impurity. Hence it has been used, by the
profligate and profane, to excuse men for their crimes. It is against this
use of the doctrine that we intend to direct the force of our argument.

But here the question arises: Can we refute the argument against the
accountability of man, without attacking the doctrine on which it is
founded? If we can meet this argument at all, it must be either by showing
that no such consequence flows from the scheme of necessity, or by showing
that the scheme itself is false. We cannot meet the sceptic, who seeks to
excuse his sins, and to cast dishonour on God, and expose his sophistry,
unless we can show that his premises are unsound, or that his conclusions
are false. We must do the one or the other of these two things; or,
whatever we may think of his moral sensibility, we must acknowledge the
superiority of his reason and logic. After long and patient meditation on
the subject, we have been forced to the conclusion, that the only way to
repel the argument of the sceptic, and cause the intrinsic lustre of man's
free-agency to appear, is to unravel and refute the doctrine of necessity.

If we could preserve the scheme of necessity, and at the same time avoid
the consequences in question, we may fairly conclude that the means of
doing so have been found by some of the illustrious advocates of that
scheme. How, then, do they vindicate their own system? How do they repel
the frightful consequences which infidelity deduces from it? This is the
first question to be considered; and the discussion of it will occupy the
remainder of the present chapter.

Section I.

The attempts of Calvin and Luther to reconcile the scheme of necessity
with the responsibility of man.

Nothing can be more unjust than to bring, as has often been done, the
unqualified charge of fatalism against the great Protestant reformers. The
manner in which this odious epithet is frequently used, applying it
without discrimination to the brightest ornaments and to the darkest
specimens of humanity, is calculated to engender far more heat than light.
Indeed, under this very ambiguous term, three distinct schemes of
doctrine, widely different from each other, are set forth; schemes which
every candid inquirer after truth should be careful to distinguish. The
first is that scheme of fatalism which rests on the fundamental idea that
there is nothing in the universe besides matter and loca