plan and disposition of the causes tending to produce the particular consequences following thereupon. The only difference between the man of common sense and the studious, is concerning the time when the disposition was made, which the one thinks a few days or a few minutes, the other many ages ago; the one frequent and occasional, the other rare and universal; but both acknowledge that nothing ever happens without the permission or appointment of our Almighty and ever vigilant Governor. Tucker's Light of Nature.

NOTE B. p. 275.

The grand and beautiful discoveries of Laplace, Lagrange, and others, in this department of astronomy, have now demonstrated, that the observed variations in the orbits of the planets in consequence of their mutual action on each other, instead of leading, as it was conjectured they might ultimately do, to material and even ruinous changes in the system, are periodical only, and that the mean distances of the planets from the sun, and consequently their mean periodic times, are absolutely invariable; that the disturbing action keeps increasing up to a certain point, and then again decreasing; and so on alternately :-thus (like the compensation balance of a modern chronometer) correcting its own (apparent) errors, and providing for the preservation of a mean state for any conceivable extent of time. This is unquestionably the sublimest as well as the most beautiful of those modern discoveries which have already gone far to place our own era on a level with that of Newton,-if not in the merit of our researches (for we have the light of his wondrous genius to work by), at least in the unspeakable interest and importance of the results which seem to be opening upon us.

NOTE B.

p.

307.

EXTRACTS FROM TUCKER'S LIGHT OF NATURE.

Nor can Despotism itself do any great matters without aid of Free Will: for rewards, honours, and encouragements, those engines of free agency, contribute more to the valour of armies, than any scourges of punishment or peremptory edicts, concluding 'for such is our will.'

Since, then, experience testifies that man can make so much use of liberty towards accomplishing his designs; why should we scruple to think the same of God in a larger extent? For he not only has all the objects in his power which touch the springs of action, but fabricated the springs themselves, and set them to receive what touches they shall take. But we judge of the workings of Providence by our own narrow way of proceeding; we take our measures from time to time, as the expedience of them occurs to our thoughts, and then must make what use we can of the materials or instruments before us, be they such as exactly suit our purpose, or not.

In like manner we vulgarly imagine God acting occasionally, and taking up purposes he had not thought of before, until a concurrence of circumstances rendered them expedient. We apprehend him as having turned the numerous race of men loose into the wide world, endowed them with various powers, talents, appetites, and characters, without knowing precisely, or without caring, what they will produce. We allow him, indeed, to have formed the main lines of a plan; but left large vacancies between to be filled up by chance, whose wild workings lie under his control, to divert their course when they would interfere with the strokes of his pencil.

Now, considering the vast variety of humours, the discordant aims and interests among mankind, it must be acknowledged, that the government of the world, in this view of it, could not be administered, without either continual miraculous interpositions

in the motions of matter, or compulsions and restraints upon free agency, giving our volition another turn than it would take from the motives present before us, or causing other motions to arise in our limbs, and thoughts in our minds, than our present volition would naturally produce.

But when we reflect that even the wanton gambols of chance must result from agents and causes originally set at work by the Almighty; when we call to mind his infinite wisdom and omniscience, which nothing can escape, nothing perplex or overload; it seems more congruous with that boundless attribute, to imagine that no single, nor most distant effect of the powers and motions he gave, was overlooked, no chasms or empty spaces left in his design; but that upon the formation of a world, he laid a full and perfect plan of all the operations that should ensue during the period of its continuance.

NOTE D. PAGE 314.

EXTRACT FROM TREMAINE, VOL. III. Page 256.

"Do you mean then," asked Tremaine," that if any very wicked man-Borgia, for example-had chosen in his free will to be virtuous, that the course of things originally in the Divine Mind, would have been affected by it?"

"I go all that length," said Evelyn.

"This is the most extraordinary doctrine I ever heard!" observed Tremaine, yet seriously revolving the train to which this led.

"It is not altogether new," returned Evelyn; "at least there is a very curious dialogue of Laurentius Valla, quoted and enlarged by Leibnitz, in his Essay upon the Goodness of God and the Free Will of Man. In this he supposes Sextus Tarquinius to consult the Delphic Oracle as to his fate. It is predicted. He complains. The Oracle refers him to Jupiter and the Destinies ;

to whom he bemoans himself, and says, they might have made him happy if they had pleased. Jupiter answers,' It is you who determine your own lot. You choose to go to Rome to be a king, and I know best what will happen there if you do. Give up going to Rome, and the Destinies will spin another thread for you. Sextus does not see why he should give up the chances of being a king, and thinks he may avoid the evils of a visit to Rome, and be a good monarch notwithstanding. He goes, and is undone." "This is amusing," said Tremaine; "but how does this come up to your doctrine."

"Theodosius

"The story is not ended," observed Evelyn. the high priest, and favourite of Jupiter, is a little shocked at the answer to Sextus, and submissively begs to know whether he might not have been allowed to be a good king as he desired. Jupiter, through Minerva, shows him the palace of the Destinies, in which are the plans of many worlds, varying according to the choice and actions of men. In some of these, he sees Sextus under another choice, exceedingly happy; but he had chosen as above stated, and the plan of the world he was in was shaped accordingly."

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