only of the contrary position, but also of all those audacious speculations which may in any degree fairly tend to unsettle the ideas of mankind on this awful subject. The Him as their Almighty Preserver. creature can take place: these are, im The hypothesis of Mr. Smith and Dr. Williams respecting the origin of moral evil is now to be considered; a hypothesis which seems to be the result of some thought, and which is supported with some acuteness, Considering that it is maintained by them without any material variation, notwithstanding there is an interval of two years between the dates of these two publications, and, farther that it has been again recently avowed by Mr. Smith in his letters on the death of Dr. Priestley, we cannot but regard it as the accepted doctrine of a tolerably numerous class of individuals, for whom the authors before us may be supposed to be the spokesmen. On this ac-being. But that bestowment could be no count, however unsound we may think it, it appears entitled to some attention, and must excite in us feelings analogous to those with which we might look upon a sovereign, who, though destitute of personal qualifications, should yet be impor tant as the recognized head of an extensive territory. The following extracts are from Mr. Smith: "The Almighty and Blessed God could bave for ever prevented the occurrence of moral evil, either by refraining from the creation of free and accountable agents, or, admitting the creation of such, by a sovereign act of preventing power :-but He has not pleased thus to interfere. "The former of these alternatives is out of the question. Surely all must admit that it is becoming and glorious in the Most High to form a rational creation. We also take for granted that rational creatures are free and accountable agents." (p. 18, 19.) "The sole and proper origination of sin is from the necessary condition and circumstances of created and finite existence, when destitute of a sovereign prevention." (p. 19.) "Limited or created natures, with all their essential properties, faculties and powers, are positive existences, are derived immediately from God as their benevolent Author, and are necessarily dependent on "Let the first case be that of change in the way of improvement. It is obvious that this can take place only by the acces sion of more positive being, that is, greater degrees of natural and moral good. Such accession must, then, of course consist in cations from the glorious Author of all real the actual bestowment of new communi other than an act of purely sovereign goodness, and could on no original account be claimable on the part of the creature." (p. 20, 21.) "But the second respect, in which ac tual change may take place in a created nature, stands on quite a different ground. Let the holy and blessed God refrain from the exercise of his power, in a way perfectly sovereign, and which could not be claimed: let him only deal with the creature on the ground of pure and absolute justice, and leave him to the tendencies of finite existence:--and the mutable being will actually change; the essential defectibility of his nature will manifest itself; he will fail, he will be deficient, he will "come short, of the glory of God;"HE WILL SIN."? (p. 21, 22.) Dr. Williams speaks thus in his notes: "We assert, that the origin of moral evil is to be found in the union of two principles, neither of which considered alone partakes of a moral character. These two principles are Liberty and Passive Power. Liberty, it is manifest, is morally neither good nor bad, but is a mere natural instrument, if I may so speak, and may be termed a natuṛ ral good of which God is the author and de creer. On the contrary, Passive Power.is a natural evil of which God is not the author or decreer, yet morally considered is not * Rom. ii. 25, Πάντες ΥΣΤΕΡΟΥΝΤΑΙ. evil. But this term, being little under evil is plain, for the holiest creatures are "Let it be further observed, that the First Cause, being goodness itself, impels, whether decretively or efficiently, to good only; and of this character is even our be ing necessitated to exercise our volitions. Yet, when the exercise of liberty, in itself innocent, unites with passive power, the offspring of this union is moral evil. This I am fully persuaded, is the true solution of the question, Whence cometh moral evil?" (p. 42, 43.) Without embarrassing ourselves with the technology of the hypothesis developed in these passages, it may suffice to seize on its leading features. These appear to be two. First; In every created being, as such, there is necessarily a constant tendency to deterioration, which will issue in sin, unless prevented by the interference of divine power. Secondly; The creature, however, has, in strict justice, no claim upon the Divine Being for such interference; and in not interfering, therefore, God dealt with man on the principles of pure justice. When it is pronounced to be impossible that a created being should be free from a natural tendency to deterioration, we are tempted to en quire the force of the word "impos sible," as thus employed. The distinction between physical and metaphysical impossibility has fre quently been noted, and is indeed, obvious; but it is, in the present instance, so important, that we shall shortly re-state it. That is said to be physically impossible, which, though it may be readily conceived to happen, yet cannot happen without a violation of the established course of nature. That is said to be metaphysically impossible, which cannot even be conceived to happen under any circumstances, the very conception of it implying an absurdity. It is physically impossible that a stone, gently dismissed from the hand, should fly upwards instead of downwards; but yet this is metaphysically possible; that is, it is conceivable; for a state of nature can be figured by the mind, in which this event should invariably occur. But it is metaphysically impossible, that things equal to the same thing should not be equal to each other, or that the three angles of a triangle should be together less than two right angles; that is, it is utterly inconceivable on any supposition. Physical truth, therefore, which is the object of experimental philosophy, is collected from our observation of the invariable agreement of certain facts, as we find them. Metaphysical or abstract truth, which is the object of geometry and the mathematics, is collected from our observation of the mutual agreements or disagreements of our own ideas, and is immutable. Metaphysical truths are either self-evident or demonstrable. It is selfevident that the whole is greater than its part. It is demonstrable that a regular cone is equal in capacity to onethird of the including cylinder. These propositions are true in the same sense; but the difference is, that the latter may be doubted till the previous and successive truths, on which it depends, arc stated, while the former compels instant assent from every person of ordinary capacity, and, if, doubted, can never be proved. Our idea of omnipotence implies the power of doing every thing that is not metaphysically impossible. When, therefore, it is stated that man could not have been created free from a tendency to deterioration, we must mean, if we mean any thing to the purpose, that it was metaphysically impossible for him to have been so created, or, in other words, that the very supposition is absurd. Consequently, the proposition that defectibility must necessarily inhere in every created being, belongs to one of the two classes of abstract truths already described: either it is self-evident, and, to be accepted, needs only to be stated; or if not, a series of intermediate truths can be found, necessarily connecting it with some other proposition which is self-evident. It remains to be seen how far it comes under either of these classes: but we think it expedient to premise that, while Dr. Williams strongly asserts this proposition to be " selfevident," Mr. Smith has attempted to prove it by establishing two or three introductory theorems. Since it is possible, however, that the epithet self-evident may have been here used by the former author in a loose and general sense, we shall lay no stress on the circumstance of this difference between them. That man is born with a tendency to deterioration is a melancholy truth, proved by experience. But when it is asserted that he could not have originally been created without it, we must declare that, to our apprehensions, this position is not self-evident. To attempt to demonstrate that it is not self-evident, would indeed be a very embarrassing task; but happily it is a task completely unnecessary, the very negation being sufficient for our purpose; for to doubt an axiom is to prove that it is no axiom. Had this, indeed, been a self-evident truth, the question of moral evil could never have been started, or, at least, CHRIST. OESERV. No. 51. would have been started in a different form from that which it has usually assumed. No man would have enquired why human nature should of itself have been prone to evil, had the very idea of created nature involved the idea of evil propensities. The sole enquiry would have been, why did a Being of infinite goodness create that which was necessarily prone to degeneration; or, creating it, why did he leave it to the developement of its own nature? We need not, however, observe that the first of these questions has entered into the discussion, and has even made a prominent part of it. It may be allowed (though even this is not to us in the sense formerly explained, a self-evident proposition) that all created nature, as such, tends to nihility. Since it sprung out of nothing, only through the intervention of Almighty power, it must certainly relapse into nothing when the intervening power is removed. Since it became something only during the pleasure of another, it will cease to be something when left to itself. But it is not so apparent, why that which never subsisted but in a state of virtue and purity, should of itself have a tendency to subsist in any other state; or why, when left to itself, if it continue at all, it should not continue in that state in which it was left. Perhaps, however, it will be contended, that, having professed our belief in the alleged "tendency to nihility," we are obliged to believe in the in the tendency to defection," which, in effect, is only a tendency to existence in a worse and disordered state; on the principle, that the greater includes the less. It being conceded that the creature must cease to be, when the whole of the sustaining power of the Creator is removed, we may be told. hat the subduction of a part of that power must be attended with a proportionate effect. This argument is founded on a confusion between natural and moral evil, metaphysically considered; a confusion sauctioned B b by Dr. Williams, when he defines But this account of moral evil may be somewhat differently stated. If we are to discriminate between that part of divine power which preserves a created being in existence, and that part which preserves him in virtue, then (we may be told) it is more than ever conceivable that the former power may continue to operate when the latter is withdrawn ; and consequently that God may have sustained the existence of man, while he left his moral faculties to themselves. Thus then, it will be pretended, the origin of moral evib is explained; for, by the supposi tion, man continued in being, but was no longer virtuous, and to be no longer virtuous is to become vicious. The fallacy of this reasoning. does not lie very deep. Two hypotheses may be entertained with respect to the influence of the Deity over the moral faculties of man, while man was yet innocent. The first hypothesis supposes that the Deity furnished man with all the powers necessary to consitute a rational agent, but that the application of those powers he left to the unbiassed volition of the agent himself; and that, therefore, man owed his moral qualities to himself, while he owed his moral faculties to his maker. The other hypothesis maintains that, where mind is concerned, there is no room for the distinction between a power and the exercise of that power; that, whatever abstract terms we may coin, moral faculties are, in reality, no more separable from moral qualities than matter is separable from its properties, it being impossible to conceive propensities that are propense to nothing, affections that cleave to nothing, a will that wills nothing, and a moral character without any thing charac¬ teristic; and, by consequence, that we must suppose the Deity to have continually, and by the same act, both kept alive and directed the faculties which constituted man. a. moral agent. On either of these suppositions it seems improper, if not absurd, to enquire, what would follow, if man were suffered to exist, but were no longer directed to virtue by divine influence. On the former hypothesis the case cannot be put, since by the terms of that hypothesis, man was never directed by divine influence at all. On the latter, it is no less strange to ask, what would become of the moral faculties if they were preserved in being, but were no longer under divine direction, than it would be preposterous to demand, what would become of a man if he continued to exist, but were no longer a man? Unless a third hypothesis can be framed, this dilemma seems inevitable. 'If, indeed, it be once conceded that corruption is inherent in human nature (and such unfortunately we find to be the fact), then, it is correct to affirm that man, when virtuous, acts under providential guidance, and that when left to himself, he falls into vice. Then, it may truly be said, in the language of Dr. Williams, that when the divine support is removed, the futurition of moral evil is certain. Then, in fine, the hypothesis of this gentleman becomes, as a statement of facts, altogether just: but to say of a hypothesis that it becomes just, only when we have previously assumed all that it was intended to establish, is to confer upon it very measured praise. As, therefore, the leading position of this author is by no means selfevident, so also, as we have attempted to shew, a good demonstration of it is hardly to be expected. At least, those which have occurred to us, we have shewn to be unsatisfactory. But it is now time to consider whether Mr. Smith, who endeavours to lay down a formal proof of the same theorem, has been at all more successful. The links of Mr. Smith's proof are as follows: That which is created, must be dependent; that which is dependent, must be mutable; it cannot, however, of itself, change for the better, because this supposes an accession of something that it has not; it must be mutable, therefore, only on the side of loss; consequently, when the power on which it depends, is lessened, it will change for the worse; that is, the created being will sin. Here, therefore, dependence is supposed to imply mutability; mutability turns out to be essential defectibility; and defectibility issues in defect. The modesty and piety with which this demonstration is propounded, while they dispose us to regard it with candour, at the same time encourage us to criticize it with freedom. It will be found, we believe, to coincide, in part, with the proofs which we ourselves have conjecturally offered of this hypothesis, and to involve nearly the same fallacies. Previously, however, to any remarks on the positions which Mr. Smith successively lays down, we must remind the reader that it is not the truth of these positions which is here to be disputed, but their necessary, metaphy sical, or (if we may so term it) apriori truth; and consequently, that if any one of them can be shewn to be deniable without a metaphysical absurdity, the whole chain is instantly broken. That all created nature depends upon God, is true. That whatever is dependent must be mutable, is also true in the sense in which our author maintains it; for we understand him more particularly to mean this,that whatever is dependent must undergo some change of state, when it is deprived of the support on which. it depends. A ship, stationary in port, depends on her anchor; but parting her anchor, she is driven out to sea, and thus changes her stationary position for a state of motion. A ship at sea, and sailing, depends on the wind; but, the wind suddenly dying, she is becalmed, and thus changes a state of motion. for a state of rest. But these familiar instances, in which the principle of mutability operates so differently, prove how necessary it is, in every case, to understand the nature of the |