Efficacious Grace — Book I
efficacious grace, book i This is the first of three extant notebooks on the subject of efficacious grace, originally labeled “Moral Agency” by Edwards and renamed after he had used and deleted entries from it while writing Freedom of the Will. In the manuscript notebook called the “Controversies,” in the section on efficacious grace, Edwards directs himself to consult “what is left of papers on free will, No. 8, p. 13,” indicating that there were at least eight books in the series at one time.1 In the conclusion to Freedom of the Will, Edwards briefly discusses efficacious grace as a related doctrine. It seems that he was gathering leftover materials from Freedom of the Will for a treatise on divine decrees that was to deal primarily with efficacious grace.2
1. See also “Sacrament Book I,” where JE refers to a “Bk. 4 on Moral Agency.” 2. See also “Efficacious Grace” from the “Controversies” notebook (printed in this volume). JE outlined a treatise on the decrees that would have used much of the materials in these three notebooks and in the “Controversies” section. The outline reads as follows:
TITLE. Of the Decrees of God and his Particular Decisive Disposals, Especially with Respect to Men’s Salvation.
PART I. Of the Decrees of God in General. Ch. I. Explaining the Nature of Divine Decrees. 1. What I mean by a divine decree. 2. The difference between God’s decrees of good and evil. N.B. God never properly decrees evil, as he decrees it is good.
Here several things may be observed: It don’t belong to the definition of a divine decree, that it should be eternal. Whether divine decrees are eternal is a matter to be proved.
It comes into the nature of divine decrees, they are for some end, and that the event is decided by them.
Where there is no decisive providence, there is no government or no disposing ordering or governing providence. What he don’t determine beforehand, he don’t order at all; it comes to pass without his ordering and will, and so without his government.
Ch. II. Of the Universality of God’s Decrees. 1. Showing in general that God decrees all events. Prove it from the foreknowledge [of God] and other rational arguments, and from Scripture.
2. In particular, that he decrees the acts of the wills of intelligent creatures. Ch. III. That God’s Decrees are all Eternal. PART II. Concerning God’s Decisive Influence and Grace in the Conversion of a Sinner.
Show first what is included in efficacious [grace]: 1. The main thing meant by the word “efficacious,” is this, its being decisive. This seems to be the main question.
The notelike nature of this manuscript is readily evident. Edwards sketches out arguments, objections, and answers in terse fashion, to be amplified at a later time. In order to separate thoughts as he jots down ideas that occur to him or takes notes from books he is reading, he draws horizontal lines, which are retained in this edition for the sake of distinguishing discrete entries. He writes directions to himself on how to make his arguments, plays with book titles (as seen in the notebook’s first entry, a title for his treatise on freedom of the will), and even pokes fun at what he sees as the ridiculous reasoning of his opponents. Other entries, meanwhile, provide some precise language that he intended to use when writing a more complete version of his thoughts on efficacious grace. Throughout this book, as in the two that accompany it, Edwards is intent on defending the doctrine that saving virtue comes through a special, arbitrary, and effectual working of God on the heart.
Edwards was working on the series in late 1746. In a letter of January 15, 1747, to Joseph Bellamy, he writes, “I have been reading [Daniel] Whitby, which has engaged me pretty thoroughly . . . and I have written considerably upon it in my private papers.” He then asks to borrow Henry Stebbing’s A Treatise Concerning the Operations of the Holy Spirit(1719). Here Edwards quotes from Whitby’s infamous Discourse on the Five Points (1710; corr. ed., 1735) and refers to books by Stebbing, Isaac Watts, and others as if he had them nearby when he was writing. Toward the end of the notebook, Edwards refers to John Taylor’s A Paraphrase with Notes on the Epistle to the Romans, published in 1746, which he received from John Erskine in the summer of 1748.3
The manuscript is made up of odd-shaped pieces of fan paper, stitched into a cover of coarse brown paper. Its pages are numbered 1–2, 7–8, 17– 18, 23–26, 29–34, 39–64, and 67–71, reflecting Edwards’ practice of removing pages whose contents had been used. Lacunae are indicated by
Efficacious Grace, Book I 199
2. Its being immediate and arbitrary in that sense as not to be limited to laws of nature.
3. That the principles are supernatural in that sense that they are entirely different from all that is in the heart before conversion.
4. That they are infused, and not contracted by custom and exercise. 5. That the change is instantaneous and not gradual. These four last heads may be subdivisions of a second general head. So that the division may be thus: 1. The main thing meant is that, its being decisive. 2. Another thing wherein they differ is the manner wherein the orthodox suppose the work to be immediate and supernatural. The four last of the heads mentioned above may be subdivisions of the last. 3. See Works, 16, 248.
line spaces and bracketed ellipses. A considerable number of entries have vertical use lines through them, as indicated in the annotations.
Portions of this notebook were printed, using the transcription of Jonathan Edwards, Jr., in Miscellaneous Observations on Important Theological Subjects (Edinburgh, 1793), as §§ 15–18 (pp. 196–200), and reprinted in the Worcester rev. ed., 2,557–59, §§ 16–21. Selected entries were used without regard to Edwards’ original ordering. Edwards, Jr., supplied transitions and, on occasion, changed words.
efficacious grace, book i A Dissertation4 on the Freedom of the Will.5
A Discourse Concerning the Freedom of the Will [and] Moral Agency, Showing Wherein the Proper Nature of the Virtuousness and Sinfulness of the Actions and Dispositions of Reasonable Creatures Consists, and What is the True Ground of Punishment or Blame, and Reward or Praise.
Quotations from Whitby, No. 1, pp. 11, 13, 16, 17.6
Texts of Scripture, pp. 13, 17, 24, 29.7
Obj.8 This is Hobbes’ main objection against the being of God and his moral government.
Show how improperly those Scripture expressions are used upon the scheme of our adversaries: “make me to go in the way of thy commandments,” “faith is the gift of God,” etc.
Obj.9 It tends to infidelity and all manner of licentiousness, as it saps all the foundation of moral virtue.
Ans. Let us consider what the fact has been. Has infidelity and licentiousness prevailed most when these principles have most prevailed?
If they say they had rather deny God’s foreknowledge of future contingencies than allow this doctrine of necessity, I answer, I had as lieu they should deny it as not, for matter of any advantage they can get to their cause by it: for if we can prove anything by the Scripture, we can prove God’s foreknowledge of future voluntary actions of men; for most of the
4. JE inscribed this booklet “No. I”; a later owner (possibly Tryon Edwards) wrote “13” in pencil on the cover. In the “Gazetteer Notebook,” JE refers to this as “1 Book on moral agency.”
5. JE drew a vertical line through the first four entries, which all appear on the inside of the front cover.
predictions of Scripture are either of these: voluntary actions of men, or things consequent and dependent on these actions.
[. . .] inattentive1 minds that will not compose their thoughts, and either are not capable of or will not give themselves the troubles of close and distinct thought disengaged from the disguise of obscure and frightful words.
Men’s passions are likely to be raised by such expressions2made to principles that have been so strenuously maintained and gloried in so much, on which they have gone such a length in triumph.
It may alarm. And the foundation-terms of fatal necessity, etc. may be often repeated on this occasion; but rational men thus accumulating3 frightful words is a different thing from real reasoning. [. . .]
Efficacious, Irresistible Grace. See “Miscellanies” no. o.4
If the Spirit of God does anything at all besides moral suasion, his grace is efficacious (“Miscellanies” no. p).5
Whether6 God’s certain foreknowledge of future events is not as inconsistent with the Arminian notion of human liberty, as God’s absolute decrees.
Whether or no the notion of a self-determining power in the will of man, or that the will voluntarily determines all its own acts, don’t imply a contradiction.
Definition. Show particularly the nature of necessity and impossibility, metaphysical necessity, moral necessity and force, how they differ. How moral necessity is included in metaphysical necessity.
Moral Necessity, when it is absolute necessity—as it always is when it is proper necessity—comes under the head of metaphysical.
1. JE directs the following paragraph to be inserted in a later page that is missing, therefore the passage has been retained in its original place.
Concerning God’s foreknowledge of future contingencies, or things happening without a cause, I say, not only we cannot conceive of the to pw~, or medas, and that this exceedingly incomprehensible [. . .]
[. . .] Text. I Pet. 2:7–8, “Being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.” Whitby says, “The meaning of these words, saith Dr. Hammond, is this, that they who disobey the gospel, standing out obstinately against it, were appointed by God to stumble and fall at this stone; that is, to be bruised by it, and by that means to be destroyed among the cruci- fiers of the Messiah” (p. 19).7 Dr. Whitby proposes another sense, thus: “To you that believe belongs, h timh, the honor (of being built upon this stone into a spiritual house); but to them who are disobedient (belongs that of Ps. 118:22), the ‘stone which the builders refused,’ etc. and (also to them he is) ‘a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense, even to them that stumble at the word, being disobedient,’ ei~ o kai etedhsan, for which also these stones were laid.”8
Conclusion.9 It is demonstrable, in the first place, that the freedom that man has as a moral agent that constitutes virtue and vice and blame, don’t consist in indifference. And second, it is likewise demonstrable that it does not consist in being able to will contrary to his present prevailing inclination, for that is a contradiction. And therefore ’tis demonstrable, in the third place, that the mind exercises its liberty in following its prevailing inclination, if we mean anything that has any existence: for the soul, in all that is voluntary, ever more follows its prevailing inclination, is guided by its own choice. Wherein it is not guided by its choice, it don’t act of choice and so don’t act voluntarily, and so exercises no liberty [. . .]
[. . .] Which1 tends most to atheism: ours, which . . . , or theirs, that is built on a foundation that is the utter subversion of every argument for the proof of a Deity and of all other existence, excepting our own perceptions for the present moment?
7. Whitby, Discourse. JE cites the 2nd ed. of 1735 (see below, p. 208); a copy of the 2nd corrected ed. of 1735 is at the Beinecke Library, but its page numbers do not correspond to JE’s references. References here are to the corrected edition, in this case, p. 20.
In the introduction of the discourse concerning the foreknowledge of God being consistent with the Arminian notion of liberty, say, “I desire that this matter may be particularly and thoroughly searched into. I cannot but think that if it be narrowly examined and viewed on every side, it may be perfectly determined whether it be indeed so or no. To this end I shall be particular in this matter.”
Necessity: ’tis one sort of metaphysical necessity, or rather one way and means by which things become metaphysically necessary.
To have definitions of many terms at the beginning and, among others, explain what is meant by moral agency, necessity, moral necessity, constraint, contingency.
When the Psalmist prays, “Make me to go in the way of thy statutes” [Ps. 119:33], is indeed his meaning that God would give him the general grace which he gives to all, and which is sufficient for all, if they will but improve [it]? Is this all?
Text. Eph. 2:8, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” Mr. Beach observes, this text “don’t mean, that their faith is so God’s gift, as not to be of themselves, as is most evident to any who reads the original.”2 This is certainly a great mistake. What I suppose he means is that the relative that, being of the neuter gender, and the word faith of the feminine, they can’t agree together. But if he would only translate the Greek relative that thing, viz. the thing last spoken of, so all the difficulty vanishes (vid. Beza in loc.).3
Observe4 how arbitrary they are in their interpretations of scripture. They say the meaning is thus or thus, when no such thing is said or implied.
204 Efficacious Grace, Book I
2. John Beach, A Sermon, Shewing, that Eternal Life is God’s Free Gift, Bestowed Upon Men According to Their Moral Behaviour. And that Free Grace and Free Will Concur, in the Affair of Man’s Salvation (Newport, 1745), p. 10.
3. Theodore Beza, The Bible: That is, The Holy Scriptures Conteined in the Olde and New Testament . . . with most profitable Annotations (London, 1595), on Eph. 2:8: “So then Grace, that is to say, the gift of God, and faith, doe stand one with another, to which these two are contrary, to be saved by ourselves, or by our workes. Therefore what meane they which would joyne together things of so contradictorie nature?”
If liberty consists in acting from indifference and without necessity, and that5a sovereignty and self-determining power in the will is necessary in order to the virtuousness of an act of the will, then the virtuousness of an act of the will6 be not determined or governed by any motive; but that the will be its own mover only and wholly, and that it wills because it will (for by their scheme, so far as the will is determined or moved by anything, so much is taken from its liberty, so far it is not determined by itself, so far that act of the will fails of being the exercise of the will’s own sovereignty). But this is absurd and contrary to all our natural notions of virtue, that a man acts most virtuously when he acts most without motive [. . .]
[. . .] though7 they are the common principles of all the Reformed churches.
[. . .] They may raise endless cavils about the manner of sin’s first ingress into the world, which yet their own scheme will never solve any better, unless plain self-contradictions are admitted as good solutions of seeming difficulties.
They may answer mine by repeating theirs, which is often Dr. Whitby’s manner when an objection [is raised], thus [to] cry out, “O! if this objection be good, then such and such horrid consequences! Then God is insincere, hypocritical, unjust, cruel,” etc. Which Dr. Whitby repeats over, times without number, the greatest part of his book being filled up with repeating the same direful exclamations over and over and over in an endless manner.
Such scriptures as these, I Cor. 15:10, “Not I, but the grace of God that was with me”; “Not I, but Christ liveth in me” [Gal. 2:20].8
To define the term inability. How inability to do a thing differs from the impossibility of its coming to pass. What is a moral inability and what a natural inability. Definition.
5. MS: “from.” JE made extensive revisions to this sentence, but neglected to make this necessary correction.
Dr. Whitby speaks of indifference as requisite to men’s freedom in the state of trial in the words of Mr. Thorndike, which he cites with great approbation, as follows, pp. 300–01: “Excellent to this purpose are these words of Mr. Thorndike, ‘We say not that indifference is requisite to all freedom, but to the freedom of man alone in this state of travail and pro- ficience, the ground of which is God’s tender of a treaty and conditions of peace and reconcilement to fallen man, together with those precepts and prohibitions, these promises and threats, those exhortations and dehortations it is inforced with.’”9
It will follow that God himself is worthy of no praise.1
Why2 do the saints praise God and love him for his holiness, if there be no moral goodness in it?
Dr. Whitby speaks as though this sort of freedom without necessity is absolutely essential to virtue (see p. 11 of this paper book),3 and yet owns that ’tis no perfection of human nature. His words are, “This liberty is indeed no perfection of human nature; for it supposes us imperfect, as being subject to fall by temptation, and when we are advanced to the spirits of just men made perfect, or to a fixed state of happiness, will, [with] our other imperfections be done away.”4 So that virtue, by him, is no perfection of human nature.
To define a command, and show what is the proper notion of commanding, in order to clear up the difficulties that are objected about the inconsistence of God’s secret and revealed will.
The Arminian notion of liberty consisting in indifference as to any bias towards good or evil being essential to virtue or vice, praise or dispraise, is directly contrary to all our natural notions of virtue and vice, praise and dispraise.
206 Efficacious Grace, Book I
9. Whitby, Discourse, 2nd corr. ed., p. 309. Whitby cites the reference from Herbert Thorndike, An Epilogue to the Tragedy of the Church of England (London, 1655), pt. 2, p. 183.
1. Two paragraphs have been moved to Efficacious Grace Bk. III at JE’s direction; see below, p. 242 and n. 6.
How far does the voice of reason concur with the voice of revelation, with respect to the great doctrine of a public and general judgment at the end of the world.
Whether or no there are not good evidences from reason that the visible world will come to an end.
About God’s being the author of sin, concerning the meaning of the expression: in what senses it would be a reproach and blasphemy against the Most High to suppose him the author of sin; in what sense it would be no reproach at all.
If Dr. Whitby’s reasoning be good, then, according to him, God is the author of the evil actions of the devil, at least the cause of his being determined to evil actions in general: for he allows that the devil has not that liberty that man has in a state of probation, consisting in a freedom not only from coaction but necessity; and that although he is not determined to evil actions in particular, yet is determined to do evil in general and not good (p. 202; see also p. 305).5 And yet he often asserts that if God withholds that grace without which sin will surely and unfrusterably6 follow, that then God is the author of that sin, or to that purpose.
If that liberty that is essential to virtue consists in indifference, then there is no virtue in loving holiness and righteousness; and the more love to holiness, the further from virtue, contrary to Ps. 45 and almost everything else in Scripture.
Dr. Whitby seems to deny any physical influence at all of the Spirit of God on the will, but only moral suasion, moral causes (p. 344),7 to show how that this is to deny that the Spirit of God does anything at all, excepting inspiring the prophets and giving the means of grace, with God’s ordination of this in his providence. Here to show, if God does do anything physically, what he does must be efficacious and irresistible.
5. Ibid., pp. 213, 317. 6. Conjectural reading. 7. Whitby, Discourse, 2nd corr. ed., p. 353: “God acts sutably to our Faculties, to wit, by the Illumination of our Understanding, and by persuading of the Will; for if God work only on the Will by Moral Causes, then lays he no Necessity upon it, since Moral Causes have no necessary Influence on the Effect, but move only by such Persuasion as the Will may resist.”
To prove that the influence of the Spirit is not only by moral suasion, but that there is an exertion of the power of the Spirit now in these days. Borrow Dr. Guyse on the Spirit, and also Dr. Stebbing.8 Here inquire whether it is not possible the Spirit may operate by moral suasion by suggesting ideas to the understanding, as Satan tempts men.
Such an assistance Dr. Whitby maintains, and concerning it says the following things, pp. 221–22:9
1. Then, I say, it must be granted that in raising an idea in my brain by the Holy Spirit, and the impression made upon it there, the action is truly physical.
2. That in these actions I am wholly passive; that is, I myself do nothing formally to produce these ideas, but the good Spirit, without my operation, doth produce them in me.
3. That these operations must be irresistible in their production, because they are immediately produced in us without our knowledge of them, and without our will, and so without those faculties by which we are enabled to act. [. . .]
[. . .] Dr.1 Whitby seems to deny that the liberty of the will consists merely in the power of doing what we will, and opposes this opinion as that wherein the Calvinists agree with Hobbes (pp. 351–52, 2nd ed.).2 Those divines that are of his mind and think that liberty don’t consist in this, would do well to tell us what it does consist in. If they say that human liberty don’t only consist in a liberty of doing what one wills, but also in a liberty of willing without necessity,3 still the question returns: if it be so that men’s liberty consists not only in a liberty of doing, but also in a liberty of willing, what does that liberty of willing consist in, if it don’t consist in a power to will as we please, or in a power to will as we will? And if this be so, that the liberty of the will consists in this, then what the Calvinists assert still holds good, that men’s liberty consists in a power to do as he will. And his power to will as he wills is one instance of it. If it be owned that a man’s liberty of will consists in a power to will as he wills, then one of these two things must be meant by it: either, first, a man has power to will as he wills,
8. John Guyse, The Holy Spirit a Divine Person, or, the Doctrine of His Godhead Represented. Practical Sermons on I Cor. XII (London, 1721); and Henry Stebbing, A Treatise Concerning the Operations of the Holy Spirit: Being the Substance of the Late Reverend and Learned Dr. William Clagett’s Discourse upon that Subject (London, 1719).
i.e. he has power to will as he does will, because what he wills, he wills, and therefore what he has power to will, that he has power to will; or, if this ben’t the thing intended, and anything at all be intended by it, then it must be, second, a man has power to will as he pleases or as he will, i.e. he has power by some antecedent act of his will to choose a consequent act of will, and therein to execute his own choice. And if this be their meaning, this is nothing but shuffling [with] those they dispute with, and not only [so], but shuffling with their own reason: for still the question returns, Wherein consists men’s liberty in that antecedent liberty in that antecedent act of will that determined the consequent act? Did the man’s liberty in this also consist in his willing as he pleased, i.e. a willing or choosing agreeable to another act of will preceding that? And so the question returns, in infinitum.
To show the unreasonableness of the distinction between virtue and moral good. Common sense.
Though it should be allowed that God assists man with a physical assistance, and yet by an obliged and promised assistance only, then God don’t do or effect or give the thing assisted to, any more than if he operated and assisted man only according to the established laws of nature, and men may as properly [be] said to do it of themselves and of their own power. The doing the thing is in the same manner in their power. The assistance by which God assists a drunkard that goes to the tavern and there drinks excessively, or by which he assists an adulterer or pirate in their actions, is that he upholds the laws of nature, the laws of the nature of the human soul, whereby it is able to perform such and such acts in such order and dependence, and the laws of the union of soul and body, and moves the body in such a stated manner in consequence of such acts of the soul, and upholds the laws of motion, and causes that there shall be such and such effects on corporeal things and also on minds in consequence of such motions.
All the difference is that4 the assistance he grants in the duties of religion is according to a newer establishment than the other, according to a method established a little later; and also that the method of the assistance in one case is written and revealed by way of promise or covenant, and not the other.
But if it be said, No, though God has promised assistance, yet he has not promised the exact degree, he has, notwithstanding his promise, left himself liberty to assist some much more than others in consequence of the very same endeavors: I answer, that this will prove a giving up their whole scheme and will infallibly bring in the Calvinistical notion of sovereign and arbitrary grace, whereby some, with the very same sincerity of endeavors and the same degree of endeavors and the same use of means, shall have the success which is denied others; and although all things are exactly equal in both cases, both as to their persons and their behavior, yet one has that success by sovereign grace and God’s arbitrary pleasure that is denied another. If God has left himself no liberty of sovereign grace in giving success to man’s endeavors, but his succeeding assistance be always tied to such endeavors precisely, then man’s success is just as much in his own power and is just the same way his own doings, as the effect and fulfillment of his endeavors to commit adultery or murder, and indeed much more: for his success in those endeavors is not tied to such endeavors, but may be providentially disappointed. Although particular motions follow such and such acts of will, in such a state of body exactly according to certain laws of nature, yet a man’s success in such wickedness is not at all tied to their endeavors by any divine establishment, as the Arminians suppose success is to men’s endeavors after conversion.
Effectual grace. For the Spirit of God to assist in that manner is not to be the efficient cause of those things, as the5 Scriptures do certainly represent.
Effectual Grace. If God ben’t the proper bestower, author and efficient cause of virtue, then the greatest benefits are not from him, not owing to his goodness, nor have we him to thank for them.
According6 to Dr. Whitby, unbelief is never a sin, nor faith any virtue, for he abundantly asserts that our not doing what we cannot do is not sin, and also that to do what we cannot but do is no virtue. But of faith he says in the following words, p. 110, 2nd ed.: “Faith being an assent to a divine testimony upon sufficient evidence, without which evidence we cannot assent to it; and when we have it, we cannot but assent.”7
In reply to some of their reasoning: This reasoning looks whole and sound at a distance, but it will drop to pieces if you handle it.
That assertion of the Arminians is certainly false, that that which we han’t power to avoid is no sin. It will follow that it is false, even from the doctrines of their own scheme, for they allow that we, since the fall, have no power to perform perfect obedience or to avoid all sin. Dr. Whitby owns this in these words, p. 165: “The nature of Adam had a power to continue innocent, and without sin, whereas ’tis certain our nature never had so.”8 And so their own scheme of Christ’s coming into the world, pardon of these unavoidable sins, and to procure a more mild covenant, more adapted to our present circumstances. See my discourse on Justification by Faith.9
At the conclusion of my discourse on this head of free will and moral agency, etc., bring in a discourse about mysteries.1
Efficacious Grace. Christ upbraids the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, that they were worse than Sodom, etc.; and the Jews of that generation, that they were worse than the men of Nineveh; and the Pharisees, that the publicans and harlots went into the kingdom of God before them. But why did he do this, if the only reason was that the one [was]2 brought to repent by effectual grace, and the other not? (See Whitby, pp. 169–71.)3 I answer, the unbelief and impenitence of these cities, this generation, and those Pharisees, when the publicans and Nineveh repented, and the men of Sodom would have repented, was an argument that they were worse, more perverse and hard-hearted than they; because though repentance is owing to special efficacious assistance, yet in his ordinary methods of proceeding with men, [God] is wont much more rarely to bestow it on those that are most perverse, hard-hearted and rooted in evil than others. So much the more as their hearts are hardened, so much the less likely are they to be brought to repentance. And though there are oftentimes exceptions of particular persons, yet it still holds as
8. Ibid., p. 169. 9. Published in Various Discourses on Important Subjects (1738); see Works, 19, 143–242. 1. See entries on mysteries of religion in both the “Miscellanies” (e. g. nos. 83, 181, 184, 583, 652, 654, 765, 770, 839, and 964) and the “Controversies” notebook, MS pp. 190–97. 2. JE, Jr.’s insert. 3. Whitby, Discourse, 2nd corr. ed., pp. 172–75.
a general rule, and especially with regard to societies, nations, cities, and ranks of men; so that Christ might well, from the fact that he mentions, draw an argument of the greater perverseness and stubbornness of those societies and ranks of men that he spake of.
“The distinction of grace into common and special may be understood two ways, viz. that grace which is afforded without any condition required on our part, as the vouchsafement of the knowledge of the gospel, and the calling men by it to the faith, may be called common grace, because it is common to all who live under the sound of the gospel; but that grace which is suspended upon a condition, as the receiving the assistance of the Holy Spirit upon our asking, seeking, knocking for him, our receiving more upon the due improvement of the talents received, the remission of sins upon our faith and repentance, may be styled special grace, because it only is vouchsafed to them who perform the condition; and so it is the same with grace absolute and conditional, or else that may be styled common grace by which we are led to the faith of Christ, and so it includes all those good desires which are excited in us, and all those good dispositions which are produced in the minds of men before they believe, all this grace being common to men before they are admitted into the new covenant; and that will be special grace which is given to believers only, for the strengthening of their faith, the increasing of their good desires, and the enabling them to live according to the gospel” (Whitby, pp. 224–25, 2nd ed.).4
The5 arguments by which we prove the falseness of the Papist doctrine of transubstantiation are metaphysical, that a body can’t be in ten thousand different places at once, because it is inconsistent with the notion of corporeal identity. The only arguments by which we can prove that the sourness of vinegar is not triangular, or that the color of a violet don’t weigh a pound, is metaphysical; or that the soul of man is not corporeal, or that God is not limited to place, or is not mutable, or that he can’t be ignorant or forgetful, or that there is but one God. We can come to an absolute certainty of no one proposition relating to the being and nature of God, the creation of the world, the dependence of things on him, concerning the nature of bodies or spirits, concerning the nature of our own souls, and concerning the great truths and principles of morality, till we have examined these things metaphysically and have brought them to a metaphysical demonstration.
A command and a manifestation of will are not the same thing. It don’t imply a true desire that [the] thing commanded should be done. So much at least is manifest by that instance of Abraham. [Show] whether in other respects that instance of a command of God be parallel with his commands to believe and repent, etc.
Whitby’s exposition of texts relating to effectual grace, pp.265, etc.6 Eph. 1:19–20, “Exceeding greatness of power.” It relates to the power to be exercised on our bodies, to give them a glorious resurrection to eternal life. See Stebbing, p. 193, etc.7
Texts that speak of conversion as a work of creation, are only metaphysical and strange figures. See Stebbing on II Cor. 4:6, p. 195.8
Efficacious Grace, Book I 213
6. Whitby, Discourse, 2nd corr. ed., pp. 271–72, on Eph. 1:19–20: “It must be absurd hence to infer that the Power of God working Faith in Believers is equal to that which affected the Resurrection of our Lord, . . . for the Apostle speaks not of the Power exercised on us to render us Believers, but of the Power exercised on us who believe already: Not of the Power to be exercised on our Souls to raise them from a Death in Sin, to a Life of Righteousness, but of the Power to be exercised on our dead Bodies to give them a glorious Resurrection to Eternal Life, as he had done already on the Body of our Head Jesus Christ.”
7. Ch. XII, pp.193–208, is entitled “Some Testimonies of Scripture urged in favour of the Doctrine of irresistible grace considered.” On Eph. 1:19–20, Stebbing writes (p. 194): “the Apostle does no where speak of the exceeding Greatness of God’s Power under the Notion of a Cause why they believed, but of the Greatness of his Power towards those who believed already. And the Meaning seems to be either, 1. That the exceeding Greatness of God’s Power was that whereby he still continued to give Testimony to the Truth, answerably to that great Testimony of the Resurrection, to wit, by enabling Believers in those Days to work Miracles. Or, 2. By the exceeding Greatness of God’s Power may be meant that wherewith God would raise them at the last Day, according as he had already raised Christ.” Stebbing concludes (p. 195) that “this Text speaks nothing at all of the Manner whereby God worketh Faith in Men, after he hath afforded them the Grounds and Means of believing, nor doth the Context lead to any such Meaning. It speaks of that which is nothing to these Mens Purpose, viz. the Greatness of God’s Power towards those who believed already, whether that whereby the Truth was confirmed, or that whereby they themselves should be raised from the Dead.”
8. P. 195, on II Cor. 4:6: “What they would argue from hence is, that as it was by an Almighty Act that God created the Light, so it is also by an Almighty Act that he illuminates us with the saving Knowledge of the Gospel. But this is a very strange sort of Inference. For tho’ the Apostle does indeed say that the same Person who commanded the Light to shine, &c. hath also enlightened our Minds, yet he does not say that he enlightens our Minds after the same manner in which he enlightened the World, nor any thing like it. The only way therefore of inferring this must be from those metaphorical Expressions of shining and giving Light; but these . . . will afford no Foundation for such a Conclusion, unless no reason can be assigned for the Allusion without supposing that God enlightens our Minds after the same manner in which he enlightened the World; which cannot be pretended.”
Conversion is represented as a new birth. ’Tis only a metaphor borrowed from the Jews, who called their proselytes “new born.”
Texts that speak of sinners as dead in sin, as Eph. 2:1 and Col. 2:13, speak only of heathens that were gross idolaters, yea, some of the worst of the heathen.
I Cor. 2:14, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God”; i.e. the wise man and disputer of this world, who will admit nothing but what he can see proved by reason, and so receives not things revealed by the Spirit because he doth not see them proved by philosophical deductions from reason, but deems them foolishness for want of that which only is, in his esteem, true wisdom. He cannot know them by that human wisdom by which alone he will be guided, for, being mysterious and secret counsels of God’s will, they are not knowable by human reason, till God is pleased to reveal them. Whence the Apostle demonstrates the necessity of supernatural revelation, that the hidden wisdom of God may be made known unto the world.
John 15:5, “Without me ye can do nothing”; i.e. without the gifts and powerful influence of the Spirit, which belonged alone to them who abode in Christ, they could do nothing to convert the world. If they are understood of Christians in general, then the meaning is, says he, “Separated from me ye can do nothing; without abiding in the faith, ye cannot be fruitful in the faith.”
John 6:44, “No man can come to me except the Father draw him”; i.e. it must be by means of the miracles which the Father has given the Son to work (John 10:25), and the great promises of eternal life, confirmed by those miracles. And this sense, he says, is confirmed by the following words: “It is written, They shall be all taught of God He therefore that hath heard, and learned of the Father, cometh to me” [John 6:45].
Matt. 7:18, “A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit”; and Rom. 8:7, “The carnal mind cannot be subject to the law of God.” Ans. This is to be understood in like manner as we understand those words, “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruits” [Luke 6:43], and elsewhere, “He that is born of God cannot sin” [I John 3:9].
God is said to give us faith and repentance (Acts 11:18. and Eph. 2:8). Ans. So God is said to have given the wicked Jews a “spirit of slumber” (Rom. 11:8), and to have given “a lying spirit in the mouth” of the false prophets (I Kgs. 22:23), and to have given to the enemies of the church “to take peace from the earth” (Rev. 6:4, 8), and to have given to the Beast to speak blasphemies (Rev. 13:5). And to these and all sayings of the like nature, he gives this as a general explanation, viz. that God gives those faculties by which we are enabled to obtain those things, and means and motives sufficient to excite those faculties to the performance of their proper actions. So God givest riches, he gives our daily bread, he gives all things to all men; but yet they must employ these faculties which God has given to procure ’em. Thus the Jews say God hath given repentance to the Gentiles, when Peter, preaching to them and proposing motives, they repented and believed (Acts 10:36, 43). So faith is said to be the gift of God, because the objects of our faith are only by divine revelation, and are con- firmed to us and made credible by the evidence which God has given.
See Stebbing’s answer to that text, Deut. 29:4, “The Lord hath not given an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day,” p. 205.9
Acts 16:14, “The Lord opened the heart of Lyddia”; i.e. God used moral means to open her heart. He,1 by moral means, inclined her to open her own heart. So God is said to open man’s ear to discipline by af- fliction (Job 36:10, 15). So Lyddia might have her heart opened by the arguments and motives of the Word of God exhibited by his messenger; her heart by these motives was inclined to receive the gospel he preached. In fine, says the Doctor, “God is here said to have opened the heart of Lyddia not to believe, but to attend to the things spoken by Paul, [. . .] and that attention produced this faith in her.”2
God promiseth to circumcise the heart (Deut. 30:6), and Ephraim prays thus, “Turn thou us, O Lord, and so we shall be turned” [Jer. 31:18].
“Now” (says Dr. Whitby), “in answer to such texts as these in general. I
9. P. 205: “[I]t is plain from the Context that the Reason intended in this Place why they did not perceive, was not because they wanted that Grace which was necessary to enable them to perceive, but because of their own Perverseness.”
lay down as a most certain rule, that when God doth require us to do what he himself doth promise, and hath made it our duty to perform, his promise is only to perform what is requisite on his part towards the work, . . . and the tenor of those prayers is only to afford his assistance to help our infirmities.” The promise made to circumcise their heart was a promise made “to nations, not to particular persons,” and that prayer of Ephraim is only a prayer that God would bring ’em out of captivity.3
God promiseth to write his law in the hearts of his people, and to put it into their inward parts [ Jer. 31:33]; that he “will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear him forever,” and “will make an everlasting covenant with them, that he will not turn away from them, to do them good: but will put his fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from him” (Jer. 32:39–40).
Ans. These promises are made to the nation, and not to particular persons (see No. III, p. 132).4 And those words, “I will put my law in their hearts, and write it in their inward parts:
1. That he would clearly make known his will to them, that they need not be at much pains to find it out, as in Deut 30:11, 14, and Rom. 10:8– 9 and Rom. 2:15. Hence the effect of [it] here is said to be, “They shall all know me, from the least to the greatest” [ Jer. 31:34]. So Heb. 8:13.
2. In inculcating them on the soul by the Holy Spirit, so that they shall be still fresh on the memory. So Deut 6:6, and Prov. 3:1, 3 and ch. 7:1, 3, Deut. 11:18.
Again, says Dr. Whitby, the promise, Jer. 32:39–40, is plainly conditional.5 See v. 37, and ch. 24:7, and ch. 3:10 and v. 40, and ch. 3:19, and Is. 55:3. Again, this text only contains a promise that when the Jewish [nation] should be converted at the close of the world, they should never fall off any more from being his people. See Stebbing, pp. 200–05.6
3. Ibid., 286–88. 4. “Efficacious Grace, Bk. III,” p. 243. 5. Whitby, Discourse, 2nd corr. ed., p. 290. 6. In pp. 200–05, Stebbing is considering Ezek. 36:26 as proof of the need for irresistible grace. He states (p. 200): “But that the Meaning of this Promise was not that God would do all himself, and leave nothing for them to do, is plain, because . . . these Men were required to make THEMSELVES a new Heart and a new Spirit.From whence it is evident, that notwithstanding God’s giving them a new Heart, it was necessary for them to renew their own Hearts; and what can this signify but that the Promise was not absolute, but supposed the Concurrence of their own Endeavours; or else if it were absolute, that the Meaning of it was no more than this, viz. that God would do every thing that was proper to be done on his Part to bring them to Repentance, leaving it still to their own Choice whether they would actually repent or not?”
God saith concerning his people, Ezek. 11:19–20, “I will give you one heart, and I will put a new spirit in you; and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them an heart of flesh: that they may walk in my statutes, and keep my ordinances.” And again, ch. 36:25, 27, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, [. . .] And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”
Ans. These are promises to the nation, and not particular persons. And they are conditional promises. Particular persons can’t claim anything by them, any more than to be filled with corn (v. 29). God may be said to do those things when, by his providential dispensations, his rich mercies or his judgments, or his miraculous dealings, he doth that which affords a powerful inducement to engage men to cleanse themselves from their de- filements, and turn to him with a perfect heart. See Is. 1:25, Is. 4:4, Hos. 11:4, Ezek. 24:13.
See Stebbing, pp. 200–05.7
Text.8 Phil. 2:13., “’Tis God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his own good pleasure.”
The plain meaning of this text is that ’tis God that gives both the will and the deed, that ’tis God by his operation and efficiency gives both the will and also enables us to put that in execution; or that he by efficiency gives both the will and the deed. And this will remain the plain meaning of this text after this sort of gentlemen have worked upon [it] a thousand years longer, if any of them shall remain on earth so long. It will be the indisputable meaning of it after their criticisms on the word energei, etc.
I question whether any word can be found in all the Greek language more expressive and significant of an effectual operation. Wherever the words “effectual” and “effectually” are used in our translation of the Bible, this is the word used in the original. See the English Concordance.9
Phil. 2:13 (see Stebbing, pp. 198, etc.; see Chubb, p. 357, § 1),1 “God
7. See preceding note. 8. The next three paragraphs are moved by JE’s direction from Bk. III, MS p. 62. 9. The work that JE used was Alexander Cruden, A Complete Concordance to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament (London, 1737).
worketh in you to will and to do of his own good pleasure”; and in Heb. 13:21, [the Apostle] prays that he would work in us what “is well-pleasing in his sight.”
That God doth thus is not denied; but the question is whether he doth it by a physical operation, or by internal suasion, or inducements to prevail on us thus to will and do. That it is the latter only, the words immediately preceding confirm: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” The word energein is sometimes used for a moral operation, as when Satan is said, energein, to work in the children of disobedience (Eph. 2:2). And besides, both these places speak of men already believing and converted. See Taylor’s interpretation, pp. 103–04 of his Key.2
Phil. 2:13. The drift of the words most plainly is to declare that God works or effects all the whole of the matter.
I Cor. 4:7, “Who maketh thee to differ from another?” Here the Apostle speaks only of extraordinary gifts of the Spirit. See Stebbing, pp. 228, etc. He supposes ’tis differing in having a better teacher.
I Cor. 1:29–31, “That no flesh should glory in his presence. For of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” Eph. 2:8–9, “By grace ye are saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
“Through grace ye are saved through faith,” i.e. through the saving grace of God, appearing to us by the preaching of the gospel, and believed
218 Efficacious Grace, Book I
work out our own Salvation, which is on the other hand a clear reason why we need not. And yet this is the very Case, if God’s working in us be supposed to imply that he is the sole Cause of Conversion. For if God be the sole Cause of Conversion, if he does so much himself, that there is nothing left for us to do, to what purpose is it that we should work?”
Thomas Chubb, A Collection of Tracts on Various Subjects (London, 1730). JE refers to Treatise XXVI, “Scripture Evidence Considered: in a View of the Controversy, betwixt the Author and Mr. Barclay’s Defenders.” “Mr. Barclay” is Robert Barclay, who wrote An Apology (London, 1676).
2. John Taylor, A Paraphrase with Notes on the Epistle to the Romans. To Which is Prefix’d, A Key to the Apostolic Writings (Dublin, 1746), pp. 103–04, on Phil. 2:13: “God works in (among) you both to will and to do (that is, God had supplied them with all proper Means, and Motives, to engage them to a faithful Discharge of their Duty, and was ready to supply them with Strength to enable them to do it).”
The following paragraph on Phil. 2:13 is inserted from Book III, p. 71, at JE’s direction. JE drew a vertical line through the entry.
by us, we are put into a state of salvation; and that all this is done to any church or nation through the free grace and mercy of God, without anything done by them antecedently to this grace. And though our actual salvation depends on good works, yet is all boasting utterly excluded upon several accounts: first, because that revelation which contains the matters of our faith, and all the powerful motives to embrace it, and all those miracles which rendered that grace highly credible and so engaged us to believe it, is the free gift of God; second, because the good works that we do, proceed not from ourselves, but are the fruits of that faith which, in the sense now mentioned, is the gift of God.
The glorying which the Apostle excludes is only that of the merit of our works, or that which doth exclude the help or assistance of the grace of God in Christ; but not all glorying, as is evident by I Cor. 9:15–16, and II Cor. 11:10, and II Cor. 1:12, and Gal. 6:4.
And as to that in I Cor. 1:29–31, the glory of our conversion is wholly due to God, because the principle by which man cooperates with God is from God; and all the motives which excite this principle to act, arise purely from God’s preventing and exciting grace. Thus, though wealth be the fruit of industry, and the diligent hand makes riches, yet ’tis God that gives power to get wealth, and ’tis his blessing on our enterprises which maketh rich. The glory therefore is due to God alone.
God himself looks on our work [as] praiseworthy, and therefore will give praise to the saints: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” [Matt. 25:21]. See also Phil. 4:8, I Pet. 1:19–20.
See Stebbing’s general answer to texts that speak of God’s giving faith and repentance, etc., pp. 196, etc.
Either it is so that the stronger the habitual inclination to good is the more virtue, and the stronger the disposition to evil the more vicious, or indifference is essential to both virtue and vice. [. . .]
[. . .] If 3 the assistance God4 affords be moral, or let it be what it will; yet according to Arminian notions of virtue and liberty of will, no assistance can promote virtue. For it can’t be assistance any further than it tends to sway the will or bias it to good. But so far as it is biased, so far is liberty destroyed, because thereby the mind is put out of a state of indifference.
Here, if it be said the assistance may not be biased, or by assistance not5
put out of a state of indifference, but the assistance may be only against some lust that did bias it, to bring it into a state [of ] indifference: in answer, If this be the case, yet the cause of virtue is not promoted, for a bias to good is no virtue, so neither is a bias to evil no vice or sin.
Dr. Whitby’s inconsistence. One while, when he is disputing against the decree of election, the Epistles, when the Apostle speaks to the elect, are not written to the converted, only because then it suits his turn that they should not be converted. But then afterwards, when disputing against efficacious grace, when the Apostle says to them, “God worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13), then he speaks only to them that are converted (p. 288).6
See Book of Minutes on the Arminian Controversy, p. 26.7
Here,8 if any one shall, contrary to demonstration, assert there is no need of perfect indifference immediately preceding an act of the will in order to that act’s not being necessary, but that the will has power to determine contrary to its present inclination, and so by that act immediately to change its own inclination, without any indifference intervening: according to this supposition, it will be more notoriously absurd to say the will determines this act out of choice, for then choice is so far from preceding and directing and determining the act that a contrary inclination or choice of the will immediately preceded and continued till the new act of will actually stood forth.
220 Efficacious Grace, Book I
5. MS: “or.” 6. Second corr. ed., pp. 294–95. 7. The entry in “Gazetteer Notebook,” p. 26, in which JE first refers to this point made in “Ef- ficacious Grace, Bk. I,” reads:
WHITBY’S INCONSISTENCE. Again, when it suits the Doctor’s turn when writing about perseverance, then all that the apostles write to are true saints, as particularly those the apostle Peter writes to that had previous faith (p. 399); and of those that the apostle [Paul] wrote the Epistle to the Galatians to (pp. 401–02).
DR. WHITBY’S INCONSISTENCE. First, he supposes that the Apostle asserts that true saints, when they fall away, ’tis impossible to renew them again to repentance (pp. 394–95); but yet, a few pages afterwards, supposes the same Apostle travailed in birth with some that had been true saints and had fallen away, that they might renew in them that faith from which they had fallen (p. 402). 8. JE directed that the next two paragraphs be inserted in an earlier page that is now missing. He also drew a vertical line through the next four paragraphs.
Again, if liberty consists in indifference and equilibrium, this further proves our virtue in no measure to be from God, nor from his Word, nor his Spirit, nor his providence: for after all means, the mind is left in equilibrio, without any good act or inclination or tendency to a good act.
According to the Arminians, the virtue of the act is not at all from God; for by their principles, all the virtue there is, is only in those acts of the will wherein the will is free, according to their notion of freedom.
If there ben’t a perfect indifference at the moment the act arises, it is easily demonstrable that it is impossible that the act should be more than one way, and so there is that necessity that overthrows the Arminian notion of liberty.9
If God has obliged himself to bestow holy and saving dispositions— those that are given in regeneration—either for natural men’s asking or for the diligent improvement of common grace, because otherwise it would not be our fault that we are without it, nor our virtue that we have it: I say, according to the opinion of all such, virtue don’t consist at all in those holy qualities themselves obtained by the regenerate, but only the fruit of virtue. All the virtue is in asking, and diligent improvement of common grace.
If 1 good acts did proceed from indifference, they could not be virtuous: for then they could not be owing to any good principle, as then no virtue of heart is exercised in it, for virtue of heart consists in virtuous inclinations and dispositions. If it arises from indifference, then before it did come from them it was owing to no goodness in them: for indifference of heart between good or evil is not goodness; for goodness certainly inclines to goodness.
Again, if liberty consists in indifference, and this liberty be essential to virtue, then virtuous acts are always equally easy, no more difficult for corruption of nature or antecedent ill habits contracted—the contrary of which Dr. Whitby allows.2
See concerning liberty of indifference, Dr. Watts, pp. 8–9.3
9. JE directs that a passage on MS p. 65, which is missing, be moved here. 1. JE drew a horizontal line through the remaining entries. 2. See especially Discourse IV, “Of the Freedom of the Will,” ch. 2 (pp. 337–53 in 2nd corr. ed.).
Corollary. This new scheme of divinity, built on these principles looked upon so happy, is not happy; not owing to an increase of real light and knowledge, the happy fruit of freedom of [will]; not owing to a happy delirium from superstition, the opinions of forefathers, bigotries. But ’tis rather to be found owing to the folly [and] great ignorance of them in departing from the dictates of that Being that sees infinitely further than they. [They are become] vain [in their] imagination of their own strength.4
And ’tis worthy of everyone’s consideration, whether there be not some secret enmity against the truth at the bottom, the soul-humbling scheme of Christianity plainly revealed in the Scripture.
Conclusion. ’Tis probable some will here object. Some real difficulties about the fall of man, or on some other topic that don’t belong to the controversy—let the difficulties be greater or less, and more or less real and inexplicable—are not owing5 to the difference of this scheme from the Arminian scheme, and would not be at all diminished by renouncing this scheme and adhering to the Arminians.
222 Efficacious Grace, Book I
in which the word Liberty is used . . . and this implies a Power to chuse or refuse, to chuse one thing or the contrary among several things which are proposed, without any inward or outward restraint, force or constraining byass or influence. . . . Man is free whether he will chuse to honour God his Maker, or dishonour him; to do good to his Neighbour, or do him hurt; to keep himself sober, or to make himself drunk: In all these things he may chuse or refuse which he pleases. This is what the Schools call Libertas indifferentiæ ad opposita, i.e. a Liberty of Indifference to chuse one thing, or its opposite.”
4. See Rom. 1:21. 5. Conjectural reading.
Notes
6. See below, pp. 203, 206, 210, 211. 7. See below, pp. 203, 204, 214, 217. 8. JE drew a vertical line through this statement. 9. JE drew a vertical line through the next seven paragraphs, which are interrupted by missing pages in the text and by shifting of passages by JE’s direction.
2. Conjectural reading where JE is writing perpendicularly over the text of a prayer bid. 3. MS: “but let rational men that accumulating.” 4. See Works, 13, 170. 5. Ibid., 171. 6. JE drew a vertical line through the next four paragraphs.
8. Ibid., 2nd corr. ed., p. 21. 9. JE drew a vertical line through the following paragraph. 1. JE drew a vertical line through the next four paragraphs.
4. JE drew a vertical line through the next two paragraphs.
6. MS: “will that it be. 7. The next two paragraphs are cued by JE to be relocated in pages that are now missing, so they have been retained in their original place. JE drew a vertical line through the next six paragraphs.
8. JE, Jr., adds, “prove efficacious grace.”
2. JE drew a vertical line through the next nine paragraphs. 3. The page is missing. 4. Whitby, Discourse, 2nd corr. ed., pp. 307–08.
9. Whitby, Discourse, 2nd corr. ed., pp. 226–27. 1. JE drew a vertical line through the next two paragraphs. 2. Whitby, Discourse, 2nd corr. ed., pp. 360–61. 3. MS: “necessity But still.”
4. MS: “that as.”
5. MS: “to.” 6. JE drew a vertical line through the next five paragraphs. 7. Whitby, Discourse, 2nd corr. ed., p. 112.
4. Ibid., p. 230. 5. JE drew a vertical line through the following paragraph.
1. MS: “heart as is that he.” 2. Whitby, Discourse, 2nd corr. ed., p. 286.
1. On pp. 198–200, Stebbing writes on Phil. 2:13. On pp. 198–99, he states: “Now that these Words do not imply that God is the sole Agent in Conversion, is plain from hence, that we are exhorted in the Verse immediately preceding to work out our own Salvation with Fear and Trembling; and it is brought as a reason why we ought to do this, because it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do. Now it would be very strange that God should use that for a reason to us why we should
3. JE drew a line through this and the following paragraph. 4. MS: “G. he.”
3. Isaac Watts, An Essay on the Freedom of Will in God and in Creatures, and on Various Subjects Connected Therewith (London, 1732). The first section is entitled, “Of Liberty and Necessity, and how far they are consistent.” In pp. 8–9, Watts writes: “Now let us enquire what is a Liberty of Choice or of Indifference. Tho’ necessary Actions are sometimes said to be free, when they are done thus spontaneously, . . . yet a Liberty of Choice or Indifference in things not necessary is the more common sense