freedom of choice. We may as well admit the necessary influence of motives, as admit that men are compelled to act according to motive, under pain of being denounced idiotical or mad. He who is banished from Scotland, is free to go or stay, excepting-that, if he stays, he will be hanged.

For the existence of Evil, Dr Coplestone very naturally attempts to account, by supposing mankind to be in a state of trial. The word trial, how ever, is ambiguous; nor has the reverend doctor given any very accurate explanation of what he means by it. This is of little consequence. Whether it means that man is then going through a certain process, by which the experience of certain sorts of pain is to produce a specific change in the constitution of the mind; or whether is meant by it an ordeal or test, by which to call forth and ascertain the quantum of inherent virtue and vice-it is still more capable of rational explanation, upon necessitarian principles, than upon any other. Under the first signification, if we allow the connection of cause and effect in the mind, as in other things;-and suppose that the application of certain motives or mental stimuli, must have necessary and specific effects upon the character, then, by the discipline of misfortune and evil, certain changes may be brought about, which may, for aught we know, be unattainable by any other means. But with an uncontroulable and incomprehensible free-will, what purpose could such a process answer? The repetition of any line of conduct is no more to be certainly expected according to this system, than the repetition of a series of tones on the Æolian harp. We have no more data for knowing how freewill may act on the next occasion, than how the wind may blow on the next occasion. The second signification is, for the reasons already stated, evidently as little reconcileable with the hypothesis of free-will, as the first. The advocates of free-will are always liable to this dilemma. Either the exertion of free choice is equally easy on each side of an alternative, under any circumstances, or it is not. If it is not, then the will is not free; and if it is, then there is an equal chance for every successive exertion being wrong, as well as right. For in this case, experience either proves too much, or nothing. It either proves the necessary influence

VOL. X.

of motives, or else it is not to be relied upon at all. Thus, if a dice-player casts a given number thrice running, it either proves the existence of some necessary cause for that number being cast, rather than another; or it is admitted that the fourth cast is not more likely to be the given number, than any other possible number. Equally inconsistent is the notion of any power in the mind of choosing against motives. Either the mind must have two methods or modes of exercising choice, which is improbable; or, the choosing against motives must be done in the same way as in choosing in accordance with motives;-that is to say, the mind must have a power of rendering to itself the unattractive side of a question apparently the attractive one, which is more improbable. It seems absolutely inconceivable that the mind should knowingly choose that which it naturally dislikes, without feeling pain; and if the effort be painful, freedom is imperfect, because we naturally are impelled to avoid pain. If it be said we have a free power of choosing to resist this impulse ; then, I reply, we must have a prior free choice, choosing that second choice, as it also would be painful; and so on, ad infinitum. With respect to any supposeable power of the mind to render that which at first was unattractive apparently attractive, the possession of such power seems to be negatived by the fact of the painful conflict which takes place when opposing motives are nearly balanced-a thing which could not be under such a power.

The words of the text which Dr Coplestone has chosen for his third discourse, are remarkably striking. "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands, have crucified and slain."-ACTs ii. 23. In setting out on his forlorn hope of reconciling free-will with this determinate counsel and declared fore-knowledge, the reverend author has very properly begun with some observations on the improper use of the words certainty, possible, contingent," &c. In the tenor of all these observations, I cannot, however, agree. "One example," says Dr Coplestone," has already been produced in the word " cer tainty," which properly relates to the mind which thinks, and is improperly transferred to the object about which

3 B

66

it is thinking." Were this position admitted, I do not apprehend that, in the end, it would materially assist Dr Coplestone; it is too sweeping, however, and therefore erroneous. It can not be denied, undoubtedly, that very often the certainty is improperly.trans ferred from the thinker to the thing thought of;—that is to say, when the certainty of the thinker is not built upon demonstrably adequate grounds. Yet, because it does not always happen that, when the mind feels certain of any thing, that thing is itself actually certain; is it therefore to be contended that the certainty is always improper ly transferred from the thinker to the object thought of? Surely not; at least if it be, then abstract certainty is denied altogether. This is going into extremes. When Newton or Halley mathematically demonstrated the occurrence of eclipses at certain times, the completeness of the demonstration was certainly an infallible proof of the certainty of the future event; and it is therefore properly transferred to it nor can reasoning be falsified by such a transfer. Considerations of a similar nature are also applicable to the words" impossible" and "contingent." The most extraordinary passages of the discourse, however, are those in which the reverend author attempts to establish the propriety—possibility perhaps should be the word of the mind's believing two distinct contradictory propositions whilst they are separate; but which, if brought together, form a direct contradiction in terms. By this means, he seems to hold, that we may easily believe, that an event, the occurrence of which is uncertain, may be certainly foreknown. We have only to believe in the contingence of the event, and also in the foreknowledge; and take special care to admit only one of these beliefs into the mind at one time, so that they may never fight. As Dr Coplestone has, in one place, admitted that direct contradictions in terms, are merely propositions without meaning, and therefore cannot be proposed to any end, either derogatory or the contrary, as to the power of any being to understand or perform them, I presume he considers fore-knowledge and contingence as two qualities, the compatibility of which is only appa

rently inexplicable-and not absolutely so; although, if this be the case, there appears no reason why they may not be believed together. That I may not misrepresent the reverend doctor, however, I shall first quote the passages from both discourses in which this odd rule of faith is embodied, and then hazard one or two observations upon them,

At p. 69, we read as follows:-"If, that God made every thing, knowing beforehand all that would come to pass, and all that men do, be an undeniable truth-if, nevertheless, he deals with man, as if he were free to act, and rewards and punishes him according to this trial, and we cannot comprehend how both these things should be true together, we yet can believe them both to be true and so believing, we may well conclude, that many of our occasional reasonings concerning these things must be infected with the same apparent incongruity that strikes us in the enunciation of those first principles." Again, at p. 79, "If, however, we set ourselves to examine each of these abstract positions separately from the other, dark and perplexing as the inquiry often is, yet the arguments deducible from reason and experience alternately in their favour, appear to be irresistible; and as one of the most candid inquirers observes, what flashes of light break out, from time to time, present the image of truth on opposite sides.' Why then should not truth itself be really an inmate of each opinion? Unless it can be shewn, which never has yet been shewn, that the two opinions are contradictory to each other. That they are contradictory has been tacitly assumed, because to us their union is inexplicable; and hence the most pernicious errors of different kinds have at times prevailed, some denying or doubting the agency of Providence, others the freedom of the human will.".

This method of believing separately two propositions, which, when compared, cannot both be believed, has, in one shape or other, been recommended before, though never perhaps so undisguisedly as in the present instance.* In the second quotation it is asserted, that " it has never been

SIR,

You must often have perceived how haughtily our southern neighbours assert their superiority over us in every thing relating to classical literature, and particularly in the science of metre. I readily admit that the country of George Buchanan does not support the fame conferred on it by that illustrious scholar; that the system of education in our schools is not as well calculated for the diffusion of deep classical knowledge, as that in the great and valuable public schools of England; and that some remarkably ignorant blunders in prosody have been occasionally made by some of our countrymen; but I nevertheless contend, that the charge against us is made too general and sweeping, and urged more with a spirit of nationality, than a regard for the real state of the case. For example, you may recollect how unmercifully they hunted down the unfortunate Musæ Edinenses. They were bad enough, in all conscience; but it was hardly fair to stigmatize, as the English Reviewers did, the literature of a whole country, from the folly of an indiscreet person who printed the exercises of raw and half-taught schoolboys. All the prosodial sins of Scotland were raked up on the occasion. I remember that the Quarterly twitted good old Doctor Anderson with having published, as a correct specimen of the Sapphic, a few verses written sixty years ago by Græme, which have the misfortune of containing

The Latin Primer in three parts

about three times as many faults as they have lines. It certainly was a betise of the Doctor's, but a candid critic would not have noticed it just then. If we wished to retaliate in the same way-that is, by picking up absurd books written, and mistakes committed, by English writers on similar subjects-we should find no difficulty in doing so, though it would be unjust to imitate them, in making the errors or ignorance of a few, the grounds of reproach against the classical learning of all England.

I have got into my hands this morning a book in considerable use in English schools-written by a clergyman, master of a grammar school-which, in 1813, had reached a fifth edition, and in all probability has added another since receiving, as its author informs us, (p. 10.) various puffy criticisms from the British Critic, the Monthly Review-which at one time was really not a contemptible workthe Critical and Analytical Reviews, in its progress; and if you, Mr North, do not think the minute disquisitions of prosody unfit for your pleasant pages, I shall shew you, by this panegyrised book, that an inconceivable ignorance of metre is sometimes to be found south as well as north of the Border.

The first portions of the book I have but slightly glanced over. They consist of rules of construction and positions of Latin arranged on a peculiar plan, that appears tolerably well exe