N05663:70
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.
5. It appears from what has been said, that these Terms necessary, impossible &c. are often used by Philosophers and Metaphysicians in a Sense quite diverse from their common Use and original Signification: For they apply them to many Cases in which no Opposition is supposed or supposable. Thus they use them with Respect to God's Existence before the Creation of the World, when there was no other Being but ⟨p. 16⟩He: so with regard to many of the Dispositions and Acts of the divine Being, such as his loving Himself, his loving Righteousness, hating Sin &c. So they apply these Terms to many Cases of the Inclinations and Actions of created intelligent Beings, Angels and Men; wherein all Opposition of the Will is shut out and denied, in the very Supposition of the Case.
Metaphysical or Philosophical Necessity is nothing different from their Certainty. I speak not now of the Certainty of Knowledge, but the Certainty that is in Things themselves, which is the Foundation of the Certainty of the Knowledge of them; or that wherein lies the Ground of the Infallibility of the Proposition which affirms them.
What is sometimes given as the Definition of Philosophical Necessity, namely, That by which a Thing cannot but be, or whereby it cannot be otherwise, fails of being a proper Explanation of it, on two Accounts: First, the Words Can, or Cannot, need Explanation as much as the Word Necessity; and the former may as well be explained by the latter, as the latter by the former. Thus, if any one asked us what we mean, when we say, a Thing cannot but be, we might explain our selves by saying, we mean, it must necessarily be so; as well as explain Necessity, by saying, it is that by which a Thing cannot but be. And Secondly, this Definition is liable to the fore-mentioned great Inconvenience: The Words cannot, or unable, are properly relative, and have Relation to Power exerted, or that may be exerted, in order to the Thing spoken of; to which, as I have now observed, the Word Necessity, as used by Philosophers, has no Reference.