It is with something like fear and trembling that one even approaches such an argument as that which you suggested last night. But I could not prevent my thoughts from recurring to the defect in Milton’s answer to the supposed difficulty of creation without the choice of the created; and I would venture to ask whether a less unsatisfactory answer may not be found in some such reflections as the following. First, that the blessing was conferred upon such easy conditions as we cannot imagine any being endowed with reason to have refused, could they have been previously proposed to him; and, secondly, when the blessing was
1 This picture is now in the Lodge at Eton. |
| 274 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
I am aware of the imperfect development of all this, but thought it less unbecoming than entire silence; and if I am mistaken in that opinion, still I am convinced you will not regard it as presumptuous. . . . . By the words ‘imperfect development,’ I mean that the difficulty of the permission of evil is not touched upon, nor the usual solution of that difficulty, namely, that you cannot even conceive the probation of a moral and intellectual being without such a permission, and upon the notion of a trial or probation the whole history of man, as given in the Bible, is founded; a notion corroborated by every day’s experience, and by the consciousness of every reasonable being.
