By this high _a priori_ method the freedom of the human mind is
demonstrated, as we have seen, to be an impossibility, and the
accountability of man a dream. Man is not responsible for sin, or rather,
there is no such thing as moral good and evil in the lower world; since
God, the only efficient fountain of all things and events, is the sole
responsible author of all evil as well as of all good. Such, as we have
seen, are the inevitable logical consequences of this boasted scheme of
necessity.

But we have clearly shown, we trust, that the grand demonstration of the
necessitarian is a sophism, whose apparent force is owing to a variety of
causes:--First, it seeks out, and lays its foundation in, a false
psychology; identifying the feelings, or affections, and the will.
Secondly, by viewing the opposite scheme through the medium of this false
psychology, it reduces its main position to the pitiful absurdity that a
thing may produce itself, or arise out of nothing, and bring itself into
existence; and then demolishes this absurdity by logic! Thirdly, it
reduces itself to the truism, that a thing is always as it is; and being
entrenched in this stronghold, it gathers around itself all the common
sense and all the reason of mankind, as well it may, and looks down with
sovereign contempt on the feeble attacks of its adversaries. Fourthly, it
fortifies itself by a multitude of false conceptions, arising from a hasty
application of its universal truism, and not from a severe inspection and
analysis of things. Fifthly, it decorates itself in false analogies, and
thereby assumes the imposing appearance of truth. Sixthly, it clothes
itself in deceptive and ambiguous phraseology, by which it speaks the
language of truth to the ear, but not to the sense. And, seventhly, it
takes its rise in a false method, and terminates in a false religion.

These are some of the hidden mysteries of the scheme of necessity; which
having been detected and exposed, we do not hesitate to pronounce it a
grand imposition on the reason of mankind. As such, we set aside this
stupendous sophism, whose dark shadow has so long rested on the beauty of
the world, obscuring the intrinsic majesty and glory of the infinite
goodness therein displayed. We put away and repudiate this vast assemblage
of errors, which has so sadly perplexed our mental vision, and so
frightfully distorted the real proportions of the world, as to lead
philosophers, such as Kant and