The answer to which is, that it is not the purpose of this chapter, nor of this treatise, properly to prove God’s perfect moral government over the world, or the truth of religion; but to observe what there is in the constitution and course of nature, to confirm the proper proof of it, supposed to be known: and that the weight of the foregoing observations to this purpose may be thus distinctly proved. Pleasure and pain are, to a certain degree, say to a very high degree, distributed among us without any apparent regard to the merit or demerit of characters. And were there nothing else concerning this matter discernible in the constitution and course of nature, there would be no ground from the constitution and course of nature, to hope or to fear that men would be rewarded or punished hereafter according to their deserts: which, however, it is to be remarked, implies, that even then there would be no ground from appearances to think, that vice upon the whole would have the advantage, rather than that virtue would. Thus the proof of a future state of retribution would rest upon the usual known arguments for it; which are I think plainly unanswerable; and would be so, though there were no additional confirmation of them from the things above insisted on. But these things are a very strong confirmation of them. For, _First_, They show that the Author of nature is not indifferent to virtue and vice. They amount to a declaration, from him, determinate and not to be evaded, in favor of one, and against the other; such a declaration, as there is nothing to be set over against or answer, on the part of vice. So that were a man, laying aside the proper proof of religion, to determine from the course of nature only, whether it were most probable, that the righteous or the wicked would have the advantage in a future life; there can be no doubt, but that he would determine the probability to be, that the former would. The course of nature then, in the view of it now given, furnishes us with a real practical proof of the obligations of religion. _Secondly_, When, conformably to what religion teaches us, God shall reward and punish virtue and vice as such, so as that every one shall, upon the whole, have his deserts; this distributive justice will not be a thing different in _kind_, but only in _degree_, from what we experience in his present government. It will be that in _effect_, towards which we now see a _tendency_. It will be no more than the _completion_ of that moral government, the _principles and beginning_ of which have been shown, beyond all dispute, discernible in the present constitution and course of nature.