d, moreover, if every event requires a
cause, and every volition is guided by motives, what are called the
spontaneous acts of the mind must be the necessary result of motives
which direct and command its elections. "To say that in our choice
we reject the stronger motive, and that we choose a thing merely
because we choose it, is sheer nonsense and absurdity. And whoever,
with a sound understanding, will fix his mind upon the state of the
question, will perceive its impossibility."

But, all correct _moral_ reasoning ranges on the side of freedom. In
opposition to the subtle or forcible reasonings of the metaphysician,
every individual can plead his inward consciousness of voluntary
agency. He feels, he knows, that he is free. The exercise of the
moral sense, the judgment which the mind pronounces on its own good
or evil movements, the conviction of having done or neglected a
duty, the calm satisfaction of the virtuous mind, and the fierce
or sullen remorse of the criminal, are associated with the
insuppressible persuasion of liberty. Destroy this persuasion,
and virtue is despoiled of its loveliness, vice of its deformity.
But it cannot be destroyed. It is the voice of nature. The Creator
has so formed us, that we cannot throw off from ourselves the sense
of responsibility, nor regard our fellow creatures as unfit for
praise or blame, for love or hatred. Men treat each other as free
agents in all the transactions of human life, and God administers
the government of the world, on the principle that mankind are
capable of self-control, regulating their conduct by the hope of
reward or fear of punishment. If the consciousness of freedom be a
delusion, it follows that moral obligation, duty, reward, guilt,
punishment, are delusions, and that religion, however salutary in
its effects, is nothing better than a magnificent imposture.

Calvinism is an attempt to found the religion of Christ on the
doctrine of necessity, and to accommodate its truths, which suppose
and require free agency in man, to a dark and appalling fatalism.
But in a case like the present, in which metaphysical reasonings,
however profound or conclusive, so far as they go, are at variance
with practical truth, with consciousness, with the actual state of
things, and with the unquestionable procedures of the Divine
government, as confirmed by the scriptures, wisdom would seem to
dictate our adhesion to that side of the question, which is
supported by mo