Section 7.

SECTION 7.

Zelotes’ second objection to a reconciliation — That objection is taken from President Edwards’ and Voltaire’s doctrine about necessity — The danger of that doctrine — The truth lies between the extremes of rigid bound willers and rigid free willers — We have liberty, but it is incomplete, and much confined — The doctrines of power, liberty, and necessity, are cleared up by plain descriptions, and important distinctions — The ground of Mr. Edwards’ mistake about necessity is discovered; and his capital objection against free will is answered.

ZELOTES has another specious objection to a reconciliation with Honestus. It runs thus: —

OBJECTION. “Honestus is for free will, and I am against it. How can you expect to reconcile us? Can you find a medium between free will and necessity? Now, that we are not free-willing creatures may be demonstrated from reason and experience:

(1.) From reason. Does not every attentive mind see that a man cannot help following the last dictate of his understanding; that such a dictate is the necessary result of the light in which he sees things; that this light likewise is the necessary result of the circumstances in which he is placed, and of the objects which he is surrounded with; — and, of consequence, that all is necessary; one event being as necessarily linked to, and brought on by another, as the second link of a chain in motion is necessarily connected with, and drawn on by the first link? Thus, for example, the accidental, not to say the providential sight of Bathsheba, necessarily raised unchaste desires in David’s mind: these desires necessarily produced adultery: and adultery, by a chain of necessary consequences, necessarily brought on murder. All these events were decreed, and depended as much upon each other as the loss of a ship depends upon a storm, and a storm upon a strong rare faction or condensation of the air.

(2.) EXPERIENCE shows that we are not at liberty to act otherwise than we do. Did you never hear passionate people complain that they could not moderate their anger? How often have persons in love declared that their affections were irresistibly drawn to, and fixed upon such and such objects? You may as soon bid an impetuous river to stop, as bid a drunkard to be sober, and a thief to be honest, till sovereign, almighty, victorious grace makes them so. f36 ‘The way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps,’ Jeremiah 10:23.”

ANSWER. I grant that “the way of man is not in himself” to make his escape, when the hour of vengeance is come, and when God surrounds him with his judgments: and that this was Jeremiah’s meaning, in the verse which you quote to rob man of his moral agency, is evident from the words that immediately precede: “The pastors are become brutish: therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered; behold the noise of the bruit [the hour of vengeance] is come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons.” Then come the misapplied words, “O Lord, I know that the way of a man [to make his escape] is not in himself, &c. Correct me, but with judgment, &c, lest thou bring me to nothing:” see verses 21, 22, 24. With respect to David, he had probably resisted as strong temptations to impurity, as that by which he fell; and he might, no doubt, have stood, if he had not been wanting to himself, both before, and at the time of his temptation. With regard to what you say about a storm; two ships of equal strength may be tossed by the same tempest, and without necessity one of them may be lost by the negligence, and the other saved by the skill of the pilot. And if we may believe St. Paul, the lives which God had given him would have been lost, if the sailor had not stayed in the ship to manage her to the last, Acts 27:31, 34. You appeal to experience: but it is as much against you as against Honestus. Experience shows that we have liberty, and thus experience is against you. Again: experience convinces us that our liberty has many bounds, and thus experience is against Honestus. As to your scheme of the concatenation of forcible circumstances and events, it bears hard upon all the Divine perfections. God is too wise, too good, and holy, to give us a conscience and a law which forbids us to sin; and to place us in the midst of such forcible circumstances as lay a majority of mankind under an absolute necessity of sinning to the last, and being damned for ever. We are therefore endued with a degree of free will. Through Him who “tasteth death for every man,” and through “the free gift which came upon all men,” we may “choose life” in the day of initial salvation; we may, by grace, (by “the saving grace which has appeared to all men,”) pursue the things that make for our peace; or we may, by nature, (by our own natural powers,) follow after the things that make for our misery, just as we have a mind. “We cannot do all,” says one, “therefore we can do nothing.” “We can do something,” says another, “therefore we can do al1.” Both consequences are equally false. The truth stands between two extremes. Beside: —

The doctrine of bound will draws after it a variety of bad consequences. It is subversive of the moral difference which subsists between virtue and vice. It takes away all the demerit of unbelief. It leaves no room for the rewardableness of works. It strikes at the propriety of a day of judgment. It represents truth and error like two almighty charms, which irresistibly work upon the elect and the reprobates, to execute God’s absolute decrees about our good or bad works, our finished salvation or finished damnation. In a word, it fastens upon us the grossest errors of Pharisaic fatalists, and the wildest delusions of Antinomian gospellers.

Having thus given a general answer to the objection proposed, I remind the reader that Mr. Edwards, president of New Jersey college, is exactly of Zelotes’ sentiments with respect to necessity or bound will. They agree to maintain that necessary circumstances necessarily turn the scale of our judgment, that our judgment necessarily turns the scale of our will, and that the freedom of our will consists merely in choosing with willingness what we choose by necessity. Mr. Voltaire also at the head of the fatalists abroad, and one of my opponents at the head of the Calvinists in England, give us, after Mr. Edwards, this false idea of liberty.

To show their mistake, I need only to produce the words of Mr. Locke: — “Liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will, &c. So a man striking himself, or his friend, by a convulsive motion of his arm, which it is not in his power by volition, or the direction of his mind, to stop or forbear; nobody thinks he has liberty in this; every one pities him, as acting by necessity and constraint. Again: there may be thought, there may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty. Suppose a man be carried, while fast asleep, into a room, where is a person he longs to see, and there be locked fast in beyond his power to get out; he awakes, and is glad to see himself in so desirable company, in which he stays so willingly; that is, he prefers his staying to going away. Is not this stay voluntary? I think nobody will doubt it; and yet being locked fast in, he is not at liberty to stay, he has not freedom to be gone. So that liberty is not an idea belonging to volition, or preferring; but to the person having the power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the mind shall choose or direct.” (Essay on Hum. Und. chap. 21.)

This excellent quotation encourages me to make a fuller inquiry into the mistakes of the rigid Predestinarians and rigid free willers, who equally start from the truth that lies between them both. It is greatly to be wished that the bounds of necessity and liberty were drawn consistently with reason, Scripture, and experience. I shall attempt to do it: and if I am so happy as to succeed, I shall reach the centre of the difficulty, find point out the very spring of “the waters of strife:” Honestus will be convinced that he has too high thoughts of our liberty: Zelotes will see that his views of it are too much contracted: and Candidus will learn to avoid their contrary mistakes. I begin by a definition of necessity and of liberty. Moral philosophers observe that necessity is that constraint upon, or confinement of the soul, whereby we cannot do a thing otherwise than we do it. Hence it appears that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as moral necessity. For could we be constrained to do unavoidable good or evil, that good were not moral good, that evil were not moral evil. Could we be necessarily confined in the channel of virtue or of vice, as a river is confined in its bed, without any power to retard or accelerate our virtuous or vicious motions as we see fit; our tempers and actions would lose their morality and their immorality. To speak with propriety, necessity has no place but in the natural world. Strictly speaking, it is excluded from the moral world; for what we may and must regulate or alter, cannot possibly be necessary or unalterable. Nevertheless I shall, by and by, venture upon the improper expression of moral necessity, to convey the idea of a strong, moral propensity or habit, and to point out with greater ease Mr. Edwards’ mistake.

This ingenious author asserts that, by the law of our nature, we choose what we suppose to be, upon the whole, most eligible. I grant it is so in most cases, nevertheless, I deny necessity, because there is no necessity imposed upon us to suppose that, upon the whole, a thing is most eligible which at first sight appears to be so to the eye of prejudice or passion; our liberty being chiefly a limited power to attend either to the dictates of reason and conscience, or to those of prejudice and passion; — to follow either the motions of the tempter or those of Divine grace. I say a limited power, because our power is incomplete, as will appear by considering the particulars of which our liberty does and does not consist. And,

1. It does not consist, in general, f37 in a power to choose evil and misery as such. Seldom do men, who are yet in a state of probation; men, who are not degenerated into mere fiends, choose evil only as evil. When we pursue some evil, it is then generally under the appearance of some good; or, as leading to some good, which will sooner or later make us ample amends for the present evil. For God having made us for the supreme good, which is the knowledge and enjoyment of himself, he has placed in our souls an unquenchable thirst after happiness, that we may ardently seek him, the fountain of true happiness. It can hardly be said, therefore, that probationers are at liberty with respect to the capital inquiry, “Who will show us any good?” We naturally desire good, just as a hungry man desires food: although he may say, “I do not choose to be hungry,” yet he is so, whether he will or not.

2. But although a hungry man is necessarily hungry, yet he does not eat necessarily; for he may fast, if he please: and when he chooses to eat, he may prefer bad to wholesome food; he may take more or less of either; he may take it now, or by and by; with deliberation, or with greediness, as he pleases. Apply this observation to our necessary hunger or thirst after happiness. All probationers necessarily ask, “Who will show us any good?” But although they necessarily aim at happiness, yet they are not necessitated to aim at it in this or that way; although they cannot but choose that end, yet they are not irresistibly obliged to choose any one particular mean to attain it.

Here then room is left for free will or liberty. We may choose to go to happiness, our mark, by saying, “What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Wherewith shall we be clothed?” Who will give us corn and wine, silver and gold, worldly honours and sensual gratifications? or we may say, Who will give us pardon and peace, grace and glory? “Lord! lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us!” In a word, though we are not properly at liberty, whether we will choose happiness in general, that choice being morally necessary to us; yet in the day of initial salvation we may choose to seek happiness in ourselves, in our fellow creatures, or in our Creator; we may choose a way that will lead us to imaginary and fading bliss, or to real and eternal happiness: or, to speak as the oracles of God, we may choose death or life.

This being premised, I observe that our liberty consists, 1. In our being under no natural necessity with regard to our choice of the means by which we pursue happiness; and, of consequence, with regard to our schemes and actions. I repeat it; by natural necessity I mean an absolute want of power to do the reverse of what is done. Thus by natural necessity an ounce is outweighed by a pound; it can no ways help it: and a man, whose eyes are quite put out, cannot absolutely see the light, should he desire and endeavour it ever so much. Hence it appears, that when Peter denied his Master, he was under no natural necessity so to do; for he might have confessed him if he had pleased. When the martyrs confessed Christ, they might have denied him with oaths, if they had been so minded: and when David went to Uriah’s bed, he might have gone to his own. There was no shadow of natural necessity in the case. We may then, or we may not admit the truth or the lie, that is laid before us as a principle of action. Thus the eunuch, without necessity, admitted the truth delivered to him by Philip; and Eve, without necessity, entertained the lie which was told her by the serpent.

2. Our liberty consists in a power carefully to consider whether what is presented to us as a principle of action is a truth or a lie; lest we should judge according to deceitful appearances. Our blessed Lord, by steadily using this power, steadily baffled the tempter: and Adam, by not making a proper use of it, was shamefully overcome.

3. It consists in a power, natural to all moral agents, to do acts of sin if they please, and in a supernatural or gracious power (bestowed for Christ’s sake upon fallen man) to forbear, with some degree of ease, doing sinful acts, f38 at least when we have not yet fully thrown ourselves down the declivity of temptation and passion; and when we have not yet contracted such strong habits as make virtue or vice morally necessary to us.

4. It consists in a gracious power to make diligent inquiry, and to apply in doubtful cases to “the Father of lights” for wisdom, before we practically decide that such a doctrine is true, or that such an action is right. Had Eve and David used that power, the one would not have been deceived by a flattering serpent; nor the other by an impure desire.

But,

5. The highest degree of our liberty consists in a power to suspend a course of life entered upon; to re-examine our principle, and to admit a new one, if it appear more suitable; especially when we are particularly assisted by Divine grace, or strongly assaulted by temptations adapted to our weakness. Thus, by their gracious free agency, Manasses and the prodigal son suspended their bad course of life, weighed the case a second time for the better, admitted the truth which they once rejected, and from that new principle wrought righteousness: while, on the other hand, Solomon, Judas, and Demas, by their natural free agency suspended their good course of life, weighed the case a second time for the worse, admitted the lie which they once detested, and from that new principle wrought damnable iniquity. Is not this account of our real, though limited liberty, more agreeable to Scripture, reason, conscience, and experience, than the necessity maintained by Calvinistic bound willers and Deistical fatalists? I have already observed, (Equal Check, vol. i, p. 444,) that the seemingly contrary systems of those gentlemen, like the two opposite half diameters of a circle, meet in natural necessity, a central point which is common to both; Mr. Voltaire, who is the apostle of the Deistical world, and Mr. Edwards, who is the oracle of Calvinistic metaphysicians, exactly agreeing to represent man as a mere, though willing slave, to the circumstances in which he finds himself, and to lead him from head to foot, and from the cradle to the grave, with the chains of absolute necessity, one link of which he can no more break, than he can make a world. Their error, if I mistake not, springs chiefly from their overlooking the important difference there is between natural necessity, and what the barrenness of language obliges me to call moral necessity. Hence it is that they perpetually confound real liberty, which is always of an active nature, with that kind of necessity in disguise, which I beg leave to call passive liberty. Clear definitions, illustrated by plain examples, will make this intelligible; will unravel the mystery of fatalism, and rescue the capital doctrine of liberty from its confinement in mystical Babel.

1. A thing is done by natural necessity, When it unavoidably takes place, according to the fixed laws of nature. Thus, by natural necessity, a serpent begets a serpent, and not a dove; a fallen man begets a fallen child, and not an angel; a deaf man cannot hear, and a cripple cannot be a swift racer.

2. A thing is done by moral necessity, (if I may use that improper expression,) when it is done by a free agent with a peculiar degree of readiness, resolution, and determination; from strong motives, powerful arguments, confirmed habits; and when it might nevertheless be done just the reverse, if the free agent pleased. Thus, by a low degree of moral necessity, chaste, conscientious Joseph struggled out of the arms of his master’s wife, and cried out, “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” And, by a high degree of it, Satan hates holiness, God abhors sin, and Christ refused to fall down and worship the devil.

3. I have observed in the Second Check that Mr. Edwards’ celebrated Treatise upon Free Will turns in a great degree upon a comparison between balances and the will. To show more clearly the flaw of his performance, I beg leave to venture upon the improper, and, in one sense, contradictory expression of “passive liberty.” By passive liberty (which might also be called mechanical liberty) I mean the readiness with which just scales turn upon the least weight thrown into either of them. Now it is certain that this liberty (so called) is mere necessity; for two even scales necessarily balance each other, and the heavier scale necessarily outweighs the lighter. According to the fixed laws of nature it cannot be otherwise. It is evident, therefore, that when Mr. Edwards avails himself of such popular, improper expressions as these, “Good scales are free to turn either way; just balances are at liberty to rise or fall by the least weight,” he absurdly imposes upon the moral world a mechanical freedom or liberty, which is mere necessity. His mistake is set in a still clearer light by the following definition: —

4. Active liberty is that of living creatures endued with a degree of power to use their faculties in various manners; their prerogative is to have in general the weight that turns them, in a great degree, at their own disposal. Experience confirms this observation: how many stubborn beasts, for example, have died under the repeated strokes of their drivers, rather than move at their command! And how many thousand Jews chose to be destroyed rather than to be saved by Him who said, “How often would I have gathered you, &c, and ye would not!” Hence it appears that active liberty subdivides itself into brutal liberty, and rational or moral liberty.

5. Brutal liberty belongs to beasts, and rational or moral liberty belongs to men, angels, and God. By brutal liberty understand the power that beasts have to use their animal powers various ways, according to their instinct and at their pleasure. By rational liberty understand the power that God, angels, and men have to use their Divine, angelic, or human powers in various manners, according to their wisdom, and at their pleasure. Thus, while an oak is tied fast by the root to the spot where it feeds and grows, a horse carries his own root along with him, ranging without necessity, and feeding as he pleases, all over his pasture. While a horse is thus employed, a man may either make a saddle for his back, a spur for his side, a collar for his shoulder, a stable for his conveniency, or a carriage for him to draw: or, leaving these mechanical businesses to others, he may think of the scourge that tore his Saviour’s back; call to mind the spear that pierced his side; reflect upon the cross that galled his shoulder; the stable where he was born; and the bright carriage in which he went to heaven: or he may, by degrees, so inure himself to infidelity as to call the Gospel a fable, and Christ an impostor.

According to these definitions it appears that our sphere of liberty increases with our powers. The more powers animals have, and the more ways they can use those powers, the more brutal liberty they have also: thus those creatures that can, when they please, walk upon the earth, fly through the air, or swim in the water, as some sorts of fowls, have a more extensive liberty than a worm, which has the freedom of one of those elements only, and that too in a very imperfect degree.

As by the help of a good horse a rider increases his power to move swiftly, and to go far: so by the help of science and application a philosopher can penetrate into the secrets of nature, and an Archytas or a Newton can Aerias tentare domos, animoque rotundum

Transmigrare polum. f39

Such geniuses have undoubtedly more liberty of thought than those sots, whose minds are fettered by ignorance and excess, and whose imagination can just make shift to flutter from the tavern to the play house and back again. By a parity of reason, they who enjoy “the glorious liberty of the children of God,” who can in a moment collect their thoughts, fix them upon the noblest objects, and raise them not only to the stars, like Archytas, but to the throne of God, like St. Paul; — they who can “become all things to all men, be content” in every station, and even “sing at midnight” in a dungeon, regardless of their empty stomachs, their scourged backs, and their “feet made fast in the stocks;” they who can command their passions and appetites, who “are free from sin,” and find “God’s service perfect freedom;” these happy people, I say, enjoy far more liberty of heart, than the brutish men who are so enslaved to their appetites and passions, that they have just liberty enough left them, not to ravish the women they set their eyes upon, and not to murder the men they are angry with. But although the liberty of God’s children is “glorious” now, it will be far more glorious when their regenerate souls shall be matched in the great day with bodies blooming as youth, beautiful as angels, radiant as the sun, powerful as lightning, immortal as God, and capable of keeping pace with the Lamb, when he shall lead them to new fountains of bliss, and run with them the endless round of celestial delights.

To return: innumerable are the degrees of liberty peculiar to various orders of creatures; but no animals are accountable to their owners for the use of their powers, but they which have a peculiar degree of knowledge. Nor are they accountable, but in proportion to the degree of their knowledge and liberty. Your horse, for instance, has power to walk, trot, and gallop: you want him to do it alternately; and, if he does not obey you, when you have intimated your will to him in a manner suitable to his capacity, you may, without folly and cruelty, spur or whip him into a reasonable use of his liberty and powers; for inferior creatures are in subjection to their possessors in the Lord. But if his feet were tied, or his legs broken, and you spurred him to make him gallop; or if you whipped a hen to make her swim, or an ox to make him fly, you would exercise a foolish and tyrannical dominion over them. This cruel absurdity, however, or one tantamount, is charged upon Christ by those who pretend to “exalt him” most. They thus dishonour him, as often as they insinuate that the children of men have no more power to believe, than hens to swim, or oxen to fly; and that the Father of mercies will damn a majority of them, for not using a power which he determined they should never have.

Some people assert that man has a little liberty in natural, but none in spiritual things. I dissent from them for the following reasons:

(1.) All men (monsters not excepted) having a degree of the human form, they probably have also a degree of human capacity, a measure of those mental powers by which we receive the knowledge of God; a knowledge this, which no horse can have, and which is certainly of a spiritual nature.

(2.) The same apostle, who informs us that “the natural man” (so called) the man who quenches the Spirit of grace under his dispensations, “cannot know the things of the Spirit of God, because they are discerned” only by the light of the Spirit, which he quenches or resists, — the same apostle, I say, declares, that “what may be known of God, is manifest in them, [the most abandoned heathens;] for God hath showed it unto them; so that they are without excuse; because when they knew God, [in some degree,] they glorified him not as God,” according to the degree of that knowledge; but became brutish, besotted persons; or, to speak St. Paul’s language, “they became vain in their imaginations; they became fools; their foolish heart was darkened; wherefore God gave them up to a reprobate mind,” and they were left in the deplorable condition of the Christian apostates described by St. Jude, “sensual, having not the Spirit:” in a word, they became yucikoi, f40 mere animal men, the full reverse of spiritual men, 1 Corinthians 2:14. Far from being the wiser for “the light that [graciously] enlightens every man that cometh into the world,” they became “inexcusable, by changing the truth of God into a lie,” and turning their light to darkness, through the wrong use which they made of their liberty.

When the advocates for necessity deny man the talent of spiritual liberty, which Divine wisdom and grace have bestowed upon him, they fondly exculpate themselves, and rashly charge God with Calvinistic reprobation. For who can think that an oyster is culpable for not flying as an eagle? And who can help shuddering at the cruelty of a tyrant, who, to show his sovereignty, bids all the idiots in his kingdom solve Euclid’s problems, if they will not be cast into a fiery furnace? Nor will it avail to say, as Elisha Coles and his admirers do, that though man has lost his power to obey, God has not lost his power to command upon pain of eternal death: for this is pouring poison into the wound, which the doctrine of natural necessity gives to the Divine attributes. Your slave runs a sportive race, falls, dislocates both his arms, and by that accident loses his power or liberty to serve you: in such circumstances you may indeed find fault with him, for bringing this misfortune upon himself; but you show a great degree of folly and injustice if you blame him for not digging with his arms out of joint; and when you refuse him a surgeon, and insist upon his thrashing, unless he choose doubly to feel the weight of your vindictive hand, you betray an uncommon want of good nature. But in how much more unfavourable a light would your conduct appear if his misfortune had been entailed upon him by one of his ancestors, who lost a race near six thousand years ago and if you had given him a bond stamped with your own blood, to assure him that “your ways are equals” and that you are “not an austere man,” that “your mercy is over all your household,” and that punishing is your “strange work?”

God is not such a master as the Calvinian doctrines of grace make him. For Christ’s sake he is always well pleased with the right use we make of our present degree of liberty, be that degree ever so little. For unconverted sinners themselves have some liberty. Fast tied and bound as they are with the chain of their sins, like chained dogs, they may move a little. If they have a mind they may, to a certain degree, come out of Satan’s kennel. When they are pinched with hunger or trouble, like the prodigal son, they may go a little way toward the bread and the cordial that came down from heaven; and when their chains gall their minds, they may give the Father of mercies to understand that they want “the pitifulness of his great mercy to loose them.” Happy the souls who thus meet God with their little degree of power! Thrice happy they who go to him so far as their chain allows, and then groan with David, “My belly cleaveth to the dust. Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name!” When this is the case, “the captive exile hasteneth that he may be loosed;” they that are thus “faithful over a few things,” will soon be “set over many things;” they will soon experience an enlargement, and say with the psalmist, “Thou hast enlarged my steps under me:” my liberty is increased. “I will run the way of thy commandments.”

The defenders of necessity are chiefly led into their error by considering the imperfection of our liberty, and the narrow limits of our powers: but they reason inconclusively who say,” Our liberty is imperfect: therefore we have none. ‘Without Christ we can do nothing:’ therefore we have absolutely no power to do any thing.” As some observations upon this part of my subject may reconcile the judicious and candid on both sides of the question, I venture upon making the following remarks: —

All power, and therefore all liberty, has its bounds. The king of England can make war or peace when he pleases, and with whom he pleases; and yet he cannot lay the most trifling tax without his parliament. The power of Satan is circumscribed by God’s power. God’s own power is circumscribed by his other perfections: he cannot sin, because he is holy; he cannot cause two and two to make six, because he is true; nor can he create and annihilate a thing in the same instant, because he is wise. Our Lord’s power is circumscribed also: “Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do.” If a degree of confinement is consistent with the liberty of omnipotence itself, how much more can a degree of restraint be consistent with our natural, civil, moral, and spiritual liberty! Take an instance of it:

(1.) With regard to natural liberty. Although you cannot fly, you may walk, but not upon the sea, as Peter did; nor thirty miles at once, as some people do; nor one mile when you are quite spent; nor five yards when you have a broken leg.

(2.) With respect to civil liberty. You are a free-born Englishman: nevertheless, you are not free from taxes; and probably you have not the freedom of two cities in all the kingdom. On the other hand, St. Paul is Nero’s “prisoner, bound with a chain,” and yet he swims to shore, he gathers sticks, makes a fire, and preaches “two years in his own hired house, nobody forbidding him.”

(3.) With respect to moral liberty. When Nabal is in company with his fellow sots, has good wine before him, and is already heated by drinking, he cannot refrain himself, he must get drunk: but might he not have done violence to his inclination before his blood was inflamed? Conscious of his weakness, might he not at least have avoided the dangerous company he is in, and the sight of the sparkling liquor, in which all his good resolutions are drowned?

Take one instance more of the imperfect liberty I plead for. Is not what I have said of civil, applicable to devotional liberty? You have not the power to LOVE God with all your heart; but may you not FEAR him a little? You cannot wrap yourself for one hour in the sublime contemplation of his glory; but may you not meditate for two minutes on death and judgment? St. Paul’s burning zeal is far above your sphere; but is not the timorous inquisitiveness of Nicodemus within your reach? You cannot attain the elevations of him who has ten talents of piety; but may you not so use your one talent of consideration, as to gain two, four, eight, and so on, till the unsearchable riches of Christ are all yours? And, if I may allude to the emblematic pictures of the four evangelists, may you not ruminate upon earth with the ox of St. Luke, till you can look up to heaven with St. Matthew’s human face, fight against sin, with the courage of St. Mark’s lion, and soar up toward the Sun of righteousness, with the strong wings of St. John’s eagle? Did not our Lord expect as much from the Pharisees, when he said to them, “Ye hypocrites, how is it that you do not discern this [accepted] time? Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?” Alas! how frequently do we complain of the want of power, when we have ten times more than we make use of! How many slothfully bury their talent, and peevishly charge God with giving them none! And how common is it to hear people, who are sincerely invited to the Gospel feast, say, “I cannot come,” who might roundly say, if they had Thomas’ honesty, “I will not believe!” The former of these pleas is indeed more decent than the latter: but is it not shamefully evasive? And does it not amount to the following excuse: — “I cannot come without taking up my cross; and as I will not do that, my coming is morally impossible?” A lame excuse this, which will pull down aggravated vengeance upon those who, by making it, trifle with truth, and their own souls, and with God himself. From the whole I conclude that our liberty, or free agency, consists in a limited ability to use our bodily and spiritual powers right or wrong at our option; and that to deny mankind such an ability is as absurd as to say that a man cannot work, or beg, or steal, as he pleases; bend the knee to God, or to Ashtaroth; go to the house of prayer, or to the play house; turn a careless, or an attentive ear to a Divine message; disbelieve, or give credit to an awful report; slight, or consider a matter of fact; and act in a reasonable, or unreasonable manner, at his option.

Is not this doctrine agreeable to the dictates of conscience, as well as to plain passages of Scripture? And when we maintain that, as often as our free will inclines to vital godliness since the fall, it is touched, though not necessarily impelled by free grace: when we assert, in the words of our tenth article, that “we have no power to do good works acceptable to God, without the grace of God, by Christ preventing [not forcing] us that we may have a GOOD will;” do we not sufficiently secure the honour of free grace? Say we not as much as David does in this passage: “Thy people [obedient believers] shall [or will] be willing [to execute thy judgments upon f41 thine enemies] in the day of thy power,” i.e. in the day of thy powerful wrath? Or, as we have it in the Common Prayer, “In the day of thy power shall the people offer free will [not bound will] offerings?” Do we not grant all that St. Paul affirms, when he says to the Philippians, “Work out your own salvation with fear, &c, for it is God that worketh in you both to WILL and to DO?” i.e. God of his own good pleasure gives you a gracious talent of will and power: bury it not: use it “with fear:” lay it out “with trembling;” lest God take it from you, and “give you up to a reprobate mind.” And is it not evident that these two passages, on which the rigid bound willers chiefly rest their mistake, are perfectly agreeable to the doctrine of the moderate free willers which runs through all the Scriptures, as the preceding pages demonstrate?

THIRD OBJECTION OF ZELOTES, Rational and Scriptural as the doctrine of liberty is, President Edwards will root it up: and to succeed in his attempt, he fetches ingenious arguments from heaven and hell.

Superos, Acheronta movendo, he musters up all the subtleties of logic and metaphysics, with all the refinements of Calvinism, to defend his favourite doctrine of necessity. To the best of my remembrance, a considerable part of his book may be summed up in the following paragraph, which contains the most ingenious objections of the Calvinists: —

The Arminians say that if we act necessarily we are neither punishable nor rewardable; because we are neither worthy of blame, nor of praise. But the devil, who is punished, and who therefore is blameworthy, is necessarily wicked; he has no liberty to be good. And God, who deserves ten thousand times more praises than we can give, is necessarily good; he has no liberty to be wicked. Hence it appears that the reprobates may be necessarily wicked like the devil, and yet may be justly punishable like him; and that the elect may be necessarily good like God and his angels, and yet that they may be, in their degree, praiseworthy like God, and rewardable like his angels. Therefore, the doctrine of the Calvinists is rational, as only supposing what is undeniable, namely, that necessary sins may justly be punished in the reprobates; and that necessary obedience may wisely be rewarded in the elect. And, on the other hand, the doctrine of the Arminians, who make so much ado about reason and piety, is both absurd and impious: absurd, as it supposes that the devil is not worthy of blame, because he sins necessarily; and impious, as it insinuates that God does not deserve praise, because his goodness is necessary.

This argument is plausible, and an answer to it shall conclude this dissertation. God is enthroned in goodness far above the region of evil; neither “can he be tempted of evil;” the excellence, unchangeableness, and self sufficiency of his nature being every way infinite. He does not then exercise his liberty in choosing moral good or evil; but,

(1.) In choosing the various manners of enjoying himself according to all the combinations that may result from his unity in trinity, and from his trinity in unity.

(2.) In regulating the infinite variety of his external productions.

(3.) In appointing the boundless diversity of rewards and punishments, with which he crowns the obedience or disobedience of his rational creatures.

(4.) In finding out different methods of overruling the free agency of men and angels; and of suspending the laws by which he governs the material world. And,

(5.) In stamping different classes of beings with different signatures of his eternal power and Godhead; and in indulging, with multifarious discoveries of himself, the innumerable inhabitants of the worlds which he has created, or may yet condescend to create.

On the other hand, the devil is sunk far below the region of virtue and bliss; neither can he be tempted of good, on account of his consummate wickedness, and fixed aversion to all holiness. His liberty of choice is not then exercised about moral good and evil; but about various ways of doing mischief, procuring himself some ease, and trying to avoid the natural evils which he feels or fears.

This is not the case of man, who inhabits, if I may use the expression, a middle region between heaven and hell; a region where light and darkness, virtue and vice, good and evil, blessing and cursing, are yet before him, and where he is in a state of probation, that he may be rewarded with heaven, or punished with hell, “according to his good or bad works.” It is then as absurd in President Edwards to confound our liberty with that of God and of the devil, as it would be in a geographer to confound the equinoctial line with the two poles.

A comparison may illustrate this conclusion. As the mechanical liberty of a pair of just scales consists in a power gradually to ascend as high, or to descend as low as the play of the beam permits; so the moral liberty of rationals in a state of probation, consists in a gracious power gradually to ascend in goodness quite to their zenith in heaven, and in a natural power to descend in wickedness quite to their nadir in hell; so immensely great is the play of the moral scales! God’s will, by the perfection of his nature, being immovably fixed in the height of all goodness, cannot stoop to an inferior good, much less to evil: and the devil, being sunk in the depth of all wickedness, and daily confirming himself in his iniquity, can no more rise in pursuit of goodness. Thus the presence of all wickedness keeps the scale of the prince of darkness fixedly sunk to the nethermost hell; while the absence of all unrighteousness keeps the scale of the Father of lights fixedly raised to the highest pitch of heavenly excellence. God is then quite above, and Satan quite below a state of probation. The one is good, and the other evil, in the highest degree of moral necessity. Not so man, who hovers yet between the world of light and the world of darkness — man, who has life and death, salvation and damnation placed within his reach, and who is called to “stretch forth his hand” to that which he will have, that “the reward of his hands may be given him.”

Nor does it follow from this doctrine that God’s goodness is not praiseworthy, and that Satan’s wickedness is not worthy of blame: for although God is fixedly good, and Satan fixedly wicked, yet the goodness of God, and the wickedness of the devil are still of a moral nature; and therefore commendable or discommendable. I mean,

(1.) That God’s goodness consists in the perfect rectitude of his eternal will, and not in a want of power to do an act of injustice. And,

(2.) That the devil’s wickedness consists in the complete perverseness of his obstinate will, and not in a complete want of power to do what is right. Examples will explain this: —

A rock cannot do an act of justice or an act of injustice, because reason and free agency do not belong to a stone; therefore, the praise of justice and the dispraise of injustice; can never be wisely bestowed upon a rock. If a rock fall upon the man who is going to murder you, and crushes him to death, you cannot seriously return it thanks; because it fell without any good intention toward you; nor could it possibly help falling just then. Not so the “Rock of ages,” the parent of rationals and free agents: he does justice with the highest certainty, and yet with the highest liberty: I say with the highest liberty; because, if he would, he COULD, with the greatest ease, do what to me appears inconsistent with the Scriptural description of his attributes. Could he not, for example, to please Zelotes, make “efficacious decrees” of absolute reprobation, that he might secure the sin and damnation of his unborn creatures? Could he not protest again and again that “he willeth not primarily the death of sinners, but rather that they should turn and live;” when, nevertheless, he has primarily, yea absolutely appointed that most of them shall never turn and live? Could he not openly “command all men every where to repent,” upon pain of eternal death, and yet keep most men every where from repenting, by giving them up to a reprobate mind from their mother’s womb, as he is supposed to have done by the myriads of “poor creatures” for whom, if we believe the advocates of Calvinistic grace, Christ never procured one single grain of penitential grace? Could he not invite “all the ends of the earth to look unto him, and be saved,” and call himself the Saviour of the world, and the Saviour of all men, though especially of them that believe, (of all men by initial salvation; and of them that believe and obey by eternal salvation,) when yet he determined from all eternity that there should be neither Saviour nor initial salvation, but only a damner and finished damnation for the majority of mankind? Could he not have caused his only begotten Son to assume a human form, and to weep, yea, bleed over obstinate sinners; protesting that he “came to save the world, and to gather them as a hen gathers her brood under her wings;” when yet from all eternity he had absolutely ordained f42 their wickedness and damnation to illustrate his glory? In a word, could he not prevaricate from morning till night, like the God extolled by Zelotes, — a God this, who is represented as sending his ministers to preach the Gospel [i.e. to offer “finished and eternal salvation”] to every creature, when his unconditional, efficacious decree of reprobation, and the partiality of Christ’s atonement, leave to multiplied millions no other prospect, but that of finished and eternal damnation? Could not God, I say, do all this if he would? Do not even some good men indirectly represent him as having acted, and as continuing to act in that manner? Now if he does it not, when he has full power to do it; if he is determined not to sully his veracity by such shuffling, his goodness by such barbarity, his justice by such unrighteousness; or, to use Abraham’s bold expression, if “the Judge of all the earth does right,” when, if he would, he could do wrong, to set off his “sovereignty” before a Calvinistic world; is not his goodness praiseworthy? Is it not of the moral kind?

The same might be said of the devil’s wickedness. Though he is confirmed in it, is it not still of a moral nature? Is there any other restraint laid upon his repenting, but that which he first lays himself? Could he not confess his rebellion, and suspend some acts of it, if he would? Could he not of two sins, which he has an opportunity to commit, choose the least, if he were so minded? But, granting that he has lost all moral free agency, granting that he sins necessarily, or that he could do nothing better if he would; I ask, Who brought this absolute necessity of sinning upon him? Was it another devil who rebelled five thousand years before him? You say, No; he brought it upon himself by his wilful, personal, unnecessary sin: and I reply, Then he is blame-worthy for wilfully, personally, and unnecessarily bringing that horrible misfortune upon himself: and therefore his case has nothing to do with the case of the children of men, who have the depravity of another entailed upon them, without any personal choice of their own. Thus, if I mistake not, the doctrine of liberty, like the bespattered swan of the fable, by diving a moment in the limpid streams of truth, emerges fairer, and appears purer, for the aspersions cast upon it by rigid bound willers and fatalists, headed by Mr. Edwards and Mr. Voltaire.