re then given of
undue elections, in which of course his misery consists as far as that
depends on himself; these causes are error, negligence, over-indulgence
of free choice, obstinacy or bad habit, and the importunity of natural
appetites; which last, it must in passing be remarked, belongs to the
head of physical evil, and cannot be assumed in this discussion without
begging the question. The great difficulty is then stated and grappled
with, namely, how to reconcile these undue elections with divine
goodness. The objector states that free will might exist without the
power of making undue elections, he being suffered to range, as it were,
only among lawful objects of choice. But the answer to this seems sound,
that such a will would only be free in name; it would be free to choose
among certain things, but would not be free-will. The objector again
urges, that either the choice is free and may fall upon evil objects,
against the goodness of God, or it is so restrained as only to fall on
good objects. Against freedom of the will King's solution is, that
more evil would result from preventing these undue elections than from
suffering them, and so the Deity has only done the best he could in the
circumstances; a solution obviously liable to the same objection as that
respecting Natural Evil. There are three ways, says the Archbishop, in
which undue elections might have been prevented; not creating a free
agent--constant interference with his free-will--removing him to another
state where he would not be tempted to go astray in his choice. A fourth
mode may, however, be suggested--creating a free-agent without any
inclination to evil, or any temptation from external objects. When
our author disposes of the second method, by stating that it assumes a
constant miracle, as great in the moral as altering the course of the
planets hourly would be in the material universe, nothing can be more
sound or more satisfactory. But when he argues that our whole happiness
consists in a consciousness of freedom of election, and that we should
never know happiness were we restrained in any particular, it seems
wholly inconceivable how he should have omitted to consider the
prodigious comfort of a state in which we should be guaranteed against
any error or impropriety of choice; a state in which we should both
be unable to go astray and always feel conscious of that security. He,
however, begs the question most manifestly in dealing with t