rbolt to dash the doctrine of free-will into atoms. And who can
forbear to agree with Luther so far as to say, that if the foreknowledge
of God proves anything in opposition to the freedom of the will, it proves
that it is under the most absolute and uncontrollable necessity? It
clearly seems, that if it proves anything in favour of necessity, it
proves everything for which the most absolute necessitarian can contend.
Accordingly, a distinguished Calvinistic divine has said, that if our
volitions be foreseen, we can no more avoid them "than we can pluck the
sun out of the heavens."(7)

But though the reformers were thus, in some respects, more true to their
fundamental principle than their followers have been, we are not to
suppose that they are free from all inconsistencies and
self-contradiction. Thus, if "foreknowledge is a thunderbolt" to dash the
doctrine of free-will into atoms, it destroyed free-will in man before the
fall as well as after. Hence the thunderbolt of Luther falls upon his own
doctrine, that man possessed free-will in his primitive state, with as
much force as it can upon the doctrine of his opponents. He is evidently
caught in the toils he so confidently prepared for his adversary. And how
many of the followers of the great reformer adopt his doctrine, and wield
his thunderbolts, without perceiving how destructively they recoil on
themselves! Though they ascribe free-will to man as one of the elements of
his pristine glory, yet they employ against it in his present condition
arguments which, if good for anything, would despoil, not only man, but
the whole universe of created intelligences--nay, the great Uncreated
Intelligence himself--of every vestige and shadow of such a power.

It is a wonderful inconsistency in Luther, that he should so often and so
dogmatically assert that the doctrine of free-will falls prostrate before
the prescience of God, and at the same time maintain the freedom of the
divine will. If foreknowledge is incompatible with the existence of
free-will, it is clear that the will of God is not free; since it is on
all sides conceded that all his volitions are perfectly foreseen by him.
Yet in the face of this conclusion, which so clearly and so irresistibly
follows from Luther's position, he asserts the freedom of the divine will,
as if he were perfectly unconscious of the self-contradiction in which he
is involved. "It now then follows," says he, "that free-will is plainly a
di