irreconcilable seems the conflict of opinion in which they are among themselves involved. The more closely we contemplate the labour of their hands, the more clearly we perceive that all their attempts, in opposition to the voice of heaven and earth, to rear the great metaphysical tower of necessity, have only ended in an utter confusion of tongues. So far, indeed, are they from having found and presented any such view of the freedom and responsibility of man, as shall, by the intrinsic and overpowering lustre of its evidence, stand some chance to dis arm the enemies of God, that they have not even found one in which they themselves can rest. The school of the necessitarian is, in reality, a house divided against itself; and that, too, in regard to the most vital and fundamental point of its philosophy.

There seems to be one exception to the truth of this general remark for there is one scheme or definition of liberty, in which many, if not most, of the advocates of necessity have concurred; that is, the definition of Hobbes. As the current of a river, says he, is free to flow down its channel, provided there be no obstruction in the way; so the human will, though compelled to act by causes over which it has no control, is free, provided there be no external impediment to prevent its volition from passing into effect. This idea of the freedom of the will, though much older than Hobbes, is primarily indebted to his influence for its prevalence in modern times; for it descended from Hobbes to Locke, from Locke to Edwards, and from Edwards to the modern school of Calvinistic divines.

No matter how we come by our volitions, says Edwards, yet are we perfectly free when there is no external impediment to hinder our volitions from passing into effect: that is to say, though our volitions be absolutely produced by the divine omnipotence itself, or in any other way; yet is the will free, provided no external cause interpose to prevent its volition from moving the body. According to this definition of the liberty of the will, it is not a property of the soul at all, but only an accidental circumstance or condition of the body. In the sig nificant language of Leibnitz, it is not the freedom of the mind; it is merely "elbow-room." It consists not in an attribute, or property, or power of the soul, but only in the external opporturity which its necessitated volitions may have to necessitate

us,

an effect. We ask, How can the mind be free? and they tell When the body may be so! We inquire about an attribute of the spiritual principle within, and they turn us off with an answer respecting an accident of the material principle without! An ignoratio elenchi more flagrant—a mistaking of the question more palpable-it is surely not possible to conceive. Yet this definition of the freedom of the will, though so superficially false, is precisely that which has found the most general acceptance among necessitarians. Though vehemently condemned by Calvin himself, unanswerably refuted by Leibnitz, sneered at by Edwards the younger, and pronounced utterly inadequate by Dr. John Dick; yet, as we have seen, is it now held up as "the Calvinistic idea of the freedom of the will."

We do not wonder that such a definition of free-will should have been adopted by atheizing philosophers, such as Hume and Hobbes, for example; because we cannot suppose them to have been penetrated with any very profound design to uphold the cause of human responsibility, or to vindicate the immaculate purity of the divine glory. But that it should have been accepted with such unquestioning simplicity by a large body of Christian divines, having the great interests of the moral world at heart, is, we cannot but think, a sufficient ground for the most profound astonishment and regret; for, surely, to plant the great cause of human responsibility on a foundation so slender, on a fallacy so palpable, on a position so utterly untenable, is to expose it to the victorious assaults of its weakest enemy and invader.

SECTION II

The scheme of necessity makes God the author of sin.

The necessitarian, in his attempts to vindicate the purity of God, has not been more successful than in his endeavours to establish the freedom and accountability of man. If, according to his scheme, the Supreme Ruler of the world be the primal cause of all things, the volitions of men included; it certainly seems exceedingly difficult to conceive, that he is not implicated in the sin of the world. And this difficulty, so appalling at first view, remains just as great after all that the most enlightened advocates of that scheme have advanced as it was before.

We have witnessed the efforts of a Leibnitz, an Edwards, and a Chalmers, to repel this objection to the scheme of necessity; and if we mistake not, we have seen how utterly ineffectual they have proved to break its force, or resist its influence. The sum and substance of that defence is, as we have seen, that God may do evil that good may come; a defence which, instead of vindicating the purity of the divine proceeding, represents it as having been governed by the most corrupt maxim of the most corrupt system of casuistry the world has ever seen. It darkens, rather than illuminates, that profound and portentous obscurity of the system of the world, arising from the origin and existence of moral evil. So far from removing the difficulty from their scheme, they have only illustrated its force by the ineffable weakness of the means and methods which that scheme has necessitated them to employ for its destruction.

SECTION III.

The scheme of necessity denies the reality of moral distinctions. For, if all things in the world, the acts of the will not excepted, be produced by an extraneous agency, it seems clear that it is absurd to attach praise or blame to men on account of their volitions. Nothing appears more self-evident than the position, that whatever is thus produced in us can neither be our virtue nor our vice. The advocates of necessity, at leas those of them who do not admit the inference in question, invoke the aid of logic to extinguish the light of the principle on which it is based. But where have they found, or where can they find, a principle more clear, more simple, or more unquestionable on which to ground their arguments? Where, in the whole armory of logic, can be found a principle more unquestionable than this, that no man can be to praise or to blame for that which is produced in him, by causes over which he had no control?

We have examined those arguments in detail, and exhibited the principles on which they proceed. Those principles, instead of being of such a nature as to subserve the purposes of valid argument, are either insignificant truisms which prove nothing, or else they reach the point in dispute only by means of an ambiguity of words. Of the first description is the celebrated

maxim of Edwards, that the essence of virtue and vice consists in their nature, and not in their cause. By which he means, that no matter how we come by our virtue and vice, though they be produced in us according to the scheme of necessity, yet are they our virtue and vice. If a horse should fall from the moon, it would be a horse for no matter where it comes from, a horse is a horse; or, more scientifically expressed, the essence of a horse consists in the nature of a horse, and not in its origin or cause. All this is very true. But then, we no more believe that horses fall from the moon, than we do that virtue and vice are produced according to the scheme of necessity.

Of the last description is that other maxim of Edwards, that men are adjudged virtuous or vicious on account of actions proceeding from the will, without considering how they came by their volition. True, we may judge of external actions according as their origin is in the will or otherwise, without considering how its volitions come to pass; but then this is because we proceed on the tacit assumption that the will is free, and not under the dominion of necessitating causes. But the question relates, not to external actions or movements of the body, but to the volitions of the mind itself. And this being the case, it does make a vast difference in our estimate, whether we consider those volitions as coming to pass freely; or whether, according to the scheme of necessity, we regard them as being produced by the operation of causes over which we have no control. In this case, it is impossible for the human mind to attach praise or blame to them, or view them as constituting either virtue or vice. For nothing can be plainer than the position, that if anything in us be produced by the mighty and irresistible operation of an extraneous agency, it can neither be our virtue nor vice. This principle is so clear, that logic can neither add to nor detract from the intrinsic lustre of its evidence. And all the cloudy sophistications of an Edwards, ingenious as they are, can obscure it only to the minds of those who have not sufficient penetration to see through the nature of his arguments.

At this point, then, as well as at others, the scheme of necessity, instead of clearing up the old, has introduced new difficulties into the system of the world. Instead of diffusing light, it has actually extended the empire of darkness, by investing in

the clouds and mists of its own raising, some of the brightest elements which enter into its organization. By scholastic refinements and sophistical devices, it has sought to overturn and destroy, not the elements of error and confusion, but some of the clearest and most indestructible intuitional convictions of the human head and heart.

But great as these difficulties are, we may still be asked to embrace the scheme from which they flow, on the ground that it is true. Indeed, this is the course pursued by some of the most enlightened Calvinistic necessitarians of the present day. Freely admitting that all the attempts of Leibnitz, of Edwards, and others, to bring the scheme of necessity into an agreement with the dictates of reason, have left its stupendous difficulties pretty much where they found them-wrapped in impenetral,.e gloom; they nevertheless maintain this scheme, and propose it to our acceptance, on the sole and sufficient ground of its evidence. If we may judge from those of their writings which we have seen, this course of proceeding is getting to be very much the fashion among the Calvinists of the present day; and they have a great deal to say in praise of simply adhering to the truth, without being over-solicitous about its difficulties, or paying too much attention to them. That man, say they, is in imminent danger of heresy who, instead of receiving the truth with the simplicity of a little child, goes about to worry himself with its difficulties. He walks in dark and slippery places. We agree with them in this, and commend their wisdom: for it presents the only chance which their system has of retaining its hold on the human mind. But before accepting this scheme on the ground of its evidence, we have deemed it prudent to look into the very interior of the scheme itself, and weigh the evidence on which it is so confidently recommended.

SECTION IV.

The moral world not constituted according to the scheme of necessity. In the prosecution of this inquiry, we have appeared to ourselves to find, that this boasted scheme of necessity is neither more nor less than one grand tissue of sophisms. We have found, we believe, that this huge imposition on the reason of man is a vile congregation of pestilential errors, through which,