Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

But that which I intend is the Defence of this Goodness.

1. The goodness of God is not impaired by suffering Sin to enter into the World, and Man to fall thereby. 'Tis rather a Testimony of Gods Goodness, that he gave Man an ability to be Happy, than any Charge against his Goodness, that he settled Man in a capacity to be Evil. God was first a Benefactor to Man, before Man could be a Rebel against God. May it not be enquired, whether it had not been against the Wisdom of God, to have made a Rational Creature with Liberty, and not suffer him to act according to the Nature he was endowed with, and to follow his own choice for some time? Had it been Wisdom to frame a Free Creature, and totally to restrain that Creature from following its Liberty? Had it been Goodness, as it were, to force the Creature to be happy against its will? Gods Goodness furnished Adam with a power to stand; was it contrary to his Goodness, to leave Adam to a free use of that Power? To make a Creature, and not let that Creature act according to the freedom of his Nature, might have been thought to have been a blot upon his Wisdom, and a constraint upon the Creature, not to make use of that freedom of his Nature, which the Divine Goodness had bestowed upon him. To what purpose did God make a Law, to govern his Rational Creature, and yet resolve that Creature should not have his choice, whether he would obey it or no? Had he been really constrained to observe it, his Observation of it could no more have been called Obedience, than the acts of Brutes that have a kind of Natural constraint upon them by the instinct of their Nature, can be called Obedience: In vain had God endowed a Creature with so great and noble a Principle as Liberty. Had it been Goodness in God after he had made a Reasonable Creature, to govern him in the same manner as he did Brutes by a necessary Instinct? It was the Goodness of God to the Nature of Men and Angels, to leave them in such a condition, to be able to give him a voluntary Obedience, a nobler Offering than the whole Creation could present him with; And shall this Goodness be undervalued, and accounted mean, because Man made an ill use of it, and turned it into wantonness? As the unbelief of Man doth not diminish the Redeeming Grace of God,^†