have of reward or
punishment. These are inapplicable to a state of fatalism. The
volitions, and the actions they produce, are in reality those of the
Deity. To Him they belong, and to Him alone. On this critical and
decisive point all the great Calvinistic writers break down. While
they award to human beings the treatment due to moral agents, they
deny to them the attributes without which they cannot be responsible
for their actions.

To beings under moral government, personal agency is essential; but
Calvinistic fatalism reduces all agency to that of the Deity alone.
The human soul is moved mechanically by impulse from without, and
passively yields to an irresistible power.

It supposes the exercise of faculties by which we are made sensible
of our relation to the Deity, and our obligation to obey his laws.
Hence results the consciousness of rectitude or guilt, and all the
noble motives by which we are led to self-government and self
-renunciation--from a sense of duty, and with a view to future
happiness in the enjoyment of the divine approbation. But
Calvinistic necessity destroys the majesty of the human mind, as "an
arbiter enthroned in its own dominion, endowed with an initiating
power, and forming its determinations for good or for evil by an
inherent and indefeasible prerogative." It tells us that we have
neither power to act nor freedom to fall--that our sense of liberty
is delusive, that we are predestined to sin or to holiness by a
decree of the infinite mind, and that our fate has been sealed from
eternity! If we really believe it and act upon it, our moral
energies are for ever suppressed, and the consciousness of virtue
and of guilt must give way to the humiliating persuasion that we can
do nothing, and that we have nothing to do, but to yield to our lot
and await our doom, whether to be lost or saved!

The absurdity of such a theory of religion is a light consideration
compared with the perilous consequences it must produce, if it were
possible that the mass of ignorant and unreflecting creatures, of
which society is composed, should really believe it true and act in
accordance with their belief. Instructed to regard their present
conduct and future allotment, as being already determined, the
notion of a state of _trial_, in which they were accountable to God,
would be cast off, with all its salutary restraints upon the
passions, and all its noble incentives to a virtuous life. Nor would
it be possi