Now, I submit that if an omnipotent and omniscient God has "declared the end from the beginning," and ordered all "the things that are not yet done" (and you have his word for it here) how is it possible for mortal and finite man to do any thing contrary to the thing ordered, or accomplish any "end" but the one "declared from the beginning?" Here you, who believe in God and the Bible, have his word for it that he has declared all things "from the beginning." Man then _must_ do and think as God has declared, and can do nothing else, hence he is _not free_. The idea that "a man cannot think unless he wills to think" is too preposterous (laying the Bible aside) for any reasonable man to accept who is not a slave to creeds and dogmas. Let "Rationalist," after reading this sentence, stop reading, and assume a quiescent state (for of course _his free will_ will enable him to do this)--a state of mental passivity, as it were,--let him _will nothing_ for the time being,--and then see if thoughts of some kind do not spontaneously arise in his mind. And then let him _will_ to have _no thoughts_ for the space of five minutes, and see if the thoughts do not steal into his brain (providing of course he has one) unbidden, and in spite of him--in spite of all his boasted freewill power. Let any reader put this impossible and absurd dictum of "Rationalist" to the test, and he will have a living demonstration in his own brain, which will render any further argument on this point entirely superfluous. "Rationalist" worries himself into inextricable confusion over causes and effects, first causes, first causes and last effects, etc., etc. Because Ingersoll has said "a first cause is just as impossible as a last effect," Rationalist well nigh swamps himself in a most ludicrous "muss-of-a muddle-of-a-jerry-cum-tumble" of bad diction and worse logic to prove that by such reasoning as Ingersoll's we come to "chaos" and to "nothing," (hasn't the gentleman himself come to chaos if not to nothing?) We reason everything out of existence, he says, and just now we will have left "no nature, no God, no man, no matter" (it would be _no matter_ if some _bipids_ were gone) "no force," no "nothing"-- "literally nothing." Shades of Bacon! let us take breath; for this would certainly be a very bad state of things, from which "good Lord deliver us!" It would be nearly as bad as before the "creation," when nothing existed throughout the infinite realms of space save Jehovah himself.