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