subsist; all subordination implying imperfection, all imperfection evil,
and all evil some kind of inconveniency or suffering: so that there
must, be particular inconvenieucies and sufferings annexed to every
particular rank of created beings by the circumstances of things, and
their modes of existence.

"God, indeed, might have made us quite other creatures, and placed us in
a world quite differently constituted; but then we had been no longer
men, and whatever beings had occupied our stations in the universal
system, they must have been liable to the same inconveniencies."

In all this, there is nothing that can silence the inquiries of
curiosity, or culm the perturbations of doubt. Whether subordination
implies imperfection may be disputed. The means respecting themselves
may be as perfect as the end. The weed, as a weed, is no less perfect
than the oak, as an oak. That _imperfection implies evil, and evil
suffering_, is by no means evident. Imperfection may imply privative
evil, or the absence of some good, but this privation produces no
suffering, but by the help of knowledge. An infant at the breast is yet
an imperfect man, but there is no reason for belief, that he is unhappy
by his immaturity, unless some positive pain be superadded. When this
author presumes to speak of the universe, I would advise him a little to
distrust his own faculties, however large and comprehensive. Many words,
easily understood on common occasions, become uncertain and figurative,
when applied to the works of omnipotence. Subordination, in human
affairs, is well understood; but, when it is attributed to the universal
system, its meaning grows less certain, like the petty distinctions of
locality, which are of good use upon our own globe, but have no meaning
with regard to infinite space, in which nothing is _high_ or _low_.
That, if man, by exaltation to a higher nature, were exempted from the