The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

as that He should not forever govern transactions and events in His own world; nor can perfect knowledge and power ever want proper means to achieve what is fit to be done. So that, though what I advanced should stand for nothing, there may still be a particular providence notwithstanding the forementioned difficulty. And then, if there may be one, it will unavoidably follow that there is one: because in the description of providence, see proposition XVIII, nothing is supposed with respect to particular cases but that they should be provided for in such a manner as will at last agree best with reason; and to allow that this may be done, and yet say that it is not done, implies a blasphemy that creates horror: it is to charge the Perfect being with one of the greatest imperfections, and to make Him not so much as a reasonable being.

I conclude, then, that it is as certain that there is a particular providence, as that God is a Being of perfect reason. For if men are treated according to reason, they must be treated according to what they are: the virtuous, the just, the compassionate, etc., as such, and the vicious, unjust, cruel, etc., according to what they are; and their several cases must be taken and considered as they are, which cannot be done without such a providence.

Against all this, it has been (as one might well expect) objected of old, that things do not seem to be dealt according to reason: virtuous and good men very often laboring under adversity, pains, persecutions, while vicious, wicked, cruel men prevail and flourish.276 But to this an answer (in which I shall a little further explain myself) is ready. It might be taken out of that which has been given to the Manichean objection under proposition VII. But I shall here give one more direct, and let that and this be mutually assisting and supplements each to the other:

We are not always certain who are good, who wicked.277 If we trust to fame and reports, these may proceed, on the one hand, from partial friendship, or flattery; on the other, from ill-natured surmises and constructions of things, envy, or malice; and on either, from small matters aggrandized, from mistake, or from the unskillful relation even of truth itself. Opposite parties make a merit of blackening their adversaries278 and brightening their friends, undeservedly and unmeasurably, and to idle companions and gossips it is diversion, and what makes the principal part of their conversation,279 to rehearse the characters of men, dressed up out of their own dreams and inventions. And besides all this, the good or bad repute of men depends in great measure upon mean people, who carry their stories from family to family, and propagate them very fast, like little insects, which lay apace, and the less the faster. There are few, very few, who have the opportunity and the will and the ability to represent things truly.280 Beside the matters of fact themselves, there are many circumstances which, before sentence is passed, ought to be known and weighed, and yet scarce ever can be known, but to the person himself who is concerned. He may have other views, and another sense of things, than his judges have; and what he understands, what he feels, what he intends, may be a secret confined to his own breast. A man may, through bodily indispositions and faults in his constitution which it is not in his power to correct, be subject to starts and inadvertancies, or obnoxious to snares, which he cannot be aware of; or, through want of information or proper helps, he may labor under invincible errors, and act as in the dark: in which cases, he may do things which are in themselves wrong, and yet be innocent, or at least rather to be pitied than censured with severity. Or perhaps the censurer, notwithstanding this kind of men talk as if they were infallible, may be mistaken himself in his opinion, and judge that to be wrong which in truth is right.281 Nothing more common than this. Ignorant and superstitious wretches measure the actions of lettered and philosophical men by the tattle of their nurses or illiterate parents and companions, or by the fashion of the country, and people of differing religions judge and condemn each other by their own tenets, when both of them cannot be in the right, and it is well if either of them are. To which may be added that the true characters of men must chiefly depend upon the unseen part of their lives, since the truest and best religion is most private and the greatest wickedness endeavors to be so.282 Some are modest, and hide their virtues; others hypocritical, and conceal their vices under shows of sanctity, good nature, or something that is specious. So that it is, many times, hard to discern to which of the two sorts, the good or the bad, a man ought to be aggregated.

It rarely happens that we are competent judges of the good or bad fortune of other people.283 That which is disagreeable to one, is many times agreeable to another, or disagreeable in a less degree. The misery accruing from any infliction or bad circumstance of life is to be computed as in section II, or according to the resistence and capacity of bearing it which it meets with. If one man can carry a weight of four or five hundred pounds as well as another can the weight of one hundred, by these different weights they will be equally loaded. And so the same poverty or disgrace, the same wounds, etc. do not give the same pain to all men. The apprehension of but a vein to be opened is worse to some, than