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The Cause of the first Choice.

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this influence. Without it indeed he never will make this choice. So inspiration teaches. But, if given, it necessitates no action. It infringes on none of his powers of free action. It may secure right action. And so, with holy beings, may common influences. It is a boon for which he cannot be too grateful. If cherished

and followed it will renew and sanctify and save the soul. If resisted, as it may be, and expelled from his mind, it will aggravate his doom and sink him to the lowest depths of perdition. But the work of resistance will be all his own, the guilt will be his own, and the awful consequences, the dire results, in unmitigated and unremitted agony, must be his own forever.

3. Does God, in consequence of his purposes, employ an agen cy in so ordering the circumstances and condition of men, and the motives or common influences which operate on their minds, as to necessitate them to act in accordance with his purposes? He does order the lot of men. He brings them into being. He appoints the time and place and circumstances of their birth. He provides the influences which fall on their minds and tend to form their characters. But this agency it is, from the nature of the case, necessary for him to employ. And not only so, but it leaves man's freedom wholly unimpaired. It does not resistlessly secure human volition. True, man does not order the circumstances of his own birth and life. But it is not requisite to freedom of choice, that a person himself provide the influences which affect or secure his volitions. The motives to choice may be presented by others in perfect consistency with his freedom. All that is requisite is, that when these influences or motives are upon him, he have full power to choose contrary to their impulsion. If he only possess this power he is perfectly free. These influences and motives he cannot always provide for himself. It is impossible, in the nature of things, that he should do it. He cannot order the circumstances of his own birth. He cannot say who his parents shall be, or what their character. These things must all be determined before his existence, and therefore it is impossible for him to do it. God or some other being must do it for him. God or some other being must order the circumstances and motives which lead to the first choice of every human being. He cannot order them himself without choosing to do it. And to suppose him to choose to do it,would be to suppose him to have a choice before his first choice, which is absurd. And besides, he could not choose to do it unless there were some motives prompting to the choice. And these motives he could not provide without again VOL. IV. No. 13.

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choosing to do it. And he would need motives again for this choice, and so on ad infinitum. The influences then which lead to the first choice of every human being must be ordered by some other one than himself. And in the case of the first created being they must have been ordered by God. If then God may not order the circumstances and influences which lead to choice, and man still be free, then free moral action in created beings is in the nature of things utterly impossible. The first free act can never be performed. It would thus be put out of the power of Omnipotence to create a free moral agent; for that agent must necessarily be influenced in his first choice by motives, and those motives could not be of his own providing, they must have been provided by God. But we must admit that God can make a free agent, or else the objection against the divine decrees, that they destroy man's free agency, is utterly absurd. It asserts that the decrees destroy what does not exist and what cannot be brought into existence even by Omnipotence itself. But if free moral agency is a possible thing, if free moral agents can be created by God, then they may be free and yet the influences that lead to their first choice may be provided by God. The fact that he, in this case, provides these influences, does not then destroy their freedom of will. And if God may provide the influences that lead to the first choice and man still be free, he may also provide those that lead to the second and third and all the choices, and man still be free. If God's agency and man's free agency are consistent in the first case, they are in the second and in all subsequent cases. God may then always supply the influences and all the influences which prompt to choice; he may order all the circumstances of his moral subjects and the motives which guide their conduct; he may reign supreme in the armies of heaven above and among the inhabitants of the earth, and yet their freedom of action remain wholly unimpaired and unmolested.

Men may then be free notwithstanding God orders all the circumstances and motives that influence their conduct. Are they thus free? They surely are unless these motives possess a causative power which necessarily produces human action. Do they possess any such power? Do the purposes of God impart to them any such power? There is no evidence that they do. There is none from the nature of the divine purposes. A purpose is a mere mental act. But a mental act does not necessarily change the character of an object without the mind, or impart to it any new quality. The thought of fire does not change the character of

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The Influence of Motives.

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fire. Nor can we find in the nature of the divine purposes anything which must exert such an influence on human motives, as to alter their original character, and give them a necessitating power over the will. Is there then any evidence from analogy that the purposes of God impart any causative power to motives? The purpose of a master mechanic to direct the conduct of his operatives, communicates no new power to the motives he employs to effect his purpose. That power all existed in the motives previous to his forming the purpose. So is it in all other cases where one man forms purposes which respect the voluntary actions of others. And surely no one has experienced in himself a change in the motives which were pressing on his own mind, a change by which they acquired a necessitating force, and a change which he could distinctly trace to the divine decrees as its cause. And no one has ever observed any such event. And the Scriptures nowhere teach that the purposes of God effect a change in the native character of motives, imparting to them a power of necessitating human volition. There is then no shadow of evidence that they ever do it. Does God then, in order to the fulfilment of his purposes, impart any such power to motives? He nowhere tells us that he does. And no one has ever seen him do it, or known of his doing it. Do motives then possess in themselves a causative energy? Have they any inherent power of compelling human action? But what if they have? In that case it surely is not the decrees of God, but the nature of motives, that destroys human freedom. If, then, motives possess inherently any necessitating energy, even supposing that God has formed no purposes, mankind are utterly divested of the attribute of free agency, and are all subject to the iron dominion of motives. By the unyielding force of motives they are all driven along the pathway of human life, with as little power of effectual resistance, as the dust of the street when swept by the wind. But motives possess in themselves no such compelling force. If they do, there is no such thing as free agency in the universe, and there can be none. It is vain, therefore, to object to the decrees of God, that they are inconsistent with free agency, for there is no such fact as the free agency of man.

We find, then, no evidence that motives possess a resistless, causative power, but rather the reverse. In an inferior sense, viz. that of prompting influences, not that of necessitating powers, they may be called causes. They are in truth only the prerequisites, not the compulsory causes of choice. They are

necessary to all choices, but they never necessitate any choice. They afford an opportunity of choosing one way or another, but do not compel a man to choose one way rather than another, or to choose at all. They are necessary to free agency or free action, but they do not force any action. The agent, notwithstanding he feels the full power of motives, is left perfectly free to choose or not to choose, and to choose one way or its opposite. God always treats men as if it were so. They always treat each other as if it were so. They always act in laying out their own plans as if it were so. They know by their own consciousness that it is so. And if it is so, mankind are free, though God does order their circumstances and condition and provide the motives which prompt their volitions and actions. The agency of God leaves their free agency wholly unmolested. He acts freely in his department of action, and they as freely in theirs. He is free in so ordering their life and lot that such and such motives fall on their minds, and they as free in choosing in coincidence with or in opposition to these motives. God's agency in bringing motives to bear on the human mind, no more compels choice than the agency of one man in presenting motives to others to prompt them to a specific course of action, forces their action. Men act just as free under those common influences which the agency or providence of God presents before them, and through which they are led to fulfil his purposes, as they would under any prompting influence which the agency of a fellow man might supply. The one is no more compulsory than the other. If men are free when persuaded to action by a fellow man, (and they know they are,) they are also free when excited to action by the influences which God has thrown around and upon them. God's agency, then, in executing his decrees by ordering the circumstances of their lot and bringing motives to bear on their minds, leaves them perfectly free in their choices and actions. Notwithstanding this agency, they, as we have seen, may be and are entirely free. When, therefore, by their voluntary conduct, they bring evil on themselves, they cannot complain of the circumstances in which they are placed or the influences which urged them to action and over which they had no control. They cannot say that these must bear the blame of their sins. The providence of God has never forced any man to commit a single sin. The agency of God in presenting motives before him has never done it. The whole black catalogue of his sins was his own work, his freely-chosen work, his much-loved work. In eve

1847.] Does the Certainty of Actions destroy their Freedom?

ry act of sin, no matter what the influence upon him, he felt that he was free. He knew that he was free. And therefore it was, that conscience laid the charge of guilt on his soul. She never allowed it to be cast upon the circumstances in which he was placed, or the influences upon him, or the agency of others, men, angels or God. She laid it on his own soul and fastened it inseparably there. She did it because he was free in his guilty conduct, and because he knew he was free. Had he not been free, she neither would nor could have done it. But there she has laid it, and there it will lie, an amply sufficient, an abiding, ever present, and painful proof that, notwithstanding any influence which the agency or providence of God may throw upon the minds of men, all their choices and actions are perfectly free and wholly their own.

4. Do the divine purposes produce a certainty that the actions of men will correspond with those purposes, a certainty which leaves men no liberty of choice, no freedom of action? Do the purposes of God deprive men of their freedom, by rendering it certain that they will so act as to fulfil his purposes?

Is it said that men always choose in accordance with the divine purposes, that they never deviate from them and that therefore they cannot be free to do it? But does it follow because a person always acts in a particular way, that he has no power to act otherwise, or that he is compelled to act as he does? Here is a man who has always lived in his native State. Does this fact prove that he has been compelled to live there, that he has had no power to go out of it? Angels have always practised holiness. Does this prove that they are compelled to do it? that they have no natural power to sin? Uniformity of conduct only proves stability of character, not compulsion of action. And suppose men should act contrary to the purposes of God. You must admit that, in such a case, they would be free. But they would be no freer than they are in acting in accordance with his purposes. If so, in what respect? Not in having more ability of choice. Not in having less or more motive to choice. Not in having more power to choose contrary to God's purposes, but simply in using this power. But freedom does not consist in using our powers of choice but in possessing them. Freedom is not the actual choosing or the power of choosing in one way rather than another, (e. g. of choosing in opposition to, rather than in accordance with the divine purposes,) but the power to choose at all. The being that CAN choose, that can make an election, that can take one