Jonathan Edwards Selected Shor (continued)
work: to give, to cause, to create such a heart, to put it in them. God is said to incline their hearts, not only to give statutes, but to incline their hearts to his statutes.
Moses speaks of the great moral means that God had used with the children of Israel to enlighten them and convince and persuade them, but of their being yet unpersuaded and unconverted, and gives this as a reason: that God had not given them a heart to perceive, as Deu. 29:4, "Yet the Lord hath not given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day." The Scripture plainly makes a distinction between exhibiting light, or means of instruction and persuasion, and giving eyes to see, circumcising the heart, etc.
49. Why should Christ teach us to pray in the Lord's prayer, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," if it is not God's work to bring that effect to pass, and it is left to man's free will and cannot be otherwise, because otherwise it is no virtue, and none of their obedience, or doing of God's will, and God does what he can oftentimes consistently with man's liberty, and those that enjoy the means he uses, do generally neglect and refuse to do his will? He does so much that he can well say, what could I have done more? And yet almost all are at the greatest distance from doing his will. See Col. 1:9-10.
50. If it be as the Arminians suppose, that all men's virtue is of the determination of their own free will, independent on any prior determining, deciding, and disposing of the event; that it is no part of the ordering of God, whether there be many virtuous or few in the world, whether there shall be much virtue or little, or where it shall be, in what nation, country, or when, or in what generation or age, or