N07809:26
Two dissertations, I. Concerning the end for which God created the world. II. The…
Two dissertations, I. Concerning the end for which God created the world. II. The nature of true virtue. / by the late Reverend, learned and pious Jonathan Edwards, A.M. president of the College in New-Jersey.
Boston: printed by S. Kneeland, 1765
Concerning the END for which GOD created the WORLD. › Introduction: INTRODUCTION
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.
Containing Explanations of Terms, and general Positions.
TO avoid all confusion in our inquiries and reasonings, concerning the end for which God created the world, a distinction should be observed between the chief end for which an agent or efficient exerts any act and performs any work, and the ultimate end. These two phrases are not always precisely of the same signification: And tho' the chief end be always an ultimate end, yet every ultimate end is not always a chief end.
A chief end is opposite to an inferior end: An ultimate end, is opposite to a subordinate end. A subordinate end is something that an agent seeks and aims at in what he does; but yet don't seek it, or regard it at all upon it's own account, but wholly on the account of a further end, or in order to some other thing, which it is considered as a means of. Thus when a man that goes a journey to obtain ⟨p. 2⟩a medicine to cure him of some disease, and restore his health,—the obtaining that medicine is his subordinate end; because 'tis not an end that he seeks for itself, or values at all upon its own account; but wholly as a means of a further end, viz. his health: Separate the medicine from that further end, and it is esteemed good for nothing; nor is it at all desired.