1. In the first place, this theory of predestination is inconsistent with the doctrine of man's free moral agency. The force of this objection is readily perceived. It is _impossible_ that we should be free agents, when all the _external circumstances_ that affect us, and all our _mental_ and _bodily acts_, are predetermined and brought about by God. Man is thus reduced to, a mere passive instrument. He is nothing more than a complicate and curious machine--a man-machine, an automaton--whose every movement is conceived, determined, directed, controlled by a supervisor. It avails nothing to apply to him terms which signify freedom. We may say that he has _the power to will_; that he _actually wills_; but the difficulty is not relieved. The being who endowed him with this faculty has foreordained and brings to pass, by a well-directed agency, every movement of that faculty. We may say that he _wills according to his inclinations_, and is therefore free; but God has decreed and brings to pass all his inclinations. We may say that he acts according to his will, and not against his will; still nothing is gained, since all his purposes, and the movements by which he executes them, are equally preordained and brought to pass by God. We may say that he is _conscious_ of _acting freely_, but this is a mere delusion, if the doctrine we are considering be true. By the very logic which reconciles it with free agency in man, I will undertake to prove that every steamboat and every railroad-engine is a free agent. Calvinistic free agency must be something analogous to Bishop Hughes's freedom of conscience, indestructible and inviolable, in its very nature and essence; so that a man may be denied the privilege of reading the Bible, or of propagating or entertaining any opinions contrary to the Church of Rome--he may be thrown into prison, and put to torture, for refusing to subscribe to its dogmas, or to worship according to forms which he holds to be idolatrous--and yet he enjoys freedom of conscience. So, according to the teachings of modern Calvinism, man is a free agent, notwithstanding all the _circumstances_ which _surround_ him, with all his _sensations, emotions, desires, purposes, volitions_ and _acts_ were _decreed from eternity_, and brought to pass by a power which he can _neither control_ nor _resist_. This free agency must then be something absolutely inviolable in its nature and essence, something which God himself cannot destroy or impinge except by terminating the existence of the being in whom it inheres. As Bishop Hughes's freedom of conscience is very different from what is generally understood to be freedom of conscience, so the free agency which may be made to harmonize with this doctrine, is different from what is usually understood to be free agency. It is not the power to act otherwise than as we do act, or to choose or will otherwise than as we do choose or will.