N05663:642
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.
Concerning this, I would observe the following Things.
I. If there be any Difficulty in this Matter, 'tis nothing peculiar to this Scheme; 'tis no Difficulty or Disadvantage wherein it is distinguished from the Scheme of Arminians; and therefore not reasonably objected by them.
Dr. Whitby supposes, that if Sin necessarily follows from God's withholding Assistance, or if that Assistance be not given ⟨p. 253⟩which is absolutely necessary to the avoiding of Evil; then in the Nature of the Thing, God must be as properly the Author of that Evil, as if he were the efficient Cause of it. From whence, according to what he himself says of the Devils and damned Spirits, God must be the proper Author of their perfect unrestrained Wickedness: He must be the efficient Cause of the great Pride of the Devils, and of their perfect Malignity against God, Christ, his Saints, and all that is Good, and of the insatiable Cruelty of their Disposition. For he allows, that God has so forsaken them, and does so withhold his Assistance from them, that they are incapacitated from doing Good, and determined only to Evil. ‡Our Doctrine, in its Consequence, makes God the Author of Men's Sin in this World, no more, and in no other Sense, than his Doctrine, in its Consequence, makes God the Author of the hellish Pride and Malice of the Devils. And doubtless the latter is as odious an Effect as the former.
- ‡Ibid P. 302.305.