duces an agreeable feeling of the equality men, and a conviction that the greatest have no cause to be vain, nor the weakest any reason to crouch under the consciousness of insignificance. But in subjects whose consequences are so momentous as that of free will, it is distressing to contemplate an honest lover of knowledge, and particularly a minister of truth, supporting principles which men such as Hume should feel any interest to espouse. But although, as simple philosophers, their doctrine exactly coincides and tends to the same dangerous practical conclusion, we regard the men with very different emotions. We love Edwards and regret his mistakes; for we see him honest in defence of what he considered truth, and important to the welfare of mankind. We detest Hume, whose excessive vanity led him to support ridiculous paradoxes, and deny truths which, even were they false, the truly benevolent sceptic would not seek to disprove, and thereby destroy the most efficient means of rendering men more noble and happy beings, at least in the present life, although, as he suspects, they might not preserve them from annihilation in the future. A generous man would not wantonly oppress and check the growth of a fine animal, with which the sentient nature gives him a community of sympathy: how detestable the wretch, and how worthy to be held up, by every man who

fears his God and loves his country, as the object of most implacable public execration, who with a cold-hearted and villanous scepticism, and under the mask of a friend of science, would blast the present happiness of nations by corrupting the public morals, and extinguish their hopes for eternity? The candid reader will not, at least, harshly condemn me if I add a prayer; and I do it with the most assured faith, for its object is what the divine veracity has been long pledged to perform-May the mercy of God, ere long, sweep such characters utterly from the earth.

To guard us then against the foolish conclusions and abominable conduct of sceptics, let us describe man as he really is, an agent who, in the exercise of conscience, possesses a self-determining power over his own will; and that as those whom Edwards opposes maintain, the motives, considered as external things, are purely passive, and cannot influence the will of the man till he has exerted his mental activity in perceiving the relations in which they stand to himself. Thus we can urge home moral obligation upon the heart even of a defender of the universe of impressions and ideas; for he cannot deny it, as a matter of consciousness, that he judges some things right and proper and other things wrong, and that his volitions are determined according to these perceptions. The divine law commands no impossibilities. The Scriptures clearly lay it

down, as was seen, that if a man is invincibly ignorant of any duty, he is under no moral obligation, and contracts no guilt by the omission of it. But if he know one thing to be right and another wrong, let him refuse to act upon this perception at his peril. His conscience will, one time or other, rise up in might, and drag him, a convicted and degraded culprit, before the judgment seat of God.

SECTION VIII.

REVIEW OF DR. WHITBY'S DISCOURSE OF THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL of man.

We next proceed to examine the opinions held on the opposite side of this controversy; and it will be found that there is greater difference in the character of the writers than in the opinions which they hold. Edwards, clear and accurate, like a hardy and skilful veteran, calmly secures his ground wherever he advances: Whitby, not less able, but incorrect and impetuous, forces his way through the thickest of the enemy, but is enveloped in smoke and confusion.Edwards is right, so far as he goes, but his view is partial, and is therefore as dangerous as error, in deriving practical conclusions: Whitby is right in his general principle, but overlooks the exceptions which, in some instances, are more numerous than the effects which follow the general law. The practical conclusion drawn from the doctrine of the one, denies moral obligation, and hence implicitly the truth of all religion: the conclusion from that of the

other subverts the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, in which consists all its excellency. Thus the result has been, what has not been unusual among theological controversialists, in their hardy zeal to defend truth, they have cruelly strangled her between them. The correctness of these remarks we shall presently ascertain.

Dr. Whitby, in his Discourse of the Freedom of the Will, attempts to establish his principle of liberty, by general arguments, without entering deeply into the metaphysics of his subject. He derives his evidence from three sources: the testimony of the sacred Scriptures, general reasonings from admitted truths, and the writings of the fathers of the Christian church. It is not the intention to pursue his reasonings through the mass of evidence of this sort which he brings forward, but to take up his principal conclusions, and examine them on the principles of mental philosophy, and ascertain how far they are consistent with the phenomena of the human mind, which, as the work of God, is not, when candidly interrogated, less correct in the statement of facts than his word.

If the object of this discourse be considered, as it certainly seems intended, to prove the reality of that moral freedom which is peculiar to man, the Doctor has completely succeeded in his design, and has done just what we have attempted to do in the Second Section of the present Es