ts operations,
are to be guarded against with the most anxious care, as tending to
confound in our apprehensions, two classes of phenomena, which it is of
the last importance to distinguish accurately from each other."(74) 2. The
privative nature of evil, as it is called, is purely a figment of the
brain; it is an invention of the schoolmen, which has no corresponding
reality in nature. When Adam put forth his hand to pluck the forbidden
fruit, and ate it, he committed a sinful act. But why was it sinful?
Because he knew it was wrong; because his act was a voluntary and known
transgression of the command of God. Now, if God had caused all that was
positive in this sinful act, that is, if he had caused Adam to will to put
forth his hand and eat the fruit, it is plain that he would have been the
cause of his transgression. Nothing can be more chimerical, it seems to
us, than this distinction between being the author of the substance of an
act, and the author of its pravity. If Adam had obeyed, that is, if he had
refused to eat the forbidden fruit, such an act would not have been more
positive than the actual series of volitions by which he transgressed. 3.
If what we call sin, arises from the necessary imperfection of the
creature, as the slowness of a vessel in descending a stream arises from
its cargo, how can he be to blame for it; or, in other words, how can it
be moral evil at all? And, 4. Leibnitz has certainly committed a very
great oversight in this attempt to account for the origin of evil. He
explains it, by saying that it arises from the necessary imperfection of
the creature which limits its receptivity; but does he mean that God
cannot communicate holiness to the creature? Does he mean that God
endeavours to communicate holiness, and fails in consequence of the
necessary imperfection of the creature? If so, what becomes of the
doctrine which he everywhere advances, that God can very easily cause
virtue or holiness to exist if he should choose to do so? If God can very
easily cause this to exist, as Leibnitz contends he can, notwithstanding
the necessary imperfection of the creature, why has he not done so? Is it
not evident, that the philosophy of Leibnitz merely plays over the surface
of this great difficulty, and decks it out with the ornaments of fancy,
instead of reaching down to the bottom of it, and casting the
illuminations of his genius into its depths?

Section III.