“But all this is to be ascribed to the general course of nature,” True. This is the very thing which I am observing. It is to be ascribed to the general course of nature: _i.e._ not surely to the words or ideas, _course of nature_; but to Him who appointed it, and put things into it; or to a course of operation, from its uniformity or constancy, called natural;[49] and which necessarily implies an operating agent. For when men find themselves necessitated to confess an Author of nature, or that God is the natural governor of the world, they must not deny this again, because his government is uniform. They must not deny that he does things at all, because he does them constantly,[50] because the effects of his acting are permanent, whether his acting be so or not; though there is no reason to think it is not. In short, every man, in every thing he does, naturally acts upon the forethought and apprehension of avoiding evil or obtaining good: and if the natural course of things be the appointment of God, and our natural faculties of knowledge and experience are given us by him, then the good and bad consequences which follow our actions, are his appointment, and our foresight of those consequences, is a warning given us by him, how we are to act. “Is the pleasure then, naturally accompanying every particular gratification of passion, intended to put us upon gratifying ourselves in every such particular instance, and as a reward to us for so doing?” No, certainly. Nor is it to be said, that our eyes were naturally intended to give us the sight of each particular object, to which they do or can extend; objects which are destructive of them, or which, for any other reason, it may become us to turn our eyes from. Yet there is no doubt, but that our eyes were intended for us to see with.[51] So neither is there any doubt, but that the foreseen pleasures and pains belonging to the passions, were intended, in general, to induce mankind to act in such and such manners. From this general observation, obvious to every one, (that God has given us to understand, he has appointed satisfaction and delight to be the consequence of our acting in one manner, and pain and uneasiness of our acting in another, and of our not acting at all; and that we find these consequences, which we were beforehand informed of, uniformly to follow;) we may learn, that we are at present actually under his government in the strictest and most proper sense; in such a sense, as that he rewards and punishes us for our actions. An Author of nature being supposed, it is not so much a deduction of reason, as a matter of experience, that we are thus under his government; under his government, in the same sense, as we are under the government of civil magistrates. Because the annexing of pleasure to some actions, and pain to others, in our power to do or forbear, and giving notice of this appointment beforehand to those whom it concerns, is the proper formal notion of government.