Albert Taylor Bledsoe

“ Is it not wonderful, to behold the great and good author of the Inquiry, thus planting himself upon the very ground of atheistical fatalism; and from thence, in sober, serious earnestness, holding out to us, as a great and glorious reality, the mere name and shadow and fiction of liberty? the very phantom which atheists, in mockery and derision, have been pleased to confer upon mankind, as upon poor blind fools, who merely dream of liberty, and fondly dote upon the empty name thereof, whilst they are ignorant of the chains which bind them fast in fate. ”

“ Indeed, does not the position, that a man, a poor, weak, fallible creature, deserves an infinite punishment, an eternity of torments, for each evil thought or word, carry its own refutation along with it? And if not, what are we to think of that attribute of justice, which demands an eternity to inflict the infinite pangs due to a single sin? Is it a quality to inspire the soul with a rational worship, or to fill it with a horror which casteth out love? ”

“ There is no other course marked out for us by the immortal Bacon: and if we pursue any other we may wander in the dazzling light of a thousand abstractions, and behold whatever fleeting images of grandeur and of beauty we may be pleased to conjure up for ourselves; but the pure light of nature and of truth will be hid from us. ”

“ The commission put into our hands is to go and preach the gospel to every creature under heaven; and the announcement sounded forth in the world from heaven's vault was, Peace on earth, good-will to men. There is no freezing limitation here, but a largeness and munificence of mercy boundless as space, free and open as the expanse of the firmament. We hope, therefore, the gospel, the real gospel, is as unlike the views of some of its interpreters, as creation, in all its boundless extent and beauty, is unlike the paltry scheme of some wretched scholastic in the middle ages. ”

“ It is also true, that a man might throw himself down from the brink of a precipice into a yawning gulf; yet he may, perhaps, refuse to do so. This may be merely a gloomy idea, and may never become a gloomy fact. In like manner, as one world fell away from God, so might another, and another. But yet this imagination may never be realized. Indeed, the Supreme Ruler of all things has assured us that it will not be the case; and in forming our views of the universe, we feel more disposed to look at facts than at fancies. ”

“ Is choice produced by choice? Then this dependence of choice upon choice, shows it to be necessary. Is choice not produced by choice? Then this independence of choice upon choice is the very thing which shows it to be necessary! Thus this great champion of necessity, just passes from one meaning of the term to another, without the least regard to the point in dispute, or to the logical coherency of his argument. Surely, if “a reluctant world has bowed in homage” to his logic, it must have been because the world has been too indolent to pry into the sophisms with which it swarms. ”

“ When all nature is music to the ear and beauty to the eye, it requires nothing more than a freedom from the darker stains and clouds of guilt within, to lead a sympathizing heart to the sunshine of external nature, as it seems to rejoice in the smile of Infinite Beneficence. The heart may swell with rapture as it looks abroad on a happy universe, replenished with so many evidences of the divine goodness ”

“ Passion is not “the gale,” it is “the card.” Reason is not the force, it is the law. All the power resides in the free, untrammelled will. He who overlooks this, and blindly seeks for something to “move the mind to volition,” loses sight of the grand and distinctive peculiarity of man’s nature, and brings it down to the dust, subjecting it to the laws of matter and to bondage.
We do not allow Mr. Hobbes to declare our idea of a free-agent, as “one that, when all the circumstances necessary to produce action are present, can nevertheless not act;” ”

“ We intend, not merely to neutralize, but to explode, the theory of the sceptic. We intend to wrest from it the element of its strength, and grind it to atoms. We intend to lay our finger precisely upon the fallacy which lies so deeply concealed in its bosom, and from which it derives all its apparent force and conclusiveness. We shall drag this false principle from its place of concealment into the open light of day, and thereby expose the utter futility, the inherent absurdity, of the whole atheistical hypothesis, to which it has so long imparted its deceptive power. ”

“ To say that we are under a natural necessity, then, is only to say that our power is limited, and not that it is not free. It is reserved for moral necessity—shall I say to enslave?—no, but to annihilate the will.
It is true, if we will to do a thing, and are restrained from doing it by a superior force, we are not to blame for not doing it; or if we refuse to do it, and are constrained to do it, we are equally blameless. In such cases, natural necessity, although it does not reach the will, is an excuse for external conduct. If the question were, is a man accountable for his external actions? ”

“ If we make a conquest of all the truth, this will make a conquest of all the difficulties within our reach. It is wonderful with what ease a difficulty, which may have resisted the direct siege of centuries, will sometimes fall before a single inquirer after truth, who had not dreamed of aiming at its solution, until this seemed, as if by accident, to offer itself to his mind. If we pursue difficulties, they will be apt to fly from us and elude our grasp; whereas, if we give up our minds to an honest and earnest search after truth, they will come in with their own solutions. ”

“ Look where he will, he sees not the “free and flowing outline” of nature’s true lineaments; he every where beholds the image of the one fixed idea in his mind, projected outwardly upon the universe of God; behind which the true secrets and operations of nature are concealed from his vision. Even when he contemplates that living source of action, that bubbling fountain of volitions, the immortal mind of man itself, he only beholds a thing, which is made to act by the action of something else upon it; just as a body is made to move by the action of force upon it. ”

“ On the contrary, I think we should contend for a perfect indifference, not in regard to feeling, but in regard to the will. Standing on this high ground, we need not retire from the broad and open field, in order to set up the empire of a perfect liberty in a dark corner, extending to a few insignificant things only: we may establish it over the whole range of human activity, bringing out into a clear and full light, the great fact of man’s perfect accountability, for all his actions, under all the circumstances of his life. ”

“ Having pronounced the term liberty, as applied to the will, to be a word without meaning, he proceeds to justify the infliction of punishment on the same grounds on which it is vindicated by Hobbes and Spinoza. “But if there is no liberty,” says he, “there is no action that merits either praise or blame, neither vice nor virtue, nothing that ought to be either rewarded or punished. What then is the distinction among men? The doing of good and the doing of evil! The doer of ill is one who must be destroyed, not punished. The doer of good is lucky, not virtuous. ”

“ The only cause in every case of motion, is that force, whatever it may be, which acts upon the body moved, and puts it in motion. All the rest is pure passion or passiveness. The motion of the body is not action; it is the most pure passion of which the mind can form a conception. If a body in action is said to act upon another, this is but a metaphor; there is no real action in the case. Indeed, if a body be put in motion, and meets with no resistance, it will move on in a right line forever—and why? ”

“ We do not know that even the justice of God would have created man, and permitted him to fall, wandering everlastingly amid the horrors of death, without hope and without remedy. We find nothing of the kind in the word of God; and in our nature it meets with no response, except a wail of unutterable horror. We like not, we confess, those vindications of God's goodness, which consist in drawing hideous, black pictures of his justice, and then telling us that it is not so dark as these. We want not to know whether there might not be darker things in the universe than God's love ”

“ Yes, no matter how we come by our choice, though it be wrought into us by the most uncontrollable power in the universe, yet are we free in the highest conceivable sense of the word, if we can only “conduct according to our choice.” This, instead of being the greatest liberty, is indeed the greatest mockery, of which it is possible for the imagination of man to conceive. The liberty of fate itself, is, in all respects, to the full as desirable as such a liberty as this. ”

“ But we hold no such doctrine; we entertain no such sentiment. We believe that God, in his infinite, overflowing goodness desires, and from all eternity has desired, the salvation of all men. We believe that salvation is impossible to some, because a necessary holiness is impossible, and they do not choose to work out for themselves what cannot be worked out for them, even by omnipotence. It was the bright and cheering light which this truth seemed to cast upon the dark places of the universe, that first inspired us with the thought and determination to produce a theodicy. ”

“ Every change throughout inanimate nature bespeaks the agency of Him, who “sits concealed behind his own creation,” but is everywhere manifested by his omnipresent energy. The human body is an effect, teeming with evidences of the most wonderful skill of its Great Cause and Contriver. The soul itself is an effect,—the soul, with all its complicated and wonder-working powers, is an effect; and clearly proclaims the wisdom, and the goodness, and the holiness of its Maker. The heavens above us, with all its shining hosts and admirable mechanism, proclaims the glory of God ”

“ To say that the innocent may be made to suffer is monstrous injustice—is horrible; but to say that they are made sinners, and then punished, is all right and proper! To say that the innocent can suffer under the administration of God, is to shock our sense of justice, and put out the light of the divine goodness; but it is all well if we only say that the punishment due to Adam's sin is made, by the same good administration, to fall upon all his posterity in the form of moral evil, and that then they are justly punished for this punishment! ”