Thus Dr. J. Clarke, in his treatise on natural evil, quoted by Bishop Law (Note 32), shows how mischiefs arise from the laws of matter; and says this could not be avoided “without altering those primary laws, i. e., making it something else than what it is, or changing it into another form; the result of which would only be to render it liable to evils of another kind against which the same objections would equally lie.” So Dr. J. Burnett, in his discourses on evil, at the Boyle Lecture (vol. ii. P. 201), conceives that he explains death by saying that the materials of which the body is composed “cannot last beyond seventy years, or thereabouts, and it was originally intended that we should die at that age.” Pain, too, he imagines is accounted for by observing that we are endowed with feelings, and that if we could not feel pain, so neither could we pleasure (p. 202). Again, he says that there are certain qualities which “in the nature of things matter is incapable of” (p. 207). And as if he really felt the pressure of this difficulty, he at length comes to this conclusion, that life is a free gift, which we had no right to exact, and which the Deity lay under no necessity to grant, and therefore we must take it with the conditions annexed (p. 210); which is undeniably true, but is excluding the discussion and not answering the question proposed. Nor must it be forgotten that some reasoners deal strangely with the facts. Thus Derham, in his _Physico-Theology_, explaining the use of poison in snakes, first desires us to bear in mind that many venomous ones are of use medicinally in stubborn diseases, which is not true, and if it were, would prove nothing, unless the venom, not the flesh, were proved to be medicinal; and then says, they are “scourges upon ungrateful and sinful men;” adding the truly astounding absurdity, “that the nations which know not God are the most annoyed with noxious reptiles and other pernicious creatures.” (Book ix. c. I); which if it were true would raise a double difficulty, by showing that one people was scourged because another had neglected to preach the gospel among them. Dr. J. Burnett, too, accounts for animals being suffered to be killed as food for man, by affirming that they thereby gain all the care which man is thus led to bestow upon them, and so are, on the whole, the better for being eaten. (Boyle Lecture, II. 207). But the most singular error has perhaps been fallen into by Dr. Sherlock, and the most, unhappy--which yet Bishop Law has cited as a sufficient answer to the objection respecting death: “It is a great instrument of government, and makes men afraid of committing such villanies as the laws of their country have made capital.” (Note 34). So that the greatest error in the criminal legislation of all countries forms part of the divine providence, and man has at length discovered, by the light of reason, the folly and the wickedness of using an instrument expressly created by divine