Wesley Corpus

It is easy to observe, that every one of these schemes implies the universal necessity of human actions. In this they all agree, that man is not a free but a necessary agent, being absolutely determined in all his actions by a principle exterior to himself. But they do not agree what that principle is. The most ancient of them, the Manichaean, maintained, that men are determined to evil by the evil god, Arimanius; that Oromasdes, the good God, would have prevented or removed that evil, but could not; the power of the evil god.’ being so great, that he is not able to control it. 2. The Stoics, on the other hand, did not impute the evil that is in the world to any intelligent principle, but either to the original stubbornness of matter, which even divine power was not capable of removing; to the concatenation of causes and effects, which no power whatever could alter; or to unconquerable fate, to which they supposed all the gods, the Supreme not excepted, to be subject. 3. The author of two volumes, entitled “Man,” rationally rejects all the preceding schemes, while he deduces all human actions from those passions and judgments which, during the present union of the soul and body, necessarily result from such and such vibrations of the fibres of the brain. Herein he indirectly ascribes the necessity of all human actions to God; who, having fixed the laws of this vital union according to his own good pleasure, having so constituted man that the motions of the soul thus depend on the fibres of the body, has thereby laid him under an invincible neces sity of acting thus, and in no other manner. So do those likewise, who suppose all the judgments and passions neces sarily to flow from the motion of the blood and spirits. For this is indirectly to impute all our passions and actions to Him who alone determined the manner wherein our blood and spirits should move. 4. The gentleman next mentioned does this directly, without any softening or circumlocution at all. He flatly and roundly affirms, The Creator is the proper Author of everything which man does; that by creating him thus, he has absolutely determined the manner wherein he shall act; and that there fore man can no more help sinning, than a stone can help falling.