Published by the fame Author, 1. Prayers for the Use of Families and Perfons in private, price 3s. bound. 2. Free Thoughts on a Diffenter's Conformity to Religious Tefts, price 1s. IN DEFENCE OF THE LIBERTY OF MAN, A S A MORAL AGENT: IN ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLEY'S ILLUSTRATIONS OF PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY. BY JOHN PALMER, MINISTER OF NEW-BROAD-STREET. not over-rul'd by fate PARADISE LOST, Book V. Line 527, &c.* If we can neither think nor act otherwife than we do, or rather, if we cannot act, in a true fenfe, but are actuated by fomething external, we must be just what we are, and power and liberty belong not to us. Let us be concerned about nothing, if our concern fignifies nothing. JORTIN'S DISCOURSES, 2d Ed. P. 237, 238, Note. LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, No. 72, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD. S the following publication is confined to the confideration of Dr. Priestley's Illuftrations of Philofophical Neceffity; all I fhall, therefore, here fay concerning his preceding Difquifitions, relating to matter and spirit, is, that they appear to me chiefly to concern mankind, as they affect human liberty or agency. The Dr. obferves, in the Preface to his Illuftrations, that if man, as " is maintained in the Difquifitions, "be wholly a material, it will not " be denied but that he must "be a mechanical being." I beg leave to remark, and the reasoning feems equally conclufive, on the other hand, that if, as is maintained in the following Obfervations, man be poffeffed of the power of moral agency, it will be as readily admitted, A 2 that that there is something in the constitution of the being, to whom this power belongs, entirely distin& from matter, or that the spirit in man is properly immaterial. The peculiar importance of the subject treated of in the Illuftrations, has led me to the separate difcuffion of that argument. I am not infenfible, that there are difficulties attending the fcheme of liberty, arifing from the unfavourable fituation in which great numbers of the human race are placed, which it is not eafy, perhaps not poffible, for men of the most enlarged and best improved understandings to clear up to their own fatisfaction, and much lefs to the general fatisfaction of the thoughtful and inquifitive. But it is one thing, to be able to answer every objection, which may lie against any |