deed of any authority in matters of faith, any further than we judge it to express the pure doctrines of the word of God. So far as we have been able to examine and understand the Holy Scriptures, it does appear to us, that our Confession contains an accurate summary of the fundamental doctrines of God, our Saviour. We appeal to it merely as an expression of what is, in our judgment, the true sense of the most important passages of the Scriptures. You read the Bible, and have no objection to state in a production of your own, what you think to be the system of doctrine contained in it: we read the Bible too, and in the writings of the divines at Westminster, find a production already extant, that accurately expresses our views on the same subject. How then can you say, unless you design to convict yourself of the same thing, that we set up some other test of orthodox christianity than the Holy Scriptures?

Our author unites with us in reprobating the doctrine, that God is the author of sin; but he accuses Calvinism of maintaining premises from which this horrible tenet is fairly deducible; so that on this point the Hopkinsians may be denominated thorough Calvinists. The premises alluded to are these, that God hath fore-ordained whatsoever comes to pass, by an immutable decree, or predestination; that means as well as ends are fore-ordained; and that unrenewed men have power only to choose evil. The Hopkinsians teach, that God makes men wicked by a direct agency upon their wills and hearts; and the very pivot on which Calvanism turns, says Mr. W. is, "that Deity makes men wicked by an indirect influence, in order, for his own glory, to consign them over to eternal misery." p. 14. "A power necessarily to choose evil, but no power to refuse it, implied no freedom of volition in Adam. The government of his will was not in himself, but in another being, who, as the efficient or first cause, governed Adam, as the agent or secondary cause of sin; so that Hopkinsianism to all intents and purposes results herefrom." p. 11.

To cut this dispute short, we admit at once that man is an agent, for he really acts; that he is a free agent, for he

acts from choice, without any physical, extraneous influence upon the faculty of volition; and that all his mental and other operations are effects of which the agent himself is the efficient cause. All man's actions, of every kind, are as truly his own, as they could be, were there no God that minds the affairs of men. In this the Calvinists will agree, and of course, it cannot be laid to their charge with any propriety, that they make God the author of any one of man's thoughts, feelings, volitions, or actions. It is a man that thinks, and not a God in his form that thinks for him; it is a man that feels, wills, and performs what he wills, and not Jehovah, that in different nominal agents performs every mental and corporal operation, We would as soon say, that God commits adultery, as to say with the Hopkinsians, that he is the efficient cause of a man's looking upon a woman to lust after her; for we can discern no difference of meaning between the two assertions. Mr. W. is correct in distinguishing between the faculty of willing, and the different acts of this faculty, called volitions. It is the man, through this faculty, that determines, chooses, inclines, purposes, refuses, designs, or wills it is the man, who is the agent; it is the man, who is free. Agency, liberty, and necessity, are predicates of the man, who has faculties of agency; and who is, or is not, physically restrained from thinking, feeling, willing, and acting, according to the laws of his nature. On the subject of moral agency Mr. W. has written much which we approve. Men are, he says, "the real efficients of their own volitions and actions." p. 212.

In perfect consistency with these things, we now proceed to declare, that the providence of God extends to all his creatures, and all their actions. Can Mr. W. deny this? If he admits any kind of providence, must he not admit a particular and universal providence? Well, then, we next affirm, that the providence of God is either intentional or not. If it is not intentional, then God extends his providence to all his creatures and all their actions, without intending to do it; which would be inconsistent with all the attributes of a free, wise, moral agent, which undoubtedly belong to him. On the other hand, if his uni

versal providence is intentional, we assert, for it is but expressing the same thing in other words, that God intended to extend his providence to all his creatures and all their actions. If he intended to exercise this providence, it must have been at least some time before it was exercised, for intention implies some determination of the mind relative to something future. And if at any time before the exercise of his providence, he intended to exercise it, he must always have intended to exercise it, for he is immutable in his intentions, "he is of one mind," and none can turn him. Those persons, therefore, who will not withhold the attribute of immutability from the Deity, will admit, that God always intended to extend his universal providence to all the objects of it. This is what we mean when we attribute to Jehovah immutable decrees, or an eternal purpose according to the counsel of his own mind, whereby for his own glory, he has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.

Our Calvinistic views may be stated in another form, which can hardly fail of securing the approbation of reflecting minds. Jehovah is an intelligent, voluntary agent. Before he performs any thing he determined to do it. Before the worlds were made he determined to make them. A divine determination, is a volition of the divine mind; and every volition of God is in consequence of some adequate motive. All his volitions, that is, purposes, intentions, destinations, determinations, or decrees, are perfectly consistent with his inherent attributes; they are all such as he knew it was right, fit, and best they should be. A destination fixed upon before hand, is a predestination. Intelligent, voluntary men, predestinate their own future actions, as far as they have any pretensions to wisdom, prudence, and intelligent conduct; and if we will not conceive of the Deity as possessing attributes inferior to those which he has conferred on his creatures, we must agree that he has predestinated all his own conduct. Other divine predestination than this we cannot ask any man to admit ; nor can we conceive that any person of common sense, not an avowed atheist, can deny that God has predestinated every one of his own

actions. If he has not, he must perform some things which he once did not intend to; and if Mr. W. can admit a being, that acts unintentionally, that is mutable, forming purposes and determinations which once did not exist in his own all seeing mind, to be God, we cannot. Such a being is not our Jehovah.

That the Deity fore-knows all things, is admitted by our opponents. If they connect with the idea of foreknowledge this divine predestination of all that God will ever do, they will soon learn how God fore-ordains all future events: for he must know what will result from his own actions; and knowing all the consequences of his own actions, by performing them, sets in order before each event the train from which it will result. If the event is a particular, voluntary, moral action of a man, the fore-ordination of that event, implies the predestinated creation of the man, with all the faculties of a moral agent, and the extension of divine providence to him after his creation, until, according to the established laws of mental empire, the identical, voluntary, moral action is performed. Suppose the fore-ordained event to be the writing of the volume of Letters now under consideration. Then the creation of the Rev. J. W. was a presdestinated act of God, necessary to that event. It was decreed, that he should be born at a certain time and place, for "our times are in his hands;" that he should receive a suitable education; that he should see a certain book called The Contrast, and that his thoughts and feelings should induce in him a volition to write the said letters in reply. This illustrates our meaning when we say, that God in his holy and wise providence fore-ordains all those events which we denominate voluntary, moral actions. Mr. W. cannot deny that God made him, and ordered the circumstances of his birth, education, and studies, until he actually chose to write the volume before us: nor do we think he will say, God was ignorant that such a man as Mr. W. under certain given circumstances, would write it. Will he then say, that Jehovah did not fore-ordain the event of which we now speak? Either God intended that these letters should be written, or he did not intend that they

should be written, or he intended that they should not be written. Let Mr. W. say which he pleases. If God intended that they should be written, then he foreordained the event; and we should suppose every other event. If he intended that they should not be written, he has been disappointed, and is no longer the Almighty God. If he did not intend that they should be written, he had no purpose about the letters; which none can admit, who think them likely to do either good or evil to the church of God; for that would imply indifference in the Divine mind to his own most glorious interests. It must be admitted, then, that voluntary moral actions are in some cases fore ordained, without interfering with the freedom of man's agency; and without rendering God liable to be consider. ed the author of them; for Mr. W. wrote these LettersGod did not and yet, God determined, before the world was, to do that, in making, preserving, and governing Mr. W. which he foreknew would be followed by the actual writing of these Letters; and in this way foreordained their existence. In like manner, it might be shown, that every moral action of every man is an event foreordained by God, and yet the moral agent who performs each is the accountable and sole efficient of it. In short, men think, feel, will, and act; they accomplish, within the limits prescribed to their nature and circumstances, what they please; while Jehovah accomplishes all his own immutable pleasure concerning them.

Calvinists, however, it is said, make God the author of sin, by maintaining that unrenewed sinners have neither power to choose that which is morally good, nor any freedom of volition to any thing which is holy. Now we assert, that every man has been, or will be free, or at liberty, to exercise every volition of which he has ever been, or ever will be the efficient; and that every person has had or will have power, to exercise every volition, which will be found in the last day charged to his account. We assert, also, that the Deity never exerts any physical energy upon any man's will, so as to put him under the physical necessity of having any volition; that the law of God gives every man liberty to choose that which is good; and that God, in the constitution and establishment of the laws of No. 1

VOL. II.

B