absurdity of measuring me with thy span? Try fo 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 foreknowledge. To conclude :

14. "Thou art ready to think hardly 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 show 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 showing his faithfulness, or his unfaithfulness; what could I have done with him? Had I sent him to hell upon foreseen disobedience, I should have acted the absurd and cruel part of a judge who hangs an honest man to-day, under pretence that he foresees the honest man will turn thief to-morrow ;-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 existence, 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 show 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 Jaws 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, I 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 free grace, do not pour contempt upon free will, which is my masterpiece in man, as man himself is my masterpiece 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 obedience of corrigible persevering believers. Nor forget that, if thou oppose the doctrine of free grace, thou wilt undermine my cross, and insult me as a Saviour: and if thou decry the doctrine of free will, thou wilt sap the foundation of my tribunal, and affront 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.

"Foreknowledge and decrees," says that judicious writer, "are only assigned to God, to give us a notion of the steadiness and certainty of the Divine actions; and if so, for us to conclude that what is represented by them is inconsistent with the contingency of events or free will, &c, is the same absurdity as to conclude that China is no bigger than a sheet of paper, because the map that represents it is contained in that compass.

The same ingenious author proposes the argument that has so puzzled mankind, and done so much mischief in the world. It runs thus:-"If God foresee, &c, that I shall be saved, I shall infallibly be so; and if he foresee, &c, that I shall be damned, it is unavoidable. And there. fore it is no matter what I do, or how I behave myself in this life." "If God's foreknowledge were exactly conformable to ours, the consequence would seem just; but, &c, it does not follow, because our foresight of events, if we suppose it infallible, must presuppose a necessity in them, that therefore the Divine prescience must require the same necessity in order to its being certain. It is true we call God's foreknowledge and our own by the same name; but this is not from any real likeness in the nature of the faculties, but from some proportion observable in the effects of them; both having this advantage, that they prevent any surprise on the person endowed with them. Now as it is true that no contingency or freedom in the creatures can any way deceive or surprise God, put him to a loss, or oblige him to alter his measures; so on the other hand it is likewise true that the Divine prescience does not hinder freedom: and a thing may either be, or not be, notwithstanding that foresight of it which we ascribe to God. When therefore it is alleged that if God foresees I shall be saved, my salvation is infallible; this does not follow: because the foreknowledge of God is not like man's, which requires necessity in the event, in order to its being certain; but of another nature consistent with contingency: and our inability to comprehend this arises from our ignorance of the true nature of what we call foreknow. ledge in God, &c. Only of this we are sure, that it so differs from ours that it may consist either with the being, or not being of what is said to be foreseen, &c. Thus St. Paul was a chosen vessel, and he reckons himself in the number of the predestinated, Eph. i, 5. And yet he supposes it possible for him to miss of salvation: and therefore he looked upon himself as obliged to use mortification, and exercise all other graces, in order to make his calling and election sure; 'lest,' he says, that, by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway,' or a reprobate, as the word is translated in other places." This author's important observation, concerning the difference be tween God's foreknowledge and ours, may be illustrated by the following remarks:-Hearing and sight are attributed to God, as well as foreknowledge and foresight. "He that planted the ear," says David, "shall he not hear? And he that formed the eye, shall he not see?" Now is it not as absurd to measure God's perfect manner of foreseeing and foreknowing, by our imperfect foresight and knowledge, as to measure his perfect manner of seeing and hearing by our imperfect manner of doing them? If Zelotes said, "I cannot see the inhabitants of the

planets; I cannot see the antipodes: I cannot see through that wall: I can see nothing of solids but their surface, &c, therefore God cannot see the inhabitants of the planets, the antipodes," &c, would not his argument appear to you inconclusive? Nevertheless, it is full as strong as the following, on which Zelotes' objection is founded:-"I cannot certainly foresee the free thoughts and contingent intentions of the human heart, therefore God cannot do it: I am not omniscient, therefore God is not so." If I argued in this manner, would you not say, “O injudicious man, how long wilt thou measure God's powers by thine? See, if thou canst, what now passes in my breast? Nay, see thy own back; see the fibres which compose the flesh of thy hands, or the vapour that exhales out of all thy pores. And if these near-these presentthese material objects are out of the reach of thy sight, what wonder is it if future contingencies are out of the reach of thy foresight? Cease then to confine God's foreknowledge within the narrow limits of thine, and own that an omnipresent, omniscient, and everlasting Spirit, who 'is over all, through all, and in all,' and whose permanent existence and boundless immensity comprehend all times and places, as the atmosphere contains all clouds and vapours ;-own, I say, that such a Spirit can, at one glance, see from his eternity all the revolutions of time far more clearly than thou canst see the characters which thine eyes are now fixed upon. And confess that it is the highest absurdity to suppose that an omnipresent, omnipotent, spiritual, and eternal eye, which is before, behind, and in all things, times, and places, can ever be at a loss to know or foreknow any thing. And what is God but such an eye? And what are Divine knowledge and foreknowledge, but the sight of such a spiritual, eternal, and omnipresent eye?"

I do not know whether this vindication of our free agency, of God's foreknowledge, and of the consistency of both will please my readers: but I flatter myself that it will satisfy Candidus. Should it soften the prejudices of Zelotes, without hardening those of Honestus, it will pro. mote the reconciliation which I endeavour to bring about, and answer the end which I proposed when I took up the pen to throw some light upon this deep and awful part of my subject.

SECTION VII.

Zelotes second objection to a reconciliation-That objection is taken from President Edwards' and Voltaire's doctrine about necessity— The danger of that doctrine-The truth lies between the extremes of rigid 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 descriptions, and important distinctions-The ground of Mr. Edwards' mistake about necessity is discovered; and his capital objection against free will is answered. ZELOTES has another specious objection to a reconciliation with Ho. nestus. It runs thus :

OBJECTION 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 dictate 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 surrounded 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 shows 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 declared 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 makes them so. *The way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps,' Jer. x, 23."

ANSWER. 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 flocks shall be scattered; behold the noise of the bruit [the hour of vengeance] is come, and a great commotion out of the north country, 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

This very passage was urged to a friend of mine by the obdurate highway. team who was hanged last year at Shrewsbury! He cited it on the morning of tu execution, to excuse his crimes, and to comfort himself. He had drunk so eeply into the doctrine of necessity, bound will, and fatalism, that he was en. tire. inaccessible to repentance. What pity is it that Zelotes should counte. Lace so horrid a misapplication of the Scriptures! Heated Austin is my ZeAstes 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 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. De Grat. lib. 5, c. 1.) Is not tais granting Mr. Voltaire as much fatalism as he contends for? and gilding the fatal pill so piously as to make it go down glib with all the rigid bound willers in Christendom?

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 sailor had not stayed in the ship to manage her to the last, Acts xxvii, 31, 34. You appeal to experience: but it is as much against you as against Honestus. Experience shows 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 forbids 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 "tasteth death for every man," and through "the free gift which came upon all men," "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 things 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 something," says another, "therefore we can do all." Both consequences are equally false. The truth stands between two extremes. Beside :

we may

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 execute God's absolute decrees about our good or 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 gospellers.

Having thus given a general answer to the objection proposed, I re. mind the reader that Mr. Edwards, president of New Jersey college, is exactly of Zelotes' sentiments with respect to necessity or bound will. They agree to maintain that necessary circumstances 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 willingness what we 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 show their mistake, I need only to produce 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 it is not in his power by volition, or the direction of his mind, to stop or forbear; nobody thinks he has liberty in this;