Created Being; contrariety to the Will of God is therefore permitted
in the Universe as a necessary result of Creaturely imperfection,
under the greatest endowment that a Created Being is capable of
having, viz. _That of Freedom or Liberty of Action_: And as the
constitution of such Creature, as this, implies that what is _best_ in
reference to the design of the Creator, and of its own Happiness,
should not be always necessarily present to the Mind as Best; such a
Creature may oppose the Will of his Maker with various degrees of
Guilt in so doing; or (possibly) with none at all; for no Agent can
offend farther than he wilfully abuses the Freedom he has to act.

But God having made Men so as that they find in themselves, very
often, a liberty of acting according to the preference of their own
Minds, it is incumbent upon them to study the Will of their Maker; in
an application of the Faculty of Reason which he has given them, to
the consideration of the different respects, consequences, and
dependencies of Things, so as to discern from thence, the just
measures of their actions in every circumstance and relation they
stand plac'd in; which _measures_ are nothing else but the dictates
resulting from those views which such a consideration of things as
this gives us, of what is consonant, or not so, to the design of the
Creator in every particular, wherein we are concern'd to act. And
these manifestations of his Will, thus discoverable to us, ought to be
regarded by us, as his Commands.

Yet however certain it is, that the dictates of _Reason_, or _Nature_,
discernable by our natural Faculties, are the commands of God to us,
as rational Creatures; it is equally true that the love of happiness
(which consists in pleasure) is the earliest, and strongest principle
of Humane Nature; and therefore whatever measures Reason does, or