'who were ordained to eternal life, that is, those who God foresaw would comply with the ' ordained condition of faith in Christ, upon 'which eternal life was offered.'* In oppo'sition to the Calvinists, I have there [Ele'ments of Christian Theology] represented Pre' destination 'as founded in foreseen obedience and disobedience; and I have added, This appears to me the only sense in which Prei destination is reconcilable with the attributes of God and the free-agency of man.'t Here are supposed effects, viz. believing, complying, obedience, and disobedience. But every effect must have an adequate cause. That there is an adequate cause of disobedience, as of every evil, has been proved before; but where shall we find an adequate cause of the other effects? It will be probably answered in Free Will. Freedom, as pertaining to the Will, it has been shewn, is a mere negation or exemption, which in the nature of things can have no positive effects; but believing, complying, &c. are positive effects; consequently all must be reduced to Will. That this may be a secondary cause of positive effects, is granted; and also the innocent occasion of the sinfulness of actions; but if will, in man, be the deciding cause of his -actions, and nothing more, how comes it to pass

that this cause which is found in every man, does not produce the same kind of effects? for it is an acknowledged axiom, That like causes produce like effects.

§ 2. If it be said, That this axiom belongs only to physics, but not to morals, I have a right to demand of the objector a reason of the difference, without his begging the question. No such reason, however, I am satisfied, can be given. If there be no other cause beside Freewill, this palpable absurdity is the consequence, that the same cause produces contrary effects, or, which is no better, that one of the effects is without a cause. God's infinite knowledge, and consequently his foreknowledge, sees all effects in their adequate causes; but how can the same thing be an adequate cause of opposite effects? To recur to the arbitrary nature of the human will, as the image of the arbitrary will of God, is an assumption without proof that there is any such will in the Deity. For will any one seriously avow, that such is the arbitrary nature of the divine Will, that it may do evil, as well as good? How much more worthy of supreme excellence is the sentiment, that the divine will cannot be so arbitrary as not to have an adequate cause of its determinations, viz. the perfect rectitude and infinite wisdom of the divine nature. The absolute nature

of God excludes all cause of defectibility, and consequently of evil effects; and the same absolute nature infallibly secures the goodness of all the effects it produces. The very nature of God, as absolutely perfect, therefore, is incompatible with that self-sovereignty of will in him, to which the human will has been supposed to bear a resemblance. But if it be incompatible with the divine nature, with how much less reason can it be assumed to be a property of the human will. Indeed were such a property possible in the nature of things, as a will without any other cause of its determination beside itself, it would be no excellency;-why then should it be claimed for the human will?

§ 3. For these reasons, among others, we are constrained to conclude, that every act of the human will, whether good or bad, has a cause or adequate reason of the effect, beside the mere will itself. And if we view the subject in any light whatever, consistent with the nature of God and of the creature, which I would call the nature of things, we are brought constantly and infallibly to this conclusion,that every good will is from a good principle, and therefore from God; and every evil will is from some kind of evil principle, and therefore from ourselves. I said, "some kind" of evil principle; in order to distinguish it from a

sinful principle, which would not be true as a general maxim. For though in fallen creatures there is a sinful principle from which evil effects proceed, it would be a direct contradiction to say that the first sin of any being was from a sinful cause or principle. We should therefore carefully distinguish between a morally evil principle which belongs to depraved creatures, and the merely defective principle which alone accounts for the first sinful act or desire.

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§ 4. Good acts, therefore, as those enumerated by the Bishop, are not foreseen as springing up of themselves without an adequate cause, but as the effect of holy energy producing them. And a determination to effect this, is to predestinate their existence;-which is the same thing in substance as is expressed by this grand theological axiom, ALL GOOD IS FROM GOD. If so, how can any one consistently assert, that Predestination is founded in foreseen obedience? It is admitted, that God determines or predestinates enjoyments to the obedient, and misery to the disobedient; but to say that this is the only sense in which Predestination is reconcilable with the attributes of God and the free-agency of man,' is extremely objectionable. The πρωτον ψευδος, or the radical fallacy of this error, is a gratuitous assumption

that good and evil must proceed from the same identical principle;-and it has been adopted by persons of even opposite sentiments. In the one extreme are those who reduce all events to the predestinating will of God; in the other, are those who reduce all moral events, without distinction of good and bad, to the will of man as their ultimate source. Both these extremes, however, pursued to their just consequences, are demonstrably absurd. Neither of them gives unto God the things that are God's, nor unto man the things that are his. The more we investigate the subject without inju rious prepossessions, and with a humble mind, the more clearly we shall perceive, that though the human will is the agent, yet the ultimate cause, and the only adequate cause of every good effect, is the will of God, operating according to his beneficent and infinitely wise nature; and the only ultimate and adequate cause of every bad effect, though, as observed before, the human will is the agent, is a negative principle peculiar to the creature, as inseparably related to it. That there is in every creature 'such a principle of defectibility, which is, however, under the control of supreme beneficence and wisdom, has been proved before; and that there is no such principle in the self-existent, independent, and all-sufficient Jehovah, needs no proof.