N05663:550
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 IV. It is agreeable to common Sense, and the natural Notions of Mankind, to suppose moral Necessity to be consistent with Praise and Blame, Reward and Punishment.
SECTION IV. It is agreable to common Sense, and the natural Notions of Mankind, to suppose moral Necessity to be consistent with Praise and Blame, Reward and Punishment.
WHETHER the Reasons that have been given, why it appears difficult to some Persons to reconcile with common Sense the praising or blaming, rewarding or punishing those Things which are morally necessary, are thought satisfactory, or not; yet it most evidently appears by the following Things, that if this Matter be rightly understood, setting aside all Delusion arising from the Impropriety and Ambiguity of Terms▪ this is not at all inconsistent with the natural Apprehensions of Mankind, and that Sense of Things which is found every where in the common People, who are furthest from having their▪ Thoughts perverted from their natural Channel, by metaphysical and philosophical Subtleties; but on the contrary, altogether agreeable to, and the very Voice and Dictate of this natural and vulgar Sense.
WHETHER the Reasons that have been given, why it appears difficult to some Persons to reconcile with common Sense the praising or blaming, rewarding or punishing those Things which are morally necessary, are thought satisfactory, or not; yet it most evidently appears by the following Things, that if this Matter be rightly understood, setting aside all Delusion arising from the Impropriety and Ambiguity of Terms▪ this is not at all inconsistent with the natural Apprehensions of Mankind, and that Sense of Things which is found every where in the common People, who are furthest from having their▪ Thoughts perverted from their natural Channel, by metaphysical and philosophical Subtilties; but on the contrary, altogether agreable to, and the very Voice and Dictate of this natural and vulgar Sense.