Self-love would always coincide with God’s commands, when our interest was rightly understood; but it is liable to error. Therefore, HABITS of resignation are necessary, for _all_ creatures; and the proper discipline for resignation is affliction. _Objec._ 4. The trouble and danger of such discipline, might have been avoided by making us at once, what we are intended to become. _Ans._ What we are to be, is the effect of what we are to do. God’s natural government is arranged not to save us from trouble or danger, but to enable and incline us to go through them. It is as natural for us to seek means to obtain things, as it is to seek the things; and in worldly things we are left to our choice, whether to improve our powers and so better our condition, or to neglect improvement and so go without the advantage. Analogy, therefore, makes the same arrangement credible, as to a future state. III. _This state of discipline may be necessary for the display of character._ =1.= Not to the all-knowing Being, but to his creation, or part of it, and in many ways which we know not. =2.= It may be a _means_ in disposing of men according to character. =3.= And of showing creation that they are so disposed of. =4.= Such display of character certainly contributes, largely, to the general course of things considered in this chapter. CHAPTER VI. OF NECESSITY AS INFLUENCING CONDUCT. Fatalists have no right to object to Christianity, for they of course hold the doctrine to be compatible with what they see in nature. The question is, whether it be not equally compatible with what Christianity teaches. To argue on the supposition of so great an absurdity as necessity, is puzzling; and the obscurity and puzzle of the argument must therefore be excused. I. _Necessity does not destroy the proof of an intelligent Author and Governor of the world._ =1.= It does not exclude design and deliberation. 1.) This is matter of actual experience and consciousness. --Necessity does not account for the _existence_ of any thing, but is only a _circumstance_ relating to its origin. Instance the case of a house: the fatalist admits that it had a builder, and the only question would be, was he obliged to build it as he did? 2.) It is the same as to the construction of the world. To say it exists by necessity must mean it had a maker, who _acted_ by necessity: for necessity is only an abstract notion, and can _do_ nothing. 3.) We say God exists by necessity, because we intuitively discern that there must be an infinite Being, prior to all causes; but we cannot say that _every thing_ so exists. The fact that many changes in nature are produced by man’s contrivance is a proof of this. 4.) Thus though the fatalist does not choose to mean by necessity _an agent acting necessarily_, he is obliged to mean this.