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WHat Reason can be given, why God should not do us all that good without our sufferings, which now he doth by them, if there were not sin and wrath, and Law in them.
1. Indeed if there were no sin, there should be no affliction; as if there were no sickness, there should be no medicine: Yet is not the Medicine evil, and a curse to the sick; nei∣ther is affliction to God's children.
2. The Scripture doth shew us other reasons of our suffer∣ing; as, to conform us to Christ, Rom. 8. 29. with 17. to try us, 1 Pet. 4. 12. Rev. 2. 10. & 3. 10. and for the mani∣festation of God's glory, John 9. 3.
1. An over seeing Answer. The Question is of sins interest as the efficient meritorious Cause: The Answer is of sin as the terminus amovendus, or privatio finis. We do not differ in that, Whether the curing of sin be the end of Chastisement? but where it is so, yet, Whether sin be not the meritori∣ous Cause, so far as it is evil? You might better have instanced in Chastisement, than medicining of Children. No wise Father chastiseth his Child, but his fault is the meritorious Cause, as well as the final (Reductivè) (his Reformation I mean.) You might therefore as truly have said, [There would be no Chastisement, if there were no sin meriting it,] as, [If there be no sin to be cured by it.] It is essential to Punishment (of which Chastisement is a species) that it be [for sin as the meritorious Cause, really or supposed.]
2. Your other assigned Reasons therefore are no Reasons; for they belong to the final Cause, and not to the efficient. And you do but leave me to renew my Question, What reason can you give, why God should have attained all those good ends (our Tryal, Conformity, his Glory, &c.) without our suffering, which now he attaineth by it, if sin were not the meritorious Cause? and some wrath still in it? specially, when God hath fully told us, that he afflicts not willingly: that man suffereth but for his sin; that for the iniquity of Jacob is all this, &c. and that he will not afflict his Creature without its
desert. If by [Conformity to Christ] you mean, not to his Holiness, but to his Suffering: I answer, That is no good to us of it self, but an evil: For it was the evil of Punishment that we deserved that he bore; and therefore if it be a good to be therein conformed to him, then it is good to bear God's Vindictive wrath. Indeed we may have comfort in our suffering, in that we suffer but what Christ hath suffered (in several respects that I need not stand on:) But the good is, that our Conformity in suffering, tends to make us conform in Holiness, and so in Glory, in our measure.