I. Statement Of Edwards’sSystem.
II. The LegitimateConsequences Of This System.
III. An Examination of the ArgumentsAgainst a Self-Determining Will.
A REVIEW OF EDWARDS’S
“INQUIRY
INTO THE
FREEDOM OF THE WILL.”
CONTAINING
BY HENRY PHILIP TAPPAN.
“I am afraid that Edwards’s book (however well meant,) has donemuch harm in England, as it has secured a favourable hearing tothe same doctrines, which, since the time of Clarke, had beengenerally ranked among the most dangerous errors of Hobbes andhis disciples.”—Dugald Stewart.
NEW-YORK:
JOHN S. TAYLOR,
THEOLOGICAL PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER,
BRICK CHURCH CHAPEL,
1839.
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1839,by
HENRY PHILIP TAPPAN,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States,for the
Southern District of New-York.
G. F. Hopkins, Printer, 2 Ann-street.
Discussions respecting thewill, have, unhappily, been confounded with theological opinions,and hence have led to theological controversies, wherepredilections for a particular school or sect, have generallyprejudged the conclusions of philosophy. As a part of the mentalconstitution, the will must be subjected to the legitimatemethods of psychological investigation, and must abide theresult. If we enter the field of human consciousness in the free,fearless, and honest spirit of Baconian observation in order toarrive at the laws of the reason or the imagination, what shouldprevent us from pursuing the same enlightened course in referenceto the will?
Is it because responsibility and the duties ofmorality and religion are more immediately connected with thewill? This, indeed, throws solemnity around our investigations,and warns us of caution; but, at the same time, so far fromrepressing investigation, it affords the highest reason why weshould press it to the utmost limit of consciousness. Nothingsurely can serve more to fix our impressions of moral obligation,or to open our eye to the imperishable truth and excel