Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

2 8 Examination of the CHAP, n.
the fact of, the human will ; that we act willingly and not
like inanimate machines ; nor does the necessitarian deny,
that the human will is will, and as far as sensation goes
free, though he represents it as ultimately moved from
without. Here, then, is a sort of freewill which is consistent
with the idea of the Divine Power. But this, as was above
is
explained,
not such a freewill as meets the demands of
natural consciousness, which is satisfied with nothing short
of a characteristic of will, which comes into collision with
our idea of the Divine Power viz., originality.
Again, the objection against the doctrine of freewill,
that it would remove human actions from the Divine Pro
vidence, 1 and so reduce this whole moral scheme of things
to chance, has an immediate answer in the very nature of
the truth as here described. Undoubtedly there is a con
tradiction in supposing that events really contingent can
be foreseen, made the subjects of previous arrangement,
and come into a scheme of Providence and ; though this
is sometimes met by the answer that the Divine foresight
is the sight of the events as such, and not in their causes
only, and that therefore contingent events can be foreseen
by God as being events, which however future to us, are
present to His eternal eye
foresight
; it must be owned that such a
as this is a contradiction to our reason2
,
and that
1
If the will of man be free with no use to direct and regulate perfect
a liberty ad utrumlibet, and if his accident. Edwards On Freedom of
actions be the offspring of his will, the Will, part 3, sect. 4.
such of his 2 actions which are not yet That no future event can be
wrought, must be both radically and certainly foreknown whose existence
eventually uncertain. It is therefore is contingent and without all necesa
chance whether they are performed sity, may be proved thus : it is imor
no. ... So that any assertor of possible for a thing to be certainly
self-determination is in fact, whether known to any intellect without evihe
mean it or no, a worshipper of the dence . . . But no understanding,
heathen lady named Fortune, and an created or uncreated, can see eviideal
deposer of Providence from its dence where there is none . . . But
throne. Toplady, vol. vi. p. 90. if there be a future event whose
If it be said that volitions are existence is contingent without all
events that come to pass without necessity, the future existence of
any determining cause, that is most the event is
absolutely without evipalpably
inconsistent with all use of dence. Edwards, On Freedom of
laws and precepts; for nothing is Will, part 2, sect. 12.
more plain than that laws can be of