A sinner in this case hath nothing but blasphemy to say against the Justice of his Maker: for what can he say? He cannot say that his Maker had not Authority to make this Law, for his authority was absolute. He cannot say that it was too cruel, hard and unjust a Law; for it was made but to deter him and such as he, from such sin, to which he had no greater temptations than the toyish vanities of a fleshly life. And he himself hath declared by the event, that the Law was not terrible enough to deter him: if it would not seem against so small and poor a bait, he himself doth justify the terribleness of it by his contempt. God saith, I threaten Hell to thee,1 to keep thee from sin: The sinner saith by his life and practice, The threatening of Hell is not enough to keep me from sin. And shall the same man say, when execution cometh, it is too great? No sinner shall suffer any thing but what he chose himself, in the causes of it. If he say, I did not believe that God was in good earnest, and would do ath• said; this is but to blaspheme, and say, I took God for a liar, and deceiver, and a bad, and unwise, and impotent Governor. If he say, I did not know that sin (even final impenitency in an ungodly life) deserved so ill, common reason, and all the world will rise up against him, and the light of nature will show him to his face, that all the forty points of malignity were in sin, which I mentioned before; and therefore that the Law of nature had a sufficient promulgation.
A sinner in this case hath nothing but blasphemy to say against the Justice of his Maker: for what can he say? He cannot say that his Maker had not Authority to make this Law, for his authority was absolute. He cannot say that it was too cruel, hard and unjust a Law; for it was made but to deter him and such as he, from such sin, to which he had no greater temptations than the toyish vanities of a fleshly life. And he himself hath declared by the event, that the Law was not terrible enough to deter him: if it would not seem against so small and poor a bait, he himself doth justifie the terribleness of it by his contempt. God saith, I threaten Hell to thee,1 to keep thee from sin: The sinner saith by his life and practice, The threatning of Hell is not enough to keep me from sin. And shall the same man say, when execution cometh, it is too great? No sinner shall suffer any thing but what he chose himself, in the causes of it. If he say, I did not believe that God was in good earnest, and would do ath• said; this is but to blaspheme, and say, I took God for a liar, and deceiver, and a bad, and unwise, and impotent Governour. If he say, I did not know that sin (even final impenitency in an ungodly life) deserved so ill, common reason, and all the world will rise up against him, and the light of nature will shew him to his face, that all the forty points of malignity were in sin, which I mentioned before; and therefore that the Law of nature had a sufficient promulgation.
- 1It is an odd fiction of Cicero, that men for sin shall be turned into women: Atque ille qui rectè & honestè curriculum vivendi à natura datum confecerit, ad illud astrum, quotum aptus fuerit revertetur: Qui autem immoderatè & intemperanter vixerit, cum secundus ortus in figuram muliebrem transferet, & si ne tum quidem finem vitiorum faciet (as he is less likely) gravius etiam jactabitur, & in suis moribus simillimas figuras pecudum & ferarum transferetur. Neque malorum terminum prius aspiciet, quàm illam sequi caeperit conversionem, quam habebat in se, &c. — cum ad primam & optimam conversionem pervenerit. Cic. de Universit. p (mihi) 358.
