The time Mr. Jenyns wrote, and the circumstances in which he was placed, may be a sufficient apology for these equivocations, but as we conceive that the necessity for finesse of this kind no longer exists, at least in this country, we shall omit, when it can be done without injury to the sense, such passages as are evidently intended as a salvo to the author's want of faith, which clearly contradict other parts of the work: For all the ingenuity of our author was insufficient to prevent the most severe attacks from Orthodox believers, nor is it possible to suppose he could have expected to avoid them; Duplicity therefore was more than useless.]

THE whole affair of Religion and Morality, the subject of so many thousand volumes, is in short no more than this: The Supreme Being, infinitely good, as well as powerful, desirous to diffuse happiness by all possible means, has created innumerable ranks and orders of Beings, all subservient to each other by proper subordination. One of these is occupied by Man, a creature endued with such a certain degree of knowledge, reason, and free-will, as is suitable to his situation, and placed for a time on this globe as in a school of probation and education. Here he has an opportunity given him of improving or debasing his nature, in such a manner, as to render himself fit for a rank of higher perfection and happiness, or to degrade himself to a state of greater imperfection and misery; necessary indeed towards carrying on the business of the Universe, but very grievous and burthensome to those individuals, who, by their own misconduct, are obliged to submit to it. The test of this behaviour, is doing good, that is, co-operating with his Creator, as far as his narrow sphere of action will permit, in the production of happiAnd thus the happiness and misery of a future state will be the just reward or punishment of promoting or preventing happiness in this. So artificially by this means is the nature of all human virtue and vice contrived, that their

ness.

rewards and punishments are woven as it were into their very essence; their immediate effects give us a foretaste of their future; and their fruits in the present life are the proper samples of what they must unavoidably produce in another. We have Reason given to us to distinguish these consequences, and regulate our conduct; and lest that should neglect its post, Conscience also is appointed as an instinctive kind of monitor, perpetually to remind us both of our interest and our duty.

When we consider how wonderfully the practice of Virtue is thus inforced by our Great Creator, and that all which he requires of us under that title is only to be happy, that is to make each other so; and when at the same time we look round us, and see mankind thro' every successive generation, tormenting, injuring and destroying each other, and perpetually counteracting the gracious designs of their Maker, it is a most astonishing paradox how all this comes to pass; why God should suffer himself to be thus defeated in his best purposes by creatures of his own making; or why man should be made with dispositions to defeat them at the expence of his own present and future happiness; why infinite Goodness should form creatures inclined to oppose its own benevolent designs, or why infinite power should thus suffer itself to be opposed.

There are some, I know, who extricate themselves from this difficulty very concisely by asserting, that there is in fact no such original depravity, no such innate propensity to vice in human nature.

But the usual solution applied to this difficulty by the ablest Philosophers and Divines, with which they themselves, and most of their readers, seem perfectly satisfied, is comprehended in the following reasoning: that Man came perfect out of the hands of his Creator, both in virtue and happiness, but it being more eligible that he should be a freeagent, than a mere machine, God endued him with Freedom of will; from the abuse of which Freedom, all Misery and

Sin, that is, all natural and moral Evils, derive their existence: from all such therefore the Divine Goodness is sufficiently justified, by reason they could not be prevented without the loss of superior Good: for to create Men free, and at the same time compel them to be virtuous, is utterly impossible.

But whatever air of demonstration this argument may assume, by whatever famed Preachers it may have been used, or by whatever learned Audiences it may have been approv ed, I will venture to affirm, that it is false in all its Principles, and in its Conclusion also; and I think it may be clearly shewn, that God did not make Man absolutely Perfect, nor absolutely free; nor, if he had, would this in the least have justified the introduction of wickedness and misery.

That Man came perfect, that is endued with all possible perfections, out of the hands of his Creator, is evidently a false notion derived from the Philosophers of the first ages, founded on their ignorance of the Origin of Evil, and inability to account for it on any other hypothesis: they understood not that the universal System required Subordination, and consequently comparative Imperfections; nor that in the Scale of Beings there must be somewhere such a creature as Man with all his infirmities about him: that the total removal of these would be altering his very nature; and that as soon as he became Perfect he must cease to be Man. The truth of this, I think, has been sufficiently proved; and besides, the very supposition of a Being originally perfect, and yet capable of rendering itself wicked and miserable, is undoubtedly a Contradiction, that very power being the highest imperfection imaginable.

That God made Man perfectly free is no less false: Men have certainly such a degree of Free-will as to make them accountable, and justly punishable for the abuse of it; but absolute and independent Free-will is what, I believe, no created Being can be possessed of. Our actions proceed from our Wills, but our wills must be derived from the natu

ral dispositions implanted in us by the Author of our Being: wrong elections procced from wrong apprehensions, or unruly passions; and these from our original Frame or accidental Education: these must determine all our actions, for we have no power to act differently, these previous circumstanees continuing exactly the same. Had God thought proper to have made all Men with the same heads, and the same hearts, which he has given to the most virtuous of the species, they would all have excelled in the same virtues. Men, as well as all other animals, are exactly fitted for the purposes they are designed for; and have inclinations and dispositions given them accordingly: He, who implanted patience in the Lamb, obedience in the Horse, fidelity in the Dog, and innocence in the Dove, might as easily have inspired the breast of Man with these and all other virtues; and then his actions would have certainly corresponded with his Formation; therefore, in the strict philosophical sense, we have certainly no Free-will; that is, none independent of our Frame, our Natures, and the Author of them.

But were both these propositions true, were men originally created both perfect and free, yet this would by no means justify the introduction of moral Evil; because, if his perfection was immediately to be destroyed by his Frec-will, he might as well never have been possessed of the one, and much better have been prevented from making use of the other: let us dispute therefore as long as we please, it must eternally be the same thing, whether a Creator of infinite power and knowledge created Beings originally wicked and miserable, or gave them a power to make themselves so, foreknowing they would employ that power to their own destruction.

If moral Evil therefore cannot be derived from the Abuse of Free-will in Man, from whence can we trace its origin? Can it proceed from a just, a wise, and a benevolent God? Can such a God form Creatures with dispositions to do Evil, and then punish them for acting in conformity to those evil dispositions? Strange and astonishing indeed must this appear

to us, who know so little of the universal Plan! but it is far, I think, from being irreconcileable with the justice of the Supreme Disposer of all things: for let us but once acknowledge the truth of our first great proposition, (and most certainly true it is) that natural Evils exist from some necessity in the nature of things, which no power can dispense with or prevent, the expediency of moral Evil will perhaps follow of course: for if misery could not be excluded from the works of a benevolent Creator by infinite power, these miseries must be endured by some creatures for the good of the whole.

I presume not by what has been here said to determine on the councils of the Almighty, to triumph in the complete discovery of the Origin of Moral Evil, or to assert that this is the certain or sole cause of its existence; I propose it only as a Guess concerning the reason of its admission, more probable, and less derogatory from the divine wisdom, and justice, than any, that has been hitherto offered for that purpose.

There is undoubtedly something farther in the Depravity of Mankind than we are aware of, and probably many great and wise ends are answered by it to us totally incomprehensible. God, as has been shewn, would never have permitted the existence of Natural Evil, but from the impossibility of preventing it without the loss of superior Good and on the same principle the admission of Moral Evil is equally consistent with the divine Goodness: and who is he so knowing in the whole stupendous system of Nature as to assert, that the Wickedness of some Beings may not, by means inconceivable to us, be beneficial to innumerable unknown Orders of others? Or that the punishments of some may not contribute to the Felicity of numbers infinitely superior?

If natural Evil owes its existence to necessity, why may not moral? If Misery brings with it its Utility, why may not Wickedness?

"If storms and earthquakes break not Heav'n's design, "Why then a Borgia or a Cataline!"