industry for their own good, which care and industry is useful and necessary to that end; and yet the very thing for which, as a reason, this great benefit of care and industry is given, is God's deceiving men in this very point in making them think their care and industry to be of great benefit to them, when indeed it is of none at all; and if they saw the real truth, they would see all their endeavours to be wholly useless, that there was NO ROOM for them, and that the event does not at all DEPEND upon them.*

And besides, what this author says plainly implies (as appears by what has been already observed,) that it is necessary men should be deceived, by being made to believe that future events are contingent, and their own future actions free, with such a freedom as signifies that their actions are not the fruit of their own desires or designs, but altogether contingent, fortuitous, and without a cause. But how should a notion of liberty consisting in accident or loose chance, encourage care and industry? I should think it would rather entirely discourage every thing of this nature. For surely if our actions do not depend on our desires and designs, then they do not depend on our endeavours flowing from our desires and designs. This Author himself seems to suppose, that if men had, indeed, such a liberty of contingence, it would render all endeavours to determine or move men's future volitions in vain he says that in this case, to exhort, to instruct, to promise, or to threaten, would be to no purpose. Why? Because (as he himself gives the reason)," then our will would be capricious and arbitrary, and we should be thrown loose altogether, and our arbitrary power could do us good or ill only by accident." But if such a loose fortuitous state would render vain others' endeavours upon us, for the same reason would it make useless our endeavours on ourselves: for events that are truly contingent and accidental, and altogether loose from, and independent of, all foregoing causes, are independent on every foregoing cause within ourselves, as well as in others.

I suppose that it is so far from being true, that our minds are naturally possessed with a notion of such liberty as this so strongly that it is impossible to root it out, that indeed men have no such notion of liberty at all, and that it is utterly impossible, by any means whatsoever to implant or introduce such a notion into the mind. As no such notions as imply selfcontradiction and self-abolition can subsist in the mind, as I have shewn in my Inquiry; I think a mature sensible consideration of the matter is sufficient to satisfy any one, that even the greatest and most learned advocates themselves for liberty of indifference and self-determination have no such notion; and that indeed they mean something wholly inconsistent with

*P, 188, 189, &c.

P. 178, 213, 214.

and directly subversive of, what they strenuously affirm and earnestly contend for. By a man having a power of determining his own will, they plainly mean a power of determining his will as he pleases, or as he chooses; which supposes that the mind has a choice, prior to its going about to confirm any action or determination to it. And if they mean that they determine even the original or prime choice by their own pleasure or choice, as the thing that causes and directs it; I scruple not most boldly to affirm, that they speak they know not what, and that of which they have no manner of idea; because no such contradictory notion can come into, or have a moment's subsistence in the mind of any man living, as an original or first choice being caused or brought into being, by choice. After all, they say, they have no higher or other conception of liberty, than that vulgar notion of it, which I contend for, viz. a man's having power or opportunity to do as he chooses: or if they had a notion that every act of choice was determined by choice, yet it would destroy their notion of the contingence of choice; for then no one act of choice would arise contingently, or from a state of indifference, but every individual act, in all the series, would arise from foregoing bias or preference, and from a cause predetermining and fixing its existence, which introduces at once such a chain of causes and effects, each preceding link decisively fixing the following, as they would by all means avoid.

And such kind of delusion and self-contradiction as this, does not arise in men's minds by nature: it is not owing to any natural feeling which God has strongly fixed in the mind and nature of man; but to false philosophy, and strong prejudice, from a deceitful abuse of words. It is artificial; not in the sense of the Author of the Essays, supposing it to be a deceitful artifice of God; but artificial as opposed to natural, and as owing to an artificial deceitful management of terms, to darken and confound the mind. Men have no such thing when they first begin to exercise reason; but must have a great deal of time to blind themselves with metaphysical confusion, before they can embrace and rest in such definitions of liberty as are given, and imagine they understand them.

On the whole I humbly conceive, that whosoever will give himself the trouble of weighing what I have offered to consideration in my Inquiry, must be sensible that such a moral necessity of men's actions as I maintain, is not at all inconsistent with any liberty that any creature has, or can have, as a free, accountable, moral agent, and subject of moral government; and that this moral necessity is so far from being inconsistent with praise and blame and the benefit and use of men's own care and labour, that, on the contrary, it implies the very ground and reason why men's

actions are to be ascribed to them as their own, in such a manner as to infer desert, praise, and blame, approbation and remorse of conscience, reward and punishment; and that it establishes the moral system of the universe and God's moral government in every respect, with the proper use of motives, exhortations, commands, counsels, promises, and threatenings; and the use and benefit of endeavours, care and industry. There is therefore no need that the strict philosophic truth should be at all concealed; nor is there any danger in contemplation and profound discovery in these things. So far from this, that the truth in this matter is of vast importance, and extremely needful to be known; and the more clearly and perfectly the real fact is known, and the more constantly it is in view, the better. More particularly, that the clear and full knowledge of that which is the true system of the universe in these respects, would greatly establish the doctrines which teach the true Christian scheme of Divine administration in the city of God, and the gospel of Jesus Christ in its most important articles. Indeed these things never can be well estab lished, and the opposite errors-so subversive of the whole gospel, which at this day so greatly and generally prevail-be well confuted, or the arguments by which they are maintained answered, till these points are settled. While this is not done, it is to me beyond doubt, that the friends of those great gospel truths will but poorly maintain their controversy with the adversaries of those truths; they will be obliged often to shuffle, hide, and turn their backs; and the latter will have a strong fort from whence they never can be driven, and weapons to use from which those whom they oppose will find no shield to screen themselves and they will always puzzle, confound, and keep under the friends of sound doctrine, and glory and vaunt themselves in their advantage over them; and carry their affairs with a high hand, as they have done already for a long time past.

I conclude, Sir, with asking your pardon for troubling you with so much in vindication of myself from the imputation of advancing a scheme of necessity, like that of the author of the Essays on the principles of Morality and Natural Religion. Considering that what I have said is not only in vindication of myself, but as I think, one of the most important articles of moral philosophy and religion; I trust in what I know of your candour that you will excuse

Your obliged friend and brother,
J. EDWARDS.

STOCKBRIDGE, JULY 25th, 1757.

THE

GREAT CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

OF

ORIGINAL SIN

DEFENDED;

EVIDENCES OF ITS TRUTH

PRODUCED,

AND

ARGUMENTS TO THE CONTRARY ANSWERED.

CONTAINING, IN PARTICULAR,

A REPLY TO THE OBJECTIONS

OF

DR. JOHN TAYLOR,

IN HIS BOOK, ENTITLED

"THE SCRIPTURE-DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN PROPOSED TO FREE AND CANDID EXAMINATION, &c.",

Matt. ix. 12. They that be whole, need not a Physician; but they that are sick.

-Et hæc non tantum ad Peccatores referenda est; quia in omnibus Maledictionibus primi Hominis omnes ejus Generationes conveniunt.-R. Sal. Jarchi.

Propter Concupiscentiam, innatam Cordi humane, dicitur, In Iniquitate genitus sum, atque Sensu est, quod a Nativitate implantatum Cordi si humano Jetzer harang, Figmentum malum.

Aben-Ezra.