This also may have been exactly what was designed.
Whereas, may it not be said that irresistible evidence would confound
all characters and all dispositions? would subvert rather than promote
the true purpose of the Divine counsels; which is, not to produce
obedience by a force little short of mechanical constraint, (which
obedience would be regularity, not virtue, and would hardly perhaps
differ from that which inanimate bodies pay to the laws impressed upon
their nature), but to treat moral agents agreeably to what they are;
which is done, when light and motives are of such kinds, and are
imparted in such measures, that the influence of them depends upon the
recipients themselves? "It is not meet to govern rational free agents in
via by sight and sense. It would be no trial or thanks to the most
sensual wretch to forbear sinning, if heaven and hell were open to his
sight. That spiritual vision and fruition is our state in patria."
(Baxter's Reasons, p. 357.) There may be truth in this thought, though
roughly expressed. Few things are more improbable than that we (the
human species) should be the highest order of beings in the universe:
that animated nature should ascend from the lowest reptile to us, and
all at once stop there.
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