And remember always, that be men's vices what they will, they have not forfeited their claim to relief under necessities, till they have forfeited their lives to justice.
"Our heavenly Father is kind to the unthankful and the evil; and sendeth his rain on the just and on the unjust," Matt. V. 45, Luke vi. 35; and, in imitation of him, our Saviour expressly requires, that our beneficence be promiscuous. But we have, moreover, the Divine example for relieving those distresses which are brought upon persons by their own faults; and that is exactly the case we are considering. Indeed, the general dispensation of Christianity is an example of this; for its general design is to save us from our sins, and the punishments which would have been the just consequence of them. But the Divine example, in the daily course of nature, is a more obvious and sensible one. And though the natural miseries which are foreseen to be annexed to a vicious course of life are providentially intended to prevent it, in the same manner as civil penalties are intended to prevent civil crimes; yet those miseries, those natural penalties, admit of and receive natural reliefs, no less than any other miseries which could not have been foreseen or prevented. Charitable providence then, thus manifested in the course of nature, which is the example of our heavenly Father, most evidently leads us to relieve, not only such distresses as were unavoidable, but also such as people by their own faults have brought upon themselves. The case is, that we cannot judge in what degree it was intended they should suffer, by considering what, in the natural course of things, would be the whole bad consequences of their faults, if those consequences were not prevented when nature has provided means to prevent great part of them. We cannot, for instance, estimate what degree of present sufferings God has annexed to drunkenness, by considering the diseases which follow from this vice, as they would be if they admitted of no reliefs or remedies; but by considering the remaining misery
