strongest motive; that you cannot prefer differently from what you do prefer: that the strongest motive is all that in the mind's view which leads to a particular act of choice or causes it to prefer one thing before another; and now we have a medicine that will cure you if you prefer upon the whole to take it, but if not, you will find it impossible to take it, and so your death will be as inevitable as if there were no remedy for your disease in existence. But mind ye, sick man, your inability in that case will make you a self-murderer." Each of these propositions might be true; but is such the course to which nature would prompt in a case like this? Is it the course to which inspired men resorted, in their endeavors to induce in sinners the choice of what is good?

No: the Bible contains not a sentence, from which any man competent to judge of the meaning of words, could infer that the necessity of obeying the strongest motive, ever entered the mind of inspired teachers. And they certainly in no single page of their writings agitated the subject of moral causation. As they have not done it, therefore, in their religious labors, why should we? And if we agitate it at all, ought it not to be simply as a matter of curious investigation, which is no way important to any point of faith or practice? There is a vast amount of truth which God has not seen fit to embody in his word, and has thus shown that however valuable it may be in other respects, it has no essential bearing in a religious point of view. Shall we therefore be wise above what is written, and undertake to give it such a bearing, or incorporate in the basis of our moral and religious reasonings the dark, intangible, and fugitive results of abstract investigation?

SECTION IV.

Metaphysical theology-Theories of moral causation-their tendency illustrated from facts.

Nothing but the most deliberate conviction that christians can never be uniform in their views and feelings, so long as they allow the results of abstract inquiry to have place among the materials which control their theological thinking, and nothing but our incapacity of devising any other method than the one we have chosen to make this appear, could induce us to throw out the remarks which we have made and are to make upon this subject. If we are in error, we pray God to counteract the pernicious influence of what we have to say, but if right, that he would endow us with the ability of transferring our convictions to others, in a manner to secure their benefit and His glory. And we must entreat the reader, not to judge of the merit of this chapter by what it is in itself, but in view of our work as a whole.

Though the metaphysics are much less in vogue than formerly, yet the writer fancies that he can detect their influence, variously modified and compounded, in every religious system which is now competing for the popular favor. No division of the christian world, has yet learned to confine itself, to what we conceive to be the only legitimate materials of religious investigation. And presumptuous as we may be deemed, truth seems to demand the exposure, that all the principal positions about which christians have been contending for ages past, and all the most considerable weapons with which they have conducted the strife, are both entirely foreign to the legitimate province of theology. Consequently the noble specimens of talent which this strife has called into requisition, and the untold benefits, which must be conceded to have, in

some points of view resulted from it,are intermixed with influences whose flow to posterity must be counteracted, before the peace of christians can ever be secured. But it is a most difficult and delicate work to expose these influences, without incurring the censure of arraying ourselves against those characters and principles, which, though identified with them, deserve to have place among the choicest recollections of departed years. Such is the unenviable task, which we have proposed to ourselves in this article, and which, much as we might desire it, we cannot hope to execute in a manner to meet the views of all our readers.

Presuming that if the man ever lived, who could have brought any valuable contributions to the science of theology from the department of metaphysics, President Edwards was that man, we employ his writings as a means of showing, that this whole field of inquiry is so indeterminate and uncertain, that God never could have suspended upon its results any principle or consideration which is necessary to life and godliness. "The rules of morality are too deeply rooted in human nature, to be shaken by every veering breath of metaphysical theory. Our moral sentiments spring from no theory. They are as general as any part of our nature, the causes which generate, or unfold and nourish them, lie deep in the unalterable interests of society, and in those primitive feelings of the human heart which no circumstances can eradicate."*

In prosecuting the task which we thus propose to ourselves, though we make no pretension to philosophical precision in the use of terms, we hope to speak in a way to be understood. From the remarks of a former section, it will be seen, that whatever value we might attach to Edwards' work on the Will in other points of view, we allow it none in theology,

* Edinburgh Review Oct. 1821 p. 255.

except so far as it may be used to disarm those captious reasoners, who pretend to have found in the nature of man or in the laws of accountable action, grounds for impugning that class of inspired statements, which respects the divine sovereignty and decrees, or those eternal purposes which God purposed in himself concerning the moral events and ultimate destiny of this world. We now speak of the work as a whole, without meaning to imply that its subordinate particulars may not be turned to other valuable purposes in this science.

Our first and weightest reason for regarding his work in this light, is, that facts have shown that its ultimate principles are capable of being converted, with equal show of propriety and truth, to uses the most opposite and conflicting, as well as most hostile to the interests of piety and virtue. These principles were the key-stone of the infidel doctrine of fate; they were the grand pillar by which Hopkins propped his cheerless theory in making God the Creator of every sinful volition as much as he is the Creator of the world; and thus, by a course of reasoning in which it is as difficult to detect any flaw as in that of Edwards himself, they have been employed to sustain systems as abhorrent as can well be conceived. If therefore, we are forced to believe that there is something wrong in the application of these principles, in the extreme cases to which we have alluded, though we can not tell how, why may we not conclude the same in regard to Edwards' reasonings?

As long as we keep in the neighborhood of the? simple elements of knowledge, such as intuitive truths, sensible impressions, facts of revelation, records of history, together with those properties of bodies in which physical science has its foundation, we are in little danger of essential divergences from truth. But when we launch out into the open sea of abstruse

philosophy, where we have none of these stars to guide our course, there is no conjecturing the track we shall describe,or the unknown wastes through which we shall wander.

The doctrine of necessity as applied to moral action, appears to have been projected or first formally insisted upon, by the acute but infidel Hobbes of Malmsbury,the personal friend of the immortal Bacon. He was the first to apply Bacon's principles to the laws and operations of mind: and he did it with so much success, as Robert Hall I think has observed, that Locke,Hartley, Hume,the Scotch metaphysicians, and most that followed, have been more or less indebted to his discoveries.

The necessity which Hobbes advocates is expressed in the following terms: "That which necessitates and determines every action is the sum of all things which being now existent, conduce and concur to the production of that action hereafter, whereof if any thing were now wanting the effect would not be produced." Edwards, if our memory serves us,had not read Hobbes' "Essay on Liberty and Necessity," at the time of writing his "Inquiry concerning the Will," and it is therefore remarkable that he should have slid into almost precisely the same definition of necessity. He calls it the necessary connection between the choice or action and the strongest motive. (6 By motive to use his own words, "I mean the whole of that which moves, excites or invites the mind to volition, whether that be one thing singly, or many things conjunctly. Many particular things may concur and unite in their strength to induce the mind; and when it is so, all together are as it were one complex motive. And when I speak of the strongest motive, I have respect to the strength of the whole that operates to induce to a particular act of volition, whether that be the strength of one thing alone or of many together. Whatever is a motive, in this