a term we apply to events, to denote that they happen without any necessary or foreknown cause. See Cause.

Our aim is, to ascribe those things to chance which are not necessarily produced as the natural effects of any proper cause: but our ignorance and precipitancy lead us to attribute effects to chance which have a necessary and determinate cause.

When we say a thing happens by chance, we really mean no more than that its cause is unknown to us: not, as some vainly imagine, that chance itself can be the cause of any thing.

The case of the painter, who unable to express the foam at the mouth of a horse he had painted, threw his sponge in despair at the piece, and by chance, did that which he could not before do by design, is an eminent instance of the force of chance: yet, it is obvious, all we mean here by chance, is, that the painter was not aware of the effect; or that he did not throw the sponge with such a view: not but that he actually did every thing necessary to produce the effect; inasmuch, that considering the direction wherein he threw his sponge, together with its form, specific gravity, the colours wherewith it was smeared, and the distance of the hand from the piece, it was impossible, on the present system of things, the effect should not follow.

Chance is frequently personified, and erected into a chimerical being, whom we conceive as acting arbitrarily,

rily, and producing all the effects whose real causes do not appear to us; in which sense the word coincides with the τύχη, fortuna, of the ancients.

CHANCE is also used for the manner of deciding things, the conduct or direction whereof is left at large, and not reducible to any determinate rules or measures, or where there is no ground for preference: as at cards, dice, lotteries, &c.

For the laws of Chance, or the Proportion of Hazard in Gaming, see GAME.

The ancient fortitude, or chance, M. Placette observes, was instituted by God himself: and in the Old Testament we find several standing laws and express commands which prescribed its use on certain occasions. Hence the Scripture says, "The lot, or chance, fell on Matthias," when it was in question who should fill Judas's place in the apostolate.

Hence also arose the fortis sanctorum, or method of determining things, among the ancient Christians, by opening some of the sacred books, and pitching on the first verse they cast their eye on, as a sure prognostic of what was to befall them. The fortis Homericæ, Virgilianæ, Prænepitæ, &c., used by the heathens, were with the same view, and in the same manner. See SORTES.

St Augustine seems to approve of this method of determining things future, and owns that he had practised it himself; grounded on this supposition, that God presides over chance; and on Prov. xvi. 33.

Many among the modern divines hold chance to be conducted in a particular manner by Providence; and esteem it an extraordinary way which God uses to declare his will, and a kind of immediate revelation.