nightest thou not foresee the certain loss of the ship, without laying the least necessity upon the pilot to steer her upon the fatal spot, where she goes to pieces? And shall not I, from whom no secrets are hid, and be fore whom things past and to come meet in one immoveable everlasting now:-Shall not Iwho inhabit eternity, where he that was, and is, and is to come, shews himself the unchange able I AM,-shall not I, I say, foresee the motions and actions of all my free agent crea tures, as certainly as a wise artist foresees the motions of the watch which he has made? Imperfect as the illustration is, it is adapted to thy imperfect understanding. For though thou canst not comprehend how I know future contingencies, thou canst easily conceive that as no one but a watch-maker can perfectly foresee what may accelerate, stop, or alter the motion of a watch; so none but the Creator of a free-agent, can possibly foresee the future motions of a free-agent. If hell is naked, and destruction hath no covering before me; is it not absurd to suppose that the human heart can be hid from my all-piercing Eye? And if thou, who livest but in a point of time, and in a point of space; if thou, whose faculties are so shallow, and whose powers are so circumscribed;-if thou, I say, in that point of time and space which thou fillest, can see what is before thee; why should not I, an all-wise, and superlatively perfect Spirit, who fill all times, and all places, through an infinite Now, and a boundless HERE, Sée also what is before me? Perceiv est thou not the absurdity of measuring me with thy span? Try to weigh the mountains in a balance, and to measure the seas in the hollow of thy hand; and if thou findest thyself confounded at the bare thought of a task so easy to my omnipotence, fall in the dust, and confess that thou hast acted an unbecoming part, in attempting to put the very same bounds to my Omniscience, which I have put to thy fore-knowledge. To conclude:

14. "Thou art ready to think hard of my wisdom, goodness, or foresight, for giving a talent of saving grace to a man, who, by burying it to the last, enhances his own destruction: To solve this imaginary difficulty, thou ascribest to me a dreadful sovereignty, -a horrible right of making vessels to dishonour, and filling them with wrath, merely to shew my absolute power. But let me expostulate a moment with thee:-I foresaw indeed, that the slothful, unfaithful man, to' whom I gave one talent, would bury it to the last; but if I had kept it from him, if I had afforded him no opportunity of shewing his faithfulness, or his unfaith fulness, what could I have done with him? Had I sent him to hell upon unforeseen disobedience, I should have acted the ab surd and cruel part of a judge, who hangs an honest man to-day, under pretence that he

foresees that honest man will turn thief tomorrow. Had I taken him to heaven, I should have rewarded foreseen unfaithfulness with heavenly glory. And had I refused to let him come into existence, my refusal would have been attended with a glaring absurdity, and with two great inconveniences. 1. With a glaring absurdity: For if I foresee that a man will certainly bury his talent; and if, upon this foresight, I refuse that man exist ence, it follows, I foresaw, that a thing which shall never come to pass, shall certainly come to pass. And what can be more unworthy of me, and more absurd, than such a foresight? 2. The notion that my foreknowledge of the man's burying his talent, should have made me suppress his existence, is big with two great inconveniences. For first, I should have defeated my own purpose, which was to shew my distributive justice, by rewarding him, if he would be FAITHFUL, or by punishing him, if he would continue in his UNFAITHFULNESS. And secondly, I should have broken, almost without interruption, the laws of the natural world and nipped the man's righteous posterity in the bud. Had I, for instance, prevented the wickedness of all the ancestors of the Virgin Mary, by forbidding their existence, ten times over I might have suppressed her useful being, and my own important humanity. Nay, at this rate, F might have destroyed all mankind twenty times over. Drop then thy prejudices : Be not wise above what is written for thy instruction: Under pretence of exalting freegrace, do not pour contempt, upon free-will, which is my master-piece in man, as man himself is my master piece in this world. Remember, that hell is the just wages, which abused free-grace gives to free-willing, incorrigible sinners: and that heaven is the gracious reward, with which my free-grace, when it is submitted to, crowns the obedi ence of corrigible, persevering believers. Nor forget, that, if thou opposest the doctrine of Free-grace, thou underminest my cross, and insultest me as a Saviour: And if thou decryest the doctrine of free-will, thou sap pest the foundation of my tribunal, and affrontest me as a Judge."

To the arguments contained in the preceding plea, I add an extract from a Discourse, written, I think, by Archbishop King, with a design to reconcile the Predestinarians and the free-willers.

Bound-willers and rigid Free-willers. We have Liberty, but it is incomplete, and much confined. The doctrines of Power, Liberty, and Necessity, are cleared up by plain de scriptions, and important distinctions.-The ground of Mr. Edward's mistake about Necessity is discovered; and his capital objection against Free-will is answered.

Zelotes has another specious objection to a Reconciliation with Honestus: It runs thus: OBJ. II. "Honestus is for free-will and I am against it. How can you expect to reconcile us? Can you find a medium between free-will and necessity? Now, that we are not free-willing creatures, may be demonstrated from reason and experience. 1. From Reason: Does not every attentive mind see, that a man cannot help following the last dictates of his understanding; that such a dictate is the necessary result of the light in which he sees things; that this light likewise is the necessary result of the circumstances in which he is placed, and of the objects which he is sûr. rounded with ;-and of consequence, that all is necessary; one event being as necessarily linked to, and brought on by another, as the second link of a chain in motion, is necessarily connected with, and drawn on by the first link. Thus, for example, the accidental, not to say the providential sight of Bathsheba, necessarily raised unchaste desires in David's mind: these desires necessarily produced adultery: and adultery, by a chain of necessary consequences, necessarily brought on murder. All these events were decreed, and depended as much upon each other, as the loss of a ship depends upon a storm, and a storm upon a strong rarefaction or condensation of the air.-2. Experience shews, that we are not at liberty to act otherwise than we do. Did you never hear passionate people complain, that they could not moderate their anger? How often have persons in love de clared, that their affections were irresistibly drawn to, and fixed upon such and such objects? You may as soon bid an impetuous river to stop, as bid a drunkard to be sober, and a thief to be honest, till sovereign, almighty, victorious grace make them so. "The way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps," Jer. x. 23.

15

This very passage was urged to a friend of mine by the obdurate highwayman who was hanged last year at

Shrewsbury, he cited it on the morning of his execution to excuse his crimes, and to comfort himself. He had drank so deep into the doctrine of necessity bound will, and fatalism, that he was entirely inaccessible to repentance. What pity is it, that Zelotes should countenance so horrid a misapplication of the Scriptures! Heated Austin is my Zelotes in this respect. Bishop Davenant saith of him, that "he did not abhor fate; and to prove his assertion, he quotes the following words of that father. If any one attributes human affairs," [which take in all the bad thoughts, words, and actions of men]"to fate, because he calls

ANS. I grant, that the way of man is not in himself to make his escape when the hour of vengeance is come, and when God surrounds him with his judgments: And that this was Jeremiah's meaning, in the verse which you quote to rob man of his moral agency, is evident from the words that immediately precede: The pastors are become brutish; therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flock shall be scattered; behold the noise of the bruit [the hour of vengeance] is come, and a great commotion out of the north coun try, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons." Then come the misapplied words, "O Lord, I know that the way of a man [to make his escape] is not in himself, &c. Correct me, but with judgment, &c. lest thou bring me to nothing." See verses 21, 22, 24.-With respect to David, he had probably resisted as strong temptations to impurity, as that by which he fell and he might no doubt have stood, if he had not been wanting to himself, both before, and at the time of his temptation.—With regard to what you say about a storm; two ships of equal strength may be tossed by the same tempest, and without necessity one of them may be lost by the negligence, and the other saved by the skill of the pilot. And if we may believe St. Paul, the lives which God had given him, would have been lost, if the sailors had not stayed in her to the last, Acts xxvii. 31, 34.-You appeal to experience : but it is as much against you, as against Honestus. Experience shews that we have liberty, and thus experience is against you. Again, experience convinces us, that our liberty has many bounds, and thus experience is against Honestus.-As to your scheme of the concatenation of forcible circumstances and events, it bears hard upon all the divine perfections. God is too wise, too good, and holy, to give us a conscience and a law, which forbid us to sin; and to place us in the midst of such forcible circumstances, as lay a majority of mankind under an absolute necessity of sinning to the last, and being damned for ever.-We are therefore endued with a degree of free-will. Through him who tasted death for every man, and through the freegift which came upon all men, we may choose life in the day of initial salvation; we may by grace (by the saving grace which has appeared to all men) pursue the things that make for our peace: or we may by nature (by our own natural powers) follow after the thinks that make for our misery, just as we have a mind. We cannot do all, says one, therefore we can do nothing: we can do the will and the power of God by the name of fate, let him hold his sentiment and alter his language." Sententiam teneat, linguam corrigat. Aug. Dr. grat. Lib. 5. c. 1."-Is not this granting Mr. Voltaire as much fatalisn as he contends for? and guilding the fatal pill so piously, as to make it go down glib with all the rigid bound-willers in Christendom.

something, says another, therefore we can do all. Both consequences are equally false. The truth stands between the two extremes. Besides :

The doctrine of bound will draws after it a variety of bad consequences. It is subversive of the moral difference which subsists between virtue and vice. It takes away all the demerit of unbelief. It leaves no room for the rewardableness of works. It strikes at the propriety of a day of judgment. It represents truth and error like two almighty charms, which irresistibly work upon the elect and the reprobates, to bring about God's absolute decrees, with our good er bad works, our finished salvation, or finished damnation. In a word it fastens upon us the grossest errors of pharisaic fatalists, and the wildest delusions of antinomian gospel.

ders.

Having thus given a general answer to the objection proposed, I remind the reader, that Mr. Edwards, President of New Jersey College, is exactly of Zelotes's sentiment with respect to necessity or bound-will. They agree to maintain, that necessary circumstan ces necessarily turn the scale of our judgment, that our judgment necessarily turns the scale of our will, and that the freedom of our will consists merely in choosing with willing ness, what we may choose by necessity. Mr. Voltaire also at the head of the Fatalists abroad, and one of my opponents at the head of the Calvinists in England, give us, after Mr. Edwards, this false idea of liberty. To shew their mistake, I need only to pro duce the words of Mr. Locke. "Liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will, &c. So a man striking himself or his friend, by a convulsive motion of his arm, which is not in his power by volition or the direction of his mind, to stop or forbear; nobody thinks he has liberty in this; every one pities him, as acting by necessity and constraint. Again, there may be thought, there may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty. Suppose a man be carried, whilst fast asleep, into a room, where is a person he longs to see, and be there locked fast in beyond his power to get he awakes, and is glad to see himself in so desirable company, which he stays willingly in; that is, he prefers his staying to going away. Is not this voluntarily? I think nobody will doubt it; and yet being locked fast in, he is NOT at liberty to stay, he has NOT freedom to be gone. So that liberty is not an idea belonging to volition or prefer ing; but to the person having the power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the mind shall choose or direct." Essay on Hum. Und. Chap. 21.

out;

This excellent quotation encourages me to make a fuller enquiry into the mistakes of the rigid predestinarians, and rigid free

willers, who equally start from the truth that lies between them both. It is greatly to be wished, that the bounds of necessity and liberty were drawn consistently with reason, scripture, and experience. I shall attempt to do it; and if I am so happy as to succeed, I shall reach the centre of the diffi culty, and point out the very spring of the waters of strife: Honestus will be convinc ed, that he has too high thoughts of our liberty: Zelotes will see, that his views of it are too much contracted: and Candidus will learn to avoid their contrary mistakes. I begin by a definition of necessity, and of liberty.

Moral philosophers observe that necessity is that constraint upon, or confinement of the soul, whereby we cannot do a thing otherwise that we do it. Hence it appears, that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as moral necessity. For, could we be constrained to do unavoidably good or evil, that good were not moral good, that evil a were not moral evil. Could we be necessarily confined in the channel of virtue or of vice, as a river is confined in its bed, without any power to retard or accelerate our virtuous or vicious motions as we see fit; our tempers and actions would lose their morality and their immor. tality. To speak with propriety, necessity has no place but in the natural world: Strictly speaking, it is excluded from the moral world: For what we may and must regulate or alter, cannot possibly be necessary or analterable. Nevertheless I shall by and by venture upon the improper expression of moral necessity, to convey the idea of a strong, moral propensity or habit, and to point out with greater ease Mr. Edwards's mistake.

This ingenious author asserts, that by the law of our nature, we choose what we suppose to be, upon the whole, most eligible. I grant it is so in most cases: nevertheless I deny necessity, because there is no necessity imposed upon us to suppose, that, upon the whole a thing is most eligible, which at first sight appears to be so to the eye of prejudice or passion; our liberty being chiefly a limited power to mind either the dictates of reason and conscience, or those of prejudice or passion:-To follow either the motions of the tempter, or those of divine grace. 1 say a limited power, because our power is incomplete, as will appear by considering the particulars of which our liberty does, and does not consist. And,

1. It does not consist, in general,t in a

thoughts, I do not absolutely assent to Mr Edwards's + I usethese limited expressions, because upon second doctrine, that the will always necessarily follows the last dictate of the understanding. I now think, that in this respect Calvin's judgment deserves our close attention, Sic interdum flagitii turpitudo conscientiam urget, ut non sibi imponens sub falsa boni imagine, sed sciens et volens, in maluin ruat. Ex quo effectu prode