unhinged, disjointed, and reverfed. Endless confufion, wild irregularity, and the moft horrible diforder (to which the materia prima, or chaos, was harmony itfelf), would prevail throughout the natural and the moral world. The property of attraction, by which the earth, and every other mais of matter, cohere refpectively into one body, and become capable of the most rapid motion, without diffipation of their conftituent particles; is one happy effect of phyfical neceffity. Analogous to which, but of incomparably greater importance, is that ineluctabilis ordo rerum, or unalterable contexture of antecedents and confequents, wifely pre-established in the uncicated mind: through the concealed energy of whofe unerring appoint-` ment, every finite intelligent being both is and does, precisely, neither more nor lefs, than the faid unerring wifdom of the Creator defigned, or refolved to permit. And this is what I fhould chufe to call moral neceffity. Suppofing that calculation to be juft, which eftimates the adult inhabitants of our own globe at about one hundred and fifty millions; or let their real amount be what it may; who can poffibly conceive the boundless diftractions and defolations, which muft every where enfue, were fo great a number of fallen beings (like ramping horfes turned loofe into a field) endued with a liberty of felf-determination, and left at large to the exercife of it! For we must take the exercife, and the outward operations confequent upon it, into the account: elle mere felfdetermination would anfwer no other end, than that of tantalizing and tormenting its refpective pofleffors.It is well for us, that, notwithilanding our wild and licentious arrogations of fovereignty, the fame Almighty Parent, who, without afking our confent, whirls our planet and our perfon round the fun, does, with equal certainty, and with as little ceremony, roll us, and the inhabitants of all the F 2 worlds worlds he has created, on the central axis of his own decree. We have been gravely told, that this reprefentation of things is heathenifm. You fhould rather call it, Bibleifm. For, that fate, or neceffity, which the antient vulgar thought proper to worship as a goddefs, was, in their idea, the daughter of a blind, fickle princefs, called, Fortune or Chance: who was, herself, the fabled daughter of a no lefs fickle old gentleman, named Oceanus. To which blind lady, and her unfteady father, the fcheme of Chriftian neceffity is not in the least related, either by confanguinity, or alliance. I muft, however, acquit the wifer of the heathens, from the abfurdity of looking upon chance, or fortune, as a reality. Senfible men knew better, and laughed at the unphilofophical chimera. Nor is the antiquity, of the word itfelf, extremely high. It is acknowledged, on all hands, that Tug (from whence the Romans took their fortuna) was a term, invented long after the times of Hefiod and of Homer (in whofe writings it no where occurs); and was fpawned by the atheiftical imagination of fubfequent poets: from whom (I think) Ancus Martius adopted it, and by building a temple to its honour, introduced it, as a deity, among the Romans. It ill becomes the Arminians to talk of heathenifm. Let them draw a folid line, if they can, between fortune, and contingency. Let them fhew us, how the refult of felf-determination differs from chance. Let them reconcile their imaginary auor, with the neceffary dependency of created beings, and with the never-ceafing agency of an univerfally particular providence. * Mr. Pope afks: When the loofe mountain trembles from on high,, I anfwer, Yes. Either gravitation fhall ceafe, while I go by, er I fall, in fome way or other, be fecured from fuffering by its effect will then abI will even ac providence. When they have wrought thefe, and a few other fimilar impoffibilities, I folve their scheme from heathenifm. quit it of atheifm. Birth and death are the æra and the period, whofe interval conftitutes the thread of man's vifible exiftence on earth. Let us examine, whether thofe important extremes be, or be not, unalterably fixed by the neceffitating providence of God. If it appear, that they are; we may the more eafily believe, that all the intercurrent events are under the controul and,direction of the fame infallible hand. I have heard it affirmed, that Defcartes, the French philofopher, was fo confiftent a free-willer, as to have believed, that death itself is abfolutely fubject to human felf-determination: that he confequently imagined, he had it in his power to protract his own age to any extent he pleafed, or to cut it precifely as fhort as he himself chofe: and would, very liberally, call any of his departed friends, who died with reluctance, fools; for confenting to a change they did not wish to experience. The antient Romans, notwithstanding the adulterations, with which the doctrine of free-will (and its natural attendant, fcepticifm) debased and corrupted their theology, were yet, in general, fo decent, as to acknowledge, that death lay at the difpofal of a Deity, lefs capricious than fortune, and more powerful than any created will. Hence, their occafional reciprocation of mors and fatum. To intimate, that men cannot die, until God pronounces their doom: and that when he fatus eft, or iffues the word of fummons, the earthly vehicle can detain its guest no longer. effect; unless the will of God, to which all fecond caufes are abfolutely fubordinate, commiflion the "loofe mountain" to do me an injury. I am of the great Mr. Charnock's mind, that "There is understanding, in every motion: and an eye, in the very wheel that goes over us and crushes us.” (Charnock on the Attributes, P. 419.) F 3 Poor Poor Descartes, with all his dreams of freewill, found himfelf obliged to die, at the age of fifty-four! I take the ratio formalis, or precife nature, of death, to be neither more nor lefs than the effect of feparation. The feparation of fpirit from matter is the immediate caufe, and feems to exhauft the idea, of animal death. Now, only the fame power, which at firft joined, can afterwards fever, the two principles. Let the permitted means of diffolving the union be what they may, the diffolution itfelf is an act of God. ·· Whoever confiders the relative alterations, the domeftic revolutions, the circulation of property, and a multitude of other negative and pofitive confequences, which, either directly or remotely, follow on the deccafe of the meaneft human individual, must foon perceive, that, was not the fceptre of death fwayed by the determinations of Infinite Widom, fuch partial inconveniences muft enfue, as would, in their complicated amount, materially affect, if not entirely reverfe, the whole fyftem of fublunary events. Some people (for inftance) would live too long. Others would die too foon. Some would leave their affigned work, unfinished: from whence the Deity would be difappointed of his views, and furprised with a chafm in his adminiftration of government. Others would furvive to do more than their allotted bufinefs. From whence, the divine plan would be difconcerted; the well-compacted web become loofe, broken, and entangled; and the adminiftration of Providence degenerate into a jumble of confufion, perplexity, and abfolute anarchy. In one word: God could not fay, to any one of his creatures, what he really does fay to all and each of them; hitherto fhalt thou come, and no farther. Our entrance into life is determined and adjusted, by the fame difpofing hand, which fixes and regulates our departure. Neceflity brings us into the world and neceflity carries us out of it. What man upon upon earth could help his being born at the very time and place he was? or could hinder himfelf from being the son of fuch and fuch parents? or alter a thousand concurring circumftances, by which his fubfequent ftate, and his very caft of mind, were. effectually and neceffarily ftamped? How abfurd, then, muft it be, to imagine that the line, though fpun at firft by the hand of neceffity, is afterwards conducted, and at laft cut off, by the no-fingers of contingency! For it is impoffible to conceive any thing fo abfolutely contingent and uncertain, as the operations, and the exit, of a felf-determining actor. Efpecially, if we fuppofe him (and the Arminian fcheme does fo fuppofe him) to live in a world, where all about him is as precarious as himfelf; and where the great sheet of events, inftead of being let down by the four corners from heaven, is only a fortuitous complication of flimfy threads, much of a which is ftill liable to unravelment, and the whole of which might never have been woven at all. Might Charles the Firft have been the fon of Cromwell's parents? And might Cromwell have been born legal heir to the English crown? Was it poffible for fir Robert Walpole to have been prime minifter to queen Elizabeth; and fir Francis Walfingham to have been fecretary of ftate to king George the fecond? Yet, all thefe impoffibilities, and millions of others, might have happened, upon the Arminian fcheme of chance. A fcheme, which, if admitted, turns every thing upfide down, and knocks every thing out of joint: Diruit, ædificat, mutat quadrata rotundis. Why was friar Bacon, and not fir Ifaac Newton, born in the thirteenth century? Why were not the living ornaments, of the prefent generation, born an hundred, or five hundred, years back? or referved to ages as remotely future? Arminianifm may tell me, that "All this is cafual: and that it was a chance, not only when and where the prefent race |