N05663:544
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.
III. When Men, after they had been so habituated to connect Ideas of Innocency or Blamelessness with such Terms, that the Union seems to be the Effect of mere Nature, come to hear the same Terms used, & learn to use them themselves in the forementioned new & metaphysical Sense, to signify quite another Sort of Necessity, which has no such Kind of Relation to a contrary supposable Will and Endeavour; the Notion of plain and manifest Blamelessness, by this Means, is by a strong Prejudice, insensibly and unwarily transferred to a Case to which it by no Means belongs: The Change of the Use of the Terms, to a Signification which is very diverse, not being taken Notice of, or adverted to. And there are several Reasons why it is not.
III. When Men, after they had been so habituated to connect Ideas of Innocency or Blamelesness with such Terms, that the Union seems to be the Effect of meer Nature, come to hear the same Terms used, & learn to use them themselves in the foremention'd new & metaphysical Sense, to signify quite another Sort of Necessity, which has no such Kind of Relation to a contrary supposable Will and Endeavour; the Notion of plain and manifest Blamelesness, by this Means, is by a strong Prejudice, insensibly and unwarily transfer'd to a Case to which it by no Means belongs: The Change of the Use of the Terms, to a Signification which is very diverse, not being taken Notice of, or adverted to. And there are several Reasons why it is not.
1. The Terms, as used by Philosophers, are not very distinct and clear in their Meaning: few use them in a fixed determined Sense. On the contrary, their Meaning is very vogue and confused. Which is what commonly happens to the ⟨p. 210⟩Words used to signify Things intellectual and moral, and to express what Mr. Locke calls mixed Modes. If Men had a clear and distinct understanding of what is intended by these metaphysical Terms, they would be able more easily to compare them with their original and common Sense; and so would not be so easily cheated by them. The Minds of Men are so easily led into Delusion by no Sort of Terms in the World, as by Words of this Sort.