514 Extravagant and Melancholy [Book X, 



for involuntary offences, is cruelty and injuftice. The 

 fyftem of free agency, on the contrary, is confident 

 \vich all the attributes of God, and is highly confolatory 

 and inftruftive to man. This fyftem refts upon the 

 cleared bafis of juftice. Man is created free.; he has 

 good and evil placed before him, with the ftrongeft 

 and moll conciriating motives in the Chrifdan difpen- 

 fation to purfue the one, and to avoid the other. If 

 he perverfely takes the wrong courfe, and proves in- 

 corrigibly wicked, 'every principle of reafon and equity, 

 fincVions the jnftice of his pnnifliment. Into the na- 

 ture of that punifhment, it is not our prefent bufincfs 

 to inquire. It wiH donbtlefs be fuch as to fatibfy infi- 

 nite juftice, yet tempered' by the fweet and fakftary ex- 

 ercife of infinite mercy. 



If the- divine laws are thus outraged by the prepof- 

 tcrous hypothefis of a fatal necefiity ; human laws, I 

 fear, will not ftand upon a much firmer foundation. 

 To punifh any criminal for an error which he could 

 not avoid, is certainly not only cruel, but wicked in the 

 extreme; and yet fuch muft be the cafe, if the doctrine 

 of the fatalifts is true *. 



* In the courfe of a very few years, it will fcarcely be credited, 

 that 3. bock has been lately published on this very principle, and 

 the argument of the author is briefly this. Man is a neceflary 

 agent, he is therefore not an accountable being; his actions are 

 all determined by his fituation and circumftances, taking in 

 amongft thefe his education and the degree of knowledge he has. 

 been enabled to acquire. What are called crimes therefore are 

 only miftakes, perfectly involuntary on his part, and he therefore 

 (whether he is a thief, a murderer, or a parricide) ought not to 

 ti punijbed, but ivftrufled and reafcned with. As no criminal 

 cught to be punUhed, all laws or regulations mult be perfeft'y 

 nugatory in fociety, and even pernicious ; marriage is law, and 

 therefore it is pernicious, and ought to be abolifned. It is happy 

 for the caufe of truth, when fuch bocks are published ; for if the 

 farc^ftic genius of a Swift could have more effectually burlefqued 

 the doctrine of neceflity, I am ao judge of irony. 



On 



