ch an idea of
liberty should be so unhesitatingly adopted from Edwards, and so
confidently set forth as the highest conceivable notion thereof, by Dr.
Chalmers. He does not seem to entertain the shadow of a doubt, either that
the definition of liberty contained in the Inquiry is that of Edwards
himself, or that which is fully founded in truth. He freely concedes, that
"we can do as we please," and supposes that the reader may be startled to
hear that this is "cordially admitted by the necessitarians themselves!"

But this concession he easily reconciles with the tenet of necessity. "To
say that you can do as you please," says he, "is just to affirm one of
those sequences which take place in the phenomena of mind--a sequence
whereof a volition is the antecedent, and the performance of that volition
is the consequent. It is a sequence which no advocate of the philosophical
necessity is ever heard to deny. Let the volition ever be formed, and if
it point to some execution which lies within the limits we have just
adverted to, the execution of it will follow."(30) Thus, his notion of
liberty makes it consist in the absence of external impediments, which
might break the connexion of a volition and its consequent, and not in the
freedom of the will itself from the absolute dominion of causes. Such an
idea of free-will, it must be confessed, is very well adopted by one who
intends to maintain "a rigid and absolute predestination" of all events.

The manner in which Edwards attempts to reconcile the free-agency and
accountability of man with the great argument from the law of causation,
or with his doctrine of necessity, is, as we have seen, precisely the same
as that adopted by Hobbes. There is not a shade of difference between
them. It is, indeed, easy to demonstrate that liberty, according to this
definition of it, is not inconsistent with necessity; and it is just as
easy to demonstrate, that it is not inconsistent with any scheme of fate
that has ever been heard of among men. The will may be absolutely
necessitated in all its acts, and yet the body may be free from external
co-action or natural necessity!

But though there is this close agreement between Hobbes and Edwards, there
are some points of divergency between Edwards and Calvin. The former comes
forward as the advocate of free-will, the latter expressly denies that we
have a free-will. Calvin admits that we may be free from co-action or
compulsion; but to call thi