GOODNESS OF 1 HE DEITY. 331 



avoiutMl. There was not, therefore, the less necessity in it 

 for its being by chance. Again, the rencounter might bo 

 most unfortunate, though the errand upon which each party 

 Bet out upon his journey were the most innocent or the most 

 laudable. The by-eiiect may be unfavorable, without im- 

 peachment of the proper purpose, for the sake of which the 

 train, from the operation of which these consequences en- 

 sued, was put in motion. Although no cause acts without 

 a good purpose, accidental consequences, hke these, may be 

 either good or bad. 



II. The appeara7ice of chance will always bear a pro- 

 portion to the ignorance of the observer. The cast of a die 

 as regularly follows the law& of motion, as the going of a 

 watch ; yet, because we can trace the operation of those 

 laws through the works and movements of the watch, and 

 cannot trace them in the shaking or throwing of the die — 

 though the laws be the same, and prevail equally in both 

 cases — we call the turning up of the number of the die 

 chance, the pointing of the index of the watch machinery, 

 order, or by some name which excludes chance. It is the 

 same in those events which depend upon the will of a free 

 and rational agent. The verdict of a jury, the sentence of 

 a judge, the resolution of an assembly, the issue of a contest- 

 ed election, will have more or less the appearance of chance, 

 might be more or less the subject of a wager, according as 

 we were less or more acquainted with the reasons which 

 influenced the deUberation. The difierence resides in the in- 

 formation of the observer, and not in the thing itself; which, 

 in all the cases proposed, proceeds from intelhgence, from 

 mind, from counsel, from design. 



Now, when this one cause of iW appearance of chance, 

 namely, the ignorance of the observer, comes to be applied 

 to the operations of the Deity, it is easy to foresee how fruit- 

 ful it must prove of difficulties and of seeming confusion. It 

 is only to think of the Deity, to perceive what variety of 

 objects, what distance of time, what extent of space and ao 



