned. But Jesus, as he had a different sense of what he was to undergo, so was he differently affected.

But

No one was ever more willing to fulfil the will of God than he was; he came into the world for this very purpose. yet, in this last and sharp trial, he found how great the weakness of the flesh was: whence probably arose the reflexion mentioned in the text, which is the ground of his exhortation to the disciples. Though they had made a very bold and forward resolution to die with him rather than deny him, yet he knew that such resolution was not a sufficient support against the weakness of human nature; but that they stood in need of all the advantages that might be reaped from watchfulness and prayer. If he himself found difficulties from the weakness of the flesh, he might well conclude how unsteady his disciples would be when their trial should come. So that the words of the text seem rather founded on what our Saviour experienced in his late agony, than on any thing criminal in his disciples: this point enlarged on.