Some pretend that the supremely wise God can derive goodness and happiness to us from the midst of those ills which he permits us to undergo in this world.  Are these men privy counsellors of the Divinity, or on what do they found their romantic hopes?  They will doubtless say, that they judge of God’s conduct by analogy, and that from the present appearance of his wisdom and goodness, they have a right to infer his future wisdom and goodness.  But do not the present appearances of his want of wisdom or goodness justify us in concluding, that he will always want them?  If they are so often manifestly deficient in this world, what can assure us that they will abound more in the next?  This kind of language therefore rests upon no other basis than a prejudiced imagination, and signifies, that some men, having without examination, adopted an opinion that God is good, cannot admit that he will consent to let his creatures remain constantly unhappy.  Yet this grand hypothesis, of the unalterable felicity of mankind hereafter, is insufficient to justify the Divinity in permitting the present sleeting and transitory marks of injustice and disorder.  If God can have been unjust for a moment, he has derogated, during that moment at least, from his divine perfection, and is not unchangeably good; his justice then is liable to temporary alteration, and, if this be the case, who can give security for his justice and goodness continuing unalterable in a future life, the notion of which is set up only to exculpate his deviation from those qualities in this?

In spite of the experience, which every instant gives the lie to that beneficence which men suppose in God, they continue to call him good.  When we bewail the miserable victims of those disorders and calamities that so often overwhelm our species, we are confidently told that these ills are but apparent, and that if our short-sighted mind could fathom the depths of divine wisdom, we should always behold the greatest blessings result from what we denominate evil.  How despicable is so frivolous an answer!  If we can find no good but in such things as affect us in a manner which is agreeable and pleasing to our actual existence, we shall be obliged to confess that those things which affect us, even but for a time, in, a painful manner, are as certainly evil to us.  To vindicate God’s visiting mankind with these evils some tell us, that he is just, and that they, are chastisements inflicted on mankind to punish the wrongs he has received from men.  Thus a feeble mortal has the power to irritate and injure the almighty and eternal Being who created this world.  To offend any one is, to afflict him, to diminish in some degree his happiness, to make him feel a painful sensation.  How can man possibly disturb the felicity of the all-powerful sovereign of nature!  How can a frail creature, who has received from God his being and his temper, act against the inclinations of an irresistable force which never consents to sin