it is this that makes either punishment or reward
just; it is upon this consideration that men exhort, rebuke,
threaten, and promise. This is the foundation of all policy,
instruction, and rules of morality. The upshot of the merit and
demerit of human actions rests upon this basis, that nothing is so
much in the power of our will as our will itself, and that we have
this free-will--this, as it were, two-edged faculty--and this
elative power between two counsels which are immediately, as it
were, within our reach. It is what shepherds and husbandmen sing in
the fields, what merchants and artificers suppose in their traffic,
what actors represent in public shows, what magistrates believe in
their councils, what doctors teach in their schools; it is that, in
short, which no man of sense can seriously call in question. That
truth imprinted in the bottom of our hearts, is supposed in the
practice, even by those philosophers who would endeavour to shake it
by their empty speculations. The intimate evidence of that truth is
like that of the first principles, which want no proof, and which
serve themselves as proofs to other truths that are not so clear and
self-evident. But how could the First Being make a creature who is
himself the umpire of his own actions?

SECT. LXIX. A Character of the Deity, both in the Dependence and
Independence of Man.

Let us now put together these two truths equally certain. I am
dependent upon a First Being even in my own will; and nevertheless I
am free. What then is this dependent liberty? how is it possible
for a man to conceive a free-will, that is given by a First Being?
I am free in my will, as God is in His. It is principally in this I
am His image and likeness. What a greatness that borders upon
infinite is here! This is a ray of the Deity itself: it is a kind
of Divine power I have over my will; but I am but a bare image of
that supreme Being so absolutely free and powerful.

The image of the Divine independence is not the reality of what it
represents; and, therefore, my liberty is but a shadow of that First
Being, by whom I exist and act. On the one hand, the power I have
of willing evil is, indeed, rather a weakness and frailty of my will
than a true power: for it is only a power to fall, to degrade
myself, and to diminish my degree of perfection and being. On the
other hand, the power I have to will good is not an absolute power,
since I have it not of mysel