Indeed, I do not see with the orthodox notions then prevalent, how it was possible on the hypothesis of God’s foreknowing and pre-ordaining all that comes to pass, to avoid considering God Almighty as the author of Sin; and to feel repugnance toward a system, which makes the deity inflict eternal punishment on a creature, whose actions he might have controuled, and whose existence he could have prevented. Such manifest injustice might be viewed without horror, by the brutal bigotry of Calvin, but the tenets that drew after them such a consequence, could not be adopted without hesitation and regret, by any, but the most thorough going, unfeeling zealot. _Origen’s_ doctrine of Universal Restitution, was first advanced in England (so far as I know) by Rust, Bishop of Dromore, and Jeremy White, who I believe had been Chaplain to Cromwell. Since that, the labours of Stonehouse, Petitpierre, Newton, Winchester, Chauncey and Simpson, have furnished ground enough for us to adopt it as the doctrine of scripture as well as of common sense. By connecting this doctrine with that of necessity, Dr. Hartley and Dr. Priestley have been enabled to give a full and satisfactory reply to all the objections that can be drawn from the theory of necessity, making God the author of Sin. Indeed, unless God’s foreknowledge be denied, the same difficulty must occur on either scheme: for he has knowingly and voluntarily adopted a system, in which the existence of evil if not necessary, is at least undeniable. Granting the goodness of God, it follows according to Dr. Priestley, that he has adopted that system which is most conducive to general, and individual happiness upon the whole; and that the moral evil of which for the best purposes he has permitted human creatures to be guilty, and the physical evil, which here or hereafter will be the inevitable consequence of that conduct, are necessary to produce the greatest sum of good to the system at large, and to each human being individually, considering the situation in which he has been necessarily placed in respect to the whole system. Indeed, moral evil is of no farther consequence than as it produces physical evil to the agent, or to others. And as we see in the system of inanimate nature, that general good is the result of partial and temporary evil, and that though the one follows necessarily from general laws as the result of the other, the good manifestly predominates, so in the moral system, we have a right from analogy to predict, that good will be the ultimate result of the apparent evil we observe in it: that we shall be the wiser for knowing what is to be avoided; the better for corrected dispositions; and that the power, and the wish to receive and communicate happiness, will be enlarged through each successive stage of our existence, by the experience of those that have preceded. So at least thought Dr. Priestley.