Albert Taylor Bledsoe

“ Is it not wonderful, to behold the great and good author of the Inquiry, thus planting himself upon the very ground of atheistical fatalism; and from thence, in sober, serious earnestness, holding out to us, as a great and glorious reality, the mere name and shadow and fiction of liberty? the very phantom which atheists, in mockery and derision, have been pleased to confer upon mankind, as upon poor blind fools, who merely dream of liberty, and fondly dote upon the empty name thereof, whilst they are ignorant of the chains which bind them fast in fate. ”

“ Look where he will, he sees not the “free and flowing outline” of nature’s true lineaments; he every where beholds the image of the one fixed idea in his mind, projected outwardly upon the universe of God; behind which the true secrets and operations of nature are concealed from his vision. Even when he contemplates that living source of action, that bubbling fountain of volitions, the immortal mind of man itself, he only beholds a thing, which is made to act by the action of something else upon it; just as a body is made to move by the action of force upon it. ”

“ The only cause in every case of motion, is that force, whatever it may be, which acts upon the body moved, and puts it in motion. All the rest is pure passion or passiveness. The motion of the body is not action; it is the most pure passion of which the mind can form a conception. If a body in action is said to act upon another, this is but a metaphor; there is no real action in the case. Indeed, if a body be put in motion, and meets with no resistance, it will move on in a right line forever—and why? ”

“ On the contrary, I think we should contend for a perfect indifference, not in regard to feeling, but in regard to the will. Standing on this high ground, we need not retire from the broad and open field, in order to set up the empire of a perfect liberty in a dark corner, extending to a few insignificant things only: we may establish it over the whole range of human activity, bringing out into a clear and full light, the great fact of man’s perfect accountability, for all his actions, under all the circumstances of his life. ”

“ Why we cease to be free agents; and it is only when the storm of passion subsides, that we are restored to the rank of accountable beings. “Sometimes a boisterous passion hurries away our thoughts,” says Locke, “as a hurricane does our bodies, without leaving us the liberty of thinking on other things, which we would rather choose. But as soon as the mind regains the power to stop or continue, begin or forbear, any of these motives of the body without, or thoughts within, according as it thinks fit to prefer either to the other, we then consider the man as a free-agent again.” ”

“ It is no reason for disbelieving a thing, that we cannot conceive how it is. This will be readily admitted; but this principle, like every other, may be misapplied and abused. If any thing is possible in itself considered, that is, if it implies no contradiction, we should not refuse to believe it, because we cannot conceive how it is. When confined within these limits, the principle or maxim in question is one of immense importance; and to disregard it betrays one of the greatest weaknesses to which the human mind is exposed. ”

“ Is choice produced by choice? Then this dependence of choice upon choice, shows it to be necessary. Is choice not produced by choice? Then this independence of choice upon choice is the very thing which shows it to be necessary! Thus this great champion of necessity, just passes from one meaning of the term to another, without the least regard to the point in dispute, or to the logical coherency of his argument. Surely, if “a reluctant world has bowed in homage” to his logic, it must have been because the world has been too indolent to pry into the sophisms with which it swarms. ”

“ Yes, no matter how we come by our choice, though it be wrought into us by the most uncontrollable power in the universe, yet are we free in the highest conceivable sense of the word, if we can only “conduct according to our choice.” This, instead of being the greatest liberty, is indeed the greatest mockery, of which it is possible for the imagination of man to conceive. The liberty of fate itself, is, in all respects, to the full as desirable as such a liberty as this. ”

“ Every change in the external world requires a producing cause; who then can possibly conceive of a volition as existing upon any other terms or conditions! It is this fallacy, this begging of the question, this perpetual declaration that it is self-evident, that has, through a natural illusion of the senses, spread the scheme of necessity far and wide over the minds of men. It is this grand illusion of the senses, or, if you please, of the mind, that has brought “the dictates of reason,” as they have been called, into conflict with the testimony of consciousness. ”

“ The truth is, we must reason about cause and effect as they appear to us; and whether time be an illusion or not, we must, in all our reasonings, conceive of cause and effect as conjoined in what we call time, or we cannot reason at all. According to the younger Edwards, the act of creation, not the mere purpose to create, but the real causative act of creation, existed in the divine mind from all eternity. Why then did the world spring up and come into existence at one point of time rather than another? ”

“ Edwards looks for liberty, and he finds it, not in the will, but in the motions of the body, which is universally admitted to be passive to the action of the will. He looks for liberty, and he finds it, where, by universal consent, an absolute necessity reigns; thus seeking and finding the living among the dead. It is no wonder, that he could reconcile such a liberty with the scheme of necessity. ”

“ It strikes my mind with the force of a self-evident truth, that nothing can be our virtue, unless we are in some sense the author of it; and to affirm that a man may be justly praised or blamed, that he may be esteemed virtuous or vicious, on account of what he has wholly and exclusively received from another, appears to me to contradict one of the clearest and most unequivocal dictates of reason, one of the most universal and irreversible laws of human belief. ”

“ Until this be shown, we must contend that there is nothing in the universe so diametrically opposed to all free-agency—to all liberty of the will, as the scheme of moral necessity; which so clearly overthrows and, demolishes the very idea of a will and all its volitions.
Indeed, what is called natural necessity does not properly interfere with the liberty of the will at all; it merely restrains the freedom of motion. It is moral necessity that reaches the seat of the mind, and takes away all the freedom thereof; even denying to us the possession of a will itself. ”

“ Now, to place liberty in this “choosing as we choose,” without regard to the cause or origin of our choice, is just about as rational as it would be to place it in the axioms of geometry. Suppose a man is made to choose, by an absolute and uncontrollable power; it is nevertheless true, that he chooses as he does choose. This cannot be otherwise than true; it is a self-evident and necessary truth; for nothing can be different from itself, can be what it is, and yet not what it is, at one and the same time. ”

“ Every change throughout inanimate nature bespeaks the agency of Him, who “sits concealed behind his own creation,” but is everywhere manifested by his omnipresent energy. The human body is an effect, teeming with evidences of the most wonderful skill of its Great Cause and Contriver. The soul itself is an effect,—the soul, with all its complicated and wonder-working powers, is an effect; and clearly proclaims the wisdom, and the goodness, and the holiness of its Maker. The heavens above us, with all its shining hosts and admirable mechanism, proclaims the glory of God ”

“ Shall we strive to make the matter plain, in a single instance, by assigning an efficient cause to an act of the will? If so, whether we escape the mystery or not, we shall certainly plunge into absurdity. We shall embrace a doctrine, which denies the nature of action, and which is necessarily involved in the great absurdity of an infinite series of causes. For my part, I prefer a simple statement of the fact of volition, with its attendant circumstances, how much soever of mystery it may seem to leave around the subject, to any explanation which involves it in absurdity. ”

“ The stern and unrelenting features of fatalism cannot always be so intimately present to the mind, as entirely to exclude it from the contemplation of a milder and more captivating system of philosophy. Notwithstanding the influence of system, how rigid soever may be its demands, the human mind will, in its moments of relaxation, recognize in its feelings and in its utterance, those great truths which are inseparable from its very nature. ”

“ We pervert it from its true meaning and import; we identify volition with local motion; we involve ourselves in the greatest of all absurdities, as well as in the most ruinous of all doctrines.
As we have already said, then, we do not give up the great principle of common sense, that every effect must have a cause. We recognize this principle when we reason from effect to cause—when we ascend from the creation up to the Creator. We deny that volition is an effect; and what then? If volition be not an effect, are there no effects in the universe? Are we sunk in utter darkness? ”

“ In the same easy way, President Edwards, as he imagines, demolishes the doctrine of indifference. He supposes that, according to this doctrine, the will does not choose when it does choose; and, having supposed this, he proceeds to demolish it, as if he were contending with a thousand adversaries; and yet, I will venture to affirm, that no man in his senses ever maintained such a position. The most contemptible advocate of free-agency that ever lived, has maintained nothing so absurd as that the mind ever chooses without choosing. ”

“ There is no other course marked out for us by the immortal Bacon: and if we pursue any other we may wander in the dazzling light of a thousand abstractions, and behold whatever fleeting images of grandeur and of beauty we may be pleased to conjure up for ourselves; but the pure light of nature and of truth will be hid from us. ”

“ Now, to say that one thing operates to induce another, or bring it into existence, is, according to the definition of the younger Edwards himself, to say that it is the efficient cause of the thing so produced. If there be any meaning in words, or any truth in the definition of the Edwardses, then to say that one thing operates to produce another, is to say that it is its efficient cause. ”

“ Inspired by his philosophy, and pursuing his method, the more than immortal Newton did not fear, cautiously yet boldly, humbly yet hopefully, to pry into “the wonderful art” wherewith the Almighty has constructed the heavens; and the great problem which Socrates had so timidly, yet so rashly, pronounced to lie beyond the reach of man, did this humble student of nature most triumphantly solve; showing, to the admiration of the world and the glory of God, that that wonderful art is infinitely more wonderful than any thing which had ever been dreamed of in the philosophy of antiquity. ”

“ Though the Almighty endowed Adam with all that is lovely in human nature, the recipient of such noble qualities certainly deserved no credit for them, as he had no agency in their production. All the praise and glory belonged to God. Such dispositions are no doubt the objects of our admiration and love, but they are no more the objects of our moral approbation than is the beauty of a flower. ”

“ We should find no difficulty, therefore, in believing that the mind of man acts, without being efficiently caused to act. This implies no contradiction; and hence the creative power of God can produce such a being—a being that acts freely, without labouring under any necessity, either natural or moral, in its accountable and moral agency. A being, the end of whose action is found in the sensibility; the intention, the design, and the plan of whose action is formed in the intelligence; and the power by which this intention is executed, and this plan accomplished, is in the will alone. ”

“ According to his view of the subject, “The plain and obvious meaning of the words freedom and liberty, in common speech, is the power, opportunity, or advantage that any one has to do as he pleases. Or, in other words, his being free from hindrance or impediment in the way of doing, or conducting in any respect as he wills. And the contrary to liberty, whatever name we call that by, is a person’s being hindered, or unable to conduct as he will, or being necessitated to do otherwise.” ”