have ascribed all volitions, whether good or bad, not to intermediate agencies, but to the direct and immediate exertion of divine Power. And it is curious to observe the ingenious methods, by which these good men contrive to interweave their ideas of faith and duty, with positions more ultra than Hobbes deemed necessary to establish his skeptical doctrine of absolute fate. While they all concur that the cause of our volitions is wholly beyond our control, and produces its result upon us by a necessity as absolute as that which governs the motions of the spheres, yet, that we are to blame for having those volitions, because, they tell us, the morality of our actions is no way concerned, in the causes which produce them. "Moral liberty consists," according to a statement already quoted from Hopkins, and Edwards expresses the same," in voluntary exercises, and not in the causes which determine them." But we do not reason thus in human jurisprudence. The crime of seduction is imputed, not to both the parties concerned, but to the one who contrives, by various ingenious methods, to obtain the consent of the other. And owing to her being exposed to such arts in controling the decisions of her will, we consider the seduced unfortunate, rather than criminal. But God's power to control the decisions of our will, must be vastly above those which one creature is capable of employing upon another; and why, therefore, if all our volitions are the result of his own positive agency, may we not also claim to be considered unfortunate rather than criminal?

But the manner in which they contrive, upon their system, to clear God from the imputation of evil, is if possible, still more ingenious. "Though God," says Hopkins, "is the cause of evil he cannot be evil himself, because the cause must exist before its effect. Evil is the effect,and it is therefore certain that there could have been no evil in its cause, because it would be

supposing that the effect existed before the cause. Moral evil cannot be the cause of evil any more than an effect can be the cause of itself." Why not say also that holiness, goodness and benevolence are effects, whose cause must have been prior to themselves, and therefore that their existence in the universe is no evidence that God is holy, good, and benevolent? Moral evil is a quality of character as much as these attributes, and its existence in a being is brought to our knowledge, by the product of his active energies, or by the fruit he bears. If therefore, God, by a direct and positive energy, has poured out upon the universe the floods of mischief, pollution and wo, which have deluged some of its fairest portions, why have we not the same evidence that evil or malevolence, is a quality of his character, as that benevolence is so, from the good which he has done to other portions still? Indeed, the above reasoning is so utterly preposterous, and so remote from the sum of the truths that bear upon the subject, that it seems like insanity. It resembles that species of mental derangement called by the physicians monomany,which consists in being so absorbed by a single idea, that the general facts which should influence the decisions of the mind, are lost sight of, or tinged with unatural hues. Thus, when our intellectual habits become thoroughly formed to this abstruse mode of reasoning, the materials which constitute the only real basis of our knowledge, are cast aside or thrown into distorted shapes, while the mind revels insanely amid the scenes of a remote abstraction, yielding itself to every deduction, however irreconcilable with facts, which may there obtrude upon its perceptions. Such are the legitimate offspring of metaphyscial theology, a compound more pregnant in absurdities and divisions to the church, than any other which the human mind has ever invented.

It is occasion of gratitude to God, however, that

the ultra positions of this compound, being found too unwieldly for all practical effect, have become nearly obsolete. Hopkins and his system are now quite out of the minds of men. He was no doubt a holy man, and long ere this, disencumbered of those unfortunate principles which rendered his labors on earth unavailable to all purposes of utility, has entered, we may hope, with invigorated powers, upon some other and more successful field of labor under the government of God. But, though the ultra positions of Hopkins are out of date, it is remarkable that the doctrine of necessity, in which they found their germs, still retains its hold, and is thought by some to occupy a highly important place in the science of theology. The more judicious and better balanced mind of Edwards, checked him in his course, somewhat short of those ultra, though legitimate results of his theory, and thus he has secured for the product of his masterly mind a more permanent, perhaps a perpetual control in the intellectual world. For, with the exception of a few attempts to show that it contradicts experience, that the terms necessity, impossibility, and the like, cannot be safely ascribed to moral action, or some such distant skirmishings, he has hitherto been left, and probably ever will be, to the undisputed occupancy of the strong holds which his own genius created for his name and memory.*

* This line of reasoning fails of bringing to view all the conditions of moral action. There are, to say the least, three prominent orders of motive, in themselves innocent, one or all of which are concerned in every action which has a moral quality; and these are self-love, benevolence, and conscience. In every case where these principles clash with each other, the question of which should prevail, is to be decided, not by the strength of the passion or motive, in itself considered, but by its nature. Conscience, or the reflective faculty, has a right to control, by virtue of its own nature, whenev er it comes in competition with the other principles of action. And actual guilt never arises, whatever may be said of native pravity, except when the agent gratifies his self-love or social affections, at the expense of what he has the means of knowing that his con

But in our view, this whole mode of reasoning, however it may be indulged as a matter of curious speculation, must be felt to be inadmissible as connected with religion, or we shall never see an end to our unhappy divisions. Adverse theories must unavoidably arise, from interweaving the plain matters of faith and duty with a department, in which the materials of knowledge are so uncertain as in mental philosophy and moral causation. It only serves to throw doubt and darkness over a subject, that every man feels to be settled and clear. We would, therefore, exhort christians to confine themselves to those evidences of accountability which God has rendered a part of our natures, which are alike common to all who are capable of moral action, and which can never be strengthened, though they may be greatly weakened, by an appeal to abstract philosophy. Let the authority of such philosophy "be first established in its own province before it ventures to invade the territories of Theology. Its worst errors have arisen from quitting its proper sphere; from presumptuously attempting to pass those bounds which Infinite Wisdom, by limiting the powers, has pleased to prescribe to the researches of reason. Nothing is more certain, than that it has no right to revise truths which have emanated from Truth itself. The word of an unchangeable God is certainly sufficient war

science, acting in view of law, must approve. It would be a useful study, therefore, to trace out all the particular cases of conflict between these several orders of motive, and mark the precise point at which the agent begins to deserve actual praise or blame. The reader is referred to several sermons on this subject, by Bishop Butler, contained in the first part of a Cambridge edition of a volume of his sermons, which every man ought to read, who wishes to understand the precise conditions of moral action. But to run the subject up in a single line, in the manner of Hopkins, Edwards, and divines of that school, is to utterly omit its important practical features. Or, to speak figuratively, though we cannot gainsay the reasoning, we distinctly feel that it leaves out the warp or woof of the moral tissue.

rant for belief; and he who receives His truths simply because they are approved by reason, is still an infidel. Can this philosophy add evidence or authority to the declarations of God? Can it add pespicuity to that system of truth, which comes from the pen of inspiration, and is proposed, not to be the subject of speculation, but simply to command our belief and control our practice?"* "To the law and the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."

SECTION VI.

Metaphysical Theology-its present state-results of past theories.

Glad should we be to leave this subject without attempting to trace its influence upon the present posture of Protestant Christendom, did we not fear that the principles which we have endeavored to establish, would fail of the practical bearing which we designed to give them. Pledged as we are to our conscience, to our God, and to you, brethren in Christ, to speak honestly and fearlessly what we conceive to be true, we see not how we can avoid detailing to some extent, the present forms which these old habits of religious philosophizing have assumed. We may err in our views, but who knows but our very errors may be converted, in abler hands, into the means of ascertaining the truth? And as truth is our only party, so far as we are able to understand it, we shall rejoice to have its cause subserv ed, even though it may be by our mistakes.

Theo. Review. vol. 2. p. 675,

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