N05663:80
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.
An Event, or the Existence of a Thing, may be said to be necessary with a particular Necessity, or with Regard to a particular Person, Thing or Time, when Nothing that can be taken into Consideration, in or about that Person, Thing or Time, alters the Case at all, as to the Certainty of that Event, or the Existence of that Thing; or can be of any ⟨p. 19⟩Account at all, in determining the Infallibility of the Connection of the Subject and Predicate in the Proposition which affirms the Existence of the Thing; so that it is all one, as to that Person, or Thing, at least, at that Time, as if the Existence were necessary with a Necessity that is most universal and absolute. Thus there are many Things that happen to particular Persons, which they have no Hand in, and in the Existence of which no Will of theirs has any Concern, at least, at that Time; which, whether they are necessary or not, with Regard to Things in general, yet are necessary to them, and with Regard to any Volition of theirs at that Time; as they prevent all Acts of the Will about the Affair. — I shall have Occasion to apply this Observation to particular Instances in the following Discourse.—Whether the same Things that are necessary with a particular Necessity, be not also necessary with a general Necessity, may be a Matter of future Consideration. Let that be as it will, it alters not the Case, as to the Use of this Distinction of the Kinds of Necessity.
These Things may be sufficient for the explaining of the Terms Necessary and Necessity, as Terms of Art, and as often used by Metaphysicians, and controversial Writers in Divinity, in a Sense diverse from, and more extensive than their original Meaning, in common Language, which was before explained.
These Things may be sufficient for the explaining of the Terms Necessary and Necessity, as Terms of Art, and as often used by Metaphysicians, and controversial Writers in Divinity, in a Sense diverse from, and more extensive than their original Meaning, in common Language, which was before explain'd.