AN ESSAY. 47 to the understanding to give any direction to the will in its choice : And as the nature of the will in itself is a power of choice or self -determination, so in these instances' it eminently appears that it must be left to determine and chuse for itself without any direction of the understanding. SECT. V. The Advantages of this Scheme of Liberty. This scheme of the liberty of the will, and of the spring of its choice and determination, as residing within itself, has many advantages attending it ; and they are such as these : I. We are hereby led evidently to a self - moving power, to a principle of motion or proper action in man, which we are con- scious of continually, and which we feel and experience in our- selves to be the active spring of those voluntary motions which we excite in our own bodies, and thereby in the bodies that are round about us : And this leads us by fair reasoning to infer, that since we neither did nor could give being to ourselves, to our self moving powers, or to other creatures, there must be some such supreme self -moving power which is the Author and Creator both of bodies and spirits, that is, of all active and pas- sive beings. Whereas the contrary opinion, which supposes the will to be always necessarily determined by the understanding, and the understanding always determined by the appearances of things, gives us no discovery of any self -moving principle or power in this world ; and while the saine opinion supposes the will of God to be in the same manner universally, eternally and unalterablymoved and determinedby the appearances of things in his ideas, and their superior fitness, it gives perhaps too much advantage to the atheist and the sceptic to doubt whether there be any self - moving power at all or no, whether there be any first- moving spirit, that is, a God. This doctrine has in fact been employed to this wretched purpose. II. This opinion asserts and attributes themost proper and most rational doctrine of full freedom to every intelligent crea- ture, and conveys a clear ideaof their liberty both in those spon- taneops actions where the fitness of things so fully and evidently appears, as powerfully to persuade the will, as well as in all other actions where the fitness Both not appearwith such full evi- dence and power, or finally in those things where there is no superior fitness at all appearing. Every action determined by the will of man is free, because the will is a self-determining power. Whereas in the other scheme, which supposes that the will ofnaan in every action rchatsoever is certainly and necessarily determined by the last dictateorjudgment of the understanding, and that the understanding is necessarily determined in its judg- ment by present appearances of things as to their fitness or unfit- ness, there is really noperfect liberty of indifference or freedow
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