N05663:700
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.
but let not the Whole be rejected, as if all were confuted, by fixing on it the Epithet Metaphysical.
II. If the Reasoning which has been made use of, be in some Sense Metaphysical, it will not follow, that therefore it must needs be abstruse, unintelligible, and a-kin to the Jargon of the Schools. I humbly conceive, the foregoing Reasoning, at least as to those Things which are most material belonging to it, depends on no abstruse Definitions or Distinctions, or Terms without a Meaning, or of very ambiguous and undetermined Signification, or any Points of such Abstraction and Subtlety, as tends to involve the attentive Understanding in Clouds and Darkness. There is no high Degree of Refinement and abstruse Speculation, in determining, that a Thing is not before it is, and so can't be the Cause of itself; or that the first Act of free Choice, has not another Act of free Choice going before that, to excite or direct it; or in determining, that no Choice is made, while the Mind remains in a State of absolute Indifference; that Preference and Equilibrium never co-exist; and that therefore no Choice is made in a State of Liberty, consisting in Indifference: And that so far as the Will is determined by Motives, exhibited and operating previous to the Act of the Will, so far it is not determined by the Act of the Will itself; that nothing can begin to be, which before was not, without a Cause, or some antecedent Ground or Reason, why it then begins to be; that Effects depend on their Causes, and are connected with them; that Virtue is not the ⟨p. 280⟩worse, nor Sin the better, for the Strength of Inclination, with which it is practised, and the Difficulty which thence arises of doing otherwise; that when it is already infallibly known, that a Thing will be, it is not a Thing contingent whether it will ever be or no; or that it can be truly said, notwithstanding, that it is not necessary it should be, but it either may be, or may not be. And the like might be observed of many other Things which belong to the foregoing Reasoning.