aculties."(106) And still more explicitly, "all acts of the will are
truly acts of the affections."(107) Is it not strange, that one who could
exhibit such wonderful discrimination when the exigences of his system
demanded the exercise of such a power, should have confounded things so
clearly distinct in their natures as an act of the will and an agreeable
impression made on the sensibility?

It is not possible for any mind, no matter how great its powers, to see
the nature of things clearly when it comes to the contemplation of them
with such a confusion of ideas. Even President Edwards is not exempt from
the common lot of humanity. His doctrine is necessarily enveloped in
obscurity. We can turn it in no light without being struck with its
inconsistencies or its futility. He repeatedly says, the will is always
determined by the strongest affection, or appetite, or passion; that is,
by the most agreeable state of the sensibility. But if the will and the
sensibility are identical, as his language expressly makes them; or if the
states of the one are not distinguishable from the states of the other,
then to say that the will is always determined by the sensibility, or an
act of the will by the strongest affection of the sensibility, is to say
that a thing is determined by itself. It is to say, in fact, that the will
is always determined by itself; a doctrine against which he uniformly
protests. Nay, more, that an act of the will causes itself; a position
which he has repeatedly ascribed to his opponents, and held up to the
derision of mankind.

It is very remarkable, that Edwards seems to have been conscious, at
times, that he laid himself open to the charge of such an absurdity, when
he said that the will is determined by the greatest apparent good, or by
what seems most agreeable to the mind. For he says, "I have chosen rather
to express myself thus, that the will always is as the greatest apparent
good, or as what appears most agreeable, than to say the will is
determined by the greatest apparent good, or by what seems most agreeable;
_because an appearing most agreeable to the mind, and the mind's
preferring, seem scarcely distinct_." We have taken the liberty to
emphasize his words. Now here he tells us that the "mind's preferring," by
which word he has explained himself to mean willing,(108) is scarcely
distinct from "an appearing most agreeable to the mind." Here he returns
to his psychology, and identifies the mos