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    Sir , fTHHE celebrated name of Mr . Cogan JL will undoubtedly call the attention of your readers to the question he has brought forward in your last Number , of Liberty and Necessity [ pp . 7—11 ] . After thinking upon this subject for

    more than thirty years , and reading nearly all the writers who have engaged in the controversy in and since the time of Mr . Hobbs , I am of opinion still , that no conclusion can be drawn either

    in favour of Liberty or Necessity ; but that the human mind must leave the matter open to endless disputation , even as a philosophical question . It is ultimately to be resolved , if resolved at all , into consciousness . Now if the

    question be , in a given state of mind , either to act or forbear acting , one man will say , if he act , that he was conscious that he could not forbear acting , and another will say , that he is conscious that he could have forborne to act , though he did act . In such a case , what conclusion can be drawn ?

    We know nothing of what passes in our own minds but by consciousness . We know nothing of the successive states of our minds but by consciousness . We know nothing of the state of other men ' s minds but by their conduct , and their conduct only enables

    us to jruess concerning the state of their minds , by the consciousness we have that when we act in the manner they do , the state of our minds is something like what we then think that of theirs to be . The evidence , therefore , of Liberty or Necessity , concerning human ac-« ons , is to be collected from conscio usness , and different men declare » n this case , a ^ different consciousness , ^ oubt and suspense of judgment , I , therefore , conclude to beall that we can * aeh on this mpst . -ti % mlt < jmlimpor-J ^ t question . AjN ^ g the doct ri ne Eki 8881 ^ ***!• W ^ Of a «* ottnwieness seems Vil ^ BOt to -be « a

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    difficult . It appears to me , that this doctrine shutjs out accountability altogether 5 just as eternal punishment shuts out all possibility of benevolence in God . I say not this because I think those who embrace the doctrine of

    Necessity , do not hold themselves to be accountable agents ; I know they do , and I know too , and could naipe more than one , who , in trying circumstances , have proved themselves to be the first and best of moral characters , who hold the doctrine of Necessity in all its bearings . HOMO .

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    church of Christ is now more enlightened and more charitable on these and much graver subjects ; and thus a great majority are , most virtuously and sensibly , become Dissenters from their own various creeds and articles ,

    JE ^—the most authoritative , and , perhaps , the only intelligible parts of some of which are thus decidedly abandoned . . . SMITH . —^ O ^ ta- —

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    On the Question of Liberty and Necessity . —Brief Notes on the Bible . 93

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    Brief Notes on the Bible . No . X . i ( Hear , O Israel ! The Lord our God is one Lord" Deut . vi . 4 ; Mark xii . 29 . *

    AND why not , in this age of the world , the Gentiles ? Wh y should not they also hear this emphatieal proclamation of the Divine Unity ? Why , after our Saviour ' s re-assertion of it as the first of all the commandments , deafen their ears against it , in the surviving spirit of polytheism , so justly derided by the modern Israelites , and opposing an insuperable bar to their conversion ? It is in infancy that the prolific tares are sown which choke the good seed in the mind's maturity , and , mingling error with truth , produce the anomalous harvest of

    orthodoxy . Educated in the bosom of the Church , with most of her prejudices clinging to me , a casual circumstance led me some forty years ago to reflect that my lot might have fallen among Dissenters ,

    and my religious persuasions , formed by culture and habit , been of a contrary or very different cast . Musing on this , it occurred to me that / had never read the Bible ! And , with a

    mixture of melancholy , I fairly laughed at myself for entertaining- any opinion upon a subject without consulting the only source of authentic information upon it . Read it-1 had , in the ordinary mode , as one does a dictionary , dipping sometimes here , at Others there , culling one text , de&eanting ^ upon another , and resting in a system

    ¦ * & ¦ -. * " Hear , Ov Israeli The Lord-te our * 0 od . The Lord is tore /* Imp . Ver »;

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1820, page 93, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2485/page/29/