ence; and on the one hand, therefore, exhibits their agency as exerted without any intelligent reasons, and implies, on the other, that the Most High has no certainty of the mode in which they will act; and contradicts alike, accordingly, their moral agency, and all the essential attributes of his character, and doctrines and declarations of his word, that have any relation to the future agency of his creatures.

Such being the theory I ascribed to him, and the objections I urged against it, the only method obviously of vindicating himself, if he attempted it, was either to evade those objections by disproving the representation of his theory on which they are founded; or if that representation is correct, to refute those objections themselves, by showing that the principles on which they rest are false, or the reasonings fallacious that are employed for their support. What then are the relations to them of the views he has presented in the article under consideration?

I. In place of the first, the theory, as he has restated it, corresponds in every essential particular with the representation I then gave of it, and confirms the propriety of all the objections to which I exhibited it as obnoxious—a fact which it becomes essential to notice, from his having disclaimed one of the doctrines which I represented his scheme as involving. In proof of it, it will be sufficient to cite the following passages:

"The last answer proceeds on the supposition, that a universe cannot be kept holy to all eternity, and that, consequently, God has never actually rejected such a universe as a possible thing; but that in a universe from which sin cannot be excluded, he has simply preferred to order his works of creation and providence, in such a manner as to reduce the evil to the least proportional extent possible, ra

ther than order them in any other manner.

the last may be true.

We have averred-that

"When we vindicate the goodness of the divine purposes on this ground, it cannot be supposed that we think the position itself is altogether void of probability. We have indeed asserted no more than its possibility; and like a possible quantity, we have assumed it to work out our process of explanation and vindication. Yet we hold there are strong probabilities in the case, that we have not assumed a wrong quantity. We will venture, therefore, in the present article, to advance the probabilities which, in our view, favor the position, that sin arises out of the nature and circumstances of a moral universe or that the providence and moral government of the Creator, having respect to beings who can sin as well as obey, are not effectual to secure universal and endless holiness in such a universe. "The position we apply to moral beings. We affirm that they, in their very nature, are capable of exerting wrong as well as right choices; that they are endued with susceptibilities to temptation, as well as to holy influences; that they have a limited personal good within reach, which occasions temptation, as well as the general good, which serves as an honorable and worthy motive to benevolence and virtue.

Again; we apply the position to a universe of moral beings for eternity. We affirm that the causes in kind which originate sin, being inseparably inherent in a moral universe, may so accumulate in degree under every system of providence and government which can be pursued, as to render sure the occurrence of sin. If in a universe of such beings, no possible system of providence adopted and pursued through eternity can shut out all occasions of the outbreakings of sin, it is easy to see, that as to his preventing it, sin is unavoidably incidental to the acts of the Creator in creating and governing such a kingdom."-Christian Spectator for December, 1832, pp. 620—622.*

Essentially the same theory was advanced in 1770, by Rev. Hugh Knox, in a letter to Rev. Jacob Green, of New-Jersey; and republished in 1809, in the Churchman's Magazine. The following are specimens of his language:

'I greatly hesitate at that supposition of yours, that God might have made a world of free agents, without a possibility of their falling into sin.' I conceive it safest to suppose (with all reverence be it spoken) that God could not (in consistence with his perfections, and the free agency of the crea

His theory, as here restated, thus is, that the entire exciusion of sin from a moral system is, or may be, impossible to

ture) make a system of free accountable creatures, without the possibility of sin's entering into such a system ;'-that he could not (in consistency with the liberty of the creature,) prevent sin's entering into the system, but that having permitted it upon a clear foresight of all its consequences, as best upon the whole, rather than not to produce such a system, he is determined to overrule it in such a manner, as will give a bright and perpetual display of his infinite power, wisdom, and goodness.'

"If you mean that God, having it in his power to plan a system wherein sin and misery could not take place, was pleased, in preference, to adopt the present, and deliberately to cause and introduce a certain quantum of sin and misery, for the greater good of the whole, I profess I cannot see how such a choice and preference can consist with the principle of universal benevolence. I know of but one way of getting rid of this difficulty, and that is, by supposing, that although God could have made a sinless system of free agents in the sense above, yet in no other system than the present could he have given so bright a display and manifestation of his perfections to his creatures; and that for this reason he preferred and adopted the present, though necessarily involving multitudes of his creatures in endless misery. But this is a mere begging of the question, seeing it is daring in us to limit the divine wisdom, and impossible for us to know that God could not have given as bright a display of his perfections to the creatures of a system, into which sin and misery could not have entered; besides, not the essential glory, but the universal benevolence of God, is the idea to be reconciled with his preference of the present plan.

"I really believe if any man were able to make this scheme consistent with itself, or to cast light on these dark and deep things of God, Mr. Edwards was that man. But I confess his doctrine of the will seems to me little else than a doctrine of fate. The constant dependence of our choice upon motives, external or without us; the uncontrollable power of these motives to produce our choices; and all these motives so fixed and planted by divine determination and providence as that the chain can never be broken, but must infallibly draw with it the last link, render men's actions so necessary that in my opinion there can be little room for virtue or vice, for reward or punishment. The creature does, indeed, in one sense, choose very freely, and yet in another sense, he chooses fatally, and cannot but choose. Yet toward the latter end of his book he very dexterously gives all these volitions and actions of the creature such a moral coloring as to make them the proper objects of praise and blame, reward and punishment. Now if the will of a man has no

the Most High; and that that, accordingly is, or may be, the reason of its admission into the present system: and he advances it, and endeavors to induce its adoption by others, from a conviction that there is a high probability of its truth, and that it is the only hypothesis by which it is possible" to vindicate the goodness of the purposes of God in relation to the entrance of sin into his kingdom."

The ground on which he rests this theory, likewise, is mainly, as before, the assumption that the nature of free agents is such as to render it impossible for God to control them in their choices. This is seen sufficiently from the passages already cited, and from the following:

"Would he give to his creatures a nature which he could not control? Under the limitations which we have already thrown around the question, it amounts simply to this: would he give existence to beings of a moral nature, if their nature involved the existence of things which might, under every possible system of providence that he could adopt, become sources and occasions of sin? i. e. if he could

elective self-determining power in the choice of objects, but is necessarily and unavoidably moved and determined by a train of external motives, so fixed and ordered in the plan of things as never to fail in determining it, it matters not to me how freely, i. e. spontaneously, the man chooses or refuses the objects that present themselves to him-there is certainly no possibility of his choosing or refusing otherwise than he actually does.

"President Edwards has indeed, in a very logical and labored manner, endeavored to establish the dependence of human choice and volition upon external motives, and to prove the absurdity and impossibility of the self-determining power of the will, and its inconsistence even with common sense, though it has been generally thought a dictate of this. And I confess I have neither leisure, nor perhaps penetration enough, to discover where the fallacy lies in his reasoning. But while to me even greater absurdities and impossibilities seem to follow from his scheme, than from that of a self-determining power, I must needs suppose some fallacy in his reasoning, and can never adopt a scheme which, as I conceive of it upon present evidence, entirely destroys moral agency."

not so control them as to prevent all sin? We reply, yes, certainly, if their nature involves this, because he has given existence to such beings."-p. 625.

He thus, as in the former article, represents the nature of moral beings to be such as to render it impracticable to God wholly to prevent them from sin, by any "possible system of providence that he could adopt;" and makes it, accordingly, the foundation of this theory that the entire exclusion of sin from the system is impossible.

The doctrine that to permit any sin that might be prevented, is inconsistent with benevolence, he has not formally repeated, but has placed those of his reasonings which relate to that branch of the subject on the assumption that it is inconsistent with benevolence to permit sin to be exerted to any greater extent, or to allow it to swell to a higher aggregate than is, on the whole, unavoidable.—p. 621.

The theory itself then, and the main ground on which it was placed his assumption respecting the nature of moral agents are as restated by him, those precisely which I ascribed to him, and present the same elements as his former discussion, for the conclusions I deduced from them. The reason of his having modified the other assumption on which he argued in support of his theory, is seen in the following passage, in which he disclaims "the doctrine" I represented it as involving, "that God cannot prevent us from sin in the instances in which we transgress."

"When we assert that the reason for the divine foreordination of sin may be, that as to God's prevention it is an unavoidable attendant on a moral universe, or on the kind of good which God seeks in his purposes, we do not advocate the doctrine' ascribed to us by the author of 'Views in Theology,' 'that God cannot prevent us from sin in the instances in which we transgress.' The reason which we