To his Father January 1731. DEAR SIR, Though some of the postulata upon which Archbishop King See letters of Dec. 11, 1730, and Jan. 6, 1791. builds his hypothesis of the Origin of Evil be such as very few will admit of, yet, since the superstructure is regular and well contrived, I thought you would not be unwilling to see the scheme of that celebrated work. He divides it into five chapters. The sum of the first chapter is this: The first notions we have of outward things are our conceptions of motion, matter, and space. Concerning each of these, we soon observe that it does not exist of itself; and consequently that there must be some first cause, to which all of them owe their existence. Although we have no faculty for the direct perception of this First Cause, and so can know very little more of Him than a blind man of light, yet thus much we know of Him by the faculties we have, that He is one, infinite in nature and power, free, intelligent, and omniscient; that consequently He proposes to Himself an end in every one of His actions; and that the end of His creating the world was the exercise of His power, and wisdom, and goodness; which He therefore made as perfect as it could be made by infinite goodness, and power, and wisdom. Chapter II. But if so, how came evil into the world If the world was made by such an agent, with such an intention, how is it that either imperfection or natural or moral evils have a place in it Is not this difficulty best solved by the Manichaean supposition that there is an evil as well as a good principle By no means; for it is just as repugnant to infinite goodness to create what it foresaw would be spoiled by another, as to create what would be spoiled by the constitution of its own nature: their supposition therefore leaves the difficulty as it found it. But if it could be proved that to permit evils in the world is consistent with, nay necessarily results from, infinite goodness, then the difficulty would vanish; and to prove this is the design of the following treatise.

Chapter III. All created beings as such are necessarily imperfect; nay, infinitely distant from supreme perfection. Nor can they all be equally perfect; since some must be only parts of others. As to their properties too, some must be perfecter than others; for, suppose any number of the most perfect beings created, infinite goodness would prompt the Creator to add less perfect beings to those, if their existence neither lessened the number nor conveniences of the, more perfect. The existence of matter, for instance, neither lessens the number nor the conveniences of pure spirits. Therefore the addition of material beings to spiritual was not contrary to but resulted from infinite goodness. Chapter IV. As the evils of imperfection necessarily spring from this, that the imperfect things were made out of nothing, so natural evils necessarily spring from their being made out of matter. For matter is totally useless without motion, or even without such a motion as will divide it into parts; but this cannot be done without a contrariety of motions, and from this necessarily flows generation and corruption. The material part of us being thus liable to corruption, pain is necessary to make us watchful against it, and to warn us of what tends toward it; as is the fear of death likewise, which is of use in many cases that pain does not reach. From these all the passions necessarily spring; nor can these be extinguished while those remain. But if pain and the fear of death were extinguished, no animal could long subsist. Since, therefore, these evils are necessarily joined with more than equivalent goods, the permitting these is not repugnant to but flows from infinite goodness. The same observation holds as to hunger, thirst, childhood, age, diseases, wild beasts, and poisons. They are all therefore permitted, because each of them is necessarily connected with such a good as outweighs the evil. Chapter V. Touching moral evils (by which I mean 'inconveniences arising from the choice of the sufferer '), I propose to show: 1. What is the nature of choice or election. 2. That our happiness consists in the elections or choices we make. 3. What elections are improper to be made. 4. How we come to make such elections. And, 5. How our making them is consistent with the divine power and goodness.

1. By liberty I mean an active, self-determining power, which does not choose things because they are pleasing, but is pleased with them because it chooses them. That God is endued with such a power I conclude: (1) Because nothing is good or evil, pleasing or displeasing, to Him, before He chooses it. (2) Because His will or choice is the cause of goodness in all created things. (3) Because if God had not been endued with such a principle, He would never have created anything. But it is to be observed, farther, that God sees and chooses whatever is connected with what He chooses in the same instant; and that He likewise chooses whatever is convenient for His creatures in the same moment wherein He chooses to create them. That man partakes of this principle I conclude: (1) Because experience shows it. (2) Because we observe in ourselves the signs and properties of such a power. We observe we can counteract our appetites, senses, and even our reason, if we so choose; which we can no otherwise account for than by admitting such a power in ourselves. 2. The more of this power any being possesses, the less subject he is to the impulses of external agents and the more commodious is his condition. Happiness rises from a due use of our faculties: if, therefore, this be the noblest of all our faculties, then our chief happiness lies in the due use of this that is, in our elections. And, farther, election is the cause why things please us: he therefore who has an uncontrolled power of electing may please himself always; and if things fall out contrary to what he chooses, he may change his choice and suit it to them, and so still be happy. Indeed, in this life his natural appetites will sometimes disturb his elections, and so prevent his perfect happiness; yet is it a fair step towards it that he has a power that can at all times find pleasure in itself, however outward things vary.

3. True it is that this power sometimes gives pain namely, when it falls short of what it chooses; which may come to pass, if we choose either things impossible to be had, or inconsistent with each other, or such as are out of our power (perhaps because others chose them before us), or, lastly, such as necessarily lead us into natural evils. 4. And into these foolish choices we may be betrayed either by ignorance, negligence, by indulging the exercise of liberty too far, by obstinacy or habit, or, lastly, by the importunity of our natural appetites. Hence it appears how cautious we ought to be in choosing; for though we may alter our choice, yet to make that alteration is painful the more painful the longer we have persisted in it. 5. There are three ways by which God might have hindered His creatures from thus abusing their liberty. First; by not creating any being free. But had this method been taken, then (1) The whole universe would have been a mere machine. (2) That would have been wanting which is most pleasing to God of anything in the universe -namely, the' free service of His reasonable creatures. (3) His reasonable creatures would have been in a worse state than they are now: for only free agents can be perfectly happy; as, without a possibility of choosing wrong, there can be no freedom. The second way by which God might prevent the abuse of liberty is by overruling this power and constraining us to choose right. But this would be to do and undo, to contradict Himself, to take away what He had given. The third way by which God might have hindered His creatures from making an ill use of liberty is by placing them where they should have no temptation to abuse it. But this too would have been the same in effect as to have given them no liberty at all. I am, dear sir, Your affectionate and dutiful Son.