regarded as the avenger of crimes merely on account of their
odiousness and deformity, not only it is impossible, without the
necessary connexion of cause and effect in human actions, that
punishments coued be inflicted compatible with justice and moral equity;
but also that it coued ever enter into the thoughts of any reasonable
being to inflict them. The constant and universal object of hatred or
anger is a person or creature endowed with thought and consciousness;
and when any criminal or injurious actions excite that passion, it
is only by their relation to the person or connexion with him. But
according to the doctrine of liberty or chance, this connexion is
reduced to nothing, nor are men more accountable for those actions,
which are designed and premeditated, than for such as are the most
casual and accidental. Actions are by their very nature temporary and
perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the characters
and disposition of the person, who performed them, they infix not
themselves upon him, and can neither redound to his honour, if good, nor
infamy, if evil. The action itself may be blameable; it may be contrary
to all the rules of morality and religion: But the person is not
responsible for it; and as it proceeded from nothing in him, that is
durable or constant, and leaves nothing of that nature behind it, it is
impossible he can, upon its account, become the object of punishment or
vengeance. According to the hypothesis of liberty, therefore, a man is
as pure and untainted, after having committed the most horrid crimes, as
at the first moment of his birth, nor is his character any way concerned
in his actions; since they are not derived from it, and the wickedness
of the one can never be used as a proof of the depravity of the other.
It is only upon the principles of necessity, that a person acquires
any merit or demerit from his actions, however the common opinion may
incline to the contrary.

But so inconsistent are men with themselves, that though they often
assert, that necessity utterly destroys all merit and demerit either
towards mankind or superior powers, yet they continue still to
reason upon these very principles of necessity in all their judgments
concerning this matter. Men are not blamed for such evil actions as they
perform ignorantly and casually, whatever may be their consequences.
Why? but because the causes of these actions are only momentary, and
terminate in them al