N05663:179
A careful and strict enquiry into the modern prevailing notions of that freedom of…
A careful and strict enquiry into the modern prevailing notions of that freedom of will, which is supposed to be essential to moral agency, virtue and vice, reward and punishment, praise and blame. By Jonathan Edwards, A.M. Pastor of the church in Stockbridge. ; [One line from Romans]A careful and strict enquiry into the modern prevailing notions of that freedom of will, which is supposed to be essential to moral agency, vertue and vice, reward and punishment, praise and blame. By Jonathan Edwards, A.M. Pastor of the church in Stockbridge. ; [One line from Romans]
printed by S. Kneeland, 1754
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
As the Acts of the Will, in each Step of the fore-mentioned Procedure, don't come to pass without a particular Cause, every Act is owing to a prevailing Inducement; so the Accident, as I have called it, or that which happens in the unsearchable Course of Things, to which the Mind yields it self, and by which it is guided, is not any Thing that comes to pass without a Cause; and the Mind in determining to be guided by it, is not determined by something that has no Cause; any more than if it determined to be guided by a Lot, or the casting of a Die. For tho' the Die's falling in such a Manner be accidental to him that casts it, yet none will suppose that there is no Cause why it falls as it does. The involuntary Changes in the Succession of our Ideas, tho' the Cause may not be observed, have as much a Cause, as the changeable Motions of the Mo•es that float in the Air, or the continual, infinitely various, successive Changes of the Unevennesses on the Surface of the Water.
As the Acts of the Will, in each Step of the fore-mentioned Proceedure, don't come to pass without a particular Cause, every Act is owing to a prevailing Inducement; so the Accident, as I have called it, or that which happens in the unsearchable Course of Things, to which the Mind yields it self, and by which it is guided, is not any Thing that comes to pass without a Cause; and the Mind in determining to be guided by it, is not determined by something that has no Cause; any more than if it determined to be guided by a Lot, or the casting of a Die. For tho' the Die's falling in such a Manner be accidental to him that casts it, yet none will suppose that there is no Cause why it falls as it does. The involuntary Changes in the Succession of our Ideas, tho' the Cause may not be observed, have as much a Cause, as the changeable Motions of the Mo•es that float in the Air, or the continual, infinitely various, successive Changes of the Unevennesses on the Surface of the Water.
There are two Things especially, which are probably the Occasions of Confusion in the Minds of them who insist upon it, that the Will acts in a proper Indifference, and without being moved by any Inducement, in it's Determinations in such Cases as have been mentioned.