A Review of Edwards's   By: Henry Philip Tappan (1805-1881)

"INQUIRY

INTO THE

FREEDOM OF THE WILL."

CONTAINING

I. STATEMENT OF EDWARDS'S SYSTEM.

II. THE LEGITIMATE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS SYSTEM.

III. AN EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST A SELF DETERMINING WILL.

BY HENRY PHILIP TAPPAN.

"I am afraid that Edwards's book (however well meant,) has done much harm in England, as it has secured a favourable hearing to the same doctrines, which, since the time of Clarke, had been generally ranked among the most dangerous errors of Hobbes and his disciples." Dugald Stewart .

NEW YORK:

JOHN S. TAYLOR,

THEOLOGICAL PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER, BRICK CHURCH CHAPEL,

1839.

Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1839, by HENRY PHILIP TAPPAN, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.

G. F. Hopkins, Printer, 2 Ann street.

INTRODUCTION.

Discussions respecting the will, have, unhappily, been confounded with theological opinions, and hence have led to theological controversies, where predilections for a particular school or sect, have generally prejudged the conclusions of philosophy. As a part of the mental constitution, the will must be subjected to the legitimate methods of psychological investigation, and must abide the result. If we enter the field of human consciousness in the free, fearless, and honest spirit of Baconian observation in order to arrive at the laws of the reason or the imagination, what should prevent us from pursuing the same enlightened course in reference to the will?

Is it because responsibility and the duties of morality and religion are more immediately connected with the will? This, indeed, throws solemnity around our investigations, and warns us of caution; but, at the same time, so far from repressing investigation, it affords the highest reason why we should press it to the utmost limit of consciousness. Nothing surely can serve more to fix our impressions of moral obligation, or to open our eye to the imperishable truth and excellency of religion, than a clear and ripe knowledge of that which makes us the subjects of duty. As a believer in philosophy, I claim unbounded liberty of thought, and by thinking I hope to arrive at truth. As a believer in the Bible I always anticipate that the truths to which philosophy leads me, will harmonize with its facts and doctrines. If in the result there should appear to be a collision, it imposes upon me the duty of re examining both my philosophy and my interpretation of the text. In this way I may in the end remove the difficulty, and not only so, but even gain from the temporary and apparent collision, a deeper insight into both philosophy and religion. If the difficulty cannot be removed, then it remains a vexed point. It does not follow, however, that I must either renounce the philosophical conclusion, or remove the text.