The introduction — The design of the work — Atheists — The prolepsis of divine justice in general — The divisions of justice, according to Aristotle — The sentiments of the schoolmen respecting these — Another division — Justice considered absolutely; then in various respects.
In this treatise we are to discourse of God and of his justice, the most illustrious of all the divine perfections, but especially of his vindicatory justice;1 of the certainty of which I most firmly believe that all mankind will, one time or other, be made fully sensible, either by faith in it here, as revealed in the word, or by feeling its effects, to their extreme misery, in the world hereafter, Rom. ii. 8, 9, 12; 2 Thess. i. 7–9. But as the human mind is blind to divine light, and as both our understandings and tongues are inadequate to conceive of God aright and to declare him (hence that common and just observation, that it is an arduous thing to speak of God aright), [and much darkness rests upon divine things],2 that we may handle so important a subject with that reverence and perspicuity wherewith it becomes it to be treated, we must chiefly depend on His aid who was “made the righteousness3 of God for us,” himself “God blessed for ever,” 1 Cor. i. 30; 2 Cor. v. 21; Rom. ix. 5. But whatever I have written, and whatever I have asserted, on this subject, whether I have written and asserted it with modesty, sobriety, judgment, and humility, must be left to the decision of such as are competent judges.
We think proper to divide this dissertation into two parts. In the first part, which contains the body of our opinion, after having premised some general descriptions of divine justice, I maintain sin-punishing justice to be natural, and in its exercise necessary, to God. The truth of this assertion forms a very distinguished part of natural theology. The defence of it, to the best of my abilities, both against Socinians, who bitterly oppose it, as well as against certain of our own countrymen, who, in defiance of all truth, under a specious pretext, support the same pernicious scheme with them, shall be the subject of the latter part.
In almost all ages there have existed some who have denied the being of a God, although but very few, and these the most abandoned.4 And as mankind, for the most part, have submitted to the evidence of a divine existence, so there never has existed one who has ever preferred an indictment of injustice against God, or who hath not declared him to be infinitely just.5 The despairing complaints of some in deep calamities, the unhallowed expostulations of others at the point of death, do not bespeak the real sentiments of the man, but the misery of his situation: as, for instance, that expostulation of Job, chap. x. 3, “Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress?” and among the Gentiles, that of Brutus, “O wretched virtue! how mere a nothing art thou, but a name!” and that furious exclamation of Titus when dying, related by Suetonius,6 “who, pulling aside his curtains, and looking up to the heavens, complained that his life was taken from him undeservedly and unjustly.” Of the same kind was that late dreadful epiphonema7 of a despairing Italian, related by Mersennus,8 who, speaking of God and the devil, in dread contempt of divine justice, exclaimed, “Let the strongest take me.”
But as “the judgments of God are unsearchable, and his ways past finding out,” Rom. xi. 33, those who have refused to submit to his absolute dominion and supreme jurisdiction (some monstrous human characters) have been hardy enough to assert that there is no God, rather than venture to call him unjust. Hence that common couplet:—
And hence Ulysses is introduced by Euripides, expressing his horror of the gormandizing of the man-devouring Cyclops, in these verses:—9