s employed to express the relation of an effect to its cause.
In this sense, it is so far from being inconsistent with activity, that
activity may be the very effect which is produced. A cannonshot is said to
be passive, with respect to the charge of powder which impels it. But is
there no activity given to the ball? Is not the whirlwind active when it
tears up the forest?"(130) Not at all, in any sense pertaining to the
present controversy. The tremendous power, whatever it may be, which sets
the whirlwind in motion, is active; the wind itself is perfectly passive.
The air is acted on, and it merely _suffers_ a change of place. If it
tears up the forest, this is not because it exercises an active power, but
because it is body coming into contact with body, and both cannot occupy
the same space at one and the same time. It tears up the forest, not as an
agent, but as an instrument.

The same is true of the cannonball. This does not _act_; it merely
_moves_. It does not put forth a volition, or an exercise of power; it
merely suffers a change of place. In one word, there is no sort of
resemblance between an act of mind and the motion of body. This has no
active power, and cannot be made to act: it is passive, however, and may
be made to move. If the question were, Can a body be made to move? these
illustrations would be in point; but as it relates to the possibility of
causing the mind to put forth a volition, they are clearly irrelevant. And
if they were really apposite, they would only show that the mind may be
caused to act like a cannonball, a whirlwind, a clock, or any other piece
of machinery. This is the only kind of _action_ they serve to prove may be
caused; and such action, as it is called, has far more to do with
machinery than with human agency.

President Edwards also has recourse to false analogies. To select only one
instance: "It is no more a contradiction," says he, "to suppose that
action may be the effect of some other cause besides the agent, or being
that acts, than to suppose that life may be the effect of some other cause
besides the being that lives."(131) Now, as we are wholly passive in the
reception of life, so it may be wholly conferred upon us by the power and
agency of God. The very reason why we suppose an act cannot be caused is,
that it is a voluntary exercise of our own minds; whereas, if it were
caused, it would be a necessitated passive impression. How can it show the
fallacy of this p