Two errors into which philosophers and divines of a certain class have fallen in their method of treating the department of our subject now under consideration, here demand a passing notice.

1. The two methods above referred to, the psychological and theological, which should at all times be kept entirely distinct and separate, have unhappily been mingled together. Thus the subject has failed to receive a proper investigation in the domain, either of theology or of philosophy.

2. In reasoning from the Scriptures to the theory of the Will pre-supposed in the same, the wrong truth has been adduced as the basis of such reasoning, to wit: the fact of the Divine foreknowledge. As all events yet future are foreknown to God, they are in themselves, it is said, alike certain. This certainty necessitates the adoption of a particular theory of the Will. Now before we can draw any such conclusion from the truth before us, the following things pertaining to it we need to know with absolute certainty, things which God has not revealed, and which we never can know, until He has revealed them, to wit: the mode, the nature, and the degree of the Divine foreknowledge. Suppose that God should impart to us apprehensions perfectly full and distinct, of the mode, nature and degree of His foreknowledge of human conduct. How do we know but that we should then see with the most perfect clearness, that this foreknowledge is just as consistent with the theory of the Will, denied by the philosophers and divines under consideration, as with that which they suppose necessarily to result from the Divine foreknowledge? This, then, is not the truth from which we should reason to the theory of the Will pre-supposed in the Bible.

There are truths of inspiration, however, which appear to me to have a direct and decisive bearing upon this subject, and upon which we may therefore safely base our conclusions. In the Scriptures, man is addressed as a moral agent, the subject of commands and prohibitions, of obligation, of merit and demerit, and consequently of reward and punishment. Now when we have determined the powers which an agent must possess, to render him a proper subject of command and prohibition, of obligation, of merit and demerit, and consequently of reward and punishment, we have determined the philosophy of the Will, really pre-supposed in the Scriptures. Beneath these truths, therefore, and not beneath that of the divine foreknowledge, that philosophy is to be sought for. This I argue—

1. Because the former has a direct, while the latter has only an indirect bearing upon the subject.

2. Of the former our ideas are perfectly clear and distinct, while of the mode, the degree, and the nature of the Divine foreknowledge we are profoundly ignorant. To all eternity, our ideas of the nature of commands and prohibitions, of obligations, of merit and demerit, and of reward and punishment grounded on moral desert, can never be more clear and distinct than they now are. From such truths, then, and not from those that we do not understand, and which at the utmost have only an indirect bearing upon the subject, we ought to reason, if we reason at all, to the philosophy of the Will pre-supposed in the Scriptures. The reader is now put in possession of the method that will be pursued in the following treatise, and is consequently prepared to enter upon the investigation of the subject before us.

CHAPTER II.

CLASSIFICATION OF THE MENTAL FACULTIES.

Every individual who has reflected with any degree of interest upon the operations of his own mind, cannot have failed to notice three classes of mental phenomena, each of which is entirely distinct from either of the others. These phenomena, which comprehend the entire operations of the mind, and which may be expressed by the terms thinking, feeling, and willing, clearly indicate in the mind three faculties equally distinct from one another. These faculties are denominated the Intellect, the Sensibility or Sensitivity, and the Will. To the first, all intellectual operations, such as perceiving, thinking, judging, knowing, &c., are referred. To the second, we refer all sensitive states, all feelings, such as sensations, emotions, desires, &c. To the Will, or the active voluntary faculty, are referred all mental determinations, such as purposes, intentions, resolutions, choices and volitions.