And though God is not to be looked upon as an arbitrary being, in the sense of this author, who will not distinguish arbitrary from humour and caprice; yet in a true sense of the word, when applied to God, he must be affirmed to be an arbitrary being, that acts only from himself, from his own will, and according to his own pleasure.
And we have no more reason to be afraid to be left to a God without a law, or to be left to his will and pleasure, than to be left under the protection and care of a being, that is all love, and mercy, and goodness. For as the existence of God, as such, necessarily implies the existence of all perfection; so the will of God, as such, necessarily implies the willing every thing, that all perfection can will.
And as the existence of God, because it contains all perfection, cannot for that reason have any external cause; so the will of God, because it is all perfection, cannot, for that reason, have any external rule or direction. But his own will is wisdom, and his wisdom is his will. His goodness is arbitrary, and his arbitrariness is goodness.
But this writer does not only thus bring God into this state of law and obligation with us, but makes farther advances in the same kind of errors.
Hence, says he, we may contemplate the great dignity of our rational nature, since our reason for kind, tho’ not for degree, is of the same nature with that of God’s.[¹]
[¹] Page 24.
Here you see our reason, that is, our faculty of reasoning, (for reason cannot be called ours in any other respect,) has no other difference from reason as it is in God, but that of degree. But what greater absurdity can a man fall into, than to suppose, that a being whose existence had a beginning but a few years ago, differs only in a degree from that which could not possibly have a beginning; or that a dependent and independent being, should not be different in kind, but only in degree?
For to say, that the faculties of a dependent and independent being, may be of the same kind, is as flat a contradiction, as to say, the same kind of thing may be dependent, and independent.
Reason belongs to God and man, just as power, existence, life, and happiness, belong to God and man; and he that can, from happiness being common to God and man, prove our happiness to be of the same kind and nature with God’s, may also prove reason in God and man to be of the same kind.
This writer indeed says, Our happiness is limited, because our reason is so; and that God has unlimited happiness, because he alone has unlimited reason.[¹]