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Untitled Article
will be productive of good ; or , in other words , because it tends to reform evil habits , and must in the course of time effect a total change in the disposition and will . Every consistent necessarian , therefore , ought
to acknowledge ( though there are many of this persuasion who do not ) that the infliction of punishment which is not corrective , is nothing less than positive injustice and wanton cruelty . The learned provost dwells with great complacency on what he alleges to be another unfavourable
circumstance against his opponents , —that , in point of fact , they never act up to their principles , and that , however tenacious of their theory , they always treat men as free agents in the common concerns of life . But here , as on numerous other occasions , the writer confounds the two senses in
which the term liberty is understood ; for while we deny that a man could have acted otherwise than he has done , supposing the previous circumstances to remain unaltered , we assert that he is perfectly free to act in
strict conformity with his choice . With more justice may we retort the charge of inconsistency on the libertarians , as no persons deviate more from their theoretic opinions in all that relates to the education of the
young , and to the general system of moral discipline . It is certainly not a little singular , that on points so intimately connected with human happiness , their practice , generally speaking , coincides with that of the most rigid necessarians .
Dr . Copleston then proceeds to express his astonishment " how opinions so unreasonable and extravagant could ever acquire an ascendency over the human mind : " and he endeavours
to account for the paradox , as he terms it , by two considerations , on which he places peculiar stress * The first cause of the reception of the necessarian system he avers may be traced to the inaccurate use of
language , and ignorance of its principles . It is extraordinary , however , that instead of having recourse to the writings of the best modern authors on the subject , he should select his
principal example from the ancient defenders of the doctrine of Fate ; and that in answering a sophism . of the Stoics lie should imagine that he is refuting the creed of the Necessarians .
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When the present advocates of necessity introduce this celebrated argument of the fatalists as a bulwark in their defence , it will be time enough to examine how far Dr . C . has succeeded in his plan of demolition . He
animadverts in a note on one or two expressions of Jonathan Edwards , which I think are liable to objection on another account , and that is , from his making use of the technical terms of scholastic logic in describing the
operations of the Divine Mind : but the great leading arguments of that powerful reasoner he has not attempted to ^ invalidate , and to this hour they remain unanswered . I by no means wish to dispute the propriety of some of Dr . 0 * 3 . remarks on the terms
certain , probable , possible , and others of a similar nature ; but his application of them is very inadequate to solve the difficulties inseparable from his view of the question . Few writers perhaps have been more inaccurate
m their modes of expression than our Oxford libertarian ; and with a great parade of precision , he is perpetually confounding the popular with the philosophical freedom of the will , and constantly argues from the fatality of the ancients against the necessity of the moderns .
The second cause which he assigns for the admission of the necessarian system , is the pride of the human , mind in refusing to believe that the foreknowledge of God may co-exist with the contingency of events . He contends , that since each of these
truths can be proved independently of the other , we ought not to withhold our assent , because to our finite apprehensions they appear incompatible , and that we must therefore ever regard them not as contradictions , but as apparent incongruities . * Other
writers have adopted nearly the same method of evading- a difficulty which they are evidently afraid to encounter ; but to any person not biassed by the prejudices of education and habit , it would not appear more preposterous to affirm that a figure may be rectilinear and curved at the same time ,
than to maintain the co-existence of prescience and contingency . Were there no favourite system to be supported , it would be admitted without * Dis . II . p . 70 .
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University of Oxford , on Necessity and Predestination . 555
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1825, page 555, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2540/page/39/
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