4. The final resort of certain Necessitarians, who may feel themselves wholly unable to meet the arguments adduced against their own and in favor of the opposite theory, and are determined to remain fixed in their opinions, may be readily anticipated. It is an assumption which may be expressed in language somewhat like the following: “After all, the immortal work of Edwards still lives, and will live, when those of his opponents will be lost in oblivion. That work still remains unanswered.” A sweeping assumption is a very easy and summary way of disposing of a difficulty, which we might not otherwise know what to do with. Let us for a moment contemplate some of the facts which have been undeniably established in reference to this immortal work.

(1.) At the outset, Edwards stands convicted of a fundamental error in philosophy, an error which gives form and character to his whole work—the confounding of the Will with the Sensibility, and thus confounding the characteristics of the phenomena of the former faculty with those of the phenomena of the latter.

(2.) His whole work is constructed without an appeal to Consciousness, the only proper and authoritative tribunal of appeal in the case. Thus his reasonings have only an accidental bearing upon his subject.

(3.) All his fundamental conclusions have been shown to stand in direct contradiction to the plainest and most positive testimony of universal Consciousness.

(4.) His main arguments have been shown to be nothing else but reasoning in a circle. He defines, for example, the phrase “Greatest apparent good,” as synonymous with choosing, and then argues, from the fact that the “Will always is as the greatest apparent good,” that is, that it always chooses as it chooses, that it is subject to the law of Necessity.

So in respect to the argument from the Strongest Motive, which, by definition, is fixed upon as the Motive in the direction of which the Will, in each particular instance, acts. From the fact that the action of the Will is always in the direction of this Motive, that is, in the direction of the Motive towards which it does act, the conclusion is gravely drawn, that the Will is and must be subject, in all its determinations, to the law of Necessity. I find my mind acted upon by two opposite Motives. I cannot tell which is the strongest, from a contemplation of what is intrinsic in the Motives themselves, nor from their effects upon my Intelligence or Sensibility. I must wait till my Will has acted. From the fact of its action in the direction of one Motive, in distinction from the other, I must then draw two important conclusions. 1. The Motive, in the direction of which my Will did act, is the strongest. The evidence is, the fact of its action in that direction. 2. The Will must be subject to the law of Necessity. The proof is, the action of the Will in the direction of the Strongest Motive, that is, the Motive in the direction of which it did act. Sage argument to be regarded by Philosophers and Theologians of the 19th century, as possessing the elements of immortality!

(5.) His argument from the Divine fore-knowledge has been shown to be wholly based upon an assumption unauthorized by reason, or revelation either, to wit: that he understands the mode of that Fore-knowledge,— an assumption which cannot be made except through ignorance, as was true in his case, without the greatest impiety and presumption.

(6.) The theory which Edwards opposes has been shown to render sacred, in all minds that hold it, the great idea of duty, of moral obligation; while the validity of that idea has never, in any age or nation, been denied, excepting on the avowed authority of his Theory.

(7.) All the arguments in proof of the doctrine of Necessity, with the single exception of that from the Divine Fore-knowledge—an argument resting, as we have seen, upon an assumption equally baseless,—involve a begging of the question at issue. Take any argument we please, with this one exception, and it will be seen at once that it has no force at all, unless the truth of the doctrine designed to be established by it, be assumed as the basis of that argument. Shall we pretend that a Theory, that has been fully demonstrated to involve, fundamentally, the errors, absurdities, and contradictions above named, has not been answered?