arife from without, but depend wholly upon

our felves; and we are equally fenfible, that fome corporeal motions proceed from the determination of our own wills. Our bodies begin to move, or particular members of them; fome other bodies also are moved by their force; and all fuch motions are continued or ftopt, while we are not conscious of any thing whereby either the continuance or ceffation are produc'd, but our own fimple volitions.

Hence arife the notions of free or voluntary Agency, and neceffity as diftinguish'd from it, and of caufe and effect. Such powers as we find in our felves, we can easily conceive to belong to other Beings, either in a greater or leffer degree. As we have clear evidence of perception and fpontaneous motions in other Animals, tho' different in kind from, and both of them much more confin'd, than ours; fo there is no difficulty in apprehending that there may be intelligence of a much larger comprehenfion than the human, and a more extenfive activity, producing more numerous, and vastly greater effects.

SERM.

We have at the fame time the idea of what is called paffive Power, or, a capacity of being moved and changed: For we can

I.

SERM.move our own Bodies, and alter the fituation,

I.

the external form, and the fenfible qualities,
of other bodies, by the use of proper means,
which we have learn'd by obfervation and
experience.
And these bodies we find to
be constantly and uniformly liable to the
fame, or the like alterations, by active force.
Whatever appearance there is of action in
this fort of beings, will be found upon closer
attention, to be really no action at all. A
man can easily distinguish between walking,
and being carried; between the involuntary
motion of his hand, and that which depends
folely upon the command of his own will:
in the one, he is an agent, in the other
wholly paffive. In like manner, a stone fall-
ing, (which we do not conceive to move from
an internal principle, because no power of
felf-motion ever appears in that kind of be-
ing,) is no more active than the earth on
which it makes an impreffion, or the human
body which it bruises, occafioning a sensation
of pain and for other corporeal action, fo
called, producing various and confiderable
effects, fuch as that of fire and air, it can
only be attributed to the intestine motion, not
fpontaneous, of more fubtile material parts;
and therefore is no more properly action than
the motion of intire folid bodies, whofe parts

are

I.

are at reft among themselves, that is, do not SER M. at all change their situation with respect to each other.

Thus we are led to distinguish between the pofitive ideas of blind neceffity and intelligent activity, as directly oppofite to each other, the one belonging to a caufe, the other to an effect. Indeed the negative idea of neceffary existence is not felf-contradictory, no more than that of infinity. But to say that unintelligent neceffity operates, muft, I think, appear to our minds to be a contradiction in terms: it is to affert operation, and at the fame time deny it in a proper fenfe, and to destroy the very notion of activity, which yet we know as clearly as we do our own existence, being equally confcious of it. There may be, 'tis true, a train of neceffary effects, as in the inftance of motion communicated to various inanimate bodies, one impelling another fucceffively; and the prior has the appearance of caufing the pofterior: But really they are alike paffive; and to imagine that they operate, is to confound the most inconfiftent notions of acting and being acted upon. And as thus the ideas of cause and effect, of

active and paffive power, of agency and neceffity, take their rife from an attention to our felves, our own minds and our bodies;

fo

I.

This di

SERM. fo we cannot avoid obferving the fame dif ference among all other beings which we know. I have not indeed the fame intuitive knowledge of another man's conscious activity, as I have of my own, but yet I have fuch evidence of it, as excludes all doubt: nor can I question, but that the earth I walk on, the pen I hold in my hand, and other instruments of action which I use, are paffive inanimate things, always yielding to force, and never discovering the leaft fign of an inward felf-determining principle. ftinction runs through the whole universe, as far as we are acquainted with it; and all the knowledge we have of being, our own or any other, leads us to difcern the effential irreconcileable contrariety of fpontaneous acting, to blind neceffity. It follows, that if there be any things or appearances, which we judge to be effects in the world, (and who can help observing a multitude of them?) to attribute them to unintelligent neceffity, is to attribute them to what we can have no notion of as a cause at all; and to say that fuch neceffity is univerfal, is to fay there is not, nor can be any fuch thing as a cause, or it is to deny the poffibility of action.

4

It is ftill to be remembered, that the neceffity here spoken of, is only fuch as ex

cludes

I.

cludes intelligence and defign: The queftion S ERM. concerning neceffary agency in another sense, that is, whether an intelligent agent acts fo neceffarily, that it is impoffible in the event he should act otherwise than he does, whatever the reason be;-This queftion, I fay, is intirely different, and not concern'd in the controversy with Atheists. For fuppofing it to be determin'd in the affirmative, ftill it leaves us the idea of intelligent active power, as a proper cause producing effects; and, with respect to the formation and order of the universe, the idea of an intelligent active power equal to the production of fuch an effect; which is what we mean by the Deity. But to attribute operation to undefigning neceffity, is to attribute it to an abstract notion, and to confound all our ideas of caufe and effect. And how can a man, who is as fully convinc'd of active power in himself, as of his own existence, and in the fame manner, that is, by being confcious of it, reafon with him who denies the being, and even the poffibility of fuch a power? And how abfurd an affertion muft it appear, that nothing at all, not the least being in nature, nor any mode or quality, not fo much as the least motion, could poffibly (by an antecedent neceffity, independant on design,) have been otherwise than VOL. I.

B

it