wage implacable war against each other; and perpetu ally clog and disconcert one another's schemes and operations. Hence men are impelled, &c., to good, or to evil, according as they come under the power of the good deity, or the bad one."-Or, to speak Calvinistically, they are necessarily made willing to believe and obey, if they are the elected objects of everlasting love, -which is the good principle; and they are irresistibly made willing to disbelieve and disobey, if they are the reprobated objects of everlasting wrath-which is the evil principle. For Free Will has no more place in Manicheism than it has in Calvinism. Hence it appears, that, setting aside the other peculiarities of each scheme, the grand difference between Calvin and Manes consists in Calvin's making everlasting, electing, necessitating Love, and everlasting, reprobating, necessitating Wrath, to flow from the same Divine Principle; whereas Manes more reasonably supposed, that they flow from two contrary principles. Whoever therefore denies Free Will, and contends for Necessity, embraces, before he is aware, the capital error of the Manichees; and it is well, if he do not hold it in a less reasonable manner than Manes himself did. "I believe," adds Mr. Toplady, "it is absolutely impossible to trace quite up to its source, the antiquity of that hypothesis which absurdly affirms the existence of two eternal, contrary, independent principles.—What led so many wise people, and for so great a series of ages, into such a wretched mistake, were chiefly, I suppose, these two consideratious: (1.) That evil, both moral and physical, are positive things, and so must have a positive cause.(2.) That a Being, perfectly good, could not, from the very nature of his existence, be the cause of such bad things."

Here Mr. Toplady reasons like a judicious Divine The misfortune for his scheme is, that his "two considerations," like two millstones, grind Calvinism to dust; or, like two cogent arguments, force us to embrace the doctrine of Free Will, or the error of Manes. Mr. T. seems aware of this; and therefore to shew that God can, upon the Calvinian plan, absolutely predesti

nate, and effectually bring about sin, by making men willing to sin in the day of his irresistible power; and that nevertheless he is not the Author and First Cause of sin ;-to shew this, I say, Mr. T. asserts, "That evil, whether physical or moral, does not, upon narrow inspection, appear to have so much of positivity in it, as it is probable those ancients supposed." Nay, he insinuates, that as "sickness is a privation of health; so the sinfulness of any human action is said to be a privation;" being called avoμia, "illegality;"-and he adds, that, wonderful as the thing may appear, Dr. Watts, in his Logic, "ventures to treat of sin under the title of not-being."* When Mr. Toplady has thus cleared the way, and modestly intimated, that sin, being a kind of non-entity, can have no positive cause, he proposes the grand question, "Whether the great First Cause, who is infinitely and merely good, can be, either efficiently or deficiently, the author of them ?” that is (according to the context) the author of iniquity, injustice, impiety, and vice; as well as the author of the natural evil by which God punishes sin?

Page 139, Mr. T. answers this question thus: "In my opinion, the single word permission solves the whole difficulty, as far as it can be solved," &c. And, (page 141,) he says, "We know scarce any of the views which induced uncreated goodness to ordain (for, &c., I see no great difference between permitting and ordaining) the introgression, or more properly the intromission, of evil." Here Mr. Toplady goes as far as he decently can: Rather than grant, that we are endued with Free Will, and that when God had made angels and men free-willing creatures, in order to judge them according to their own works, he could not, without inconsistency, rob them of Free Will by necessi▾ lating them to be either good or wicked;-rather, I

*If the Calvinists, in their unguarded moments, represent sin as a kind of not-being or non-entity, that they may exculpate God for absolutely ordaining it, do they not by this means exculpate the sinner *? If the first cause of sin is excusable, because sin is a privation

"not so much of positivity in it as the ancients supposed," is ond cause of sin much more excusable on the same account →

say, than admit this scriptural doctrine, which perfectly clears the Gracious Judge of all the earth, Mr. Toplady first indirectly and decently extenuates sin, and brings it down to almost nothing; and then he tells us, that God ordained it. Is not the openness of Manes preferable to this Calvinistic winding?-When Mr. T. grants, that God" ordained" sin, and when he charges "the intromission of evil" upon God, does he not grant all that Manes in this respect contended for? And have not the Manichean necessitarians the advantage over Mr. T., when they assert, that a principle, which absolutely ordains, yea, necessitates sin and all the works of darkness, is a dark and evil principle? Can we doubt of it, if we believe these sayings of Christ?, Out of the [evil] heart proceed evil thoughts, &c.-By their works you shall know them.-The tree is known by its fruit.'

Again: If "sin," or rather the sinfulness of an action, may be properly called a "not-being," or a non-entity, as Mr. Toplady inconsistently insinuates, (p. 137,) it absurdly follows, that crookedness, or the want of straightness in a line, is a mere privation also, or a not-being: Whereas reason and feeling tell us, that the crookedness of a crooked line, is something every way as positive as the straightness of a straight line. To deny it, is as ridiculous as to assert, that a circle is a not-being, because it is not made of straight lines like a square; or that a murder is a species of non-entity, because it is not the legal execution of a condemned malefactor. Nor can Mr. T. mend his error by hiding it behind "Dr. Watts's Logic ;" for the world knows, that Dr. Watts was a Calvinist when he wrote that book; and therefore, judicious as he was, the vail of error prevented him from seeing then that part of the truth which I contend for.

Once more: Whether sin has a positive cause or not, (for Mr. T. insinuates both these doctrines, with the inconsistency peculiar to his system,) I beg leave to involve him in a dilemma, which will meet him at the front or back door of his inconsistency. Either sin is a real thing, and has a positive cause; or it is not a

real thing, and has no positive cause.

If it is NOT a real thing, and has no positive cause, why does God positively send the wicked to hell for a privation, which they have not positively caused? And if sin is a real thing, or a positive moral crookedness of the will of a sinner, and as such has a positive cause; can that positive cause be any other than the self-perversion of Free Will, or the impelling decree of a sin-ordaining God? If the positive cause of sin is the self-perversion of Free Will, is it not evident, that so sure as there is sin in the world, the doctrine of Free Will is true? But if the positive cause of sin is the impelling decree of a sin-ordaining, sin-necessitating God; is it not incontestible, that the capital doctrine of the Manichees, the doctrine of Absolute Necessity, is true; and that there is in the Godhead an evil principle, (it signifies little whether you call it matter, darkness, everlasting free wrath, or devil,) which positively ordains and irresistibly causes sin? In a word, is it not clear, that the second gospel-axiom is overthrown by the doctrine of Necessity; and that the damnation of sinners is of God, and not of themselves?

While Mr. T. tries to extricate himself from this dilemma, I shall produce one or two more passages of this book, to prove that his scheme makes God the author of sin, according to the most dangerous error of Manes. The Heathens imagined, that Minerva, the goddess of Wisdom, was Jupiter's offspring in the most peculiar manner. Diana was indeed Jupiter's daughter, but Latona, an earthly princess, was her mother: Whereas Jupiter was at once the father and mother of Minerva. He begat her himself in the womb of his own brain, and when she was ripe for the birth, his forehead opened after a violent head-ache, which answered to the pangs of child-bearing, and out came the lovely female Deity. Mr. Toplady, alluding to this Heathen fiction, represents his Diana, Necessity, as proceeding from God with her immense chain of events, which has among its adamantine links, all the follies, heresies, murders, robberies, adulteries, incests, and rebellions,

of which men and devils have been, are, or ever shall be guilty. His own words, (p. 50,) are, Necessity, in general, with all its extensive series of adamantine links in particular, is, in reality, what the poets feigned of Minerva, the issue of Divine Wisdom: [He should have said, the issue of the supreme God, by his own wise brain,] deriving its whole existence from the free will of God; and its whole effectuosity from his neverceasing Providence." Is not this insinuating, as plainly as decency will allow, that every sin, as a link of the adamantine chain of events, has been hammered in heaven, and that every crime "derives its whole existence from the free will of God?" Take one more instance of the same Manichean doctrine:

Page 64. Mr. Toplady having said, that 'He [God] casteth forth his ice like morsels-and causeth his wind to blow,' &c., adds, "Neither is material nature alone bound fast in fate. All other things, the human will itself not excepted, are not less tightly bound, i. e., effectually influenced and determined."-Hence it is evident, that if this Calvinism is true, when sinners send forth vollies of unclean and profane words, Calvin's God has as "tightly bound" them to cast forth Manichean ribaldry, as the God of nature binds the clouds to cast forth his ice like morsels.'

I would not be understood to demonstrate by the preceding quotations, that Mr. T. designs to make God the author of sin. No: On the contrary, I do him the justice to say, that he does all he can to clear his doctrines of grace from this dreadful imputation. I only produce his own words to shew, that, notwithstanding all his endeavours, this horrid Manicheau consequence unavoidably flows from his Scheme of Necessity.