pulse can ever fail to produce a definite effect; or in other words, how any beings can act above the common laws of matter and motion; how they can possibly resist, what they do not resist; or yield when they do not yield. Alas! why was not man a God? Why does he not know all things? Or rather, why, knowing so very little as he does, will he presume that because he cannot see how any being can choose, or refuse, but by absolute compulsion; therefore all beings are acted upon, as the iron is by the hammer, and, by every stroke unavoidably formed according to the received impulse. This appears to the neces sitarian to be more in the line of wisdom, than a system of real liberty and free agency. But to me it utterly excludes all wisdom, and seems to be wholly founded in man's ignorance and folly. Or that because man cannot comprehend God as he is, he will therefore frame one to his own short comprehension and ideas. And in order that he may fathom both his knowledge and his power of exertion, he presumptuously determines his knowledge to be such as excludes contingency, and his exertions only such as are consistent with uncontrolable necessity which to me is little better, if indeed it amounts to any thing materially different from saying at once, "There is no God."

But to come now to this third supposition, that "uncontrolable necessity" exists, because "there is no God;" and therefore no wisdom, order, direction, or interference whatever; but all things must be as they will be, or as they may happen to be. This amounts to what I suppose an atheist means by the word chance. And though I most sincerely think atheism absurd and ridiculous, even in the extreme, yet I do as sincerely think, it is more rational to say, all things are unavoidably as they are, because there is no God, than because there is. For, if all things are unavoidably as they are, I think it renders a God superfluous; and that if we will still say he is, we make him an empty name, an insignificant, seeming agent in the machinery, who, though called by men, in pretended reverence, most high, most mighty, and most wise, has no real wisdom or might at all.

Not so, says the necessitarian: he is perfectly wise and allpowerful. But can he tell us wherein he is, in any degree, either wise or powerful. I must confess the very best account VOL. II.-73

that I can give of his wisdom and power, on this plan, (and I wish to do the necessitarian all justice possible,) is barely this: that, according to this notion, God may, perhaps, be said to be all-wise, to discover how things are, and will unavoidably be, and all powerful to execute whatever was from eternity impossible to be left unexecuted; but has no wisdom whereby he can see, or ever could have seen the possibility of a single event being in any wise different from what it is, must, and will be; and no power either to execute the most trivial thing different from what unavoidable necessity ordains, or to avoid executing it all.

The necessitarian may say, this is the very height, and utmost perfection of wisdom and power. He may insist that God's wisdom is so perfect, that no room was ever left, no possibility ever existed, for any thing to have been seen, or conceived of, better than what actually takes place in all things; and that no possible powers could have achieved any thing better than what is; and that therefore the impossibility, both of conceiving how any event could have been otherwise than it is, and of effecting any thing else, arises from the very wisdom and goodness of the Deity, who must unavoidably in all things, see and prefer the best. Specious subtilty! what makes his omniscience confine him to one only possible and exact line and measure of contemplation, view, or discovery? and his power to one only possible rout or line of operation? As if he was so wise to choose the best, that therefore, there was no choice at all; and that if there had been any choice, or any possible deviation from what is, there must have been contingency, which says the necessitarian, is inconsistent with the Divine prescience! If there was no alternative, there was no choice; and consequently no wisdom in choosing. If there was an alternative, a scope for choice, and wisdom in choosing; then there was both free agency and contingency: that is, things might have come to pass, differently from what they have. "No," says the necessitarian, "wisdom infinite must choose the best ;" and "therefore nothing could have been but just as it is." I own this is a new kind of wisdom to me. I always thought wisdom and choosing the best, implied scope for the exercise of wisdom and choice; and that the exercise of wisdom and choice implied contingency; and I

still think the denial of contingency is a flat denial both of wisdom and of choice.

But what if in all alternatives, where one choice would be better than another, it were granted that "wisdom infinite must choose the best," how knowest thou, O dim-sighted man! how many thousand different processes might have taken place, and all equally good, so that Infinite Wisdom must have pronounced either, as his works of old, "very good?" How many things are there within our own choice, equally good; and for that reason, left by Infinite Wisdom wholly to our own choice, without any manifestation of choice, control, or predilection in the divine mind, towards our choosing one or the other! How many different sorts of food! How many different ways of tilling our lands, breeding our flocks, building our houses, &c. Which God, as far as we know, appears equally pleased with, and has left wholly to our choice! And why may we not consider this liberty, and even this indifferency of some things, as a transcript of the divine mind, or a part of God's image in which we are created; and by which he would teach us, that many systems and things would be possible to, or with him, and yet equally wise and good, the one as the other.?

This, to me, is a much fairer idea of Omniscience, than that which supposes Divine Wisdom tied up to one exact view and operation in all things. I don't mean that all possible or conceivable plans are indifferent and equally good; but I should think it presumption in me, to say there existed no possibility of any variation from the present, consistently with an equal degree of universal good. Indeed, it is very easy for me to conceive a great variety of different productions, operations, and displays, all possible to be brought into act by the Deity, and all equally good, and which yet never may be brought into act, because something else may be equally good, equally possible, and which may, in fact, take place.

The necessitarians themselves not unfrequently mention, that doubtless God had power, and could have done quite otherwise than he has; or that he could have effected things which he has not but when they say this, they seem to me flatly to contradict the whole scheme of that universal "uncontrolable

necessity," which they say influences the "whole series of events." They seem to me at once to grant a real, uncontroled liberty, free agency, and even contingency. And if all this be granted, the whole doctrine of universal, absolute necessity, falls flat to the ground; and the inconsistency of the divine prescience with the contingency of events, is overthrown. For it matters nothing at all in regard to the consistency of prescience with contingency, whether man be a free agent or not; if God himself is a free agent, and can, or ever could do ought but what he has done, and does, then contingency is strictly consistent with infinite wisdom and knowledge. And what wild work the necessitarian makes with many clear scripture testimonies. To instance only two 'at present: Christ represents that he could have prayed, and obtained twelve legions of an gels; which yet, for very good reasons, he did not do. Here was certainly contingency; or else his pretending that he could have obtained those succours, was a grand imposition and deception. Again, he wept over Jerusalem, and intimated hist desires to have gathered her children, to have been as real and universal, as is the hen's desire to gather all her brood; and that he assuredly would have done it, had it not been, that they would not. And their would not, was wholly, (according to the necessitarian scheme,) imposed upon them by God. So that, at this rate, Christ's good-will and wish to gather them, must have been both contrary to God's unalterable will concerning them, and a wish to effect impossibilities! Perhaps it may be said, he only wished it had been possible, and wept over them because it was not possible for them ever to have submitted and been gathered. And where will this centre? Why, that Christ's good-will was directly contrary to divine determination, or to the unavoidable result of God's arrangements of motives, causes, and events. It also should be considered, how Christ came by that good-will, and cordial desire to have ga thered Jerusalem's children. It must be of God, not only as he was the son of God, but by the necessitarian creed, it resulted directly from, or belonged unavoidably to, that concatenation of causes and effects, which is inseparable from the divine will, and influenced by uncontrolable necessity. And if so,

then it was included in, and inseparable from the divine will, both that Jerusalem should kill the prophets, and sin with violence, and a high hand, till her house was left unto her desolate, and peace hid for ever from her eyes; and at the same time that Christ should weep over her, and compassionately wish she had or would have known, in her day of visitation, those very things belonging to her peace, which, according to this doctrine, had ever been hid from their eyes, or only given them to behold, merely to mock them, without any possibility of obtaining them. Whereas Christ laments their not obtaining as a very great and grievous neglect; and saith not, they were always hidden, but "now they are hid from thine eyes." That is, now thou hast so long and wickedly rejected them, and stouted it out against all the calls, invitations, and drawings of that love, which, if submitted to, would as surely have gathered all thy children, as a hen gathers her chickens, all of them, without partiality or dereliction of any, under her hovering wings.

It is a favourite doctrine with the necessitarians, that past, present, and to come, is to God one eternal now. I don't believe they know any thing about it. I don't doubt its seeming to them, a necessary result from certain rational axioms and deductions. And I don't know that it is my business directly to oppose it. For, who can tell whether it is all now to an infinite being, or not; unless he be infinite himself, who presumes to tell? How dost thou know that a very finite, limited, and short-sighted being, can have a very clear idea of past, present, and future; and yet that an infinite, unlimited, all-comprehensive mind cannot? Is not this a little like making his capacity to choose the best, a negation of all choice? Is not his unlimited comprehension, here made an argument against the comprehension of any thing, but as actually now present? Is God now creating Adam and Eve, identically? Is he now about those six days work, which he long ago rested from? Well, he rested from those works, and is he now both doing, and resting from them? He was once doing them; he finished them; and afterwards he rested, or ceased from those particular exertions. And are past, present, and to come, such an absolute now to him, that he is even now