N05663:516
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.
SECTION II. The Falseness and Inconsistence of that metaphysical Notion of Action, and Agency, which seems to be generally entertained by the Defenders of the Arminian Doctrine concerning Liberty, moral Agency, &c.
ONE Thing that is made very much a Ground of Argument and supposed Demonstration by Arminians, in Defence of the fore-mentioned Principles, concerning moral Agency, Virtue, Vice &c. is their metaphysical Notion of Agency and Action. They say, unless the Soul has a Self-determining Power, it has no Power of Action; If it's Volitions be not caused by it self, but are excited and determined by some extrinsic Cause, they can't be the Soul's own Acts; and that the Soul can't be active, but must be wholly passive, in those Effects which it is the Subject of necessarily, and not from it's own free Determination.
ONE Thing that is made very much a Ground of Argument and supposed Demonstration by Arminians, in Defence of the fore-mentioned Principles, concerning moral Agency, Vertue, Vice &c. is their metaphysical Notion of Agency and Action. They say, unless the Soul has a Self-determining Power, it has no Power of Action; If it's Volitions be not caused by it self, but are excited and determined by some extrinsic Cause, they can't be the Soul's own Acts; and that the Soul can't be active, but must be wholly passive, in those Effects which it is the Subject of necessarily, and not from it's own free Determination.
Mr. Chubb lays the Foundation of his Scheme of Liberty, and of his Arguments to support it, very much in this Po••• on, That Man is an Agent, and capable of Action. Which doubtless is true: But Self-determination belongs to his Notion of Action, and is the very Essence of it. Whence he infers that it is impossible for a Man to act and be acted upon, in the same Thing, at the same Time; and that nothing that is an Action, can be the Effect of the Action of another: and he insists, that a necessary Agent, or an Agent that is necessarily determined to act, is a plain Contradiction.