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entertain little anxiety to know in what manner controversialists may terminate their disputations respecting " the former . It may possibly be said , that the example I have here adduced is so entirely speculative , and so little connected with human conduct , that it
ought not to be placed in comparison with a subject of such universal interest as the nature of the Supreme Being . This objection , whether well or ill founded , certainly will not be alleged against the second example which remains to be noticed . I have
read the last edition of Dr . Southwood Smith ' s Illustrations of the Divine Government with attention , and I may add , with much interest , though I do not profess to concur in all his reasoning's . He is one of the very few writers even on that side of the
question , who ascribes the existence of evil , as well moral as physical , to the will of the Almighty , as its truly efficient cause ; and when this admission is traced to its consequences , it involves one of the greatest conceivable mysteries . It is somewhat singular that Jonathan Edwards , the most
successful vindicator of the doctrine of philosophical necessity y and whose leading arguments are irrefragable , should vet hesitate in making the same admission , and should adopt the Arnrinian distinction , as far as it regards moral evil , that its prevalence is permitted , but not ordained , by the allwise Ruler of the universe . He
endeavours to support this distinction by a very inapt illustration taken from the sun , considered as the cause of light and heut , and as the cause of darkness and cold : but , in truth , however
unwilling many persons may feel to acknowledge it , that Being who consents to the existence of any effect which he had the power to prevent , and which he has evidently taken no measures to prevent , is to all intents and purposes the cause of that effect . With more
consistency , therefore , Dr . S . Smith maintains that the Deity is the cause of moral evil in as real and strict a sense as he is of natural evil , and that " he has appointed both for the same wise and benevolent purpose , namely , because he saw that they would produce the greatest sum of good /' BuJ doea not this assertion present
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to the reflecting mind a difficulty , \ may even say a contradiction , beyond the limits of human comprehension ? Is not the free inquirer astounded , when he first perceives * that though the great and benevolent Author of Nature has forbidden * under the severest penalties , the commission of
every act which can occasion evil , however remote , either to the agent himself , or to the creatures placed within his sphere of action , yet that the very evil which the Creator has
thus prohibited , should in all its revolting forms , be one of the principal instruments in his own hands of producing good ? The very notion that pain and sorrow should be the only , or , if not the only , at least the best
mode of promoting joy and tranquillityy contains a mystery of which we shall in vain attempt to frame any satisfactory solution . The fact may be true , but how , or why , are questions which it is impossible to answer .
He , however , who professes an ardent attachment to the cause of truth , must not shrink from its consequences ; and that man well deserves the appellation' of timid , who , when convinced that any doctrine is supported by indisputable argument , dares not follow the results to which it
finally leads . There are undoubtedly many persons who , while they admit that evil is adopted by the Divine Being as the most effectual instrument of good , are yet unwilling to view the subject more in detail . But with all their reluctance , there is no escape , unless they voluntarily relinquish their claim to the character of sound
reasoners . Be their timidity what it may , they cannot avoid conceding not only that the accumulation of sorrow , affliction and suffering , which we observe in the various gradations of society , is ordained for the purpose
of increasing- the amount of human happiness , but that all the crimes , the depravities , the atrocities of the worst part of the species , are selected as the best possible means of promoting the ultimate purity and felicity of the most
delinquents themselves . The flagitious enormities that ever stained the moral character , must be regarded as the best instruments which could have been chosen for effectuating the designs of infinite benevolence . What *
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340 Remarks on two Doctrines of Dr . Priestley and Dr . S . Smith
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1823, page 340, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1785/page/28/
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