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The Modern Prevailing Notions Respecting that Freedom of Will
The Modern Prevailing Notions Respecting that Freedom of Will Author:Jonathan Edwards Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INQUIEY, ETC., ETC. PART I. WHEREIN ARE EXPLAINED AND STATED VARIOUS TERMS AND THINGS BELONGING TO THE SUBJECT Or THE ENSUING DISCOURSE. SECTION I. ... more » CONCERNING THE NATURE OF THE WILL. It may possibly be thought that there is no great need of going about to define or describe the will; this word being generally as well understood as any other words we can use to explain it: and so, perhaps, it would be, had not philosophers, metaphysicians, and polemic divines, brought the matter into obscurity by the things they have said of it. But since it is so, I think it may be of some use, and will tend to the greater clearness in the following discourse, to say a few things concerning it. And therefore I observe, that the will (without any metaphysical refining) is plainly, that by which the mind chooses anything. The faculty of the will is that faculty or power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing: an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice. If any think it is a more perfect definition of the will to say, that, It is that by which the soul either chooses or refuses, I am content with it; though I think that it is enough to say, It is that by which the soul chooses : for in every act of will whatsoever, the mind chooses one thing rather than another; it chooses something rather than the contrary, or rather than the want or non- existence of that thing. So, in every act of refusal, the mind chooses the absence of the thing refused; the positive and the negative are set before the mind for its choice, and it chooses the negative ; and the mind's making its choice in that case is properly the act of the will; the will's determining between the two is a voluntary determining, but that is the same thing as making a choice. So that what...« less