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

It is a Vanity, to pretend it is a sufficient Answer to this, to say, that it is nothing but metaphysical Refinement and Subtlety, and so attended with Obscurity and Uncertainty.

It is a Vanity, to pretend it is a sufficient Answer to this, to say, that it is nothing but metaphysical Refinement and Subtilty, and so attended with Obscurity and Uncertainty.

If it be the natural Sense of our Minds, that what is blame-worthy in a Man must be from himself, then it doubtless is also, that it must be from something bad in himself, a bad Choice, or bad Disposition. But then our natural Sense is, that this bad Choice or Disposition is evil in it self, and the Man blame-worthy for it, on it's own Account, without taking into our Notion of it's Blame-worthiness, another bad Choice, or Disposition going before this, from whence this arises: for that is a ridiculous Absurdity, running us into an immediate Contradiction, which our natural Sense of Blame-worthiness has nothing to do with, and never comes into the Mind, nor is supposed in the Judgment we naturally make of the Affair. As was demonstrated before, natural Sense don't place the moral Evil of Volitions and Dispositions in the Cause of them, but the Nature of them. An evil Thing's being FROM a Man, or from something antecedent in him, is not essential to the original Notion we have of Blame-worthiness: But 'tis it's being the Choice of the Heart; as appears by this, that if a Thing be from us, and not from our Choice, it has not the Nature of Blame-worthiness or Ill-desert, according to our natural Sense. When a Thing is from a Man, in that Sense, that it is from his Will or Choice, he is to Blame for it, because his Will is IN IT: So far as the Will is in it, Blame is in it, and no further. Neither do we go any further in our Notion of Blame, to enqui•• whether the bad Will be FROM a bad Will: There is no Consideration of the Original of that bad Will; because according to our natural Apprehension, ⟨p. 283⟩Blame originally consists in it. Therefore a Thing's being from a Man, is a secondary Consideration, in the Notion of Blame or Ill-desert. Because those Things in our external Actions, are most properly said to be from us, which are from our Choice; and no other external Actions but those that are from us in this Sense, have the Nature of Blame; and they indeed, not so properly because they are from us, as because we are in them, i. e. our Wills are in them; not so much because they are from some Property of ours, as because they are our Properties.