uses "permission" for efficacy,-no "salvation due," for eternal torments insured; "not enriching," for absolute reprobation; and "passing by," for absolutely appointing to remediless sin and everlasting burnings. Let us now consider the grand, logical substitution which deceives that gentleman, and by which he misleads the admirers of his scheme.

Page 14. "I acquiesce in the old distinction of necessity [a distinction adopted by Luther and others] into a necessity of compulsion, and a necessity of infallible certainty. We say of the earth, for instance, that it circuits the sun by compulsory necessity. The necessity of infalli ble certainty is of a very different kind, and only renders the event inevitably future, without any compulsory force on the will of the agent." If Mr. T. had said, "The necessity of true prophecy considers an event as certainly future, but puts no Calvinian, irresistible bias on the will of the agent;" I would have subscribed to his distinction. But instead of the words truly certain, or certainly future, which would have perfectly explained what may improperly be called necessity of true prophecy, and what should be called certain futurity; instead of those words, I say, he artfully substitutes, first, "infallibly certain," and then "inevitably future." The phrase infallibly certain may be admitted to pass, if you understand by it that which does not fail to happen: but if you take it in a rigid sense, and mean by it that which cannot absolutely fail to happen, you get a step out of the way, and you may easily go on shuffling your logical cards, till you have imposed fatalism upon the simple, by making them believe that certainly future, infallibly future, and inevitably future, are three phrases of the same import; whereas the difference between the first and last phrase is as great as the difference between Mr. Wesley's Scriptural doctrine of free will, and Mr. T.'s Manichean doctrine of absolute necessity.

It is the property of error to be inconsistent. Accordingly we find that Mr. T., after having told us, p. 14, that the "necessity of infallible certainty," which renders the event inevitably future, lays "no compulsory force on the will of the agent," tells us, in the very same page, that his Calvinian necessity is "such an indissoluble concatenation of secondary causes, [created for that end,] and of effects, as has a native tendency to secure the certainty of events, [i. e. of all volitions, murders, adulteries, and incests,] sicut unda impellitur unda;" as one wave impels another; or as the first link of a chain, which you pull, draws the second, the second the third, and so on. Now if all our volitions are pushed forward by God through the means of his absolute will, his irresistible decree, his efficacious creation, and his all-conquering necessitation, which is nothing but an adamantine chain of second causes created by Providence in order to produce absolutely all the effects which are produced, and to make them impel each other, "as one wave impels another;" we desire to know how our volitions can be thus irresistibly impelled upon us "without any compulsory force on our will." I do not see how Mr. T. can get over this contradiction, otherwise than by saying, that although God's necessitation is irresistibly impulsory, yet it is not at all compulsory; although it absolutely impels us to will, yet it does not in the least compel us to be willing. But would so frivolous, so absurd a distinction as this, wipe off the foul blot which the scheme of necessity fixes on the Father of lights, when it represents

him as the first cause, and the grand contriver of all our sinful volitions?

Mr. T., pp. 133, 134, among other pieces of Manicheism, gives us the following account of that strange religion:-"There are two independent gods, or infinite principles, viz. light and darkness. The first is the author of all good; and the second of all evil. The evil god made sin. The good god and the bad god wage implacable war against each other; and perpetually clog and disconcert one another's schemes and operations. Hence men are impelled, &c, to good, or to evil, according as they come under the power of the good deity, or the bad one." Or, to speak Calvinistically, they are necessarily made willing to believe and obey, if they are the elected objects of everlasting love, which is the good principle; and they are irresistibly made willing to disbelieve and disobey, if they are the reprobated objects of everlasting wrath, which is the evil principle. For free will has no more place in Manicheism than it has in Calvinism. Hence it appears that, setting aside the other peculiarities of each scheme, the grand difference between Calvin and Manes consists in Calvin's making everlasting, electing, necessitating love, and everlasting, reprobating, necessitating wrath, to flow from the same Divine principle; whereas Manes more reasonably supposed that they flow from two contrary principles. Whoever therefore denies free will, and contends for necessity, embraces, before he is aware, the capital error of the Manichees; and it is well if he do not hold it in a less reasonable manner than Manes himself did. "I believe," adds Mr. Toplady, "it is absolutely impossible to trace quite up to its source the antiquity of that hypothesis which absurdly affirms the existence of two eternal, contrary, independent principles. What led so many wise people, and for so great a series of ages, into such a wretched mistake, were chiefly, I suppose, these two considerations: (1.) That evil, both moral and physical, are positive things, and so must have a positive cause. (2.) That a being, perfectly good, could not, from the very nature of his existence, be the cause of such bad things." Here Mr. Toplady reasons like a judicious divine. The misfortune for his scheme is, that his "two considerations," like two mill stones, grind Calvinism to dust; or, like two cogent arguments, force us to embrace the doctrine of free will, or the error of Manes. Mr. Toplady seems aware of this; and therefore to show that God can, upon the Calvinian plan, absolutely predestinate, and effectually bring about sin, by making men willing to sin in the day of his irresistible power; and that nevertheless he is not the author and first cause of sin; to show this, I say, Mr. Toplady asserts, "that evil, whether physical or moral, does not, upon narrow inspection, appear to have so much of positivity in it, as it is probable those ancients supposed." Nay, he insinuates that as "sickness is a privation of health; so the sinfulness of any human action is said to be a privation;" being called avoua, "illegality;" and he adds, that wonderful as the thing may appear, Dr. Watts, in his Logic, "ventures to treat of sin under the title of not being."* When

*If the Calvinists, in their unguarded moments, represent sin as a kind of not being or nonentity, that they may exculpate God for absolutely ordaining it, do they not by this means exculpate the sinner also? If the first cause of sin is excusable, because sin is a privation, and has not so much of positivity in it as

Mr. Toplady has thus cleared the way, and modestly intimated that sin, being a kind of nonentity, can have no positive cause, he proposes the grand question, "whether the great first cause, who is infinitely and merely good, can be either efficiently or deficiently the author of them?" that is (according to the context) the author of iniquity, injustice, impiety, and vice, as well as the author of the natural evil by which God punishes sin?

Page 139, Mr. Toplady answers this question thus::-"In my opinion, the single word permission solves the whole difficulty, as far as it can be solved," &c. And page 141, he says, "We know scarce any of the views which induced uncreated goodness to ordain (for, &c, I see no great difference between permitting and ordaining) the introgression, or more properly the intromission, of evil." Here Mr. Toplady goes as far as he decently can. Rather than grant that we are endued with free will, and that when God had made angels and men free-willing creatures, in order to judge them according to their own works, he could not, without inconsistency, rob them of free will by necessitating them to be either good or wicked; rather, I say, than admit this Scriptural doctrine, which perfectly clears the gracious Judge of all the earth, Mr. Toplady first indirectly and decently extenuates sin, and brings it down to almost nothing, and then he tells us that God ordained it. Is not the openness of Manes preferable to this Calvinistic winding? When Mr. Toplady grants that God "ordained" sin, and when he charges "the intromission of evil" upon God, does he not grant all that Manes in this respect contended for? And have not the Manichean necessitarians the advantage over Mr. Toplady, when they assert that a principle, which absolutely ordains, yea, necessitates sin and all the works of darkness, is a dark and evil principle? Can we doubt of it, if we believe these sayings of Christ? "Out of the [evil] heart proceed evil thoughts, &c. By their works you shall know them. The tree is known by its fruit."

Again: if "sin," or rather the sinfulness of an action, may be pro. perly called a "not being," or a nonentity, as Mr. Toplady inconsistently insinuates, page 137, it absurdly follows, that crookedness, or the want of straightness in a line, is a mere privation also, or a not being: whereas reason and feeling tell us that the crookedness of a crooked line is something every way as positive as the straightness of a straight line. To deny it is as ridiculous as to assert that a circle is a not being, because it is not made of straight lines like a square; or that a murder is a species of nonentity, because it is not the legal execution of a condemned malefactor. Nor can Mr. Toplady mend his error by hiding it behind "Dr. Watts' Logic;" for the world knows that Dr. Watts was a Calvinist when he wrote that book; and therefore, judicious as he was, the veil of error prevented him from seeing then that part of the truth which I contend for.

Once more: whether sin has a positive cause or not, (for Mr. Toplady insinuates both these doctrines with the inconsistency peculiar to his system,) I beg leave to involve him in a dilemma, which will meet him at the front or back door of his inconsistency. Either sin is a real the ancients supposed," is not the second cause of sin much more excusable on the same account?

thing, and has a positive cause; or it is not a real thing, and has no positive cause. If it is NOT a real thing, and has no positive cause, why does God positively send the wicked to hell for a privation which they have not positively caused? And if sin is a real thing, or a positive moral crookedness of the will of a sinner, and as such has a positive cause; can that positive cause be any other than the self perversion of free will, or the impelling decree of a sin-ordaining God? If the positive cause of sin is the self perversion of free will, is it not evident, that so sure as there is sin in the world, the doctrine of free will is true? But if the positive cause of sin is the impelling decree of a sin-ordaining, sin-necessitating God; is it not incontestable that the capital doctrine of the Manichees, the doctrine of absolute necessity is true; and that there is in the Godhead an evil principle, (it signifies little whether you call it matter, darkness, everlasting free wrath, or devil,) which positively ordains and irresistibly causes sin? In a word, is it not clear that the second Gospel axiom is overthrown by the doctrine of necessity; and that the damnation of sinners is of God, and not of themselves?

While Mr. Toplady tries to extricate himself from this, dilemma, I shall produce one or two more passages of this book to prove that his scheme makes God the author of sin, according to the most dangerous error of Manes. The heathens imagined that Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, was Jupiter's offspring in the most peculiar manner. Diana was indeed Jupiter's daughter, but Latona, an earthly princess, was her mother: whereas Jupiter was at once the father and mother of Minerva. He begat her himself in the womb of his own brain, and when she was ripe for the birth, his forehead opened after a violent headache, which answered to the pangs of child bearing, and out came the lovely female deity. Mr. Toplady, alluding to this heathen fiction, represents. his Diana, necessity, as proceeding from God with her immense chain of events, which has among its adamantine links all the follies, heresies, murders, robberies, adulteries, incests, and rebellions, of which men and devils have been, are, or ever shall be guilty. His own words, page 50, are, "Necessity, in general, with all its extensive series of adamantine links in particular, is, in reality, what the poets feigned of Minerva, the issue of Divine wisdom: [he should have said the issue of the supreme God, by his own wise brain,] deriving its whole existence from the free will of God; and its whole effectuosity from his never-ceasing providence." Is not this insinuating, as plainly as decency will allow, that every sin, as a link of the adamantine chain of events, has been hammered in heaven, and that every crime "derives its whole existence from the free will of God?" Take one more instance of the same Manichean doctrine :

Page 64. Mr. Toplady having said that "he [God] casteth forth his ice like morsels, and causeth his wind to blow," &c, adds, " Neither is material nature alone bound fast in fate. All other things, the human will itself not excepted, are not less tightly bound, i. e. effectually influenced and determined." Hence it is evident, that if this Calvinism is true, when sinners send forth volleys of unclean and profane words, Calvin's God has as " tightly bound" them to cast forth Manichean ribaldry, as the God of nature binds the clouds to "cast forth his ice like morsels."

I would not be understood to demonstrate by the preceding quotations, that Mr. Toplady designs to make God the author of sin, No: on the contrary, I do him the justice to say, that he does all he can to clear his doctrines of grace from this dreadful imputation. I only produce his own words to show that, notwithstanding all his endeavours, this horrid Manichean consequence unavoidably flows from his Scheme of Necessity.

SECTION II.

Mr. Toplady attempts to support his Scheme of Absolute Necessity by philosophy-His philosophical error is overthrown by fourteen argu. ments-What truth comes nearest to his error.

We have taken a view of the Scheme of Necessity, and seen how it represents God, directly or indirectly, as the first cause of all sin and damnation. Consider we now how Mr. T. defends this scheme by rational arguments as a philosopher.

Page 22. "The soul is, in a very extensive degree, passive as matter is." Here Mr. Toplady, in some degree, gives up the point. He is about to prove that the soul is not self determined; and that, as our bodily organs are necessarily and irresistibly affected by the objects which strike them; so our souls are necessarily and irresistibly deter mined by our bodily organs, and by the ideas which those organs necessarily raise in our minds, when they are so affected. Now, to prove this, he should have proved that our souls are altogether as passive as our bodies. But, far from proving it, he dares not assert it: for he allows that the soul is passive, as matter, only "in a very extensive degree;" and therefore, by his own concession, the argument on which he is going to rest the notion of the absolute passiveness of the soul with respect to self determination, will be at least in some degree groundless. But let us consider this mighty argument, and see if Mr. T.'s limitation frees him from the charge of countenancing materialism, “in a very extensive degree."

Page 22.The senses are necessarily impressed by every object from without, and as necessarily commove the fibres of the brain; from which nervous commotion, ideas are necessarily communicated to, or excited in the soul; and by the judgment, which the soul necessarily frames of those ideas, the will is necessarily inclined to approve or disapprove, to act or not to act. If so, where is the boasted power of self determination?"

This Mr. Toplady calls "a survey of the soul's dependence on the body." Page 27, he enforces the same doctrine in these words: "The human body is necessarily encompassed by a multitude of other bodies. Which other surrounding bodies, animal, vegetable, &c, so far as we come within their perceivable sphere, necessarily impress our nerves with sensations correspondent to the objects themselves. These sensations are necessarily, &c, propagated to the soul, which can no more help receiving them, and being affected by them, than a tree can resist a stroke of lightning.

"Now, (1.) If all the ideas in the soul derive their existence from