I. A short Method of converting all the Roman Catholics in the Kingdom of Ireland A Letter to the Printer of the Dublin Public A Disavowal of persecuting Papists Reasons against a Separation from the Thoughts on Separation from the Church *244 An Answer to an important Question Free Thoughts on the present State of Thoughts upon Necessity, TO THE READER. I HAD finished what I designed to say on this subject, when the Essay on Liberty and Necessity fell into my hands. A most elaborate Piece, touched and retouched with all possible care. This has occasioned a considerable enlargement of the following Tract. I would fain place mankind in a fairer point of view than that Writer has done: as I cannot believe the noblest creature in the visible world to be only a fine piece of clock-work, IS Man a Free-Agent, or is he not? Are his actions free or necessary? Is he self-determined in acting; or is he determined by some other Being? Is the principle which determines him to act, in himself or in another? This is the question which I want to consider. And is it not an important one? Surely there is not one of greater importance in the whole nature of things. For what is there that more nearly concerns all that are born of women ? What can be conceived, which more deeply affects, not some only, but every child of man? I. 1. That Man is not Self-determined, that the Principle of Action is lodged, not in himself, but in some other being, has been an exceedingly ancient opinion, yea, near as old VOL. XV. B as the foundation of the world. It seems, none that admit of Revelation can have any doubt of this. For it was unquestionably the sentiment of Adam, soon after he had eaten of the forbidden fruit. He imputes what he had done not to himself, but another: The woman whom thou gavest me. It was also the sentiment of Eve: The serpent he beguiled me, and I did eat. It is true, I did eat: but the cause of my eating, the spring of my action, was in another. 2. The same opinion, That Man is not self-determined, took root very early, and spread wide, particularly in the Eastern world, many ages before Manes was born. Afterwards indeed he and his followers, commonly called Manichees, formed it into a regular system. They not only maintained, that all the Actions of Man were necessarily determined by a power exterior to himself, but likewise accounted for it, by ascribing the good to Oromasdes, the Parent of all Good: the evil to the other independent Being, Arimanius, the Parent of all Evil. 3. From the Eastern World, "When Arts and Empire learned to travel West," this opinion travelled with them into Europe, and soon found its way into Greece. Here it was earnestly espoused and vehemently maintained by the Stoic Philosophers: Men of great renown among persons of literature, and some of the ablest disputants in the world. These affirmed with one mouth, That from the beginning of the world, if not rather from all eternity, there was an indissoluble chain of causes and effects, which included all human Actions. And that these were by fate so connected together, that not one link of the chain could be broken. 4. A fine writer of our own country, who was a few years since gathered to his fathers, has, with admirable skill, drawn the same conclusion, from different premises. Ile lays it down as a principle, (and a principle it is, which cannot reasonably be denied,) That as long as the soul is vitally united to the body, all its operations depend on the body: That in particular all our thoughts depend upon the vibrations of the fibres of the brain; and of consequence |