virtuous, though their respect to virtue be only indirect and remote, and that it is nothing at all virtuous that truly excites or terminates their inclinations.

2. Another thing that insensibly leads and beguiles men into a supposition that this moral necessity or impossibility is, or may be against men's wills and true endeavours, is the derivation of the terms often used to express it. Such words for instance, as unable, unavoidable, impossible, irresistible; which carry a plain reference to a supposable power exerted, endeavours used, resistance made, in opposition to the necessity; and the persons that hear them not considering nor suspecting but that they are used in their proper sense: that sense being therefore understood, there does naturally, and as it were necessarily arise in their minds a supposition, that it may be so indeed, that true desires and endeavours may take place, but that invincible necessity stands in the way and renders them vain and to no effect.

V. Another thing which makes persons more ready to suppose it to be contrary to reason, that men should be exposed to the punishments threatened to sin for doing those things which are morally necessary, or not doing those things which are morally impossible, is, that imagination strengthens the argument, and adds greatly to the power and influence of the seeming reasons against it, from the greatness of that punishment. To allow that they may be justly exposed to a small punishment, would not be so difficult. Whereas, if there were any good reason in the case, if it were truly a dictate of reason, that such necessity was inconsistent with faultiness or just punishment, the demonstration would be equally certain with respect to a small punishment, or any punishment at all, as a very great one: but it is not equally easy to the imagination. They that argue against the justice of damning men for those things that are thus necessary, seem to make their argument the stronger, by setting forth the greatness of the punishment in strong expressions :-"That a man should be cast into eternal burnings, that he should be made to fry in hell to all eternity for those things which he had no power to avoid, and was under a fatal, unfrustrable, invincible necessity of doing, &c,"

SECT. IV.

It is agreeable to common Sense, and the natural Notions of Mankind, to suppose moral Necessity to be consistent with Praise and Blame, Reward and Punishment.

Whether the reasons that have been given, why it appears difficult to some persons to reconcile with common Sense the praising or blaming, rewarding or punishing those things which are morally necessary, are thought satisfactory or not; yet it most evidently appears by the following things, that if this matter be rightly understood, setting aside all delusion arising from the impropriety and ambiguity of terms, this is not at all inconsistent with the natural apprehensions of mankind, and that sense of things which is found every where in the common people; who are furthest from having their thoughts perverted from their natural channel by metaphysical and philosophical subtilties; but, on the contrary, altogether agreeable to, and the very voice and dictate of this natural and vulgar Sense.

I. This will appear, if we consider what the vulgar Notion of blameworthiness is. The idea which the common people, through all ages and nations, have of faultiness, I suppose to be plainly this; a person being or doing wrong, with his own will and pleasure; containing these two things; 1. His doing wrong, when he does as he pleases. 2. His pleasure being wrong. Or, in other words, perhaps more intelligibly expressing their Notion; a person having his heart wrong, and doing wrong from his heart. And this is the sum total of the

matter.

The common people do not ascend up in their reflections and abstractions to the metaphysical sources, relations and dependencies of things, in order to form their Notion of faultiness or blameworthiness. They do not wait till they have decided by their refinings what first determines the will, whether it be determined by something extrinsic or intrinsic; whether volition determines volition, or whether the understanding determines the will; whether there be any such thing as metaphysicians mean by contingence (if they have any meaning;) whether there be a sort of a strange unaccountable sovereignty in the will, in the exercise of which, by its own sovereign acts, it brings to pass all its own sovereign acts. They do not take any part of their Notion of fault or blame from the resolution of any such questions. If this were the case, there are multi

tudes, yea the far greater part of mankind, nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand, would live and die without having any such Notion as that of fault ever entering into their heads, or without so much as once having any conception that any body was to be either blamed or commended for any thing. If this were the case, it would be a long time before men came to have such Notions. Whereas it is manifest, they are in fact some of the first Notions that appear in children; who discover, as soon as they can think, or speak, or act at all as rational creatures, a Sense of desert. And certainly, in forming their Notion of it, they make no use of metaphysics. All the ground they go upon consists in these two things; experience, and a natural sensation of a certain fitness or agreeableness which there is in uniting such moral evil as is above described, viz. a being or doing wrong with the will, and resentment in others, and pain inflicted on the person in whom this moral evil is. Which natural Sense is what we call by the name of conscience.

It is true, the common people and children, in their Notion of any faulty act or deed of any person, do suppose that it is the person's own act and deed. But this is all that belongs to what they understand by a thing being a person's own deed or action; even that it is something done by him of choice. That some exercise or motion should begin of itself, does not belong to their Notion of an action or doing. If so, it would belong to their Notion of it that it is the cause of its own beginning: and that is as much as to say, that it is before it begins to be. Nor is their Notion of an action some motion or exercise, that begins accidentally without any cause or reason; for that is contrary to one of the prime dictates of common Sense, namely, that every thing that begins to be, has some cause or reason why it is.

The common people, in their Notion of a faulty or praiseworthy work done by any one, do suppose, that the man does it in the exercise of liberty. But then their Notion of liberty is only a person having an opportunity of doing as he pleases. They have no Notion of liberty consisting in the will first acting, and so causing its own acts; determining, and so causing its own determinations; or choosing, and so causing its own choice. Such a Notion of liberty is what none have, but those that have darkened their own minds with confused metaphysical speculation, and abstruse and ambiguous terms. If a man is not restrained from acting as his will determines, or constrained to act otherwise; then he has liberty, according to common Notions of liberty, without taking into the idea that grand contradiction of all, the determinations of a man's free will being the effects of the determinations of his free will.-Nor have men commonly any Notion of freedom

consisting in indifference. For if so, then it would be agreeable to their Notion, that the greater indifference men act with, the more freedom they act with; whereas, the reverse is true. He that in acting proceeds with the fullest inclination, does what he does with the greater freedom, according to common Sense. And so far is it from being agreeable to common Sense that such liberty as consists in indifference is requisite to praise or blame, that, on the contrary, the dictate of every man's natural sense through the world is, that the further he is from being indifferent in his acting good or evil, and the more he does either with full and strong inclination, the more is he esteemed or abhorred, commended or condemned.

II. If it were inconsistent with the common Sense of mankind, that men should be either blamed or condemned in any volitions, in case of moral necessity or impossibility; then it would surely also be agreeable to the same Sense and reason of mankind, that the nearer the case approaches to such a moral necessity or impossibility-either through a strong antecedent moral propensity, on the one hand,* or a great antecedent opposition and difficulty, on the other-the nearer does it approach to a person being neither blameable nor commendable; so that acts exerted with such preceding propensity, would be worthy of proportionably less praise; and when omitted, the act being attended with such difficulty, the omission would be worthy of the less blame. It is so, as was observed before, with natural necessity and impossibility, propensity and difficulty: as it is a plain dictate of the sense of all mankind, that natural necessity and impossibility take away all blame and praise; and therefore, that the nearer the approach is to these, through previous propensity or difficulty, so praise and blame are proportionably diminished. And if it were as much a dictate of common Sense that moral necessity of doing, or impossibility of avoiding, takes away all praise and blame, as that natural necessity or impossibility does; then by a perfect parity of reason, it would be as much the dictate of common Sense, that an approach of moral necessity of doing, or impossibility of avoiding, diminishes praise and blame, as that an approach to natural necessity and impossibility does so. It is equally the voice of common Sense, that persons are excusable in part, in neglecting things difficult against their wills, as that they are excusable wholly in neglecting things impossible against their wills. And if it made no difference, whether the impossibility were natural and against the will, or moral, lying in the will, with regard to excusableness; so neither would it make any dif

It is here argued, on supposition that not all propensity implies moral ne cessity, but only some very high degree; which none will deny.

ference, whether the difficulty, or approach to necessity be natural against the will, or moral, lying in the propensity of the will.

But it is apparent that the reverse of these things is true. If there be an approach to a moral necessity in a man's exertion of good acts of will, they being the exercise of a strong propensity to good and a very powerful love to virtue; it is so far from being the dictate of common Sense that he is less virtuous, and the less to be esteemed, loved and praised, that it is agreeable to the natural Notions of all mankind, that he is so much the better man, worthy of greater respect, and higher commendation. And the stronger the inclination is, and the nearer it approaches to necessity in that respect; or to impossibility of neglecting the virtuous act, or of doing a vicious one; still the more virtuous, and worthy of higher commendation. And, on the other hand, if a man exerts evil acts of mind; as, for instance. acts of pride or malice from a rooted and strong habit or principle of haughtiness and maliciousness, and a violent propensity of heart to such acts; according to the natural Sense of men he is so far from being the less hateful and blameable on that account, that he is so much the more worthy to be detested and condemned by all that observe him.

Moreover, it is manifest that it is no part of the Notion which mankind commonly have of a blameable or praiseworthy act of the will, that it is an act which is not determined by an antecedent bias or motive, but by the sovereign power of the will itself; because, if so, the greater hand such causes have in determining any acts of the will, so much the less virtuous or vicious would they be accounted; and the less hand, the more virtuous or vicious. Whereas, the reverse is true: men do not think a good act to be the less praiseworthy for the agent being much determined in it by a good inclination or a good motive, but the more. And if good inclination, or motive, has but little influence in determining the agent, they do not think his act so much the more virtuous, but the less. And so concerning evil acts, which are determined by evil motives or inclinations.

Yea, if it be supposed that good or evil dispositions are implanted in the hearts of men by nature itself (which, it is certain, is vulgarly supposed in innumerable cases) yet it is not commonly supposed that men are worthy of no praise or dis praise for such dispositions; although what is natural is undoubtedly necessary, nature being prior to all acts of the will whatsoever. Thus, for instance, if a man appears to be of a very haughty or malicious disposition, and is supposed to be so by his natural temper, it is no vulgar Notion, no dictate of the common Sense and apprehension of men, that