N05663:182
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
Part 2 › Section 7: Concerning the Notion of Liberty of Will consisting in Indifference.
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.
SECTION VII. Concerning the Notion of Liberty of Will consisting in Indifference.
WHAT has been said in the foregoing Section, has a Tendency in some Measure to evince the Absurdity of the Opinion of such as place Liberty in Indifference, or in that Equilibrium whereby the Will is without all antecedent Determination or Bias, and left hitherto free from any prepossessing Inclination to one Side or the other; that the Determination of the Will to either Side may be entirely from it self, and that it may be owing only to it's own Power, and that Sovereignty which it has over it self, that it goes this Way rather than that.‖
- ‖Dr. Whitby, and some other Arminians, make a Distinction of different Kinds of Freedom; one of God, and perfect Spirits above▪ another of Persons in a State of Trial. The former Dr. Whitby allows to consist with Necessity; the latter he holds to be without Necessity: And this latter he supposes to be requisite to our being the Subjects of Praise or Dispraise, Rewards or Punishments, Precepts and Prohibitions, Promises and Threats, Exhortations and Dehortations, and a Covenant-Treaty. And to this Freedom he supposes Indifference to be requisite. In his Discourse on the five Points, P. 299, 300, he says; It is a Freedom (speaking of a Freedom not only from Co-action, but from Necessity) requisite, as we conceive, to render us capable of Trial or Probation, and to render our Actions worthy of Praise or Dispraise, and our Persons of Rewards or Punishments. And in the next Page, speaking of the same Matter, He says, Excellent to this Purpose, are the Words of Mr. Thorndike: We say not, that Indifference is requisite to all Freedom, but to the Freedom of Man alone in this State of travail and Proficience: the Ground of which is God's Tender of a Treaty, and Conditions of Peace and Reconcilement to fallen Man, together with those Precepts and Prohibitions, those Promises and Threats, those Exhortations & Dehortations, it is enforced with.