It has been urged, that the dOctrine of necessity tends to discouSage exertion as useless, and to produce a total stagnation and torpor of the soul, since every thought and act of every individual being deter mined by necessary influences, and regu lated by eternal laws, these can no more be counteracted by him, than he can pluck the moon from her orbit, or comprehend the ocean in a span. What ever be the pressure of this difficulty, it is by no means peculiar to the doctrine in question, but applies with equal force to all who maintain the prescience of the Supreme Being, and who are, in fact, nearly all that do not deny his exist ence.
Foreknowledge unquestionably in cludes the certainty .-f those events which are foreknown ; yet the advocates of li berty and prescience by no means regard this absolute certainty as precluding the employment of means. But necessity is merely another word for certainty, and the remonstrances and exhortations, the deliberations and efforts, which are ad mitted to be usefully instrumental with respect to events decidedly foreknown, must be allowed equally applicable with regard to such as are fixed by the eternal series of necessary causation and produc hon. The events in both cases are equal ly certain, and, on that acc000t merely, equally inevitable, and equally necessi tated. In reality, whatever be the cer tainty or necessity of future events, the ignorance of man respecting them will always operate upon him as if they were actually uncertain or contingent. The conviction felt by every one, that the pe riod and circumstances of his dissolution are perfectly known to God, and conse quently unalterable by prayers or efforts, does not diminish his exertions for the preservation of his life ; and the farmer cultivates his ground with equal attention and assiduity, though he knows it is clearly foreseen by God, whether the reaper shall gather a crop of grain or mil dew. If ends are certain and necessary, so likewise are means. Those who ne glect the latter are precluded from the former. The seed deposited in •the ground may not always mature into the golden harvest ; but unless the seed be deposited, no harvest whatever can ap pear. The regular application of food and air will not always preserve the hu man frame in vitality and vigour ; but without air and food, its strength and life must inevitably perish.
Voluntary action is an essential link in the chain of causes. The whole course of moral nature ascertains its necessity to the accomplishment of various objects of human wishes, and the man, who, pos sessing ardent desires for any particular object, declines the employment of those efforts, without which it must be miracu lous or impossible that he should obtain it, must be considered as exhibiting an instance of something worse than absurd reasoning, in proportion as madness is more pitiable than absurdity.
Finally, upon the principles of necessi ty, God is undoubtedly the author of evil : a statement, which, to the minds of some, may carry the appearance of the most ir reverent, and even impious imputation, and excite against the system, which not only thus maintains, but avows it, a repul sion amounting to antipathy. The ques
tion, however, relates to truth, and not to feeling, and those who pursue the former, with that ardent attachment and eager re search which it merits, will endeavour to divest themselves as much as possible of prejudice apd prepossession, and strive to attain that point of elevation to which the fogs of passion never ascend, and at which the mental eye can range at once with clearness and comprehension. Eve ry act and volition of intelligent creatures is the immediate effect of necessitating circumstances, originating in other cir cumstances equally necessitated, and which, through a long series of operation and result, must be considered as depend ing on that situation, into which, indepen dently of their own consent or controul, they were at first introduced by their Creator. Every reflection, determination and deed, therefore, however tainted by vice, or exalted by virtue, must indispu tably, upon this statement, flow from the divine appointment and energy. But to those who admit the prescience of the Deity, who do not, in order to support an hypothesis, proceed so far as to divest the Supreme Being of that foreknowledge of events, without which confusion and dis appointment must apparently result to the divine mind, from occurrences neither appointed nor expected, the difficulty un der consideration is precisely the same. All such must admit that he, who sees the end from the beginning, placed all human beings originally in situations, the most minute results of which were fully com prehended and foreknown by him. Not withstanding his precise comprehension of all the consequences which must flow from their origination in such circum stances, in such circumstances they were actually placed, and foreseeing that natu ral and moral evil would be the certain effects of his own voluntary act in man's creation, he must not only have permit ted, but designed, these effects. The pre science of a mere observer would by no means necessarily imply any intention that the event foreseen should be accom plished, or any thing more indeed than the absolute certainty of the event itself. But the prescience possessed by an agent of all the circumstances that will arise from any particular act, inevitably in cludes, in his purpose to accomplish that act, a purpose to produce these circum stances, and renders him as much the au thor of the inevitable consequences as of the previous act ; and if evil therefore were foreknown to be the necessary re sult of man's formation, the existence of evil, and the formation of man, are equal ly attributable to the divine appointment.