The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…

As the Rational Soul doth ever include the Sensitive and Vegetative Faculties, so doth God's Fatherly Relation to us include his Dominion and Government. A Father is thus a kind of Image of God in this Relation: For, 1. he hath a certain Propriety in his children. 2. He is by nature their rightful Governor. 3. He is their Benefactor, (for they are beholden to him for their being and well-being) Nature causeth him to love them, and bindeth them again to love him. And the Title [OUR FATHER which art in Heaven] includeth all these Divine Relations to us, but specially expresseth the Love and Graciousness of God to us.

As the Rational Soul doth ever include the Sensitive and Vegetative Faculties, so doth God's Fatherly Relation to us include his Dominion and Government. A Father is thus a kind of Image of God in this Relation: For, 1. he hath a certain Propriety in his children. 2. He is by nature their rightful Governour. 3. He is their Benefactor, (for they are beholden to him for their being and well-being) Nature causeth him to love them, and bindeth them again to love him. And the Title [OƲR FATHER which art in Heaven] includeth all these Divine Relations to us, but specially expresseth the Love and Graciousness of God to us.

Obj. But I must go against the sense of most of the world, if I take God to be infinitely or perfectly good: for operari sequitur esse: He that is perfectly good, will perfectly do good. But do we not see and feel what you said before. The world is but as a wilderness, and the life of man a misery! We come into the world in weakness, and in a case in which we cannot help our selves, but are a pity and trouble to others: we are their trouble that breed us and bring us up: we are vexed with unsatisfied desires, with troubling passions, with tormenting pains, and languishing weakness, and enemies malice; with poverty and care; with losses and crosses, and shame and grief; with hard labour and studies, with the injuries and spectacles of a Bedlam world, and with fears of death, and death at last! Our enemies are our trouble, our friends are our trouble: our Rulers are our trouble, and our inferiors, children and servants are our trouble: our possessions are our trouble, and so are our wants. And is all this the effect of perfect Goodness? And the poor Brutes seem more miserable than we! they labour, and hunger, and die at last to serve our will! we beat them, use them and abuse them at our pleasure! And all the Inanimates have no sense of any good! and which is worst of all, the world is like a Dungeon of ignorance, like an Hospital of mad-men for folly and distractedness; like a band of Robbers for injury and violence, like Tigers for cruelty, like snarling Dogs for contention, and, in a word, like Hell for wickedness.