“If man be a mere machine, irresistibly governed according to fixed laws, from which he cannot swerve, and performing every action through the influence of an impelling power, which he is unable to resist; it is plain, first, that he cannot be an accountable creature, for accountableness can only be understood when there is liberty to do, or abstain from doing; and, secondly, this scheme involves an absolute contradiction between our experience and the fact, supposing us to be creatures of necessity, by which, if we be really overruled, and placed in _duresse_ from which we have no power to emancipate ourselves; we are, then, put into the extraordinary predicament of _being_ one thing, while we are so constituted as to _believe_ ourselves to be another. That is to say, in fine, that we are _conscious_ of freedom, though in reality we are bound; and are thus practically and irresistibly acting all our lives upon a fraud, a delusion, which compels us to give up the testimony of our senses, at the same time that we declare their evidence to furnish the most unquestionable source of knowledge that we possess, and to afford the principal rule upon which our whole conduct is regulated, either in public or private life. “There is a sublime simplicity in the works of Providence, in comparison with which the strange incongruity which I have been describing would present a case so completely anomalous as to disturb the harmony of creation, and leave us a bewildered race, without helm or compass to guide our course. But a contradiction still more monstrous and difficult to reconcile would result from such an order of things as we are now supposing. The necessity which we are considering must either be independent of, or immediately proceeding from, God. If the former, it supersedes the Deity, or, identified with Him, is itself the sovereign ruler of the universe. If the latter, all the evil deeds of man are performed by the _express order_ of that Being who threatens with eternal punishment those of his creatures who will not obey His commandment to be “holy even as He is holy.” The preposterous absurdities involved in this view are levelled at once by the belief that man at his birth is _decreed_ to be a free agent, all whose actions are in his own power; who will never be tempted above what he is enabled to bear; and who, if he sincerely _desire_ after righteousness, will never fail in attaining it.