is not the
cause but the consequence of our will; or Clarke's theory of liberty, as
consisting in agency which seems to erect an infinite number of
subsidiary first causes in the wills of all created beings. A short cut
to the same conclusions consists in simply denying the objective reality
of chance or contingency; but Edwards has no love of short cuts in such
matters, or rather cannot refuse himself the pleasure of following the
circuitous route as well as explaining the more direct method.

This main principle established, Edwards has of course no difficulty in
showing that the supposed injury to morality rests on a misconception of
the real doctrine. If volitions, instead of being caused, are the
products of arbitrary chance, morality becomes meaningless. We approve
or disapprove of an action precisely because it implies the existence of
motives, good or bad. Punishment and reward would be useless if actions
were after all a matter of chance; and if merit implied the existence of
free-will, the formation of virtuous habits would detract from a man's
merit in so far as they tend to make virtue necessary. So far, in short,
as you admit the existence of an element of pure chance, you restrict
the sphere of law; and therefore morality, so far from excluding,
necessarily involves an invariable connection between motives and
actions.

Arguments of this kind, sufficiently familiar to all students of the
subject, are combined with others of a more doubtful character. Edwards
has no hesitation about dealing with the absolute and the infinite. He
dwells, for example, with great ingenuity upon the difficulty of
reconciling the Divine prescience with the contingency of human actions,
and has no scruple in inferring the possibility of reconciling virtue
with necessity from the fact that God is at once the type of all
perfection, and is under a necessity to be perfect. If such arguments
would be rejected as transcending the limits of human intelligence by
many who agree with his conclusions, others, equally characteristic, are
as much below the dignity of a metaphysician. Edwards draws his proofs
with the same equanimity from the most abstruse speculations as from a
child-like belief in the literal inspiration of the Scriptures. He
'proves,' for example, God's foreknowledge of human actions from such
facts as Micaiah's prophecy of Ahab's sin, and Daniel's acquaintance
with the 'horrid wickedness' about to be committed by Antioc