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54 command of this necessity. The priest may deceive, the lawyer defraud, and the physician poison, by the same impulse of necessity. Pickpockets may steal, and ruffians murder, with the same excuse; and all the evils and horrors of which he complains, are as much matters of necessity, as his condemnation of them. Nor do I see ought of distinction between necessity and predestination; save that one is applied to a sectarian definition of the Christian faith, and the other is the general principle applied to the whole phenomena of nature. I understand the passage in which Necessity is asserted to be the mother of the world, is one of those which have been selected for persecution. Yet the continuation of the stanza breathes doctrines which would be considered as devout, were not the opinions of society shocked by the rudeness of substituting a new epithet, for that usually employed when speaking upon such matters. Allow Mr. Shelley to designate his ruling power by the term Necessity, and his theology remains as sound as that of other men. He is not an atheist, even where he fancies himself one. Speaking of the ruling power, he says, in this very stanza,