t it
should be thus in all ages, and that this sort of existences should never
fail to come to pass when there is room for them, or a subject capable of
them, and that constantly whenever there is occasion."(115) Now all these
words are put together to prove that non-entity cannot bring forth
effects, at least such effects as we see in the world; for if non-entity
brought them forth, that is, to come to the point in dispute, if
non-entity brought forth our volitions, they would not be always of one
particular sort of effects. But they are of one particular sort, and hence
there must be some antecedent to account for this uniformity in their
nature, and they could not have been brought forth by nonentity! Surely if
anything can equal the fatuity of the hypothesis that nonentity can bring
forth, or that a thing can produce itself, it is a serious attempt to
refute it. How often, while poring over the works of necessitarians, are
we lost in amazement at the logical mania which seems to have seized them,
and which, in its impetuous efforts to settle and determine everything by
reasoning, leaves reason itself neither time nor opportunity to
contemplate the nature of things themselves, or listen to its own most
authoritative and irreversible mandates.

But lest we should be suspected of doing this great metaphysician
injustice, we must point out the means by which he has so grossly deceived
himself. According to his definition of motive, as the younger Edwards
truly says, it includes every cause and condition of volition. If anything
is merely a condition, without which a volition could not come to pass,
though it exerts no influence, it is called a cause of that volition, and
placed in the definition of motive. And if anything exerts a positive
influence to produce volition, this is also a cause of it, and is included
in the same definition. In short, this definition embraces every
conceivable antecedent on which volition in any manner, either in whole or
in part, either negatively or positively, depends. Thus the most
heterogeneous materials are crowded together under one and the same
term,--the most different ideas under one and the same definition. Is it
possible to conceive of a better method of obscuring a subject than such a
course? When Edwards merely means a condition, why does he not say so? and
when he means a producing cause, why does he not use the right word to
express his meaning? If he had carried on the variou