in their advance from nonentity: and also, as no created thing can have other than finite circumstances; and as active and related passive property and suitable circumstances are essential to the power involved in second causes, it is evident, valuable operation and influence must be limited; and that as positive consequents follow the positive causes thus constituted, so also negative consequents must follow the negations or defects of value and excellence in properties and circumstances; and hence evil to individuals unprevented exists. NOTHING, is rightly conceived, and can only be described by negation of thing, of whatever kind that thing is, and negative causes or reasons, can only be conceived and described, but as producing by indirect necessity, other negations and defects.

Mutations or changes, are effects both of positive and negative causes, and these are natural or accidental. Animals of all classes take shape by degrees, advance to size and strength by degrees, under positive causes, and then are subject to decline, decay, and finally die, (under negative causes), which is respecting them, the evil of all evils; their related passive properties declined, while the sun, air, food and medicine, retained the same active properties as before. Intellect of man expands progressively, until natural decline of properties, perhaps merely of the body, render unapt to learn, deficient in retention, dull of recollection, and sometimes to fall into ideotism. Perhaps these evils by natural decay, are more strictly called natural evils, and all others more properly called accidental.

The most valuable endowments and accommodations of mankind, by negative causes, sometimes concur to overwhelming evil. Superior understanding and quickness of intelligence, sometimes support subtilty and knavery, which end in ruin of the person by a judiciary interposition. The social pas

sions, corrective of the inordinacy of self-love, how indispensible, and of what utility! but misplaced love, unworthy love, disappointed love, has produced suicide, and other evils. Natural fortitude and courage, so excellent in the cause of God and of civil government, yet, sometimes by accidental negative causes, is employed as the grand expedient of the slaughter of millions in war, arising from inordinate passions. Beauty of person, by negative causes, has been a snare to others, and the ruin of its possessor.-Food, a valuable indispensible, an essential accommodation, but this, under a negative cause, has occasioned deaths by starving and by poison. The human body has passive properties related to the active properties of food, but apart from the suitable circumstances of eating and drinking, evil is not excluded, the person starves and dies. Medicine, it is a scientific truth, has saved the lives of hundreds, but misapplied, may occasion decline and death, the depricated evils. The medicine had active properties adapted to a specific complaint, but not being suited to the case of the present patient, notwithstanding the circumstance of being taken, proved injurious. Another excellent preparation for using externally, by being used internally, poisons the patient, death is hastened, evil exists. Mankind are accommodated by clothing from second causes, but accidentally through a negative cause, this has been a medium of their being burnt to death. Dwelling houses erected by second causes, a valuable convenience, but by negative causes, some persons have been buried in their ruins, and others burnt in their beds, unquestionably evils. Restorative sleep, balmy sleep, essential to life and vigour, yet sometimes concurs by a negative cause or accompaniment, to the evil of being robbed, and sometimes murdered.

Negative causes are equally applicable to moral

evil as to natural evil. By negative causes, there are temptations which accompany childhood, another class adapted to youth, another for ripened years, and another for old age; all which may operate and produce yielding, or bad chusing, which is moral evil. Some persons are raised higher than others from nothing in moral sense, and some in moral affections, and also by the dispensations of Divine providential culture, but experience and observation prove, that negative accompaniments concur to sin, yes, to aggravated moral evil. Moral evils do unquestionably result from negative causes, but these expose us to blame of self, and blame from other persons, which natural evils do not. As the essence of moral good lies in wise elections, so the essence of moral evil lies in foolish choices; and hence proceed wrong purposes, and wrong volitions, in respect of the approbation of God, the good and happiness of their subject, or of society; whether the volitions issue in bad works, or in bad omissions, respecting internals or externals. Idleness, inordinate desires, pride, envy, avarice, falshood, hypocrisy, cruelty, ingratitude, and infidelity, are moral evils, which result from negative causes; and themselves essentially concur to negative causes of future moral evils, which positive causes, or Divine interposition can alone prevent or surmount; and all of them avoidable, had the mind been adequately subjected to Divine ruling.

Many enquirers for the origin of evil rest in negative causes, (which some have absurdly called metaphysical power, and passive power,) and consider them the ultimate reason of evil: but if we reflect that all negative causes influence by indirect necessity, and that they owe their existence to antecedent second causes, and that these second causes in their origin must ultimately be of Divine choices, if there were no other reason for the existence of evil, by inference, God would be the origin of evil!

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4th, and lastly. I now consider chance, and the non-extinction of chance, as the origin of evil, and as the ultimate origin of evil. I conceive evil an accidental thing; and remind the reader, that it is the accidental inadequacy and failure of preventives and remedies of evils, which is a reason of actual evil;that it is the accidental collision of properties which is a reason of evils;-and that it is the accidental accompaniment of negative causes, which is a reason of evil. By accidental, I mean undesired, and therefore, unchosen, unpurposed, and unwilled consequents of the finity of God's voluntary works. Accidents are a species of chance, occasioned by the necessary finity of all created, generated, or made things. Accidents, though consequents of agency, are not purposed, or willed, or affected by strength of the agent. I think all evils come under this description of accidents in respect of God, and seem to have their essential origin in chance and nothingness, as opposed to choice and power. I think every day's experience must convince persons of observation, that accidents are sources of new evils; and every reflecting person, that chance is the origin of evil, and the ultimate origin thereof. We could not find a resting place for the ultimate reason of evil, even in negative causes: for negative causes themselves must have an origin, either in a choice of God, or in chance. I reject the former, and assume the latter.

We now conclude, that all negative causes, and negative effects, as being never chosen of God, although they accompany his chosen, purposed, and voluntary works, are ultimately resolvable to chance as their origin. Notwithstanding evil be of negative causes, yet, as negative causes are indirectly necessary, they cannot be the ultimate reason of evil, because they must have an origin either in God's choice, or in chance; for all things which are even but indirectly necessary, must have a reason of

existence, however remote, in a choice of God, or in chance. Again, all injurious collisions which we attended as an origin of natural and moral evils, as never chosen of God, but merely undesired consequents of his choices, purposes, wills, and works, are ultimately reducible to chance as their origin. And the degree of inadequacy of all chosen preventives, reliefs, and remedies, is also rationally traced back to merely the same ultimate reason, namely chance.

The foregoing remarks on the ultimate origin of evil, may seem to the reader chiefly applicable to natural evil; but they are equally applicable to moral evil, if it is a fact that the agents themselves in soul, in body, or in circumstances, derive, or retain something of chance, or that chance may be truly predicated of any of their internal operations. To show that is the case, we must recur to my former assumption, that human imaginations, or the incessant springing up of our attained knowledge in present thoughts, is fortuitous, or of chance, in respect of their succession, and order, and imaginations present at a particular time, when uninfluenced by existing passion, or by some past or present choice. This hypothesis seems fully supported by common sense, by all my reflections on my own experience, and by the absurdity of all arguments which have been brought to oppose it within my cognizance, while its fact is the reason of our essential need of being ruled by our Maker. God actually ruleth human persons, and the first chosen preparatory medium for ruling them was, probably, constituting man with appetites, and the next, constituting him subject to the emotions which we call the passions.

Quite apposite to assigning chance as the ultimate reason of evil, both natural and moral, were the sentiments of the intelligent author as expressed, Eccles. ix. 11, 12. "I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle always to the strong, neither yet bread always to