self-determination is a determination of the will, and whatever leads to a self-decision leads to a decision of the will. (2.) A sec- ond objection to confounding these expressions is, that they are not really equivalent. The man may be free, when his will is in bond- ao-e. It is a correct and. established usage of language, expressive of a real fact of consciousness, to speak of an enslaved will in a free agent. This is not a mere metaphor, but a philosophical truth. He that commits sin is the servant of sin. Long-continued mental or bodily habits may bring the will into bondage, while the man continues a free agent. A man who has been for years a miser, has his will in a state of slavery, yet the man is perfectly free. He is self-controlled, self-determined. His avarice is himself. It is his own darling, cherished feeling. (3.) There is no use to have two expressions for the same thing ; the one appropriate, the other ambiguous. What we really mean is, that the agent is free. That is the only point to which any interest is attached. The man is the responsible subject. If he be free so as to be justly account- able for his character and conduct, it matters not what are the laws which determine the operations of his reason, conscience, or will ; or whether liberty can be predicated of either of those faculties separately considered. We maintain that the man is free ; but we deny that the will is free in the sense of being independent of rea- son, conscience, and feeling. In other words, a man cannot be independent of himself, or any one of his faculties independent of all the rest.
Liberty and Ability.
Fifthly, Another fruitful source of confusion on this subject, is confounding liberty with ability. The usage which attaches the same meaning to these terms is very ancient. Augustine denied free will to man since the fall. Pelagius affirmed freedom of will to be essential to our nature. The former intended simply to deny to fallen man the power to turn himself unto God. The latter defined liberty to be th.e ability at any moment to determine him- s(.'lf either for good or evil. The controversv between Luther and Erasmus was really about ability, nominally it was about free-will. Luther's book is entitled " De Servo Arbitrio," that of Erasmus, *' De Libero Arbitrio." This usage pervades all the symbols of the Reformation, and was followed by the theologians of the sixteenth century. They all ascribe free agency to man in the true sense of the words, but deny to him freedom of will. To a great extent this confusion is still kept up. Many of the prevalent definitions of liberty are definitions of ability ; and much that is commonly
292 PART n. Ch. IX. — free agency.
advanced to prove the liberty of the will, is really intended, and is of force only as in support of the doctrine of ability. Jacobi de- fines liberty to be the power to decide in favour of the dictates of reason in opposition to the solicitations of sense. Bretschneider says it is the power to decide according to reason. Auii;ustine, and after him most Augustinians distinguished, (1.) The liberty of man before the fall, which was an ability either to sin or not to sin. (2.) The state of man since the fall, when he has liberty to sin, but not to good. (3.) The state of man in heaven when he has liberty to good, but not to evil. This last is the highest form of hberty, afelix necessitas boni. This is the liberty which belongs to God. In the popular mind perhaps the common idea of liberty is, the power to decide for good or evil, sin or holiness. This idea pervades more or less all the disquisitions in favour of the liberty of indifference, or of power to the contrary. The essence of liberty in a moral accountable being, according to Reid, is the power to do what he is accountable for. So Cousin, Jouffroy, Tappan, and this whole class of writers, make liberty and ability synonymous. The last-mentioned author, when speaking of the distinction between natural and moral inability, says, " when we have denied liberty in denying a self-determining power, these definitions, in order to make out a quasi liberty and ability, are nothing but ingenious folly and plausible deception." ^ Here liberty and ability are avowedly used as convertible terms.
Other writers who do not ignore the distinction between liberty and ability, yet distinguish them only as different forms of liberty. This is the case with many of the German authors. As for ex- ample with Miiller, who distinguishes the Formale Freiheit, or ability, from the Reale Freiheit, or liberty as it actually exists. The former is only necessary as the condition of the latter. That is, he admits, that if a man's acts are certainly determined by his character, he is really free. But in order to render him justly responsible for his character, it must be self-acquired.^ This is confounding things which are not only distinct, but which are admitted to be distinct. It is admitted by this class of writers, and, indeed, by the whole Christian world, that men since the fall have not power to make themselves holy ; much less to effect this trans- formation by a volition. It is admitted that saints in glory are
1 Review of Edwards, edit. New York, 1839, pp. 164, 165.
2 " Frei ist ein Wesen inwiefern die innere Mitte seines Lebens aus der heraus es wiriit und tlijitig' ist. durch Selbstbestiinmung bedinstt ist." Lehre von der Siinde, vol. ii. p. 72. He elsewhere defines liberty to be the power of self-development. " Freiheit ist Macht aus sich zu werden," p. 62.