ing still would be to the Natural. His Goodness therefore does not fuffer him to interpose, except when he forefees that the Evils arifing from our depraved Elections are greater than those which would enfue upon an Interruption of the Course of Nature, which he only can know who knows all things. (67.) NOTES. III. (67.) By this last Concession our Author evidently allows that God may fsometimes have fufficient reason to interpose in matters relating to our Elections; (though perhaps he never acts apon the Will by Phyfical Impulse, or irrefiftibly, which will be confidered in the next Subsection.) His Design therefore is only to shew that this ought not to be Jone frequently, or as often as Men choose amiss. Now this may be illuftrated in the fame manner as we treated of the Laws of Motion. That there are general Mechanic Laws in the Natural World, the Establishment and Preservation whereof tends more to the Happiness of the Creation, and is every way more worthy of the Deity, than to act always by particular Wills, was shewn in Note 25. If these Laws were frequently altered and unfixed, they would cease to be Laws, and all Action, and Contrivance which depends upon the Stability, and computes the future Effects of them, muft cease, or at least prove infignificant. In like manner Liberty has been proved to be an Universal Law of Intellectual Beings, and the great Ufe and Excellence of it evinced, and therefore we have equal reason to suppose that it could not be, at least not frequently, suspended, without as great Inconvenience as would attend the Violation of these Laws of Mechanism. If this were done in the Rational World, all Studies, Enterprises, Arguments, all kind of Reasoning and Policy would be in vain and useless; all rewardable Action, and its concomitant Happiness (of which in Note 65 and more below) must entirely cease. Nay, perhaps to deprive a rational Being of Free-Will, would be altogether as absurd and inconvenient, as to endow a Machine with Reflection, or an Edifice with Self-motion. But our great Ignorance of the Intellectual World must render any Argument of this kind very uncertain. However, thus much we are sure of, that so great Violence done to the Will, would be directly contrary to the general Method of God's treating reasonable Creatures, and quite opposite to the end of all those Manifestations he has made of his Nature and Will; the very Reverse of all those Arguments, Exhortations, Promises and Threats, which are the Subject of Revealed Religion: a Man that believes any thing of these (upon the Belief of which I am now arguing) can never imagine III. Secondly, Such an Interruption as this would God by not only do Violence to Nature, but quite invert interpofing in the the Method of treating Free Agents. This Me- Elections thod is to hinder or excite Elections by Rewards of his and Punishments: To divert them from unreason- Creatures, able would Free or absurd things, and draw them to better by quite inthe perfuafion of Reafon. But it is doubtful whe- vert the ther the Nature of the thing will permit an Election Method of to be determined by Impulse, or as it were by im- treating mediate Contact. For it seems equally abfurd to Agents. attempt a change of Election by any other means than those above mentioned, as to defire to stop the Motion of Matter by Intreaty, or offering Rewards. May we not with the fame reason expect that Matter should be moved by Rewards and Punishments, as the Will influenced by Physical Impulse, as they call it? For it is by these Means that they would have God to stop or alter the Choice. So prepofterous an Interpofal would confound every thing, and leave nothing certain in Nature. How fatal fuch an Experiment would be, and how it would affect the Minds of the Observers, or what Sufpicions concerning God and their own Security, it might suggest to the whole System of thinking Beings, God only knows. We fee that human Laws cannot be dispensed with, without very many Inconveniencies, which yet, as they are made upon an imperfect Forefight, and can provide for few Cafes, seem naturally to require some Interposal: how much greater Evils may we apprehend from a Dispensation with the Divine, the natural Laws, on the Observance of which the Good of the whole depends? This feems to be the reason why God makes use of so much Labour and Pains, NOTES. fo imagine that they are all made use of to no purpose, as they must be in a great measure, if the Will could be over-ruled occafionally without any confiderable Inconvenience. This is what our Author endeavours to prove in the following Paragraph. He would that so great an Apparatus of Means, (68.) so many Precepts, Perfuafions, and even Entreaties for the Amendment of Mankind; which nevertheless he could effect in a Moment, if he were pleased to apply force; and he would undoubtedly do it, if he had not foreseen more Inconveniencies from a Change in the Order of Nature, and Violence done to Elections. IV. Thirdly, That which gives us the greatest take away Pleasure in Elections, is a Consciousness that we which is could have not chosen; without this 'tis no Choice the most at all: but such is the Nature of us rational Beings agreeable that nothing pleases us but what we choose. In to us in order therefore to make any thing agreeable to us, Elections, viz. a 'tis necessary for us to be conscious that we choose Confci- it voluntarily, and could have refused it: But if God determine our Election extrinfically, the most agreeable Part of all is taken away. (X.) For we muft ousness that we might have not chosen. NOTES. (68.) The Hiftory of the Jewish Nation affords good Instances of this. What an apparatus of outward Means was continually made use of in the Government of that stiff-necked People? What frequent Murmurings, Rebellions and Apostacies were permitted, and then punished ? What numerous Miracles, both of the remunerative and vindictive kind were applied, in order to bring them to some tolerable sense of their dependence on God, and a suitable practice of the Duties refulting from it? All which would have been unnecessary at leaft, if one Miracle exerted on their Minds could have done the business; if their Understandings could as well have been illuminated and their Wills reformed at once; and if their Practice produced by this means, and as it were extorted from them, would have been equally agreeable to the Deity. And in this, as well as many other respects they seem to have been Types and Representatives of all Mankind. (X.) "Tis objected, that this explication of Free-Will makes Adam more unreasonable in the state of Innocence than his Pofterity in the state of Corruption. For according to this it would have grieved him to think that his choofing right was due to God's assistance, and that he would not have believed himself happy, if when he was ready to break God's Command, he had perceived that God by his Grace had interposed and enabled him to refift the Temptation, Whereas in truth, fuch 3 1 must either be confcious that God determines our Will or not; if we be confcious, how can that be agreeable NOTES. such a discovery would have made him, as it must make us, more happy, tying him by a new Obligation to acknowledge the Sovereign Goodness of God, and on that account to love and adhere to him the more closely. But it is alledged that the Author is absolutely of another Opinion. I answer, the Objector may assure himself, the Author has no such Opinion, nor is there any thing like it in the Book or that can be deduced from it. What the Author says is, that God has made Man an intelligent Creature, capable of pleasing himself by Choice; that the proper way to move his Will is by Rewards and Punishments as the proper way to move Bodies is by physical Impulse; that in the ordinary Course of things it is as improper, and perhaps as impracticable to move the Will by any other force than that of rational Motives, as to attempt to move a Body by Rewards and Punishments : That there is this difference between them, that a body necefsarily moves when impelled, but the Will is not neceffitated by the moral Motives proposed to it. That there are two forts of Goods which may be proposed to a Man, one that arises from the conveniency of things to our natural Appetites, and is antecedent to Choice, and another that is founded in the Choice itself, and confequent to it; and that the first is subordinate to the second. When therefore these two interfere, the first gives place to the latter: and hence we see many Men prefer their Choice even to Life, which is the greatest natural Good, tho' 'tis true, this is done with difficulty and reluctance. But when there is no such interfering between the Choice and Appetites, there the Man is entirely free, and can make the thing chosen good without mixture, which happens in a thousand Instances of Life, and therefore there is much more Good than Evil in it. As to Adam, he was placed in this State of Freedom because his Natuure required it; and the Author believes God might have prevented his choosing amiss, if he would have altered his Nature, Motives and Circumstances; that is, made a new World for him, and left this without intelligent Inhabitants. I do not deny but God may stop Man from executing his Choice, when he is ready to make an ill one; for no body ought to presume to limit the Divine Power. But I say, when a free Agent is ready to make an ill choice, and wou'd do it if not prevented by an Almighty Power, he is already guilty in the fight of God, such a readiness is an obliquity in his Will and a moral Evil, and therefore God is not obliged to prevent the Execution of it; for that were to prevent the Punith agreeable which is obtruded on us by force? If we be not, we are deceived in the Operations of our NOTES. own Punishment, though the guilt be contracted: and it is easy to fee what the Consequence of such a procedure may be in a World that is to be governed by Rewards and Punishments; and what effect it might have on those innumerable Myriads of intelligent Beings that are under the Government of God, and that are all now virtuous by their Choice, and thereby justly diftinguished in their Rewards and Circumstances, and poffefsed of that most valuable perfection and only moral Good, an active conformity to the Will of God. Whereas if the Will of Man were necessitated and held by an irresistible force from choosing amiss, the whole intellectual Creation would be let loose, and under no kind of moral Obligation to concern themselves about their Choices; and so there could only be a passive Conformity to God's Will, and no room for Virtue or Holiness, which are the most valuable Goods in the World; and hence to avoid fome Moral Evil there wou'd be no room left for any moral Good. Against this it is urged that the Elect are thus prevented by God's Grace, and yet no body denies them to have moral Good. The Holy Scriptures teach us that it is the Spirit of God that Works in us to will and to do, and that it is his Grace that efficaciously determines the Wills of thofe that are predeftinated. To this I answer, that Man by his ill choice and abuse of his Faculty of Free-Will had disabled it from choofing Spiritual Good. When a Man loses a Limb or an Eye, or is wounded in any mortal Part, he can't have that Limb restored or be recovered but by a Miracle; and the same will hold as to the Spiritual Functions, when they are lost or disabled, only he that gave them can restore them. Now this the Holy Scriptures and the Catholic Church have taught us to be the case of the Will of Man in his corrupted State as to spiritual Objects; and therefore the effectual interpofition of God's Power to restore Man is the Christian Doctrine. But though the restoring the Faculty to its former state be the immediate Work of God's Spirit, yet the acts performed by that restored Faculty are Man's, and he is free in the exerting of them, and this I take to be likewife the sense of the Catholic Church. 'Tis true, those who are thus elected and influenced by God will certainly use their Free-Will right so far as the Gospel requires in order to their Salvation: but it is not because they have not the Power to do otherwise, but because they make their Choice otherwise; nor doth it follow because they can choose amiss, that they will do fo. A poffe ad effe non valet Confequentia. If |