our own responsibility for our acts of rational will. Possessing these, even without the possibility of any ultimate theory of moral agency for the gratification of the logical faculty, or finite understanding, men may consistently “follow after holiness,” and also receive, as possible, though inexplicable, the supernatural account which has been conveyed to them of the historical origin of that tendency to sin of which they experience the power, as well as of that free restoration from the “fallen state,” which, revealed in the Gospel, is mysteriously bestowed on the regenerate. This agrees, too, with the analogy of Scripture, for the Bible is full of both ideas—absolute commencement and derived volition—but it essays not to explain nor to reconcile them.
If the finite power of reasoning may be proved incapable to grasp the theory that is sufficient to account for responsible actions, consistently on the one hand with our belief regarding causation, and on the other, with the limitation of the series of causes which is assumed in those principles of the theistical argument that are at variance with the hypothesis of an infinite chain of derived causes, common sense includes among its other beliefs the conviction that we are created by God moral agents, responsible for those actions which we perform in relation to Him and to one another. This belief is sufficient to sustain our moral activity, even although the limits of the human intellect lay an arrest on further speculation, and therefore render it impossible for us to
