N05663:261
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.
1. To suppose, as Mr. Chubb plainly does, that every free Act of Choice is commanded by, and is the Produce of free Choice, is to suppose the first free Act of Choice belonging to the Case, yea, the first free Act of Choice that ever Man excited, to be the Produce of an antecedent Act of Choice. But I hope I need not labour at all to convince my Readers, that 'tis an Absurdity to say, the very first Act is the Produce of another Act that went before it.
2. If it were both possible and real, as Mr. Chubb insists, that every free Act of Choice were the Produce or the Effect of a free Act of Choice; yet even then, according to his Principles, no one Act of Choice would be free, but every one necessary; because, every Act of Choice being the Effect of a foregoing Act, every Act would be necessarily connected with that foregoing Cause. For Mr. Chubb himself says, P. 389. When the Self-moving Power is exerted, it becomes the necessary Cause of it's Effects. —So that his Notion of a free Act, that is rewardable or punishable, is a Heap of Contradictions. It is a free Act, and yet, by his own Notion of Freedom, is necessary; and therefore by him it is a Contradiction, to suppose it to be free. According to him, every free Act is the Produce of a free Act; so that there must be an infinite Number of free Acts in Succession, without any Beginning, in an Ag••t that has a Beginning. And therefore here is an infinite Number of free Acts, every one of them free; and yet not any one of them free, but every Act in the whole infinite Chain a necessary Effect. All the Acts are rewardable or punishable, and yet the Agent cannot, in Reason, be the Object of Reward or Punishment, on Account of any one of these Actions. He is active in them all, and passive in none; yet active in none, but passive in all, &c.