“How far the _ultimate ends_ of all that we see may be _fixed_ by the fiat of Divine ordinances, is not our business to inquire into, any more than what future worlds the Creator may please to form when our planetary system shall have passed away. Our own actions are our immediate concern: thousands of _events_ may hinge upon every one of them, with which we do not _design_ the remotest connection; while the ends which we _intend_ to bring about are never achieved. Yet, in secular matters, no man ever believes his free will to have been restrained. If he make a bad bargain, or act upon a false calculation, he may regret his want of prudence, or lament a deficiency of information; but it never occurs to the most sceptical amongst those with whom I have ever met, to fancy, for a single moment, that he _might_ not have done differently, inquired farther, or been less precipitate. “Whence this _division_? Why are temporal affairs regulated by the law of responsibility while spiritual conduct only is to be considered under the inflexible control of a _necessary_ compulsion? The reason is plain: the creed of the fatalist is only adopted to screen him from the examination which he dreads, and serve as an opiate to his conscience. The fatalism of the ancient heathen world was more rational and consistent than that of modern infidelity, inasmuch as it was applied to earthly concerns, and frequently led to contentment under misfortune and privation. Perhaps you are ready to say how much less puzzling you would find the doctrine of free-will than that of necessity were it not for one stumbling block. How can fore-knowledge be reconciled with freedom? Were human analogies to satisfy our inquiry, there would be no difficulty to encounter in this question. In _this_ world, the prophetic wisdom which, like that of Edmund Burke, looks deeply into the volume of futurity, and predicts events to come, is rarely, if ever concerned in the practical occurrence of them; but on the contrary, is generally in diametrical opposition, as he was to the horrors of that revolution which he so clearly foresaw. So far analogy _separates_ fore-knowledge from necessity. Imagine _once_ that man is created _free_ by the Almighty’s decree, and the difficulty vanishes. If _free_, man is empowered to act for himself; and though _beyond_ a certain limit he may not be able to _see_ or to _do_, he has liberty _within_ a given circuit, and that liberty once conferred, there is nothing more incomprehensible in the fore-knowledge of God, than in that of an earthly parent, who having _endowed_ his children with a certain measure of power, limited by his discretion, and recallable at his will, _foresees_, without _choosing_ to control its exercise. That species of active interference sometimes employed to bring about the designs of self-interest by people who plan devices, and then are busied in executing them; is not what we mean by fore-knowledge _humanly_ speaking.