why the turning of one key shall open one lock, and not another. Thus, while we are destitute of senses, acute enough to discern the minute particles of bodies, and to give us ideas of their mechanical affections, we must be content to be ignorant of their properties and operations. And this, at once, shews us, how disproportionate our knowledge is to the whole extent even of material beings. The operation of our own minds upon our own bodies, is inconceivable. How any thought should produce a motion in the body, is as remote from our conception, as how any figure should produce any thought in the mind.

We have the knowledge of our own existence by consciousness; of the existence of God by demonstration; and of that of other things, by sensation. Man has a clear perception of his own being. He knows certainly he exists, and that he is something. In the next place, he knows, by an intuitive certainty, that bare nothing can no more produce any real being, than it can be equal to two right angles. If, therefore, we know that there is some real being, it is incontrovertibly evident, that from eternity there has been something; since, what has not from eternity had a beginning, must be produced by something

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something else. Next, it is evident, that what has its being from another, must also have all that which is in, and belongs to, its being from another too: all the power it has, must be owing to and received from the same source. This eternal source then, of all being, must be also the source and original of all power; and so this Eternal Being must be also the most powerful.

Again, man finds in himself perception and knowledge. We are certain, then, there is not only some being, but some knowing, intelligent being in the universe. There was a time, consequently, when there was no knowing being, or else there has been a knowing being from eternity. If it be said, there was a time when that Eternal Being had no knowledge, the reply is, that then it is impossible there should have ever been any knowledge; it being as impossible, that things wholly void of knowledge, and operating blindly, and without any perception, should produce a knowing being, as it is, that two and three should make four. Thus, we have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God, than of any thing our senses have not immediately discovered to us; nay, we more certainly know there

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there is a God, than that there is any thing else without us.

Thus circumstanced, then, are we to consider the volitions and actions of men, as free, or as necessary? Are we unavoidably compelled to what we do; or have we the power of choice, from the vital energy of the mind? Here I answer without difficulty; and without hesitation, embrace the doctrine of liberty; that liberty which men have commonly esteemed their noblest privilege, and of which they have fancied themselves undoubtedly possessed. Shall I subscribe to a contrary reasoning, which would prove a murderer to be as necessarily determined to commit murder, as a stone is to fall by gravity? Yet, at the same time, I confess, if there be any thing obscure or difficult in philosophy, it is in that part which treats of elections and liberty. There is no point, in fact, about which the learned have been more divided; nor is it an easy matter even to understand them, or to give a certain and true representation of their opinions.

Human freedom is called, by Doctor Priestley, absurd and dangerous. Collins, whose book on

King's Origin of Evil.

the

the subject the Doctor also wishes reprinted, says it is atheistical. Mr. J. Edwards, whom the Doctor likewise recommends as unanswerable, has these remarkable expressions: "All the Arminians on earth might be challenged, without arrogance, to make these principles of theirs consistent with common sense, yea, and perhaps to produce any doctrine ever embraced by the blindest bigot of the church of Rome, or the most ignorant Mussulman, or extravagant enthusiast, that might be reduced to more and more demonstrable inconsistencies and repugnancies, to common sense, and to themselves; though their inconsistencies may not, indeed, lie so deep, or be so artfullly veiled, by a deceitful ambiguity of words, and an indeterminate signification of phrases."*

I hold it to be an intuitive proposition, a Necessitarian will argue, that the Deity is the primary cause of all things; that with consummate wisdom he formed the great plan of government, which he carries on by laws suited to the different natures of animate and inanimate beings; and that these laws produce a regular chain of causes and effects, in the moral as well

as in the material world, admitting no events but what are comprehended in the original plan. Hence, chance is excluded out of this world; nothing can happen by accident; and "no event is arbitrary or contingent." But I will

not again trouble you about these words, chance and contingency. When we say a thing has happened by chance, we do not mean surely that chance was the cause; for no person ever thought chance to be a thing that can act or produce events: we only mean, we are ignorant of the cause, and that, for ought we see, it might have happened or not happened, or happened differently. The same of contingency: there is no such thing in nature as contingency; or in other words, a sense that any thing hapwithout a cause: such a sense would be grossly delusive.

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An argument of an indirect kind, indeed, in behalf of philosophical necessity, is sometimes built upon the certainty of the Divine prescience, supposing that what is foreseen must, merely on that account, be predetermined or necessary. This is done more particularly by those who contend, that matter, fitly organized,

* Essays on Morality and Natural Religion.

Kaim's Sketches of man.

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