3. This moral inability is the only natural inability that has or can have any thing to do with duty or with morality and religion; or, as has been shown,

4. It consists in disobedience itself. Present moral inability to obey is identical with present disobedience, with a natural inability to obey !

It is amazing to see how so great and good a man could involve himself in a metaphysical fog and bewilder himself and his readers insomuch that such an absolutely senseless distinction as the one now under consideration, should pass into the current phraseology, philosophy, and theology of the church, and a score of theological dogmas be built upon the assumption of its truth. Who does not know that this nonsensical distinction has been in the mouth of the Edwardean school of theologians, from Edward's day to the present? Both saints and sinners have been bewildered, and, I must say, abused by it. Men have been told that they are as really unable to will as God directs, as they were to create themselves, and when it is replied that this inability excuses the sinner, we are directly silenced by the assertion that this is only a moral inability, or an inability of will, and therefore that it is so far from excusing the sinner, that it constitutes the very ground, and substance, and whole of his guilt. Indeed! Men are under moral obligation only to will as God directs. But an inability thus to will consisting in the absence of such motives as would necessitate the required choice, or the presence of such motives as to necessitate an opposite choice, is a moral inability, and really constitutes the sinner worthy of an "exceeding great and eternal weight" of damnation! Ridiculous! Edwards I revere; his blunders I deplore. I speak thus of this Treatise on the Will because, while it abounds with unwarrantable assumptions, distinctions without a difference, and metaphysical subtleties, it has been adopted as the text book of a multitude of what are called Calvinistic divines for scores of years. It has bewildered the head, and greatly embarassed the heart and the action of the church of God. It is time, high time that its errors should be exposed and so "shown up" that such phraseology should be laid aside, and the ideas which these words represent should cease to be entertained.

IV. WHAT CONSTITUTES MORAL ABILITY ACCORDING TO THIS SCHOOL.

It is of course the opposite of moral inability.

Moral ability according to them, consists in willingness with the cause of it. That is, moral ability to obey God consists in that inclination, desire, choice, volition, or sense of the most agreeable which God requires together with its cause. Or it consists in the presence of such motives as do actually necessitate the above named state or determination of the will. Or more strictly it consists in this state caused by the presence of these motives.

This is as exact a statement of their views as I can make. According to this, a man is morally able to do, as he does, and is necessitated to do, or, he is morally able to will as he does will, and as he can not help willing.

He is morally able to will in this manner simply and only because he is caused thus to will by the presence of such motives as are, according to them, "indissolubly connected" with such willing by a law of nature and necessity. But this conducts us to the conclusion,

V. THAT THEIR MORAL ABILITY TO OBEY GOD IS NOTHING ELSE THAN REAL OBEDIENCE, AND A NATURAL INABILITY TO DISOBEY.

Strictly this moral ability includes both the state of will required by the law of God and also the cause of this state, to wit, the presence of such motives as necessitate the inclination, choice, volition or sense of the most agreeable, that God requires.

The agent is able thus to will because he is caused thus to will. Or more strictly, his ability and his inclination or willing are identical. Or still further, according to Edwards, his moral ability to thus will and his thus willing and the presence of the motives that cause this willing are identical. This is a sublime discovery in philosophy; a most transcendental speculation! I would not treat these notions as ridiculous, were they not truly so, or if I could treat them in any other manner and still do them any thing like justice. If, where the theory is plainly stated, it appears ridiculous, the fault is not in me, but in the theory itself. I know it is trying to you, as it is to me to connect any thing ridiculous with so great and so revered a name as that of President Edwards. But if a blunder of his has entailed perplexity and error on the church, surely his great and good soul would now thank the hand that should blot out the error from under heaven.

Thus, when closely examined, this long established and venerated fog-bank vanishes away; and this famed distinction between moral and natural ability and inability, is found to be "a thing of nought."

LECTURE XLVIII.

INABILITY.

THERE are yet other forms of the doctrine of inability to be stated and considered before we have done with this subject. In the consideration of the one before me I must,

I. STATE WHAT I CONSIDER TO BE THE FUNDAMENTAL ERROR OF EDWARDS AND HIS SCHOOL ON THE SUBJECT OF ABILITY.

II. STATE THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SCHEME OF INABILITY

WHICH WE ARE ABOUT TO CONSIDER.

III. CONSIDER ITS CLAIMS.

I. I AM TO STATE WHAT I CONSIDER TO BE THE FUNDAMENTAL ERROR OF EDWARDS AND HIS SCHOOL UPON THE SUBJECT OF ABILITY.

Edwards adopted the Lockean philosophy. He regarded the mind as possessing but two primary faculties, the understanding and the will. He considered all the desires, emotions, affections, appetites, and passions as voluntary, and as really consisting in acts of will. This confounding of the states of the sensibility with acts of the will I regard as the fundamental error of his whole system of philosophy so far as it respects the liberty of the will or the doctrine of ability. Being conscious that the emotions, which he calls affections, the desires, the appctites and passions, were so correlated to their appropriate objects, that they are excited by the presence or contemplation of them, and assuming them to be voluntary states of mind, or actions of the will, he very naturally, and with this assumption, necessarily and justly concluded that the will was governed or decided by the objective motive. Assuming as he did that the mind has but two faculties, understanding and will, and that every state of feeling and of mind that did not belong to the understanding, must be a voluntary state or act of will, and being conscious that his feelings, desires, affections, appetites and passions, were excited by the contemplation of their correlated objects, he could consistently come to no other

conclusion than that the will is determined by motives, and that choice always is as the most agreeable is.

Had he not sat down to write with the assumption of the Lockean school of philosophy in his mind, his Treatise on the Will, in any thing like its present form, could never have seen the light. But assuming the truth of that philosophy, a mind like his could arrive at no other conclusions than he did. He took upon trust or assumed without inquiry an error that vitiated his whole system, and gave birth to that injurious monstrosity and misnomer, "Edwards on the Freedom of the Will."

He justly held that moral law legislates and can strictly legislate only over acts of will and those acts that are under the control of the will. This he, with his mental development, could not deny, nor think of denying. Had he but given or assumed a correct definition of the will and excluded from its acts the wholly involuntary states of the sensibility, he never could have asserted that the will is always and necessarily determined by the objective motive.

Assuming the philosophy of Locke, and being conscious that the states of his sensibility, which he called acts of will, were controlled or excited by motives or by the consideration of their correlated objects, his great soul labored to bring about a reconciliation between the justice of God and this real though not, so called slavery of the human will. This led him to adopt the distinction which we have examined between a moral and a natural inability. Thus, as a theolo gian, he committed a capital error in suffering himself to take upon trust another man's philosophy. Happy is the man who takes the trouble to examine for himself whatever is essential to his system of opinion and belief.

II. I AM TO STATE THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SCHEME OF INABILITY WHICH WE ARE ABOUT TO CONSIDER.

1. This philosophy properly distinguishes between the will and the sensibility. It regards the mind as possessing three primary departments, powers, or susceptibilities, the intellect, the sensibility and the will. It does not always call these departments or susceptibilities by these names, but if I understand them, the abettors of this philosophy hold to their existence, by whatever name they may call them.

2. This philosophy also holds that the states of the inte lect and of the sensibility are passive and involuntary.

3. It holds that freedom of will is a condition of moral agency.

4. It also teaches that the will is free and consequently that man is a free moral agent.

5. It teaches that the will controls the outward life and the attention of the intellect, directly, and many of the emo tions, desires, affections, appetites, and passions, or many states of the sensibility, indirectly.

6. It teaches that men have ability to obey God so far forth as acts of will are concerned, and also so far as those acts and states of mind are concerned that are under the direct or indirect control of the will.

7. But they hold that moral obligation may, and in the casc of man at least, does extend beyond moral agency and be yond the sphere of ability; that ability or freedom of will is essential to moral agency, but that freedom of will or moral agency, does not limit moral obligation; that moral agency and moral obligation are not co-extensive; consequently that moral obligation is not limited by ability or by moral agency.

8. This philosophy asserts that moral obligation extends to those states of mind that lie wholly beyond or without the sphere or control of the will; that it extends not merely to voluntary acts and states, together with all acts and states that come within the direct or indirect control of the will, but, as was said, it insists that those mental states that lie wholly beyond the will's direct or indirect control, come within the pale of moral legislation and obligation; and that therefore obligation is not limited by ability.

9. This philosophy seems to have been invented to reconcile the doctrine of original sin in the sense of a sinful nature or of constitutional moral depravity with moral obligation. As suming that original sin in this sense is a doctrine of divine revelation, it takes the bold and uncompromising ground already stated, namely, that moral obligation is not merely coextensive with moral agency and ability, but extends beyond both into the region of those mental states that lie entirely without the will's direct or indirect control.

10. This bold assertion the abettors of this philosophy attempt to support by an appeal to the necessary convictions of men and to the authority of the Bible. They allege that the instinctive judgments of men as well as the Bible everywhere assume and affirm moral obligation and moral charac ter of the class of mental states in question.