the heart and will under the common name of will: and, overlooking the immense difficulty of subduing a wicked heart, they speak of the operation as being as easy as it is to will. They go upon the principle that the will, (in the vulgar sense of the word, viz. the faculty which forms resolutions,) can control the affections; and they constantly beset awakened sinners to resolve to submit. That resolution they consider the cause of all the holy affections: of course it is not itself holy consequently it cannot be moved by motives adapted to a holy temper. Here then again there is no chance for the operation of any but selfish motives, to awaken that lordly resolution which commands into existence all the holy affections. None but bad motives can act on that wicked emperor who orders the mind into submission to the pure motives of God. He is moved himself by the worst influence, but sends out the best. He is not known by his works; for his works are good and he is evil.

I ask the advocates of the exercise system, what there is before the holy affection that can be called an independent power; I mean, that originates holy exercises without the immediate action of God. How does it work? I am not asking what power exercises the affections; that is the mind but I am inquiring after a power which exhausts its influence before the exercise appears. Is this power exerted through a voluntary act or is it not? If it is, then there is a volition before every volition, and one before the first. If it is not, then I ask, what is that mighty power which produces these wonderful effects without any decision or action? Look at this thing on every side.

Look at it long. Pass not by the question without a distinct answer. The main point turns on this. How does the mind cause its own exercises without any act or decision?

What independent cause can act there without an act of the mind? Look at it. What can it be? When you go back beyond volition, you find nothing but mind in an involuntary state: but how can mind in such a state act to cause volition in distinction from exercising it? The believers in a disposition might think they saw a cause, though not an independent cause. But will you who are so strenuous to exclude every thing from the mind but exercise, say that you have found in it an independent cause of exercise which involves no decision or action? In a thing which has nothing but exercise, what is that mighty cause which produces every thing without exercise? Existing affections, by entertaining motives which call forth similar affections, may in a sense be the cause of the latter; but this is not the case contended for by the advocates of the self-determining power. Besides, there are here no such affections as you wish to produce.

You say, the cause lies in the faculty of the will. But are you sure that this is not using words without a meaning? What is the faculty which, without any decision or act, causes itself to will? Can you look so far as clearly to see that there is any thing in all this but words? Put it in plain and intelligible language and tell me what it is. Get not over this task by covering it up in the tapestry of general terms. I cannot be satisfied till this question is answered. I well know that there is a faculty, and that that faculty is exercised in willing; but when the faculty

has willed, it has done all that we can trace:

we cannot find in it an independent cause of that exercise. We can find in it a sort of cause, (as without the faculty the exercise could not exist,) but by no means an independent cause. By the faculty of the will we understand no more than that the mind is so formed that, with or without divine efficiency, it will put forth volitions, as matter cannot. But whether there is or is not divine efficiency, is not decided by the allowed existence of a faculty.

But cannot God, you say, lodge in mind an efficient cause as well as in matter? If you mean by an efficient cause that without which the effect could not be, (the common definition given it,) then mind is an efficient cause; for without mind there could be no perception or thought or affection or volition, or any operation of imagination or memory. But if you mean by an efficient cause, a cause independent for its present power and action, there is not an efficient cause in all the works of God. I am willing to admit also that the attributes of matter, which constitute the laws of nature, are efficient causes. Stewart considers the laws of nature as only the stated modes of divine operation, and denies that any thing intervenes between the divine will and the effect. But if the attributes of matter do not exist separately from God, matter does not exist; and then we must all go back to Berkleianism. Stewart denies that efficient causes can exist in matter: but if extension exists separately from God, the extension of a marble rock is the efficient cause of its filling the space to the exclusion of other bodies. Brown, on the other hand, maintains that the laws of nature are efficient

causes, but denies that God constantly produces their existence; and says that at the creation he permanently lodged in matter its existence and powers, which continue without his further interposition. But to me this appears as impossible as for God to create a being which for the future shall be self-existent. It seems to suppose that he lodged self-existence in matter and its laws, which appears to be a contradiction even in terms. In the middle space between these two philosophers I would take my humble stand, and say, that the attributes or laws of matter are efficient causes, actually intervening between the divine will and the effect, but that they are momentarily supported and made what they are by the power of God.

Now the operations of these laws of matter are uniform and mechanical, without any variations or diversities to be accounted for. In this they essentially differ from the operations of mind. In the latter the diversities are the very things and the only things to be accounted for. That the mind is the efficient cause, in general, of affections and volitions, does not account for the fact that one mind has holy exercises and another sinful. We may account for the sinful by the existence of self-love, (essential to every nature above a block,) turned into selfishness by the absence of love to God, and moved by motives of which the universe is full; but we cannot account for the holy exercises without going back beyond the motives in view of which they were called forth, to that power which with the motives: for before

caused the mind to fall in

holiness is implanted in the heart, there is nothing answering to self-love in the other case, to which the motives

are adapted. The fact is, that the heart governs the head more than the head the heart. The heart, influencing the judgment respecting the greatest good, controls, in moral matters, the opinions of the understanding; but the understanding cannot reform a selfish heart.

The mind, though an efficient cause, is not independent. And what do you mean by that? you say. Suppose God does constantly uphold the causal powers of the mind, as he does the causal power of the loadstone, they are still causes existing separately from him, as much as the attributes of matter, (the true physical causes,) exist separately from him. All this is true; but those mental powers are only what we mean by faculties. And in the exercise of the faculties there is a latitude altogether different from the mechanism of the material world. No powers or faculties are causes of such a nature as to account for the difference of moral feeling between Peter and Judas. Those powers act uniformly so far as to attend to and choose the greatest apparent good; but what that apparent good is, depends less on the faculties than on the state of the heart. In the unregenerate, where supreme self-love predominates, the greatest apparent good is sure to be wrapt up in self-interest, and the powers which God supports are as sure to act under the general control of selfishness and as no light spread upon other objects can make them dearer to the selfish man than self, no radiations of truth can alter this direction of the powers, until, by an energy wholly distinct from the faculties and from truth, the stubborn heart, in view of truth, is all at once made to transfer its supreme affection to God.