scheme you are carried back forever in search of the freedom of the will, and you will never find it, unless you can discover that you had one choice, before the first choice, which may be considered as the parent of all the rest. If you are not willing to consider yourself a free moral agent, as soon as you find that you have à rational soul, and that you are choosing and refusing the objects which are presented to you, without you can also find what has caused you thus to will, I am persuaded it will be impossible for you ever to become satisfied as to your free agency.

If the question should be asked, why has God made creatures perfectly dependent on him for all their mor al actions, as well as for every thing else? I would answer, He has made them so, because he could not make them otherwise. We can make a machine, which when it is completed, will go without our aid, because we take the advantage of the laws of nature, i. e. of the stat ed and known operations of the great first cause. Thus, in the clock we take the advantage of the law of gravi tation; and in the water mill, of the law of fluids. The Supreme Agent can keep our works in operation, when they have gone out of our hands; but who is there to keep his works in operation, after they have gone out

on him for his existence, and for all his actions. He will not pretend but that he had an cbject to answer by the dreadful murders which this man committed: He will not even pretend but that he sent him to Jerusalem, to tread down the bypocritical inhabitants like the mire of the streets. (Sce v. 5, 6.) The Judge will feel concerned for the honor of his own name, to make it appear to the whole intelligent creation, that this wicked man was like the axe and the saw in his hand, and that all the mischief which he did, was made use of in his hand to promote good; so that by him, the Lord performed his work. (See v. 12.) And notwithstanding all this, the holy Judge will not hesitate to pronounce sentence, and execute it by punishing the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria. If the criminal should reply against the Judge, saying, Who hath resisted thy will? Did I not, as an instrument, help to fulfil thy decrees, and promote thy declarative glory? The Judge will reply; Howbeit thou didst not mean so, neither did thy heart think so, but it was in thy heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few. (See v. 7.) All the friends of divine government will say, "Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus."

of his hands? It requires Divine power, as much to uphold, as to create ;-to keep in motion, as to set in motion; and to keep the will in motion, as much as to keep the body in motion. This is agreeable to the scripture representations concerning the perseverance of the saints in holiness. They, considered as saints, are said to be kept by the power of God; just as they were first made willing, that is, made saints, in the day of his power. To the above question I could reply, 2dly, If God can make creatures free, and at the same time perfectly dependent agents, it is infinitely desirable that he should make them all dependent, even if it were possible for him to make them otherwise. If free agents are perfectly dependent on God for all their moral actions, then while they are free, God can at the same time do all his pleasure, because their hearts are in his hand; and as the rivers of water he can turn them whithersoever he will. See Prov. xvi, 1.

Let us now see, whether the doctrine of divine decrees will destroy the agency of man. Mr. B. seems to view this as indisputable. Among the many sentences which are scattered through his whole work, I need quote but one to show his sentiment on this subject." For the doctrine of foreordination, and universal and irresistible decrees, is totally subversive of free agency." p. 25. But why is foreordination totally subversive of free agency? It is because it gives an absolute certainty to the yet future actions of moral agents? It is evident from many things said in the Letters, that the absolute cer. tainty and fixedness which a decree gives to future events, was one thing which made the author think, that the doctrine of decrees was subversive of free agency, But did he not know, that the same objection lay against his doctrine of prescience? What the omniscient God foreknows will be, most certainly will be. If his prescience is perfect, there will not be the smallest variation from that, in any thing which will ever take place. The author of the Letters was aware of the same difficulty attending his scheme which he charged upon ours: He suggested the difficulty, without doing any thing to remove it. In his preface he says, "Whatever mysteries therefore, there may be in the science of human nature, and however difficult it may be to obyi

ate the objections which may be urged from prescience, there is no fact more certain than this, that man is a free agent, as it respects his moral conduct." So say we: However difficult it may be to obviate the objections which may be urged from foreordination, there is no fact more certain than this, that man is a free agent, as it respects his moral conduct. If our antagonist had stopped to obviate the objections which may be urged from prescience, he would have furnished us with the means of obviating those which may be urged from foreordination; at least so far as the absolute certainty of future events is concerned. Is it not strange that he should so easily glide over this difficulty with a single sentence, and then write several hundred pages, in which he should be continually charging the scheme of his opponents with absurdity and falsehood, when if he had only removed the difficulties out of the way of his own system, he would have removed them out of the way of theirs. It is a leading idea in Mr. B's. book, that decrees concerning moral actions, make those actions necessary, and necessary actions he thinks cannot be free actions. "And to have made man a necessary agent would have been to make him any thing besides an intelligent creature." p. 59. An action made necessary by compulsion, it is acknowledged, cannot be a free action. For example, if another man who is stronger than I, puts a knife into my hand and forces me to kill my neighbor, while I meant to do no such thing, I have not murdered my neighbor, I have not in the exercise of moral agency killed the man. But if Mr. B. means, that actions which are made perfectly certain, are necessary actions, then necessary actions may be free, else he must give up the doctrine of God's certain foreknowledge of the actions of moral agents. What would our author say about the state of the inhabitants of heaven after the day of judgment? Are they liable to change? Can the holy become filthy? And does this fixedness in holiness destroy their free agency, and make them something else besides intelligent creatures?

If it be not the mere fixedness of future events which is supposed to destroy free agency, but because it is God who has fixed these events, and determined to

bring them to pass, this will run into the same objec tion which has been already answered. If we can be persuaded that God can cause the exercises of moral agents, and still these exercises be free, there will be no peculiar difficulty in supposing, that he can previous-. ly determine to do so, and still they be free.

But after all, says the objector, you cannot make me believe that both sides of a contradiction are true. Man a free agent and yet perfectly dependent for all his moral actions-has his own choice, and yet this choice was predetermined before he was born! What can be more repugnant to reason? In the view of many who appear to be rational men, it is altogether more repugnant to reason, to suppose man to be capable of willing or doing, without God's working in him both to will and to do; or to suppose our moral actions were not determined by him, as much as the motion of the planets. But when theology is the subject, we ought to be sure that we reason out of the scriptures. And I presume it is not more difficult for the human mind to reconcile this, than many other things which are most surely believed by us all. We all believe in the eternity of the Godhead. But how amazingly difficult it is for our minds to conceive of a being, whose existence is, in this respect, so perfectly different from our own. We are ready to say, How can it be? He did not create himself, and no other being created him; how then came he to exist? The atheist says, "It cannot be, it is perfectly repugnant to my reason, and I must give up my rational faculties in order to believe it." But let the atheist remember, however difficult it is to conceive of the eternity of God, yet he must have existed from eternity, or nothing could now be in existence. The objector, with whom we have to do, will say, The eternity of the divine existence is mysterious, yet not contradictory; but there is no man who can reconcile decrees and free agency.

We answer, they were reconciled in the mind of Peter, when on the day of Pentecost, he said to the crucifiers of Christ, Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: and when to those who had thus fulfilled the determinate counsel of God, he said, Repent. The tears of this same Peter

testified, that there was nothing in his mind irreconcileable between decree, and moral agency, when he went out and wept bitterly for doing just so, as his divine Master had told him he certainly would do.

We have spent the more time on this topic, as we are persuaded that if our minds can be helped over the difficulty of free agency, as being consistent with divine decrees, other difficulties will not be insurmountable. But I proceed to other objections which are urged against God's having a fixed purpose concerning every thing which comes to pass.

2. It is urged against a divine plan, which shall include all the wickedness of creatures; that it makes God the author of sin, in such a sense that sin can all be charged to him-and that God, instead of being infinitely holy, must be the greatest sinner in the universe. "If every event which comes to pass, is brought to pass by God's plan, as you call it, or is an effect of his decree, then there can be no event however trivial in itself, however wicked, foolish and inconsistent, but what is included in this plan which you ascribe to God, and which according to your statement, is the effect of his uncontrolable decree. If this system does not ascribe wickedness, foolishness, and absurdity to God, there are no such things as wickedness, foolishness, and absurdity in the world; for all events whether they be wicked or good, foolish or wise, absurd or consistent, you intimate are included in God's plan." p. 15.

I admit, whether my Calvinistic brethren do or not, that a determination in God concerning every thing which comes to pass, implies that his agency is concerned in bringing every thing to pass, even the actions of wicked men. He has not only a counsel about all things, but he also worketh all things after that counsel. Mr. B. supposes it is not consistent for God to predetermine the actions of any free agents, because it destroys their freedom. But the present objection is this, that it is not consistent for him to predetermine the actions of sinful agents, because it makes him sinful; and especially if his agency be the cause of their sinful actions. Mr. B. reasons thus on the subject: "An unholy effect must have an unholy cause; but sin the effect is unholy, and therefore must proceed from an unholy