It has been asked on our side, How can our faculties be constantly dependent and their operations forever independent? There is nothing gained by anything delusive or by concealing any part of the truth. I admit therefore that the argument for divine efficiency involved in this question is not logical. The power of the loadstone, though constantly supported by God, is its own power; else the attributes of matter have no existence separate from God, and then matter has no existence. And if that attraction is its own power separately from God, it is, though not an independent, yet an efficient cause, intervening between the divine will and the effect. Can that cause be dependent and its action independent? Its action, though not the immediate action of God, is certainly caused by God. The action of that power mechanically follows from the support of that power; and if the power is not independent, the action is not independent, although the action is its own and not God's. Thus it is with the attributes or laws of matter: is it so with mind? The faculties of the mind are as constantly supported as the attributes of matter; and the exercise of a faculty is not the act of God but the act of the creature. Its support and its exercise are so distinct as to be the acts of entirely different agents. Thus far the two cases are alike. But here arises the mighty difference: there is no such mechanism in the operations of the mental faculty. If there was, its operation must be the same at all times and in all minds. Its support makes it merely a faculty, but does not decide its operations. These are decided by the state of the heart and outward circumstances,-outward

circumstances throwing in motives adapted to the existing temper or affections. We cannot therefore argue from the dependence of the faculties, that the particular form of their exercise is determined by God. The faculties themselves are not the full cause of the diversities of their operations and therefore to support them is not to support the entire cause, much less to be the cause. There is not a single faculty that has the full cause in itself. The judgments of the intellect and the decisions of the will are both controlled by the heart. And the heart itself is so far dependent on the intellect, that it is always influenced by motives contemplated by that faculty, provided they accord with its own taste. The faculty of the heart can never account for all the diversities of its operations. The attraction of the magnet is a competent and efficient cause of the motion of the steel towards it: but if it had such a latitude of action as sometimes to attract and sometimes to repel the same object, no single power lodged within it could be the cause of this diversity of action. The faculty of the heart cannot account for a man's hating rather than loving or loving rather than hating, and therefore is not the full cause of any specific mode of action. If the movements of this faculty involved the mechanism of material laws, the power would be the full cause of the operation but as it works in opposite ways, in loving and hating, the cause of this diversity must be sought for be yond the faculty. When therefore you say that God supports the faculty, you do not say that he supports the entire cause of these diversities, much less that he is himself the cause. That he supports the life and faculties of

the wicked, is no proof that he produces all their wicked feelings.

To prove our spontaneity in originating our own holy exercises, an appeal is often made to our consciousness. Never was an appeal less supported. What are we conscious of? Entire willingness in the operations of our own minds. But the question is not about exercising, but about spontaneously causing our own volitions. Now we know that we are willing, but are we conscious of willing to be willing? The very question answers itself, and refutes this confident appeal. Whatever are the difficulties of comprehending this subject, I think we can clearly see that the nature of our exercises is the same whether they are divinely caused or not. My thoughts of you and my love to you are what they are, whether originated by God or by myself. We know from consciousness that we have all the workings of a rational soul, and that they are perfectly free by whomsoever caused; we cannot be certain from their nature or freeness, whether they are caused by the simple powers of the mind or by the addition of a foreign impulse. If we were plainly told that God had "wrought all our works in us," we should not feel them to be less our own or less free. If we were told that he had made us "willing in the day of" his "power," we should be no less conscious of being willing and free. A thought is a thought and love is love however caused. We cannot therefore draw from our conscious freedom any argument against the efficiency of God.

But will not these reasonings prove either that God is

not.

the efficient cause of all the volitions of the unregenerate, or that they possess the self-determining power? I think Self-love and a submission to the greatest apparent good, are essential to all beings that have life. A worm prefers pleasure to pain, and will turn aside if a coal of fire is laid before it. Otherwise it could not have both the power of perception and of muscular motion. If God sustains the rational existence of natural men, he sustains a nature sure to be influenced by the strongest motive addressed to self-love. Nothing more is necessary on his part than to withhold his sanctifying grace, to convert that self-love into selfishness. It remains in subjection while the love of God rules the heart; but as soon as that superior is withdrawn, the servant, by a mere change of relations, becomes the master; and from its very nature it cannot be a master without being a tyrant and a traitor. No divine power is necessary in all this process but to support the rational existence. And if nature itself, thus supported, works in this way, by the mere preponderance of motives addressed to selfishness, there needs no self-determining power. In supporting nature God supports reason and self-love and the empire of the greatest apparent good; and the sin comes from men's not keeping self-love in subjection by the dominant love of God. This is their own fault. They are bound, even without the application of divine efficiency, to love God supremely, because they have rational souls and are capable of understanding his will. But does no self-determining power act in all the multiform ragings of their selfishness? No: their supreme regard for the gratification of their own pro

pensities, into which their self-love, (their essential nature,) turns when they neglect the love of God, must be roused to all these ragings by the pressure of adapted and sufficiently powerful motives: for to be influenced by motives and to be controlled by the greatest apparent good, are essential to their nature. Let their nature, in all its attributes, be supported by its Author, and they change its operations, not by a self-determining power, but by withholding their love from God. By that single neglect, and not by a self-determining power, they cause the laws of nature, which the God of nature must support, to work rebellion. But though the wicked rage without any application of divine efficiency but to support the harmless laws of nature, not without that efficiency do they turn from supreme enmity to the supreme love of God.

Still God has the absolute control of mind in all its common operations: else how could he govern the world? Whether he does this by the mere force of motives adapted to the existing temper, or sometimes by a lower sort of efficiency, not however productive of sin, I will not determine. But the fact is incontrovertible. "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord as the rivers of water : he turneth it whithersoever he will." "The preparations of the heart in man and the answer of the tongue is from the Lord." "There are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand." "A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps." "O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." "Man's goings are of the Lord: how can a man