There are often several conflicting desires, or impelling affec- tions in the mind at the same time, in which case the strongest desire, or the strongest group of desires, drawing in one way, de- termine the volition. That which is strongest proves itself to be such only by the result, and not by the intensity of the feeling it excites. Some of these internal motives are very vivid, like a thirst for vengeance, and others calm, as a sense of duty, yet often the calm motive proves itself the strongest, and draws the will its own way. This of course must depend upon the character of the agent. It is this inward contest of opposite principles which constitutes the warfare of the Christian life. It is the same ex- perience which occasions a great part of that confusion of con- sciousness which prevails among men with respect to the problem of the will, and the conditions of free agency. Man often acts against motives, but never without motive. And the motive which actually determines the choice in a given case may often be the least clearly defined in the intellect, and the least vividly experienced in the feelings. Especially in sudden surprizes, and in cases of trivial concernment, the volition is constantly deter- mined by vague impulses, or by force of habit almost automati- cally. Yet in every case, if the whole contents of the mind, at the time of the volition, be brought up into distinct consciousness, it will be found that the man chose, as upon the whole view of the case presented by the understanding at the instant he desired to choose.
7. What is the distinction between a transient affection or desire, and a permanent principle or disposition of the will ? ( Will here understood in the wide sense of the term, as including the phenomena of desire as ivell as of volition.)
See above, Chap. XIV., question 4.
8. If the immediately preceding state of the man s mind cer- tainly determines the act of his will, how can that act be truly free if certainly determined ?
This objection rests solely upon the confusion of the two dis- tinct ideas of liberty of the will as an abstract faculty, and lib- erty of the man who wills. The man is never determined to will by any thing without himself. He always himself freely gives,
CERTAINTY CONSISTENT WITH FREEDOM. 263
according to his own character, all the weight to the external influences which bear upon him that they ever possess. But, on the other hand, the mere act of volition, abstractly con- sidered, is determined by the present mental, moral, and emo- tional state of the man at the moment he acts. His rational freedom, indeed, consists, not in the uncertainty of his act, but in the very fact that his whole soul, as an indivisible, knowing, feeling, moral agent, determines his own action as it pleases.
9. Prove that the certainty of a volition is in no degree incon- sistent with the liberty of the agent in that act.
1st. God, Christ, and saints in glory, are all eminently free in their holy choices and actions, yet nothing can be more certain than that, to all eternity, they shall always will according to righteousness.
2d. Man is a free agent, yet of every infant, from his birth, it is absolutely certain that if he lives he will sin.
3d. God, from eternity, foreknows all the free actions of men as certain, and he has foreordained them, or made them to be certain. In prophecy he has infallibly foretold many of them as certain. And in regeneration his people are made " his work- manship created unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them."
4th. Even we, if we thoroughly understand a friend's charac- ter, and all the present circumstances under which he acts, are often absolutely certain how he will freely act, though absent from us. This is the foundation of all human faith, and hence of all human society.
10. What is that theory of moral liberty, styled " liberty of indifference" " self-determining power of the will" " power of contrary choice" " liberty of contingency" etc., held by Armin- ians and others ?
This theory maintains that it is essentially involved in the idea of free agency, 1st, that the will of man in every volition may decide in opposition, not only to all outward inducements, but equally to all the inward judgments, desires, and to the whole coexistent inward state of the man himself. 2d. That man is conscious in every free volition that he might have willed pre-
264 FREE AGENCY.
cisely the opposite, his outward circumstances and his entire inward state remaining the same. 3d. That every free volition is contingent, i. e., uncertain, until the event, since it is deter- mined by nothing but the bare faculty of volition on the part of the agent. — Hamilton's Keid, pp. 599 — 624.