I. The first inquiry that presents itself is this: Do Necessitarians hold the doctrine of Necessity as defined in this chapter? Do they really hold, in respect to every act of will, that, in the circumstances of its occurrence, that one act only is possible, and that cannot but arise? Is this, for example, the doctrine of Edwards? Is it the doctrine really held by those who professedly agree with him? I argue that it is:

1. Because they unanimously repudiate the doctrine of Liberty as here defined. They must, therefore, hold that of Necessity; inasmuch as no third relation is even conceivable or possible. If they deny that the phenomena of the Will fall under either of these relations, and still call themselves Necessitarians, they most hold to an inconceivable something, which themselves even do not understand and cannot define, and which has and can have no real existence.

2. Edwards has confounded the phenomena of the Will with those of the Sensibility which are necessary in the sense here defined. He must, therefore, hold that the characteristics of the latter class belong to those of the former.

3. Edwards represents the relation between motives and acts of Will, as being the same in kind as that which exists between causes and effects among external material substances. The former relation he designates by the words moral necessity; the latter, by that of natural, or philosophical, or physical necessity. Yet he says himself, that the difference expressed by these words “does not lie so much in the nature of the connection as in the two terms connected.” The qualifying terms used, then, designate merely the nature of the antecedents and consequents, while the nature of the connection between them is, in all instances, the same, that of naked necessity.

4. Edwards himself represents moral necessity as just as absolute as physical, or natural necessity. “Moral necessity may be,” he says, “as absolute as natural necessity. That is, the effect may be as perfectly connected with its moral cause as a natural necessary effect is with its natural cause.”

5. Necessitarians represent the relation between motives and acts of Will as that of cause and effect; and for this reason necessary. “If,” says Edwards, “every act of Will is excited by some motive, then that motive is the cause of that act of Will.” “And if volitions are properly the effects of their motives, then they are necessarily connected with their motives.” Now as the relation of cause and effect is necessary, in the sense of the term Necessity as above defined, Edwards must hold, and design to teach, that all acts of Will are necessary in this sense.

6. Necessitarians represent the connection between motives and acts of Will as being, in all instances, the same in kind as that which exists between volitions and external actions. “As external actions,” says President Day, “are directed by the Will, so the Will itself is directed by influence.” Now all admit, that the connection between volitions and external actions is necessary in this sense, that when we will such action it cannot but take place. No other act is, in the circumstances, possible. In the same sense, according to Necessitarians, is every act of Will necessarily connected with influence, or motives. We do Necessitarians no wrong, therefore, when we impute to them the doctrine of Necessity as here defined. In all cases of sin, they hold, that an individual is in circumstances in which none but sinful acts of Will are possible, and these he cannot but put forth; and that in these identical circumstances the sinner is under obligation infinite to put forth different and opposite acts.