Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

Many men regard not the infinite goodness in their service of him, but consider him as cruel, tyrannical, injurious to their Liberty. Adam's Posterity are not free from the Sentiments of their common Father, till they are regenerate. You know what Conceit was the Hammer whereby the Hellish Jael struck the Nail into our first Parents, which conveyed Death, together with the same Imagination to all ⟨p. 54⟩their Posterity, Gen. 3.5. God knows that in the day you eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as Gods knowing Good and Evil: Alas poor Souls! God knew what he did when he forbade you that Fruit: He was jealous you should be too happy: It was a cruelty in him to deprive you of a Food so pleasant and delicious. The apprehension of the severity of Gods Commands riseth up no less in desires that there were no God over us, than Adam's apprehension of Envy in God for the restraint of one Tree moved him to attempt to be equal with God: Fear is as powerful to produce the one in his Posterity, as Pride was to produce the other in the Common-Root. When we apprehend a thing hurtful to us, we desire so much evil to it, as may render it uncapable of doing us the hurt we fear. As we wish the preservation of what we love or hope for; so we are naturally apt to wish the not being of that whence we fear some hurt or trouble. We must not understand this as if any man did formally wish the destruction of God, as God. God in himself is an infinite Mirror of Goodness and ravishing Loveliness: He is infinitely good, and so universally good, and nothing but good; and is therefore so agreeable to a Creature, as a Creature, that it is impossible that the Creature, while it bears itself to God as a Creature, should be guilty of this, but thirst after him and cherish every motion to him. As no man wishes the destruction of any Creature, as a Creature, but as it may conduce to something which he counts may be beneficial to himself; so no man doth, nor perhaps can wish the cessation of the Being of God, as God; for then he must wish his own Being to cease also; But as he considers him clothed with some perfections, which he apprehends as injurious to him; as his Holiness in forbidding Sin, his Justice in punishing Sin:

Many men regard not the infinite goodness in their service of him, but consider him as cruel, tyrannical, injurious to their Liberty. Adam's Posterity are not free from the Sentiments of their common Father, till they are regenerate. You know what Conceit was the Hammer whereby the Hellish Jael struck the Nail into our first Parents, which conveyed Death, together with the same Imagination to all