N05663:262
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.
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.
V. Mr. Chubb does most strenuously deny, that Motives are Causes of the Acts of the Will; or that the moving Principle in Man is moved, or caused to be exerted by Motives. His Words P. 388 & 389. are, If the moving Principle in Man is MOVED, or CAUSED TO BE EXERTED, by something external to Man, which all Motives are, then it would not be a Self-moving Principle, seeing it would be moved by a Principle external to it self. And to say, that a Self-moving Principle is MOVED, or CAUSED TO BE EXERTED, by a Cause external to it self, is absurd and a Contradiction &c. —And in the next Page, 'tis particularly and largely insisted, that Motives are Causes in no Case, that they are merely passive in the Production of Action, and have no Causality in the Production of it, — no Causality, to be the Cause of the Exertion of the Will.