Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, by Lord Kames; in a Letter to a Minister of the
Notes to Pages 441–47 ∑Ω∞
had attempted to combine evangelical Calvinism with contemporary ideas of free will and morality. Edwards could have included countless others with similar views, but these three served to illustrate how writers from a wide spectrum of theological opinions all assumed the ''modern prevailing notions'' regarding the sort of freedom necessary to moral agency. Paul Ramsey ''Introduction,'' Freedom of the Will, Works, 1: 66–118, deals with these opponents in detail.
18. Freedom of the Will, Works, 1: 163–64. 19. Ibid., 140–48, 172. 20. Ibid., 345–46. 21. Ibid., 157. 22. Ibid., 160. 23. Ibid., 357–71, 277–94. 24. Edwards summarized these points most succinctly in ibid., 431–32. He dealt with them and with many possible objections to them at length, pp. 375–429.
25. Ibid., 397–412. 26. Ibid., 430, 374. Edwards probably learned some version of such arguments from Locke, who was influenced by Hobbes. Ramsey, ''Introduction,'' Freedom of the Will, Works, 1: 14, 47–65. Edwards' views also resembled David Hume's in some respects, although they arrived at their views independently. Ramsey, ''Introduction,'' 14.
27. Edwards spells out this view of God's governance in Miscellany no. 1263 (Works of Edwards transcription). Cf. Ramsey's analysis, ''Introduction,'' Freedom of the Will, Works, 1: 110–14. 28. If one were comparing men to machines, Edwards further observed, men would be inferior beings if governed by blind chance. ''Whereas machines are guided by an understanding cause, by the skillful hand of the workman or owner; the will of man is left to the guidance of nothing, but absolute blind contingence.'' Freedom of the Will, Works, 1: 371.
29. Cf. Ramsey, ''Introduction,'' Freedom of the Will, Works, 1: 111–12; and Freedom of the Will, Works, 1: 381–83. In Original Sin, see chapter 27, below, Edwards dealt more directly with the objection that the Calvinist system would make God guilty of causing human sin.
30. Ibid., 437–39. 31. Edwards to John Erskine, July 25, 1757, published as Remarks on the Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, by Lord Kames; in a Letter to a Minister of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1758), in Freedom of the Will, Works, 1: 453–65, quotation p. 453. See Ramsey's introduction to this letter, pp. 443–52. By the early 1760s Freedom of the Will had been adopted at Yale by his old antagonist, President Thomas Clap. Hopkins, Life, 86.
32. Guelzo, Edwards on the Will, 1. See also Joseph A. Conforti, Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), passim.
33. Cf. philosopher Paul Ramsey's remark that ''this book alone is su≈cient to establish its author as the greatest philosopher-theologian yet to grace the American scene.'' Ramsey, ''Introduction,'' Freedom of the Will, Works, 1: 2.
chapter 27. Original Sin ''in This Happy Age''
1. Hopkins, Life, 73. 2. ''Book of Controversies,'' Beinecke, Works of Edwards transcription.