rial universe. It is certain that, if the world endure, the waters will next year run downwards, and the trees will grow upwards; but it is equally certain, that he who shall next year have too much cloth and no bread, will be willing to exchange a part of it with him who has too much bread and no cloth. When a man obtains a lease of an estate for years, for which he is to pay rent, he calculates no less upon the willingness of mankind to purchase the produce of his farm than he does upon the fertility of the soil and the regular return of the seasons. Nobody would be. come bound as an apprentice, if it were not certain that the productions of a particular art will always be valued. There could be no such thing as what is called a knowledge of the world and of mankind, if human conduct were not regulated by fixed principles. The enact ment of laws would be an absurdity, were it not understood and believed that men are ruled by motives and rational considerations. There would be no public law or policy if our conduct were at all times the result of hazard; and there could be no morality, if it were impossible ever to fix in the human mind some steady rule of conduct.

It is evident, then, that neither knowledge nor foreknowledge could possibly exist, if the affairs of the universe did not proceed upon an arranged and established plan. It has been al

leged indeed, that, strictly speaking, there is no connection betwixt the existence of an event and our knowledge of it, as our knowledge is not the cause of its existence, which may therefore be contingent. It has been said, that although I know what a particular man will do to-morrow, yet my knowledge is not the cause of his conduct; his actions are not the result of my foresight, but of his own choice, which may therefore be casual.-But an obvious answer occurs to this My knowledge or foreknowledge proceeds upon the supposition that his actions are previously fixed or certain, and that they will proceed in a particular train, and in no other. If the man had no fixed and established temper and character to influence his conduct, that conduct could never be foreseen, for we could have no principle from which to reason concerning it. Our foreknowledge, then, does not fix or influence a man's actions; but it is because his actions are actually fixed and influenced that we foresee or know them.

Often, indeed, we cannot foretel the actions of men; but neither can we always foretel the simplest events in the material world. A covetous man shall do a generous action, or a good-natured man shall unexpectedly act harsh ly. There is always a reason for such occurrences, though we may be ignorant of it. The one man may have been put into good humour

by some uncommon instance of good fortune; and the other may have been suddenly soured by disappointment, or some other circumstance must have taken place with which we are unacquainted. In the same manner, a chemical experiment shall succeed a hundred times, and shall fail the next time it is performed. A watch or a clock shall go ill, or not at all, and an eminent artist shall be unable to tell how or why. The whole difficulty arises from our ignorance of the actual state of the case. An accurate examination sometimes does, and sometimes does not, discover the latent cause of what astonished us; but he would have a strange mind indeed who should resolve the difficulty, by saying that it arose from contingency, that is, from no cause at all. The vulgar do better than this; for they ascribe astonishing events to witchcraft or inchantment. In other words, they ascribe incomprehensible events to incomprehensible causes.

III. WERE not human actions produced by perceptions or motives of some kind or other, there could exist no such thing as what is called

character among men. It would be impossible for one person to know what another would do next. To'say of a man, that fear, hope, love, hatred, interest, or reason, do not rule his conduct, is to hold him out as a being that is terrible to the human race, and whom none of us in our senses would approach. Happily our

species is very differently formed. We have a character and a nature from which our actions originate. If an accusation of infamous conduct were brought against a steadfast and enlightened man whose character we know, we would readily say that it cannot be true, that it is not in his nature to act unworthily, and that he must be misrepresented. We may indeed unhappily be mistaken, because we may not have known him sufficiently; but in as far as we have correctly understood his mind and its dispositions, we shall infallibly be found in the right.

As man, then, is not the author of his own existence, nor consequently of his own perceptions or exertions, and as human affairs proceed not according to chance or hazard, but are the result of a fixed and original intellectual constitution and character, which can be made the subject of knowledge and of foresight, it is evident that the actions of men are no less the work of the Arranging Mind that contrived and animates the universe, than any other part of the movements and events that occur in creation.

CHAP. IV.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

BUT against the opinion which has been now maintained many formidable objections have been stated. It has been alleged that it degrades the human character, and reduces man to the rank of a mere machine or passive engine in the hands of a superior Power; that it tends to destroy all activity in man, by representing all his efforts as useless, seeing his destiny is fixed, and depends not on himself; that if this opinion be true, moral instruction and education must be useless, as the appointed train of human actions cannot be altered by any efforts of ours; that it is hostile to the important doctrine of a state of rewards and punishments after this life; that it either destroys all distinction between right and wrong, or it represents the Deity as the author of all the moral evil and the crimes that exist in the world; and, lastly, that it is contrary to our own consciousness of freedom.-I shall consider shortly each of these objections.