teem guilty, if you do not think him morally free and accountable. Every age and country on earth have judged as you do in the sentence, and all law and society depend on that judgment. But when you are a culprit yourself, you are then for saying you could not possibly avoid the committal of that robbery or murder, which have on trial, been fully proved against you. How is this? Are you alone, of all mankind, the slave of wickedness? On other occasions you talk of yourself in a much higher strain, as a man governed by reason, as a free agent, as one perhaps, who considers the most lawful authority to be an infringement of your natural liberty. I believe all mankind would look on him as an arrant knave, who, if arraigned, should plead his predominant passion as a full apology for the unlawful action proved upon him, and would look on him as a hair-brain, who should come out with his prepollents on a jury in favour of the prisoner. If we are not free to do good or evil, áll reward is a waste of bounty; all punishment, cruelty; and all society, tyranny. All mankind are mistaken about that as a reality, which the necessitudinarians have found out to be but an empty notion; but happily mistaken, for they subsist on the notion, that all men are morally free. We deem it a sort of freedom in a trainable brute, that he can abstain from that which his appetite leads him to, rather than suffer the lash. Here is certainly all the appearance of a choice, made by a dog or horse, though prepollency evidently determines that choice. In ourselves we perceive, not an apparent, but a real and actual choice of that which we prefer for the sake of a prepollent motive. Now, where there is a real choice, there is real freedom. A man who wishes to live, but is hungry, hath, we will suppose, a dish of very good victuals set before him, and at the same time, a dose of poison, with leave to swallow which he pleases. He laughs at the choice, but takes his dinner. Pray will any man in his senses say, this person does not choose life, rather than death, and wholesome food, rather than poison? Or in choosing is not free?

If mankind are not free, at least morally free, in their actions, instead of being placed, in the scale of being a little lower than angels, they are, I fear, set a little lower than brutes. We hold many of the brutes to some degree of ac

count, and must stand to a much higher one ourselves, whether we think their sense and freedom greater or less, than our own, The judgment of our Maker, with regard to our moral freedom, is legible enough in the book of nature, and still more so in that of revelation. Good actions are generally attended with approbation and profit, and bad ones with disgrace and trouble, even in the present state of things. But why so, if men are necessary agents? If we can act no otherwise than we do; if there is neither virtue nor vice in the world; if to the agent all actions are indifferent; why is the happiness of mankind made, by the natural constitution of men and things; to result from one sort of actions, and their misery from another? Why should the temperate be healthy, and the drunkard sickly? Is it not because the former may drink to excess, and the latter be sober if he pleases? Who drenches the one, or sews up the mouth of the other? There is no man so enslaved by the most inveterate habits of sin, as to have entirely lost his moral freedom; none who cannot abstain from a bad action, if he pleases. This is evident, by his refraining wholly from the sins he is most addicted to, when under the observation of others, particularly of persons, whom he greatly respects. Yet one should think, a propensity awed by beings not much higher than himself, cannot be very strong. Did the same man, by faith, always feel himself in the presence, and under the inspection of God, he would not sin. It proceeds only from an abuse of his own freedom, that he will not consider himself as perpetually in that awful presence. This, it is certain, he might do, were it not that he finds himself uneasy under the sense of such a presence. He therefore chooses to hide from God, in other thoughts, or in want of thought, as his first parents in parallel circumstances did, from the same presence, in the trees of the garden.' If the force of habit and temptation acting unopposed and uncontrolled, could in any case deprive us of our moral liberty, at least we have an ally always at hand, more than able to counterbalance their power, as soon as called in by an easy meditation. If we will not call him in, it must be owned, this at least is an exercise of choice and liberty. But I utterly deny, that, excepting by total annihilation, or eternal damnation, a man can possibly be deprived of choice and

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liberty. I will answer for the truth of this position, tried in every conceivable, every possible case or circumstance, that can be supposed. Liberty of choice is indeed essential to man. In the book of Revelation, the moral freedom of mankind is laid down at the very basis of every law, every precept, every dispensation. Good and evil, life and death, are there, on every occasion, set before us, and a free choice offered to us. If we embrace the former, well done thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord,' follows as the predetermined consequence of virtue; if we choose the latter, why will you die? Go ye accursed into everlasting fire,' is the voice of our judge, already sounded in our ears. What! endless happiness promised beforehand to virtue, and endless misery threatened beforehand to vice! and yet is there no difference between virtue and vice? No truly, one man is forced to do good, and another to do evil, and therefore this ought not to be punished, nor that rewarded. The wildest distraction cannot dictate any thing more remote from common sense, nor the most impious spirit of rebellion against God, any thing more enormously hostile.

In all, or any thing, I have said concerning moral liberty, I would not be understood to assert, that all men are placed in a state of indifference or suspension between inducements to good, and allurements to bad actions. Such state is never necessary to a freedom of choice. Neither do I hold an equal degree of freedom in all men. He who is least morally free in any instance, is nevertheless still morally free, and may, but, I confess, with difficulty, fix his choice against his particular bias. Natural disposition, and habit, have their weight in the mental scales. Good or bad principles have theirs too. But reason, if she pleases, may preponderate on the side of a right choice. Error, and the suggestions of an evil spirit, may strongly interfere on the side of slavery. But if a man hath not quenched the Holy Spirit in himself, that Spirit will guide him into all the truth' he wants, and the truth shall make him free.' Without the grace of God, we naturally lean to sin, and are never sufficiently free to such good works, and in such a manner, as may be acceptable in the sight of God. But the bias laid on us by natural corruption towards sin, is counter

balanced by grace, and we are set upright again, and made free to do good or evil. Temptation cannot force us to sin. Nor will the Holy Spirit compel us to serve God, who disdains a service, not founded on choice, nor flowing from the good will, nor from the grateful and affectionate heart of his servant.

From what hath been said, it appears demonstrably, that God, from all eternity, perfectly foreknew every action of every intelligent being; that he therefore, from all eternity, predestinated and prefixed, the doom of every such agent; and that both angels and men are made morally free by their Creator, in respect of every action, whether good or bad.

Nothing farther remains to finish the purpose of this little treatise, than, in the last place, so to touch on the interference of the divine foreknowledge and human freedom, as to shew how far it may be reconciled to our conception, and how far it ought to be acquiesed in as a mystery. This I shall attempt by stating and clearing up the most considerable difficulties, wherewith it is attended in the minds of modest, but bewildered inquirers; and that I may not seem destitute of that humility and modesty, which I wish for in my reader, I mean to confess my ignorance, where I would have him made sensible of, and satisfied with his.

But with all this, is there not some presumption in proceeding farther on subjects of a nature so abstruse, than barely stating and proving the doctrines? As there is nothing knowable, that does not grow dark to our understandings a little beyond the entrance or surface, and wholly incomprehensible, if we attempt to pry still a little farther ; and as in these high and mysterious subjects, our inquiries are sure to be sooner thrown out, and to a greater distance too, from all hope of satisfaction; it is my opinion we ought to rest in the full proof of two doctrines, separately exhibited, and set them down for unquestionable truths, though we should be wholly unable to clear up their consistency. If they are truths asunder, they are truths together also, though a poor reptile understanding should not see how. A healthful man knows, that wholesome food will nourish him; but how, he knows not, nor need he care. Why should he not take a useful truth from God in the same manner, and sit down contented?

I will however, lay before the reader those reflections, which have given ease to my own mind, and wish they may do the like by his, on the difficulties arising from the doctrines already stated and proved.

Let the first be, the old weather-beaten difficulty, that future free volitions, or actions, cannot with certainty be foreseen, because the certainty of the foresight makes it necessary, that the action, if foreseen, should be done, whereas the freedom of the agent puts it in his power to do, or not do, that action, and therefore he may abstain from doing it, which must inevitably destroy the certainty of such foresight.

Yet it hath been naturally demonstrated, that God did from eternity know every thing knowable, and experimentally, that he does certainly foreknow, and did actually predict the moral actions of some men, who were unquestionably free to do, or not do those actions. The difficulty therefore must be founded on a mistake, and well it may, for who can deny, there is a faculty or power in God, whereby he foresees with certainty the action of a free agent, in some such manner as we see the action while it is a doing? Our seeing a man act does by no means cause him to act, nor take away his liberty of acting, or not acting. I see John walking, but I do not by my seeing make him walk. I see him afterward sit down, but I do not by my seeing, or by any other power over him, make him sit. He is all the time free to do either the one or the other, and my knowledge of what he is doing, absolutely certain. Farther, I foresee, but with some uncertainty indeed, that he will eat and drink, before an entire year, from the present minute, shall go round, or die for want of food. But my foresight, whether certain, or uncertain, it matters not in this case, neither causes him, nor hinders him, to eat. He is free as to either. Now God foresees with certainty, we hypothetically and uncertainly ; but there is no more reason for supposing his certain, than our uncertain foresight, to bear on the freedom of any created agent; not, I am sure, that we can conceive. If it should be said that God foresees, because he first causes or predestines the thing foreseen, this is inverting the natural order, laid down by St. Paul, and making God the author of all sins he foresees.