N05663:508
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.
'Tis agreeable to the natural Notions of Mankind, that moral Evil, with it's Desert of Dislike and Abhorrence, and all it's other Ill-deservings, consists in a certain Deformity in ⟨p. 195⟩the Nature of certain Dispositions of the Heart, and Acts of the Will; and not in the Deformity of something else, diverse from the very Thing it self, which deserves Abhorrence, supposed to be the Cause of it. Which would be absurd, because that would be to suppose, a Thing that is innocent and not Evil, is truly evil and faulty, because another Thing is Evil. It implies a Contradiction; for it would be to suppose, the very Thing which is morally evil and blame-worthy, is innocent and not blame-worthy; but that something else, which is it's Cause, is only to blame. To say, that Vice don't consist in the Thing which is vicious, but in it's Cause, is the same as to say, that Vice don't consist in Vice, but in that which produces it.
'Tis agreable to the natural Notions of Mankind, that moral Evil, with it's Desert of Dislike and Abhorrence, and all it's other Ill-deservings, consists in a certain Deformity in ⟨p. 195⟩the Nature of certain Dispositions of the Heart, and Acts of the Will; and not in the Deformity of something else, diverse from the very Thing it self, which deserves Abhorrence, supposed to be the Cause of it. Which would be absurd, because that would be to suppose, a Thing that is innocent and not Evil, is truly evil and faulty, because another Thing is Evil. It implies a Contradiction; for it would be to suppose, the very Thing which is morally evil and blame-worthy, is innocent and not blame-worthy; but that something else, which is it's Cause, is only to blame. To say, that Vice don't consist in the Thing which is vicious, but in it's Cause, is the same as to say, that Vice don't consist in Vice, but in that which produces it.
'Tis true, a Cause may be to blame, for being the Cause of Vice: It may be Wickedness in the Cause, that it produces Wickedness. But it would imply a Contradiction, to suppose that these two are the same individual Wickedness. The wicked Act of the Cause in producing Wickedness, is one Wickedness; and the Wickedness produced, if there be any produced, is another. And therefore the Wickedness of the latter don't lie in the former, but is distinct from it; and the Wickedness of both lies in the evil Nature of the Things which are wicked.