of the times in which the reformers
lived and acted, it is not very surprising that they should have fallen
into such errors. The corruptions of human nature, manifesting themselves
in the Romish Church, had so extravagantly exalted the powers of man, and
especially of the priesthood, and so greatly depressed or obscured the
sovereignty of God, that the reformers, in fighting against those abuses,
were naturally forced into the opposite extreme. It is not at all
wonderful, we say, that a reaction, which shook the very foundations of
the earth, should have carried the authors of it beyond the bounds of
moderation and truth. They would have been more than human if they had not
fallen into some such errors as these which we have ascribed to them. But
the great misfortune is, that these errors should have been stereotyped
and fixed in the symbolical books of the Protestant Churches, and made to
descend from the reformers to their children's children, as though they
were of the very essence of the faith once delivered to the saints. This
is the misfortune, the lamentable evil, which has furnished the Romish
Church with its most powerful weapons of attack;(70) which has fortified
the strongholds of atheism and infidelity; and which has, beyond all
question, fearfully retarded the great and glorious cause of true
religion.

If we would examine the most elaborate efforts to defend these doctrines,
or rather the great central dogma of necessity from which they all
radiate, we must descend to later times; we must turn our attention to the
immortal writings of a Leibnitz and an Edwards.

Section II.

The attempt of Leibnitz to show that the scheme of necessity does not make
God the author of sin.

This philosopher employed all the resources of a sublime genius, and all
the stores of a vast erudition, in order to maintain the scheme of
necessity, and at the same time vindicate the purity of the Divine Being.
That subtle and adroit sceptic, M. Bayle, had drawn out all the
consequences of the doctrine of necessity in opposition to the free-agency
of man, and to the holiness of God. Leibnitz wrote his great "Essais de
Theodicee," for the purpose of refuting these conclusions of Bayle, as
well as those of all other sceptics, and of reconciling his system with
the divine attributes. In the preface to his work he says, "We show that
evil has another source than the will of God; and that we have r