A Treatise on Free Agency; Maintaining That the Immutability of the Divine Nature Is Perfectly Compatible with the Moral Freedom of the Intellectual ... Comprising Its Most Remarkable Internal Evid - Tapa blanda

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This historic book may have numerous typos or missing text. Not indexed. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1829. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... PART THE SECOND. SECTION I. On human conduct, respecting which Christ recognises the free-agency of man. Respecting moral conduct, true reason, that lover of impartiality, would teach man not to pardon in himself whatever faults, vices, or crimes he would condemn in another. Nor can we suppose any rational being, in the commencement of an evil career, to be void of so much discernment. Certainly, the frequent perpetration of evil may so darken a transgressor's mind, as to render him blind, more or less, to his awful condition: but in this he is equally culpable as if he were actually conscious of all his improprieties, since to have hurled himself into such a deep gulph of mental darkness and depravity is so extremely reprehensible. As to free-agency, it is not here intended to be confined to cases of moral evil. For, according to circumstances, man being accountable respecting the perpetration of moral evil, implies that he possesses such a power (whether derived or otherwise) as would have enabled him to avoid such culpability; free-agents having thence a power to do good (whether derived or otherwise) as well as to act on the opposite side of the question. In short, if man had no more than a power to be always wrong, I cannot discern how he could ever be justly accountable for not doing what he never could do. As, however, where man acts rightly he proves conformable to the divine will; he could not from this alone be necessarily inferred a free-agent. Demonstration, therefore, in this complexion of the subject, must be deduced from cases of moral evil; which, when obtained, leads us to conclude that as man is culpable for doing evil, or (in other words) for not doing good when he had it in his power; so, as having a power to do good (whether derived or...