N05663:530
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.
The Words may nevertheless be properly of opposite Signification: there may be as true and real a Difference between acting and being caused to act, tho' we should suppose the Soul to be both in the same Volition, as there is between living, and being quickened, or made to live. 'Tis no more a Contradiction, to suppose that Action may be the Effect of some other Cause, besides the Agent, or Being that acts, than to suppose that Life may be the Effect of some other Cause, besides the Liver, or the Being that lives, in whom Life is caused to be.
The Words may nevertheless be properly of opposite Signification: there may be as true and real a Difference between acting and being caused to act, tho' we should suppose the Soul to be both in the same Volition, as there is between living, and being quicken'd, or made to live. 'Tis no more a Contradiction, to suppose that Action may be the Effect of some other Cause, besides the Agent, or Being that acts, than to suppose that Life may be the Effect of some other Cause, besides the Liver, or the Being that lives, in whom Life is caused to be.
The Thing which has led Men into this inconsistent Notion of Action, when applied to Volition, as tho' it were essential to this internal Action, that the Agent should be self-determined in it, and that the Will should be the Cause of it, was probably this; that according to the Sense of Mankind, and the common Use of Language it is so, with respect to Men's external Actions; which are what originally, and according to the vulgar Use and most proper Sense of the Word, are called Actions. Men in these are self-directed, self-determined, and their Wills are the Cause of the Motions of their Bodies, and the external Things that are done; so that unless Men do 'em voluntarily, and of Choice, and the Action be determined by their antecedent Volition, it is no Action or Doing of theirs. Hence some Metaphysicians have been led unwarily, but exceeding absurdly, to suppose the same concerning Volition it self, that That also must be determined by the Will; which is to be determined by antecedent Volition, as the Motion of the Body is; not considering the Contradiction it implies.