Excerpt from Miscellanies, Vol. 2: Essays, Tracts or Addresses, Moral and Religious

A recent essayist, whose work has attracted more than usual notice, the Rev. Henry Woodward, has forced prominently for ward the fact, that nearly all our reasonings concerning the Wisdom of God imply some limitation of his power. To a being, Omnipotent in the gross and popular sense, wisdom must be wholly useless, and in fact becomes in him an unintelligible quality. As policy is superfluous to a conqueror who can apply overwhelming force, so is wisdom superseded by omnipotence. We admire the adaptation of lungs to air, and of air to the lungs, on the supposition that a difficult problem has been proposed, how to free the blood from noxious particles But if we are asked, why might not the divine fiat have done it as well? One reply alone is to be had, - that there are other objects to be gained by adhering to the general laws of matter, which objects could not have been so well gained by a direct exertion of divine power. If otherwise, there would be no intelligible wisdom in employing a circuitous, rather than a direct method of effecting the end. The like may be observed in every other case. Hence, wisdom and power are in one sense antagonistic qualities; the more you enlarge the sphere of the latter, the more you diminish that of the former; and every time we ascribe wisdom to the divine agent, we virtually imply some unknown limitation to his power, and deny the existence of almightiness in its vulgar sense.

To ignorant persons, who have imbibed with their devotional feelings the popular idea of omnipotence, it is apt to appear a profane thing to assert, that it is not within the power of the Almighty to recall the past; or, to construct a square which shall have the properties of a circle. But all thoughtful and philosophical minds have long been aware, that that which is self-contradictory does not lie within the Sphere of power; and that it 18 no degradation to the Almighty that he cannot make the same thing both to be and not to be.

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