"The ultimate author of all our volitions is the creator of the world, who first bestowed motion on this immense machine, and placed all beings in that particular position, whence every subsequent event, by an inevitable necessity, must result. Human actions therefore either can have no turpitude at all, as proceeding from so good a cause; or, if they have any turpitude, they must involve our creator in the same guilt, while he is acknowledged to be their ultimate cause and author. For a man, who fired a mine, is answerable for all the consequences, whether the train employed be long or short; so wherever a continued chain of necessary causes is fixed, that being, either finite or infinite, who produces the first, is likewise the author of all the rest." (Of Liberty and Necessity, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (New York, 1955, chap. VIII, 90-111.)