Wesley Corpus

In all he is bound by an invisible, but more than adamantine, chain. No man can move his head or foot, open or shut his eyes, lift his hand, or stir a finger, any other wise than as God determined he should, from all eternity.” 8. That this chain is invisible, they allow ; man himself perceives nothing of it. He suspects nothing less; he imagines himself to be free in all his actions; he seems to move hither and thither, to go this way or that, to choose doing evil or doing good, just at his own discretion. But all this is an entire mistake; it is no more than a pleasing dream: For all his ways are fixed as the pillars of heaven; all unalterably determined. So that, notwithstanding these gay, flattering appearances, In spite of all the labour we create, We only row; but we are steer'd by fate 1 9. A late writer, in his celebrated book upon free-will. explains the matter thus: “The soul is now connected with a material vehicle, and placed in the material world. Various objects here continually strike upon one or other of the bodily organs. These communicate the impression to the brain; consequent on which such and such sensations follow. These are the materials on which the understanding works, in forming all its simple and complex ideas; according to which our judgments are formed. And according to our judgments are our passions; our love and hate, joy and sorrow, desire and fear, with their innumerable combinations. Now, all these passions together are the will, variously modified; and all actions flowing from the will are voluntary actions; consequently, they are good or evil, which otherwise they could not be. And yet it is not in man to direct his own way, while he is in the body, and in the world.” 10. The author of an “Essay on Liberty and Necessity,” published some years since at Edinburgh, speaks still more explicitly, and endeavours to trace the matter to the found ation: “The impressions,” says he, “which man receives in the natural world, do not correspond to the truth of things. Thus the qualities called secondary, which we by natural instinct attribute to Lmatter, belong not to matter, nor exist without us; but all the beauty of colours with which heaven and earth appear clothed, is a sort of romance or illusion.