o absurdly as to say, "that if
the dispositions of the mind, or acts of the will, _be never so good_, yet
if the cause of the disposition or act be not our virtue, there is nothing
virtuous or praiseworthy in it," we have not one word to say in his
defence; nor shall we ever raise our voice in favour of any one, who shall
maintain, that "if the will, in its inclinations or acts, _be never so
bad_, yet, unless it arises from something that is our vice or fault,
there is nothing vicious or blameworthy in it." For we are firmly
persuaded, that if the acts of the will be good, then they are good; and
if they be bad, then they are bad; whatever may have been their origin or
cause. We shall have no dispute about such truisms as these.

We insist, indeed, that the first virtuous act of the first man was so,
because it partook of the nature of virtue, and not because it had a
virtuous origin or cause in a preceding virtuous disposition of the mind.
But, in his work on Original Sin, Edwards contends otherwise. He there
contends, that no act of Adam could have been virtuous, unless it had
proceeded from a virtuous origin or cause in the disposition of his heart;
and that this could have had no existence in the world, unless it had
proceeded from the power of the Creator. Thus he looked beyond the nature
of the act itself, even to its origin and cause, in order to show upon
what its moral nature depended; but now he insists that we should simply
look at its own nature, and not to its origin or cause, in order to
determine this point. He ascends from acts of the will to their origin or
cause, in order to show that virtue can only consist with the scheme of
necessity; and yet he denies to us the privilege of ascending with him, in
order to show that the nature of virtue cannot at all consist with the
scheme of necessity!

We admit that the virtuousness of every virtuous act lies, not in its
origin or cause, but in itself. But still we insist that a virtuous act,
as well as everything else, may be traced to a false origin or cause that
is utterly inconsistent with its very nature. A horse is undoubtedly a
horse, come from whence it may; but yet if any one should tell us that
horses grow up out of the earth, or drop down out of the clouds, we should
certainly understand him to speak of mere phantoms, and no real horses, or
we should think him very greatly mistaken. In like manner, when we are
told that virtue may be, and is, necessita