unfrequent. Christians believe that God has purposes respecting the salvation of individuals; that those purposes will certainly be accomplished; that all his elect will be gathered in ; and in these views they find a pillow for their consciences, and an excuse for their sloth. While they are engaged and active for the securing of other objects, which they believe equally settled in the purpose of God, they quietly resign a world lying in wickedness to be disposed of according to his pleasure.

Of a similar perversion of the doctrine in question, impenitent sinners are perpetually guilty. How many are there, and among these not a few who ought to know better, who, when pressed on the subject of religion, are ever ready to reply, Why should we give ourselves any trouble about it? If it is God's purpose to save us, we shall be saved, and if not, we cannot be, let us do what we may."

The moral tendency of the doctrine of God's purposes, when held in its just connections, and stated with proper qualifications, has been uniformly happy. And this has frequently been acknowledged, even by its opposers.-A learned infidel, while expressing a decided preference of the Arminian to the Calvinistic system, admits that "the modern Calvinists have, in no small degree excelled their antagonists in the practice of the most rigid and respectable virtues. They have been the highest honor to their own age, and the best models for imitation to every succeeding age."

A writer some years ago in the Edinburgh Review, who was probably an infidel, asks, "What are we to think of the morality of Calvinistic nations, especially the most numerous of them, who seem, beyond all other men, to be most zealously attached to their religion, and most deeply penetrated with its spirit? Here, if anywhere, we have a practical and decisive test of the moral influence of predestinarian opinions. In Protestant Switzerland, in Holland, in Scotland, among the English Nonconformists, and the Protestants of the North of Ireland, and in the New England States, Calvinism was long the prevalent faith, and is probably still the faith of a considerable majority. Their moral education was at least completed, and their collective character formed, during the prevalence of Calvinistic opinions, yet where are communities to be found of a more pure and active

virtue?"

I add one more testimony to the good moral tendencies of Calvinistic predestination. It is that of Tholuck, a Lutheran,

and not a professed believer in the doctrine. In his Treatise on Oriental Mysticism, he says, that "the doctrine of predestination, so far from producing the despondency and inaction often ascribed to it, on the contrary, moves and excites the inmost soul, by the self-surrender which it demands to the all-prevailing will of God." To the influence of this doctrine, he attributes whatever of seeming religion there is among those who receive the sensual dogmas of the Koran. "And Calvinism," he allows, "is incomparably more favorable to the deeper religious life, than that doctrine, by which the will of God is limited or conditioned by the human will."

From these concessions, as well as from other and more obvious considerations, it appears that the doctrine of God's universal and eternal purposes is not one of idle and unprofitable speculation. It is rather one, when properly stated and explained, of high practical influence and importance. It gives us the most exalted ideas of God and his truth. It humbles the pride of the sinner; tries the feelings of the human heart; sustains and comforts the people of God in seasons of darkness and affliction; and stimulates and encourages them in the performance of painful self-denying duties. It gives them a deep sense of obligation to God for his distinguishing goodness and mercy, and thus promotes their gratitude, their humility, and their growth in grace. In short, when properly represented and urged, the influences of the doctrine are good-all good, and so they have showed themselves, always and everywhere. It becomes Christians, therefore, to hold the doctrine fast, and to rejoice in it, as an important branch of that holy system of truth by which they are to be sanctified and made meet for heaven.

ARTICLE III.

REVIEW OF DR. EDWARDS'S "Dissertation CONCERNING LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.”

By Rev. Samuel T. Spear, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, Lansingburgh, N. Y.

[Continued from page 240.]

In resuming this work of examination and comparison with truth, it may be well to remind the reader, that in the former Article, the criticism upon Dr. Edwards was directed to the three following points, viz., the nature of Moral Necessity, the distinction between the two Necessities, moral and physical,-and the Dictum Necessitatis. In the present inquiry we shall seek to indicate and examine the grounds of Dr. Edwards in relation to the cause of volition.

The question, What causes volition? is the main question to be proposed and answered in every theory of the will; it is the Gordian knot which has puzzled the philosophic world; it is indeed the only question, that is fraught with much difficulty. The answer indicates the school of philosophy to which its author belongs. If we adopt the canon, that the mind can bring no effects to pass but in consequence of acting, and hence infer that it cannot itself be the cause of the acting; and hence again infer that the willing must have some cause ab extra, our position is fixed in the school of necessity. If we take the opposite grounds, the Dictum Necessitatis must be rejected, mind becomes the cause of the phenomenon, and our position is fixed among the advocates of what has been termed Free Agency or Philosophical Liberty. That philosophers have not been agreed on this subject, needs no better proof than the history of this discussion. Both parties have been about equally confident as to the merits of their cause, and the success of their argumentation; both charge each other with maintaining the grossest absurdities; neither seems to have been satisfied with the reasoning of its opponents. If we were to judge of this question by the confidence with which different advocates have defended

their respective positions, we should almost be inclined to allow the possibility of demonstrating contrary propositions. On the one hand Collins, President Edwards and the Son, think they have proved, beyond successful contradiction, the truth of moral necessity. On the other, Buffin, Reid, Stewart, Dr. Clarke and Professor Tappan, claim to have fully replied to the arguments for necessity, and made out a complete demonstration of the opposite scheme.

The question, beyond a doubt, is one of great difficulty. No man can penetrate its interior without making this discovery. Its importance is not less than its difficulty; it is a vital question in its bearing on responsible agency, and man's relation, as a subject, to any religious system, whether natural or revealed. The attack has been made at this point more frequently than at any other, by those who have sought to upturn the foundations of all religion. It is the Thermopyla of religious disputation. The skeptic has here brandished his intellectual armor, and attempted to foreclose the subject of religion by the force of "the previous question." Piety may treat him with contempt; common sense may laugh at him; but philosophy must be serious, and conduct this warfare by argument, or leave the whole ground in the undisputed possession of the skeptic.

It deserves special notice that the ground of President Edwards on this subject has been differently understood by different writers. Some suppose him to deny mental causality in toto; some understand him to make motive the sole cause of every volition; others regard him as asserting the causality, both of mind and motive. The fatalist and the atheist have claimed him as being on their side of the question; the philosophical and pious theist vindicates the reputation of Edwards from this aspersion, and insists that he has taken no such grounds, either by implication or concession. This discrepancy of interpretation is not a little remarkable; it argues, either great ambiguity of style, or great obscurity of view, or numerous self-contradictions, or much complexity in the subject, or a most extraordinary concurrence of contingencies, leading so many competent minds to such dissimilar interpretations. President Edwards is not now under review; if he were, it might easily be shown that he is not always consistent with himself or with truth.

Dr. Edwards prepared his Dissertation with his eye upon the work of the Elder Edwards. Having adopted the system of the

latter, his purpose was to explain and defend it, and especially to reply to the Essays of Dr. Samuel West. His Dissertation, therefore, contains not only his construction of the father's system, but also a statement of his own views. He stands before us in the attitude of an interpreter as well as an original author. If any one may be supposed to have had signal advantages for this work, that man was Dr. Edwards. He lived, thought, and wrote at the time, when this discussion was in progress. Gifted with unusual talent in metaphysical reasoning, and incited by the strong impulse of filial feeling, he doubtless searched this subject, as he supposed, to its very bottom. He had every motive to understand the "Inquiry" of President Edwards, and being an honest believer in its positions, to defend it against the attack of its opponents. He addresses himself to this work with. great skill-suggests no doubt as to the truth of the father's system-intimates no wish to modify its features-gives substantially the same explanations, and repeats the same general arguments. The system of the son and the father is one system. It matters but little, which work you read; both contain the same arguments, and aim at the same general conclusions; both must stand or fall together. A criticism, therefore, upon the Dissertation of Dr. Edwards, is indirectly a critique upon the great "Inquiry" of President Edwards.

Having made the reader acquainted with the main design of this Article, and submitted several suggestions upon the attitude of the question before us, I propose the following synopsis of discussion:

1. Whether volition be an effect?

2. Whether the knowledge of what causes an effect supposes the knowledge of how it causes?

3. Whether the mind be the cause of volition?

4. Whether motive be its cause?

5. Whether God be the cause of every volition ?—These inquiries cover the entire ground, they lay open the whole field. Let us proceed to examine Dr. Edwards on these several points:

I. Whether Volition be an Effect?

Alexander Smith, in his "Philosophy of Morals," does not grant the position that volition is properly an effect at all. In allusion to the arguments on the side of necessity, he says