nce of the force imposed on his body in the
other. This kind of necessity is called co-action by Calvin and Luther; it
is usually denominated "natural necessity" by Edwards and his followers;
though it is also frequently termed compulsion, or co-action, by them.

This natural necessity, or co-action, it is admitted on all hands,
destroys accountability for external conduct, wherever it obtains. Indeed,
if a man is compelled to do a thing against his will, this is not,
properly speaking, his act at all; nor is it an omission of his, if he
wills to do a thing, and is necessarily prevented from doing it by
external restraint. But it should be observed that natural necessity, or
co-action, reaches no deeper than the external conduct; and can excuse for
nothing else. As it does not influence the will itself, so it cannot
excuse for acts of the will. Indeed, it presupposes the existence of a
volition, or act of the will, whose natural consequences it counteracts
and overcomes. Hence, if the question were--Is a man accountable for his
external actions, that is, for the motions of his body, we might speak of
natural necessity, or co-action, with propriety; but not so when the
question relates to internal acts of the will. All reference to natural
necessity, or co-action, in relation to such a question, is wholly
irrelevant. No one doubts, and no one denies, that the motions of the body
are controlled by the volitions of the mind, or by some external force.
The advocates for the inherent activity and freedom of the mind, do not
place them in the external sphere of matter, in the passive and
necessitated movements of body: they seek not the living among the dead.

But to do justice to these illustrious men, they did not attempt, as many
of their followers have done, to pass off this freedom from external
co-action for the freedom of the will. Indeed, neither of them contended
for the freedom of the will at all, nor deemed such freedom requisite to
render men accountable for their actions. This is an element which has
been wrought into their system by the subsequent progress of human
knowledge. Luther, it is well known, so far from maintaining the freedom
of the mind, wrote a work on the "Bondage of the Human Will," in reply to
Erasmus. "I admit," says he, "that man's will is free in a certain sense;
not because it is now in the same state it was in paradise, _but because
it was made free originally, and may, through God's grace, b