ginal express the going-the suffering-the being killed-the being raised again-are all equally subject to the verb which answers to the word must of our language, and in its first and proper meaning predicates necessity. As he must be raised on the third day, so he must go, he must suffer, he must be killed. Every one of these events, his going to Jerusalem, his suffering, and his death there--and that these sufferings and that death should be brought about by the malice of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, every one of these things is plainly announced, as no less unalterably fixed than the resurrection of our Saviour, or the time of his resurrection-that it was to happen on the third day.

The previous certainty of things to come is one of those truths which are not easily comprehended. The difficulty seems to arise from a habit that we have of measuring all intellectual powers by the standard of human intellect. There is nothing in the nature of certainty, abstractedly considered, to connect it with past time or with the present, more than with the future; but human knowledge extends in so small a degree to future things, that scarce any thing becomes certain to us till it is come to pass, and therefore we are apt to imagine that things acquire their certainty from their accomplishment. But this is a gross fallacy. The proof of an event to us always depends either upon the testimony of others or the evidence of our own senses; but the certainty of events in themselves arises from their natural connexion with their proper causes. Hence, to that great Being who knows things, not by testimony, not by sense, but by their causes, as being himself the First Cause, the source of power and activity to all other causes, to Him, every thing that shall ever be, is at all times infinitely more certain than any thing either past or present can be to any man, except perhaps the simple fact of his own existence, and some of those necessary truths which are evidenced to every man, not by his bodily senses, but by that internal perception which seems to be the first act of created intellect.

This certainty, however, is to be carefully distinguished from a true necessity inherent in the nature of the thing. A thing is necessary when the idea of existence is included in the idea of the thing as an inseparable part of it. Thus, God is necessary;—the mind cannot think of him at all without thinking of him as existent. The very notion and name of an event excludes this necessity, which belongs only to things uncaused. The events of the created universe are certain, because sufficient causes do, not because they must, act to their production. God knows this certainty, because he knows the action of all these causes, inasmuch as he himself begins it, and perfectly comprehends those mutual connexions between the things he hath created, which render this a cause, and that its effect.

But the mere certainty of things to come, including in it even human actions, is not all that is implied in the terms of our Lord's prediction; which plainly intimate that the actions of men, even their worst actions, are in some measure comprised in the design

of Providence, who, although he wills not the evil of any single act, undoubtedly wills the good in which the whole system of created agency shall ultimately terminate.

On these views of things, and in particular on our Saviour's prediction of his sufferings, in which these views are most strongly set forth, the Calvinistick divines endeavoured to establish their hard doctrine of arbitrary predestination, a doctrine to which, whether we consider it in itself, or in its consequences, we may with good reason apply the words of the prophet, " It hath truly little form or comeliness-little beauty, that we should desire it." But let us not judge uncharitably of those who maintained it, nor ascribe to a morose severity of temper, much less to spiritual pride, what is easily traced to nobler principles. The Calvinistick predestinarians had found in the Scriptures, both of the Old and of the New Testament, the most explicit assertions of God's omniscience, and of his constant attention to the minutest occurrences, both of the natural and of the moral world. These notions they found agreeable, we must not say to philosophy, (for of that these pious men had but a scanty portion,) but to what in many cases is a better guide, to the natural sense and feeling of a vir. tuous mind. The belief that the world, and they themselves as a part of it, were under the immediate care and protection of the wisest and the best of beings, had taken possession of their honest hearts more firmly than it seems to do of some men's understandings; and they set themselves to combat with the fiercest zeal, and without any scrupulous examination, every doctrine that might seem to contradict it, and threaten to rob them of the holy joy and comfort which flowed from that persuasion. They did not understand that the foreknowledge and providence of the Deity, and that liberty which doth truly belong to man as a moral agent, are things perfectly consistent and naturally connected; they did not hesitate a moment to deny the freedom of human actions. But this was a dangerous errour; for, in truth, the proof of our liberty is to every individual of the human race the very same, I am persuaded, with the proof of his existence. I feel that I exist, and I feel that I am free; and I may with reason turn a deaf ear upon every argument that can be alleged in either case to disprove my feelings. I feel that I have power to flee the danger that I dread to pursue the pleasure that I covet-to forego the most inviting pleasure, although it be actually within my grasp, if I apprehend that the present enjoyment may be the means of future mischief to expose myself to present danger, to submit to present evils, in order to secure the possession of a future good: I feel that I have power to do the action I approve -to abstain from another that my conscience would condemn;in a word, I feel that I act from my own hopes, my own fears, my own internal perceptions of moral fitnesses and discongruities. Happy, thrice happy they who act invariably by these percepons! They have attained to the "glorious liberty of the sons of God!" But whenever I act from other motives, I feel that I am.

misled by my own passions, my own appetites, my own mistaken views of things. A feeling always succeeds these unreasonable actions, that, had my mind exerted its natural powers, in considering the action I was about to do, the propriety of it in itself and its consequences, I might and I should have acted otherwise. Having these feelings, I feel all that liberty which renders the morality of a man's actions properly his own, and makes him justly accountable for his conduct.

The liberty, therefore, of man, and the foreknowledge and providence of God, are equally certain, although the proof of each rests on different principles. Our feelings prove to every one of us that we are free: reason and revelation teach us that the Deity knows and governs all things; that "even the thoughts of man he understandeth long before,"-long before the thoughts ariselong before the man himself is born who is to think them. Now, when two distinct propositions are separately proved, each by its proper evidence, it is not a reason for denying either, that the human mind, upon the first hasty view, imagines a repugnance, and may perhaps find a difficulty in connecting them, even after the distinct proof of each is clearly perceived and understood. There is a wide difference between a paradox and a contradiction. Both, indeed, consist of two distinct propositions; and so far only are they alike: for, of the two parts of a contradiction, the one or the other must necessarily be false;-of a paradox, both are often true, and yet, when proved to be true, may continue paradoxical. This is the necessary consequence of our partial views of things: An intellect to which nothing should be paradoxical would be infinite. It may naturally be supposed that paradoxes must abound the most in metaphysicks and divinity," for who can find out God unto perfection?"-yet they occur in other subjects; and any one who should universally refuse his assent to propositions separately proved, because when connected they may seem paradoxical, would in many instances, be justly laughed to scorn by the masters of those sciences which make the highest pretensions to certainty and demonstration. In all these cases, there is generally in the nature of things a limit to each of the two contrasted propositions, beyond which neither can be extended without implying the falsehood of the other, and changing the paradox into a contradiction; and the whole difficulty of perceiving the connexion and agreement between such propositions arises from this circumstance; that, by some inattention of the mind, these limits are overlooked. Thus, in the case before us, we must not imagine such an arbitrary exercise of God's power over the minds and wills of subordinate agents, as should convert rational beings into mere machines, and leave the Deity charged with the follies and the crimes of men,-which was the errour of the Calvinists: nor must we, on the other hand, set up such a liberty of created beings, as, necessarily precluding the Divine foreknowledge of human actions, should take the government of the moral world out of the hands of God, and leave him nothing to do with the noblest

part of his creation,-which hath been, perhaps, the worse errour of some who have opposed the Calvinists.

There is yet another errour upon this subject, which, I think, took its rise among professed infidels; and to them, till of late, it hath been entirely confined. But some have appeared among its modern advocates, actuated, I am persuaded, (for their writings on this subject witness it,) by the same humble spirit of resigned devotion which gave birth to the plan of arbitrary predestination. Deeply versed in physicks, which the Calvinists neglected, these men wish to reconcile the notions of God's arbitrary dominion, which they in common with the Calvinists maintain, with what the others entirely overlooked, the regular operation of second causes: and in this circumstance lies the chief, if not the whole difference, between the philosophical necessity of our subtle moderns and the predestination of their more simple ancestors. And so far as these necessarians maintain the certain influence of moral motives, as the natural and sufficient means whereby human actions, and even human thoughts, are brought into that continued chain of causes and effects, which, taking its beginning in the operations of the Infinite Mind, cannot but be fully understood by him, so far they do service to the cause of truth; placing the "great and glorious" doctrines of foreknowledge and providence, -absolute foreknowledge-universal providence, upon a firm and philosophical foundation; a thing to be wished with respect to every doctrine of any practical importance, whenever, as in this case, the great obscurity of the subject renders the interpretation of texts of Scripture dubious, which, otherwise, taken as they ought to be, in the plainest and the most natural meaning of the words, might be decisive. But when they go beyond this, when they would represent this influence of moral motives as arising from a physical necessity, the very same with that which excites and governs the motions of the inanimate creation, here they confound Nature's distinctions, and contradict the very principles they would seem to have established. The source of their mistake is this, that they imagine a similitude between things which admit of no comparison-between the influence of a moral motive upon mind, and that of mechanical force upon matter. moral motive and a mechanical force are both indeed causes, and equally certain causes each of its proper effect; but they are causes in very different senses of the word, and derive their energy from the most opposite principles. Force is only another name for an efficient cause; it is that which impresses motion upon body, the passive recipient of a foreign impulse. A moral motive is what is more significantly called the final cause, and can have no influence but with a being that proposes to itself an end, chooses means, and thus puts itself in action. It is true, that while this is my end, and while I conceive these to be the means, a definite act will as certainly follow that definite choice and judgment of my mind, provided I be free from all external restraint and impediment, as a determinate motion will be excited

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in a body by a force applied in a given direction. There is in both cases an equal certainty of the effect; but the principle of the certainty in the one case and in the other is entirely different, which difference necessarily arises from the different nature of final and efficient causes. Every cause, except it be the will of the Deity acting to the first production of substances; every cause, I say, except this acting in this singular instance, produces its effect by acting upon something; and, whatever be the cause that acts, the principle of certainty lies in a capacity, in the thing on which it acts, of being affected by that action. Now, the capacity which force, or an efficient cause, requires in the object of its action, is absolute inertness. But intelligence and liberty constitute the capacity of being influenced by a final cause, by a moral motive: and to this very liberty does this sort of cause owe its whole efficacy, the whole certainty of its operation; which certainty never can disprove the existence of that liberty upon which it is itself founded, and of which it affords the highest evidence.

These distinctions between the efficient and the final cause being once understood, we may from the necessarian's own principles deduce the firmest proof of the liberty of man: for since God foreknows and governs future events, so far as subordinate agents are concerned in them, by the means of moral motives, that is, by final causes, since these are the engines by which he turns and wields the intellectual world, bending the perverse wills of wicked men and of apostate spirits to his purpose; and since these motives owe their energy, their whole success, to the liberty of the beings that are governed by them, it is in consequence most certain, however it may seem most strange, that God could not govern the world as he does, by final causes, if man were not free, no more than he could govern the material part of it mechanically, by efficient causes, if matter were not wholly passive. The necessarian does not listen to this argument. He has furnished himself with an expedient to make room for the physical necessity he would introduce into what has been called the moral world. His expedient is neither more nor less than this, that he would annihilate the moral world altogether: he denies the existence of the immaterial principle in man, and would stamp the very form of human intellect, that living image of the Divinity, upon the passive substance of the brain! It seems, the notion of an active principle distinct from the body, the true cause of voluntary motion, possessing in itself the faculties of thought, desire, volition, and necessarily surviving the body, which principle should much more truly than the body constitute the man; all this was a phantom of heathen philosophy, which a Christian, for that reason in particular, should discard. It is a new kind of argument against the truth of a proposition which a man might otherwise be disposed to receive, that it hath been asserted and maintained by wise, and good, and learned men, who had spent a great part of their lives in thinking most intensely upon the subject. This