Who can tell what _different kinds_ of rational creatures, distinguished by variety of natures, and faculties, it is fit and reasonable for God to create, because he eternally foresaw what would be the _effect_ of such different creations? Who can explain the _fitness_ of that vast _variety_ there is amongst rational creatures of the _same species_, or shew that all their different faculties ought to be as they are? And yet the _fitness_ of this providence has its _certain reason_ in the divine fore-knowledge, and it could not be fit, but because of it. Who can tell what _degree_ of reason rational creatures ought to enjoy, or what degrees of _new_ and _revealed_ knowledge it is fit and reasonable for God to give, or not give them, because they seem, or seem not to themselves to want it, are disposed, or not disposed to receive it? For as mankind cannot tell why it was fit and reasonable for God to create them of such a _kind_, and _degree_, as they are of; so neither can they tell how God ought, or ought not to add to their natural knowledge, and make them as _differently accountable_ for the use of revealed rules of life, as for the use of their natural faculties. And as the reason why God created them of _such_ a _kind_, and with _such faculties_, was because of his own fore-knowledge of the _effects_ of such a creation; so if ever he does reveal to them any _supernatural_ knowledge, both the doing it, the _time_, the _matter_, and _manner_ of it, must have their fitness in his own _eternal fore-knowledge_ of the effects of such a revelation. The reasons therefore on which the fitness of this or that revelation depends, _why_ or _when_, of _what matter_, in _what manner_, and to whom it is to be made, must, from the nature and reason of things, be as unsearchable by us, as the reasons of _this_ or _that_ creation of rational beings, at such a _time_, of such a _kind_, in such a _manner_, in such a _state_. This may help us to an easy solution of the unreasonable questions, which this writer puts in this manner. “If the design of God in communicating any thing of himself to men was their happiness, would not that design have obliged him, who at all times alike desires their happiness, to have at all times alike communicated it to them? If God always acts for the good of his creatures, what reason can be assigned, why he should not from the beginning have discovered such things as make for their good, but defer the doing it till the time of _Tiberius_; since the sooner this was done, the greater would his goodness appear?”¹ ¹ Page 393. And again “How is it consistent with the notion of God’s being universally benevolent, not to have revealed it to all his children, when all had equal need of it? Was it not as easy for him to have communicated it to all nations, as to any one nation or person? Or in all languages, as in one?”¹ ¹ Page 196. Now all this is fully answered, by our author’s own great and fundamental principle.