ppose the essence of liberty
so much to consist in these things that unless the will of man be free
in this sense, he has no real freedom, how much soever he may be at
liberty to act according to his will.

A moral agent is a being that is capable of those actions that have a
moral quality, and which can properly be denominated good or evil in a
moral sense, virtuous or vicious, commendable or faulty. To moral
agency belongs a moral faculty, or sense of moral good and evil, or of
such a thing as desert or worthiness, of praise or blame, reward or
punishment; and a capacity which an agent has of being influenced in
his actions by moral inducements or motives, exhibited to the view of
understanding and reason, to engage to a conduct agreeable to the
moral faculty.

The sun is very excellent and beneficial in its action and influence
on the earth, in warming it, and causing it to bring forth its fruits;
but it is not a moral agent. Its action, tho good, is not virtuous or
meritorious. Fire that breaks out in a city, and consumes great part
of it, is very mischievous in its operation; but is not a moral agent.
What it does is not faulty or sinful, or deserving of any punishment.
The brute creatures are not moral agents. The actions of some of them
are very profitable and pleasant; others are very hurtful; yet, seeing
they have no moral faculty, or sense of desert, and do not act from
choice guided by understanding, or with a capacity of reasoning and
reflecting, but only from instinct, and are not capable of being
influenced by moral inducements, their actions are not properly sinful
or virtuous; nor are they properly the subjects of any such moral
treatment for what they do, as moral agents are for their faults or
good deeds.

Here it may be noted that there is a circumstantial difference between
the moral agency of a ruler and a subject. I call it circumstantial,
because it lies only in the difference of moral inducements they are
capable of being influenced by, arising from the difference of
circumstances. A ruler, acting in that capacity only, is not capable
of being influenced by a moral law, and its sanctions of threatenings
and promises, rewards and punishments as the subject is; tho both may
be influenced by a knowledge of moral good and evil. And therefore
the moral agency of the Supreme Being, who acts only in the capacity
of a ruler toward His creatures, and never as a subject, differs in
that respect from th