AN ESSAY. 979 sentsituation ofpersons and things : For this existence and situ- ation necessarily makes such an appearance to the mind ; from this appearance flows a necessary perception and judgment con- cerning these things ; this judgment necessarily determines the will ; and thus by this chain of necessary causes, virtue andvice would lose their nature, andbecome natural ideas and necessary things, instead of moral and free actions ; and thus there would be nothing really rewardable in the one, or blameableand punish- able in the other. This also the atheists and the fatalists have formed into so strong an argument, as it is very difficult to give a fair answer to them, ifwe suppose the will to be necessarily deter- mined in every act by the ideas and assent of the understanding. To confirm this notion of virtue and vice proceeding from the self-determining power of the will ; let us consider, that all man- kind naturally and constantly suppose the determinations of their wills to he their own actions, whether they be good or evil : for however they might, from a principleofpride and vanity, assume thehonour of good actions to themselves, though they were not entirely their own, yet they would not impute evil actions to themselves, if they did not feel themselves to be the proper cause of them by the free determinations of their own will . The soul or conscience of man charges him with acting amiss, when his will has chosen that which is evil, and brought misery upon him- self; and hence arise sharp and bitter inward reflections,' and sorrows of another kind than those which proceed from mere calamities which were necessary, and which he could not avoid. Nor can we suppose the God of nature would have placed such a principle in mankind, as should naturally excite him to bitter anguish and self accusation for actions which were naturally. ne- cessary, that is, if he were determined to them necessarily by his perceptions, and inwhich his will had no self-determining. power or choice. V. This doctrine of the self-determining power of the will, chews us a wise andgood man in his true character', viz. whose will, though it be a self-determining power, and can chuse con- trary to the understanding, and can obey the influences of appe- titeand sinful passion, yet it suffers itself to bedirected and always determines it choice by the fitness or unfitness of things, as they are representedby the understanding after a due examination and survey, wheresoever this fitness or unfitness appears. And in this conduct he imitates the blessed God, who never acts contrary to these appearancesof fitness orunfitness, never determines any thing contrary to the eternal reasons and relations of things as contained in his own ideas, but always chuses and acts in confor- mity to them. VI. This gives us the clearest, the easiest, and the most unexceptionableaccount how sincame jira into the world. Mat+
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