Leibnitz has certainly committed a very great oversight in this attempt to account for the origin of evil. He explains it, by saying that it arises from the necessary imperfection of the creature which limits its receptivity; but does he mean that God cannot communicate holiness to the creature? Does he mean that God endeavours to communicate holiness, and fails in consequence of the necessary imperfection of the creature? If so, what becomes of the doctrine which he everywhere advances, that God can very easily cause virtue or holiness to exist if he should choose to do so? If God can very easily cause this to exist, as Leibnitz contends he can, notwithstanding the necessary imperfection of the creature, why has he not done so? Is it not evident, that the philosophy of Leibnitz merely plays over the surface of this great difficulty, and decks it out with the ornaments of fancy, instead of reaching down to the bottom of it, and casting the illuminations of his genius into its depths? Section III. The maxims adopted and employed by Edwards to show that the scheme of necessity does not make God the author of sin. “This remarkable man,” says Sir James Mackintosh, “the metaphysician of America, was formed among the Calvinists of New-England, when their stern doctrine retained its vigorous authority. His power of subtle argument, perhaps unmatched, certainly unsurpassed among men, was joined, as in some of the ancient mystics, with a character which raised his piety to fervour.” It is in his great work on the will, as well as in some of his miscellaneous observations, that Edwards has put forth the powers of his mind, in order to show that the scheme of necessity does not obscure the lustre of the divine perfections. With the exception of the Essais de Théodicée of Leibnitz, it is perhaps the greatest effort the human mind has ever made to get rid of the seeming antagonism between the scheme of necessity and the holiness of God.