224 HUME x 



he must be the cause of evil among the rest ; if 

 he is omniscient, he must have the fore-knowledge 

 of evil ; if he is almighty, he must possess the 

 power of preventing, or of extinguishing evil. 

 And to say that an all-knowing and all-powerful 

 being is not responsible for what happens, because 

 he only permits it, is, under its intellectual aspect, 

 a piece of childish sophistry; while, as to the 

 moral look of it, one has only to ask any decently 

 honourable man, whether, under like circum- 

 stances, he would try to get rid of his responsibility 

 by such a plea. 



Hume's " Inquiry " appeared in 1748. He does 

 not refer to Anthony Collins' essay on Liberty, 

 published thirty-three years before, in which the 

 same question is treated to the same effect, with 

 singular force and lucidity. It may be said, 

 perhaps, that it is not wonderful that the two 

 freethinkers should follow the same line of reason- 

 ing ; but no such theory will account for the fact 

 that in 1754, the famous Calvinistic divine, 

 Jonathan Edwards, President of the College of 

 New Jersey, produced, in the interests of the 

 straitest orthodoxy, a demonstration of the neces- 

 sarian thesis, which has never been equalled in 

 power, and certainly has never been refuted. 



In the ninth section of the fourth part of 

 Edwards's "Inquiry," he has to deal with the 

 Arminian objection to the Calvinistic doctrine 

 that " it makes God the author of sin " ; and it is 



