A careful and strict enquiry into the modern prevailing notions of that freedom of…

The common People don't ascend up in their Reflections and Abstractions, to the metaphysical Sources, Relations and Dependences of Things, in order to form their Notion of Faultiness or Blame-worthiness. They don't wait till they have decided by their Refinings, what first determines the Will; whether it be determined by something extrinsic, or intrinsic; whether Volition determines Volition, or whether the Understanding determines the Will; whether there be any such Thing as Metaphysicians mean by Contingence (if they have any Meaning;) whether there be a Sort of a strange unaccountable Sovereignty in the Will, in the Exercise of which, by it's own sovereign Acts, it brings to pass all it's own sovereign Acts. They don't take any Part of their Notion of Fault or Blame from the Resolution of any such Questions. If this were the Case, there are Multitudes, yea the far greater Part of Mankind, nine Hundred and ninety-nine out of a Thousand would live and die without having any such Notion as that of Fault ever entering into their Heads, or without so much as once having any Conception that any Body was to be either blamed or commended for any Thing. To be sure, it would be a long Time before Men came to have such Notions. Whereas 'tis manifest, they are some of the first Notions that appear in Children; who discover as soon as they can think, or speak, or act at all as rational Creatures, a Sense of Desert. And certainly, in forming their Notion of it, they make no use of Metaphysics. All the Ground they go upon consists in these two Things; Experience, and a natural Sensation of a certain Fitness or Agreeableness which there is in uniting such moral Evil as is above described, viz. a being or doing wrong with the Will, and Resentment in others, and Pain inflicted on the Person in whom this moral Evil is. Which natural Sense is what we call by the Name of Conscience.

The common People don't ascend up in their Reflections and Abstractions, to the metaphysical Sources, Relations and Dependences of Things, in order to form their Notion of Faultiness or Blame-worthiness. They don't wait till they have decided by their Refinings, what first determines the Will; whether it be determined by something extrinsic, or intrinsic; whether Volition determines Volition, or whether the Understanding determines the Will; whether there be any such Thing as Metaphysicians mean by Contingence (if they have any Meaning;) whether there be a Sort of a strange unaccountable Sovereignty in the Will, in the Exercise of which, by it's own sovereign Acts, it brings to pass all it's own sovereign Acts. They don't take any Part of their Notion of Fault or Blame from the Resolution of any such Questions. If this were the Case, there are Multitudes, yea the far greater Part of Mankind, nine Hundred and ninety-nine out of a Thousand would live and die without having any such Notion as that of Fault ever entring into their Heads, or without so much as once having any Conception that any Body was to be either blamed or commended for any Thing. To be sure, it would be a long Time before Men came to have such Notions. Whereas 'tis manifest, they are some of the first Notions that appear in Children; who discover as soon as they can think, or speak, or act at all as rational Creatures, a Sense of Desert. And certainly, in forming their Notion of it, they make no use of Metaphysicks. All the Ground they go upon consists in these two Things; Experience, and a natural Sensation of a certain Fitness or Agreableness which there is in uniting such moral Evil as is above described, viz. a being or doing wrong with the Will, and Resentment in others, and Pain inflicted on the Person in whom this moral Evil is. Which natural Sense is what we call by the Name of Conscience.