LITERARY

AND

THEOLOGICAL REVIEW.

ART. I.

NO. IV. DECEMBER, 1834.

REVIEW OF EDWARDS ON THE WILL.

By Rev. ENOCH POND, Professor in Theological Seminary, Bangor, Me.

A careful and strict Inquiry into the modern prevailing notions of that Freedom of Will, which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame. By Jonathan Edwards, President of New-Jersey College.

A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will. By Thomas C. Upham. Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Bowdoin College, 1834.

A NATURAL and beneficial effect of controversy in the Christian church has been, to draw attention and interest towards important controverted truths, to bring them into clearer light, and cause them to be better understood, and more justly appreciated. Such was the effect of the Arian controversy in respect to the doctrine of the Trinity; and of the Pelegian controversy in respect to the doctrine of depravity; and of the controversy of Luther with the Romanists, in respect to the doctrine of justification by faith. And such, it may be added, has been the effect of the Arminian controversy in respect to the doctrine of God's universal purposes, and the consistency of these purposes with human freedom. Much attention has been bestowed upon these difficult subjects in the controversies of the last two hundred years; nor has it been altogether in vain. It is not too much to say that, by some at least, these subjects are now better understood, and more justly and faithfully exhibited, than they have been at any time since the days of the apostles.

The Arminian controversy originated in Holland, near the commencement of the seventeenth century. The points involved in it had been the occasion of inquiry and discussion at earlier periods; but they were now introduced for the first time into the Reformed churches, in a way to excite attention and engender strife.

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From Holland, the peculiar sentiments of the Arminians soon travelled into England, and under the administration of archbishop Laud, seem to have infected very generally the English church. They received a check, during the Protectorate of Cromwell; but revived with increased power and effect under the oppressive and licentious reigns of the second Charles, and his brother James.

Our Pilgrim fathers were strict Calvinists; and their descendants, for several generations, adhered closely to the principles of their pious ancestors. But events have since shown, that the children of the pilgrims were not proof against the influence of Arminian corruptions, which, like most of the errours which have infested our churches, were poured in upon us from the mother country. More than a hundred years ago, the writings of Whitby were circulated in New-England; and after them, the publications of Turn-` bull and Taylor. Our spiritual soil was then in a fit state to receive seed of this kind, and it took root, and sprung up, and brought forth fruit in abundance. In the year 1734, President Edwards speaks of a general alarm through "the country about Arminianism, which appeared with a very threatening aspect upon the interests of religion." "The friends of vital piety," he says, " trembled for fear of the issue."

But when errour and licentiousness were coming in like a flood, the Lord was pleased to lift up a standard against them. The great revivals of religion, which, for ten years together, prevailed over all the settled parts of New-England, imposed, for the time, an effectual barrier to the spread of Arminianism; and when these effusions of mercy ceased, a class of ministers who had been peculiarly blessed in them, and had learned lessons which the schools could not teach, were prepared and disposed to take up their pens, and defend the precious doctrines of the Gospel.

Among these distinguished and devoted ministers, the name of Edwards stands pre-eminent. He had been, under God, the father of the recent revivals. They commenced under his ministry and were promoted by his labors more, perhaps, than by those of any other individual. He watched the progress of them at every step, reproved their incautious and injudicious friends, and silenced their noisy and presumptuous enemies; and when, at length the grieved Spirit of God withdrew, and coldness and lethargy succeeded, and Arminianism began to creep from its hiding-places,

to renew its ravages upon the church, he was the first to meet it in the field of open controversy.

President Edwards had projected his Treatise on the Will, as early as 1747, several years before his dismission from Northampton. In a letter to Mr. Erskine, written some time in the summer of 1747, he says, "I have thought of writing something particularly and largely on the Arminian controversy, in distinct discourses, on the various points in dispute; beginning first with a discourse concerning the Freedom of the Will, and Moral Agency, endeavouring fully and thoroughly to state and discuss those points of liberty and necessity, moral and physical inability, efficacious grace, and the ground of virtue and vice, reward and punishment, blame and praise, with regard to the dispositions and actions of reasonable creatures."

By various interruptions, President Edwards was hindered from accomplishing the design thus announced, until the winter and spring of 1753. He was now residing at Stockbridge, Mass., and diligently engaged in the various labours of his parish, and of his Indian missions; but notwithstanding these, he was enabled, in a period not exceeding four months and a half, to put forth a work, the influence of which will be felt through many generations, and which has raised its author to a distinguished rank among the divines and philosophers of the world. It is well remarked by his biographer, that perhaps "no similar example of power and rapidity united, is to be found in the annals of mental effort."

Previous to the time of Edwards, the subject of moral agency had not been thoroughly investigated, and was not understood. Certain things were often supposed to be necessarily involved in freedom of will, which are not involved in it; and from this erroneous supposition, resulted consequences most unfavorable to the cause of truth. For instance, it seems to have been admitted, previous to the time of Edwards, that freedom of will necessarily implies indifference of will; or that man is not the subject of any natural bias to evil, which it requires the interposition of divine grace to overcome. Hence those who held the doctrine of native depravity were led to deny the freedom of the will. It was on this ground that Augustine, Luther and Calvin, (as any one may satisfy himself who reads their works,) discarded free agency, and laboured to establish what they called

the slavery of the will. All they meant by this phraseology was, that the will of fallen man is not in a state of indifference, but is under what Paul denominates the bondage of corruption. In other words, they insisted that the will of man is subject to a powerful and (to mere human strength) an invincible bias to evil, which renders it certain that he will sin, and only sin, till divine grace interposes, and the evil of the heart is overcome. Thus Augustine asks, “If therefore, men are the slaves of sin, why do they boast of free will? For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage." Luther wrote a treatise concerning the Slavery of the Will. And Calvin taught, that "man, in his present state is despoiled of freedom of will, and subjected to a miserable slavery." Now the fact, which these eminent Christian writers laboured to establish, is scriptural and true. The will of fallen man is not in a state of indifference, but is subject to such a bias to evil as renders it certain that he will persist in sin, unless divine grace interpose to deliver him from it. But they mistook in conceding that this fact is inconsistent with the free agency of man; and in this way they gave their adversaries an advantage over them.

It was formerly admitted that freedom of action, necessarily implies contingency of action; or that there can be no previous certainty, or moral necessity, relative to the actions of free agents. Hence those who maintained the doctrines of God's foreknowledge and decrees, as extending to the actions of men, felt themselves necessitated to deny the freedom of the will.

It was moreover asserted by Arminians, and admitted by some distinguished Calvinists, in the days of Edwards, that freedom of will necessarily implies a self-determining power of will. Those Calvinists who made this admission, (among whom were Doctors Watts and Doddridge*) felt the importance of maintaining, in opposition to Material

Dr. Watts was the author of "An Essay on the Freedom of Will in God, and Creatures," in which he argues in favour of the self-determining power. President Edwards refers to this Essay, and controverts it at length, in his Treatise on the Will. The younger Edwards, speaking of the state of things in the religious world, at the time when his father commenced writing the work before us, says, "The Calvinists themselves began to be ashamed of their own cause, and to give it up, so far at least as relates to liberty and necessity. This was true, especially of Dr. Watts and Dr. Doddridge, who, in their day, were accounted leaders of the Calvinists. They must needs bow in the house of Rimmon, and admit the self-determining power, which, once admitted, and pursu