rojected. It reaches not to the
interior sphere of the will itself, and has no more to do with its freedom
than has the influence of the stars. We may please to do a thing, nay, we
may freely will it, and yet a natural necessity may cut off and prevent
the external consequence of the act.

Again, if by a superior force, a man's limbs or external bodily organs
should be used as instruments of good or evil, without his concurrence or
consent, he would be excusable for the consequences of such use. This is
the other branch of natural necessity. It is evident that it has no
relation to the freedom or to the acts of the will, but only to the
external movements of the body. It interferes merely with that external
freedom of bodily motion, about which we heard so much in the first
chapter of this work, and which the advocates of necessity have, for the
most part, so industriously laboured to pass off upon the world for the
liberty of the will itself. As this natural necessity, then, trenches not
upon the interior sphere of the will, so it merely excuses for the
performance or non-performance of external actions. It leaves the great
question with respect to man's accountability for the acts of the will
itself, from which his external actions proceed, wholly untouched and
undetermined.

Far different is the case with respect to moral necessity. This acts
directly upon the will itself, and absolutely controls all its movements.
Within its own sphere it is conceded to be "as absolute as natural
necessity,"(99) and "as sure as fatalism."(100) It absolutely and
unconditionally determines the will at all times, and in all cases. Yet we
are told that we are accountable for all the acts thus produced in us,
because they are the acts of our own wills! Nothing is done against our
wills, as in the case of natural necessity; (they should rather say,
against the external effects of our wills;) but our wills always follow,
and we are accountable therefor, though they cannot but follow. Moral
necessity is not irresistible, because this implies resistance, and our
wills never resist that which makes us willing. It is only invincible; and
invincible it is indeed, since with the mighty, sovereign power of the
Almighty it controls all the thoughts, and feelings, and volitions of the
human mind. Now we see this scheme as it is in itself, in all its
nakedness, just as it is presented to us by its own most able and
enlightened defenders. And seeing