IH. Ohjitiiitiis to this Theory. — The anti-necessitarians notwitli>iaiiding allege that the doctrine of necessity, in the light of these various interpretations of Calvinistic theologians, "charges God as the author of sin; that it takes away the freedom of the will; renders man unac- countable to his Maker; makes sin to be no evil, and morality or virtue to be no good; and that it precludes the use of means, and is of the most gloomy tendency. The necessitarians, on the other hand, deny these to be legitimate consequences of their doctrine, wliieh they declare to be the most consistent mode of explaining the divine government; and they observe that the Dt-ity acts no more immorally in decreeing vicious actions than in permitting all those irregularities which he could so easily have prevented. All necessity, say they, does not take away freedom. "The actions of a man may be at one and the same time both free and neces- sarv. Thus it was infalliblv certain that Judas would
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betray Christ, yet he did it voluntarily ; Jesus Christ necessarily [?] became man, and died, yet he acted free- ly. A good man does naturall_v and necessarily love his children, yet voluntarily. They insist that necessity does not render actions less morally good ; for, if neces- sary virtue be neither moral nor praiseworthy, it will follow that God himself is not a moral being, because he is a necessary one [ i. e. necessarily such ; rather such by nature] ; and the obedience of Christ cannot be good, because it was necessary [?]. Further, say they, necessity does not preclude the use of means ; for means are no less appointed than the end. It was or- dained that Christ should be delivered up to death ; but he could not have been betrayed without a betrayer, nor crucified without crucifiers." That it is not a gloom}' doctrine, they allege, because nothing can be more con- solatory than to believe that all things are under the direction of an all-wise Being, that his kingdom ruleth over all, and that he doeth all things well. They also urge that to deny necessity is to deny the foreknowledge of God, and to wrest the sceptre from the hand of the Creator, and to place that capricious and undefinable principle, the self-determining power of man, upon the throne of the universe. In these statements there is obviously a confused use of terms in different meanings, so as to mislead the unwary. For instance, necessity is confountled with certainty; but an action may be cer- tain, though free — that is to say, certain to an omnis- cient Being, who knows how a free agent \v^ll finally resolve; but this certainty is, in fact, a quality of the prescient Being, not that of the action, to which, how- ever, men delusively transfer it. Again : God is called a necessary Being, which, if it mean anything, signifies, as to his moral acts, that he can only act right. But then this is a wrong application of the term necessity, which properly implies such a constraint upon actions, exercised (ib extra, as renders choice or will impossible. But such necessity cannot exist as to the Supreme Be- ing. Again : the obedience of Christ unto death was necessary — that is to say. unless he had died, guilty man could not have been forgiven ; but this could not make the act of the Jews who put him to death a necessary act — that is to say, a forced and constrained one ; nor did this necessity affect the act of Christ himself, who acted voluntarily, and might have left man without salvation. That the Jews acted J'reely is evident from their being held liable to punishment, although unconsciously thej- accomplished the great designs of heaven, which, how- ever, was no excuse for their crime. Finally : as to the allegation that the doctrine of free agency puts man's self-delerraining power upon the throne of the universe, that view proceeds upon notions unworthy of God, as if he could not accomplish his plans without compel- ling and controlling all things by a fixed fate; where- as it is both more glorious to him, and certainly more in accordance with the Scriptures, to say that lie has a perfect foresight of the manner in which all creatures will act, and that he, by a profound and infinite wisdom, subordinates everything without violence to the evolu- tion and accomplishment of his own glorious purposes.
" The doctrine of necessity is nearly connected with that of predestination, which of late years has assumed a form very different from that which it formerly pos- sessed; for, instead of being considered as a point to be determined almost entirely by the sacred writings, it has, in the hands of a number of able writers, in a great measure resolved itself into a question of natural religion, under the head of the philosophical liberty or necessity of the will; or, whether all human actions are or are not necessarih' determined by motives arising from the character which God has impressed on our minds, and the train of circumstances amid which his providence has placed us? The Calvinistic doctrine of predestina- tion is that ' God, for his own glory, hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.' The scheme of philosophi- cal necessity, as stated by the most celebrated necessi- tarian of the age, is, ' that everything is predetermined