to the approved feeling, under moral necessity. He is irresistibly compelled to will and to perform what he disapproves and condemns. The arguments and motives which are calculated to arouse his moral strength in support of the decision of conscience, have lost their power; for the understanding itself may have been rendered incapable of forming vigorous and adequate conceptions of the motives, and their proper susceptibilities may be completely destroyed. In many such cases, it is vain to talk to the unhappy man of the wickedness, the folly, the absurdity, the ruinous consequences of his conduct. He may admit most honestly the truth of all your arguments, and in moments of reflection when his passions are laid to rest by satiety, he may feel and deplore the horror of his thraldom; but the languid emotions which his deadened susceptibilities are able to produce will, in the season of temptation, be quickly suppressed by the powerful and tumultuous passions, which opposite motives awak

en.

He will feel, as some unhappy men are constrained to confess, that he cannot do otherwise than he does. In certain circumstances he truly cannot do otherwise, but is under the absolute necessity of committing such and such crimes. The wretched being has sold himself under sin, to use the language of the apostle, and is completely the slave of a master, whom, whether he approve or not, he is compel

led to obey. The laws of his constitution, which, if not corrupted, render him strong to obey the dictates of his conscience, now in consequence of the indulgence of sinful habits, bind him hopelessly down to the practice of iniquity. As soon may he resist the law of the philosophical necessity by which the planets revolve or the mountains stand upon their bases, as resist the philosophical necessity by which he is impelled to the commission of crime. The prophet correctly states this law of our nature, when he demands, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil."* From this state of degraded thraldom, the Creator of the human soul alone can deliver the miserable being whom habit has confirmed in vice.

Jeremiah. xiii. 23.

SECTION V.

THE MEANS OF BEING DELIVERED FROM MORAL NECESSITY AND THE UNIVERSALITY OF MORAL

RESPONSIBILITY.

FROM the doctrine of moral necessity, as just stated, an argument is usually drawn against the responsibility of the human agent. No being, it is said, can be under any obligation to work impossibilities. If man, by his constitution, is placed under the necessity of acting in a certain manner and cannot act otherwise, he cannot incur moral guilt. Neither the justice of the Deity, it is contended, nor the moral judgment of man can impute guilt, when there is no power to act in a different manner. Power and liberty to reject the wrong and to choose the right must ever form the ground of moral responsibility.

The argument here employed is confessedly legitimate, and the conclusion cannot be denied. If any being, without any act of his own, is placed in such circumstances as render all his actions

necessary in the proper sense; and has no means,

direct or indirect, of delivering himself from this condition, he cannot be the subject of moral responsibility. Such however is not the condition of man. The necessity under which he labours

is the result, to a great extent, of his own criminal conduct; and he has the power, by indirect means, of effecting his own deliverance.

The source of all moral necessity is the moral corruption of human nature in consequence of the fall. The strong bias to evil, on account of the derangement of our moral susceptibilities, is now natural to man and is entailed upon him, as an individual of the fallen species. So far a man is not personally chargeable with crime. But the natural corruption of the human heart is the direct cause of but a small portion of the necessity under which mankind labour. Their own criminal conduct and their sinful indulgences are the cause of that hopeless necessity, by which they are generally enthralled. Hence their responsibility and their guilt remains; and they must in justice be chargeable, as moral and intelligent beings, with the consequences of their own voluntary actions.

But it is not on this fact alone that we would rest the responsibility of man. To convince a miserable being, who is impelled by the irresistible influence of moral necessity to the commission of crime, that his own criminal conduct has placed him in this unhappy condition, and that

he is therefore still responsible for his actions, establishes the justice of the divine administration in the punishment of moral transgression; but does not illustrate the glorious economy of mercy under which we now live. The truth which we now wish to exhibit, as the ground of moral responsibility, is, that man possesses the means of delivering himself from the thraldom of moral necessity, and that multitudes actually ef fect their deliverance.

That the same cause, in the same circumstances, will constantly and invariably produce the same effect, is the general principle of causation on which moral necessity depends. Hence, when a human being has once acted in opposition to his judgment, by the wilful commission of a crime, when again placed in the same circumstances, external and internal, he will uniformly act in the same manner. To act in a different manner, he must change either his own dispositions and feelings, or avoid the external temptation; and both of these are, to a certain extent, in his own power.

The source of all human liberty, and of the power of man to rescue himself from necessity, is the enlightened understanding. In every instance of moral necessity, when guilt is incurred, the man is aware that his conduct is wrong, or at least, is not certain that it is right; for what is not of faith, or done with the confidence of