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It lies at the foundation of moral obligation, and hence of all religion, natural and revealed. To the Christian, in particular, the subject of liberty must ever be peculiarly interesting. Notwithstanding all the laborious efforts to establish universal necessity, he knows, on the highest evidence, that there is indeed a liberty with which the Divine Redeemer makes his people free; but how can this be understood without knowing the nature of the being who enjoys it? Ignorance of the human constitution, and its present condition, is the principal cause of the endless controversies among Christians. Did man know himself, the feelings of humility, of faith, and of gratitude would quickly supersede the rancorous passions of the disputant. And perhaps there is not a subject in the whole compass of theology, whose explication would so directly and completely remove so many grounds of difference among inquiring Christians as that of liberty and necessity. Were this subject fully illustrated, it might be considered one of the most hopeful tokens that the period was at hand, when the watchmen shall see eye to eye, and when with the voice together they shall sing; and the Christian church shall at length be

delivered from that wisdom, earthly, brutal and devilish, which has led the ministers of truth to wrangle about they knew not what, while the multitudes gazing around were allowed to perish for lack of the knowledge of those truths on which they were all agreed.

Allow me then, Sir, to state briefly how far the subject of liberty has been satisfactorily explained, and at which points it still requires illustration.

Mr. Hume, President Edwards, and others have put beyond all doubt the universality of causation or philosophical necessity. Every thing has a cause, except the eternal First Cause, whose name therefore is, "I am that I am;" and every action implies an agent who has had power to perform it. So far there is no difference of opinion; but should we hence conclude the universality of any necessity opposed to freedom? Quite the reverse. This necessity, as shall be shown, is nothing but the simple fact, that agents exist, and proves no necessity but that which is stated in the proposition-a thing cannot be, and not be simultaneously. As a stone is, because it is solid, &c.; so a being is an agent because he has power to secure the regu

lar performance of the actions peculiar to his nature. To maintain therefore the universality of philosophical necessity, is just to affirm the fact of the existence of agents; and accordingly, as shall be afterwards shown, while one class of philosophers have written many a huge volume to prove to mankind, that while a being is, he must be; another class have strenuously maintained that in order to be free he must be annihilated. The dispute, as generally managed, between the necessitarian and libertarian, has truly regarded only the existence of the agent, and not the liberty or necessity of an agent who actually has a being. The necessity of the one states just the fact, I am; the liberty of the other asserts, I am not.

To free us from all such misconceptions, we are first of all to inquire, what is an agent; and then having settled this preliminary inquiry, and taken, as a matter of fact, the existence of the being whose condition it is required to ascertain, we are prepared to inquire further, what is the liberty of such and such an agent, and what the opposite state of necessity. The philosophical necessity is the fact of his existence as a being possessed of the power of agency; real necessity can be nothing but a state of an agent who

already exists. By thus distinguishing philosophical and real necessity, we shall be delivered at once from a fearful host of arguments on both sides, which will be found utterly irrelevant and unmeaning; and obtain a fine illustration of the justness of the remark of Dr. Brown, that "to remove a number of cumbrous words is, in many cases, all that is necessary to render distinctly visible, as it were to our very glance, truths, which they and they only, have been for ages hiding from our view."

This true method of inquiry, indeed, was laid down by Edwards, though he did not carry it forward to its legitimate conclusions. Freedom he proved to be the enjoyment of power; necessity to be the result of weakness. The voluntary agent, for example, is free when he is able to carry his will into effect, but labours under the opposite state of real necessity, when his will is opposed and frustrated by irresistible physical force. To both these opposite states of being, it is plain, causation or philosophical necessity is equally necessary, that is, whether a being enjoy power and is free, or is weak and is oppressed by the superior power of another, the law of causation equally prevails.

Pursuing the inquiry on this just principle, Edwards and all the necessitarians admit that man is, in one sense, free when he does as he chooses, and is in the opposite state of necessity when his will is opposed and resisted. And that man, when free from all compulsion and restraint, does uniformly act according to his volitions cannot be doubted, and so far all are agreed. The question then becomes, whether this is all the liberty enjoyed by man. Hume, Edwards, &c. maintain that it is, and hold it absurd to imagine, that man should possess a higher degree of freedom than the power of doing as he chooses and finds most agreeable.

That this is the whole of free will, as it is usually termed, or all the liberty of the voluntary agent who regulates his actions by his volitions, Mr. Locke long since demonstrated; but that it is not all the liberty possessed by man shall afterwards appear. It is common to man with the brutes; and it is not the muscular motions consequent upon volition, but the will itself which man is required, by the law of God, to regulate; and therefore if he has the power only of determining his actions by his volitions, but not of controlling and regulating the volitions themselves,

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