effect in physics, that we can very seldom, if at all, reason from the one relation to the other. That man has such a controlling power over the motives which incite him to action, as to be able-not to act without any motive-but to banish, for a time, from his contemplation even that which he knows to be the strongest, and to act on the other, I know by experience; and so doth every man, who is conscious of having been guilty of sin, as hundreds have confessed to me. If it be asked how this can be, it is surely sufficient to reply, that we know not how mind acts upon matter in any case, or how mind is affected by matter: We only know the facts; and I am not more certain that I have acted on any occasion, than I am that, on some occasions, I have laboured, not without difficulty, to banish from my mind what I knew to be the strongest motive, and acted on a weaker. There may be motives, I admit, which no mere man, without supernatural aid, could resist; but when it is affirmed that such self-determination, in ordinary cases, would be an effect without a cause, I cannot help considering the necessarian as guilty of advancing as an argument, what is really a petitio principii ; for the assertion is true only if the mind in volition be inert as the body is inert; and the inertia of mind is the sole question at issue.

It is likewise said, both by the Calvinists and the philosophical necessarians, that to assert the freedom of the human will is to deny the prescience of God; because nothing can be certainly fore

known which is itself not decreed to take place. It is indeed true that men cannot certainly foreknow any thing that is itself contingent; but I have elsewhere* proved, that as God undoubtedly knows what is present by a faculty-if I may use such a termwhich we do not possess, he may, by the same faculty, know with certainty what is to us contingent and future. But I will pursue this subject no farther. In the works of Hobbes, Hume, Lord Kames, and Dr Priestley on the one side, and Archbishop King with his translator and editor, Drs Clarke, Price, Horsley, Reid, and Dr Gregory of Edinburgh on the other, you will find the question of liberty or necessity amply discussed by some of the most acute and discriminating philosophers that the present and the last age have produced. Should you not find leisure or inclination to read so many works on so abstruse a question, you will find an accurate summary of the arguments on both sides in the article entitled Metaphysics in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

The Calvinistic doctrines of election and predestination, differ in many respects from the doctrine of the philosophical necessarians; and where such is the case, the Calvinistic doctrine appears to me perhaps the most revolting of the two. The necessarian contends that his series of causes and effects was unavoidable even by omnipotence; but that all the sufferings which it brings on mankind are

* Letter VI.

necessary to correct sinners and reclaim them from their errors; and that it will ultimately be productive of universal piety, virtue, and happiness.

In direct opposition to this, the genuine doctrine of Calvin is, that,

"Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet hath he not decreed any thing because he foresees it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and anges are predestinated to everlasting life, and others tore-ordained to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and fore-ordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite, that it cannot be Lithe “ATEURed or diminished. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the

anation of the world was laid, according to his serenal and immutable purpose, and the sacred enesel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of his mere grace and love, without any foresight of faith, or zoni xuris, or perseverance in either of them, or any ciner thing in the creature, as conditions or causes moving him thereunto; all to the praise of his glorious grace." *

They who drew up these articles must have had strange notions of God, or have understood by the

Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. iii, 2, 3, 4, 5.

word glory something altogether different from what is generally understood by that word; for how the glory of the Self-existent, Almighty, and Omniscient Creator and Governor of the universe, could be manifested by creating myriads of beings for no other purpose than to torment them to all eternity, is not, I think, easy to be conceived. Some of the texts quoted in support of this doctrine have no relation to it whatever; one of them is directly contrary to it; and another relates to an election of a very different kind, from that of individuals to everlasting life. When St Paul said, that "those whom he (God) did foreknow, he also did predestinate, to be conformed to the image of his Son," he surely meant that this predestination was founded on the foresight or fore-knowledge of something; and when it is said, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I set aside," it is as clear as the sun at noon-day, that the preference given to Jacob relates not to the election of either of the brothers to everlasting life, but to the high honour of being the father of the family (which both could not be) from which the Messiah was to spring. But for further information on this subject, I refer you to Calvin himself, Limborch, the Bishops Burnet and Tomline, with Archbishop King's Sermon on Predestination, and Lawrence's Bampton Lectures.

* Rom. ix. 13, and Malachi i. 2, 3. See Scheusner on Moεw, and Taylor on .

LETTER XVIII.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE EIGHTEENTH, NINETEENTH, TWENTIETH, AND TWENTY-FIRST ARTICLES OF RELIGION.

FAITH is represented in the New Testament as so essential a condition of our justification, both at our admission into the Church, and at the tribunal of Christ, before which all mankind must appear to receive the things done in the body, whether they have been good or bad, that many a pious and compassionate mind has been distressed by gloomy apprehensions of the future state of those who never heard of either Christ or his Gospel. This gloom has to some been darkened by the eighteenth article of our Church, which declares that "those are to be had accursed, who presume to say that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that law and the light of nature. For holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the name of Jesus Christ whereby men must be saved."

The meaning of this article, as well as the er