The right establishing of this will help us to conceive aright of his counsel of predestination. It is a common cavil of carnal reason: how can the Lord reject so many persons, and fore-ordain them to destruction? It seems most contrary to his goodness and wisdom, to have such an end of eternal predestination before him, in the creating of so many, to make men for nothing, but to damn them? Here carnal reason, which is enmity to God, triumphs, but consider, I say, that this is not the Lord’s end and chief design, to destroy men. Even as it is not his majesty’s first look, or furthest reach, to give unto others eternal life, so it is not his prime intent to sink them into eternal death, as if that were his pleasure and delight. No, indeed! Neither is the creature’s happiness nor its misery that which first moves him, or is most desired of him, but himself only, and he cannot move out of himself to any business, but he must return it unto himself. Therefore the wise preacher expresses it well, “He made all for himself, even the wicked for the day of evil.” It was not his great end of creating wicked men to damn them, or creating righteous men to save them, but both are for a further and higher end,—for himself and his own glory. All seem to agree about this, that the great end of all the Lord’s counsels and decrees is his own glory, to be manifested on men and angels, and that this must be first in his mind; not that there is first or last with him, but to speak after the manner of men. If he had many thoughts, as we have, this would be his first thought and in this one purpose this end is chiefly aimed at, and all other things are by the Lord’s counsel subordinate to this, as means to compass that. But as concerning the order of these means, and consequently of his majesty’s purpose about them, men, by examining his majesty according to the creature’s rules, or according to sense, bring him down far below his own infinite greatness. Some conceive that that was first, as it were, in his mind which is first done. Looking upon the execution of his purpose in the works of his power, they imagine, that as he first created man righteous, so this was his first thought concerning man, to create man for the glory of his goodness and power, without any particular determination as yet of his end. And I conceive, this is the thought of the multitude of people. They think God was disappointed in his work, when they hear he created such a glorious creature that is now become so miserable. They cannot believe that his majesty had all this sin and misery determined with him when he purposed to create him, but look upon the emergent of man’s fall into sin and misery as a surprisal of his majesty,—as if he had meant another thing in creating him, and so was, upon this occasion of man’s sin, driven to a new consultation about the helping of the business, and making the best out of it that might be. Thus “through wisdom, the world knows not God.” They