Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

2. The Dominion of God as a proprietor, is practically contemned by a violent or surreptitious taking away from any, what God hath given him the possession of. Since God is the Lord of all, and may give the possession and dominion of things to whom he pleaseth, all Theft and Purloining, all cheating and cozening another of his right, is not only a crime against the true possessor, depriving him of what he is entrusted with, but against God as the absolute and universal proprietor, having a right thereby, to confer his own goods, upon whom he pleaseth; as well as against God as a Lawgiver forbidding such a violence. The snatching away what is an others, denies man the right of possession, and God the right of donation. The Israelites taking the Egyptians Jewels had been Theft, had it not been by a Divine license and order; but cannot be slandered with such a term, after the proprietor of the whole World had altered the Title, and alienated them by his positive grant from the Egyptians, to confer them upon the Israelites.

2. The Dominion of God as a proprietor, is practically contemned by a violent or s•rreptitious taking away from any, what God hath given him the possession of. Since God is the Lord of all, and may give the possession and dominion of things to whom he pleaseth, all Theft and Purloyning, all cheating and cousening another of his right, is not only a crime against the true possessor, depriving him of what he is intrusted with, but against God as the absolute and universal proprietor, having a right thereby, to confer his own goods, upon whom he pleaseth; as well as against God as a Lawgiver forbidding such a violence. The snatching away what is an others, denyes man the right of possession, and God the right of donation. The Israelites taking the Egyptians Jewels had been Theft, had it not been by a Divine license and order; but cannot be slander'd with such a term, after the proprietor of the whole World had alter'd the Title, and alienated them by his positive grant from the Egyptians, to conferr them upon the Israelites.

3. The Dominion of God as a proprietor is practically contemned, by not using what God hath given us, for those ends for which he gave them to us. God passeth things over to us with a condition, to use that for his Glory which he hath bestowed upon us by his bounty. He is Lord of the end for which he gives, as well as Lord of what he gives; the donors right of propriety is infringed, when the Lands and legacies he leaves to a particular use are not employed to those ends, to which he bequeathed them. The right of the Lord of a Manor is violated: