An Examination of President Edwards' Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will. Albert Taylor Bledsoe

overthrows “the great principle of common sense” that cause and effect necessarily imply each other; and involves all our reasoning from cause to effect, and vice versa, in the utmost perplexity and confusion. It throws clouds and darkness over the whole field of inquiry.

      Since the time of Dr. Samuel Clarke, it has been frequently objected to the scheme of moral necessity, that it is involved in the great absurdity of an infinite series of causes. President Edwards urged this objection against the doctrine of the self-determining power; he did not perceive that it lay against his own scheme of the motive-determining power; and hence, he has not even attempted to answer it. This was reserved for the younger Edwards; and although he has deservedly ranked high as a logician, I cannot but regard his attempt to answer the objection in question, as one of the most remarkable abortions in the history of philosophy.