wards perfection, is still groaning under a body of sin, and by the remaining corruption of his heart, is compelled to confess, that the good which we would he does not, but that the evil which he would not that he does. Let us not then seek to accommodate facts to hypotheses, and talk of the efficacy of truth and evidence to effect the moral renovation of man, till we practically deny the agency of the Holy Spirit. Let us rather imitate the sacred writers, who fearlessly display the extent of the disease and the hopeless degeneracy of the human heart; for they know that they proclaim a remedy more than sufficient for all its wants. No perception of evidence, they maintain, and no knowledge of truth, however well adapted to its end and how much soever it may effect, can renew the degenerate heart and rescue the man from bondage; but they proclaim the Spirit of God-who at first created the thinking mind and the feeling soul, as the only source of all sanctification and freedom to his fallen creature. Why then conceal the evil, when so mighty a deliverer is prepared? The Creator has become the Redeemer is He not able to renovate the corrupted heart, as well as to enlighten the darkened mind ?*

* Note H.

APPENDIX.

Note A.

VOLITION.-Dr. Brown's account of volition is so just and so satisfactory, that it may gratify the reader to see it more at large. "The term will, in its application to a process which is partly mental and partly organic, is not denied to be a convenient term for expressing those desires which have instant termination in a muscular motion, which is their object, to distinguish them from desires which relate to objects not directly and immediately attainable, and therefore not accompanied with the belief of direct and immediate attainment; but still it must not be forgotten, that the mental part of the sequence, the momentary feeling which exists in our consciousness alone, and ceases almost as soon as it rises, is a desire that differs not from other desires more than those others mutually differ.*** We are hence often said inaccurately to will, as if, in the process, there were two feelings of the mind, a desire and a volition, so essentially different in their nature, that the will was the choice of what was not desirable. Thus if any one be compelled to support a weight on his outstretched arm, under a fear of a more painful punishment if he should draw it back, and experience, as in that situation he must soon experience, a degree of fatigue which is almost insupportable; if he still continue to keep his arm extended, he will be said, in the common language of philosophers, to will the very pain which he cannot be suppos

ed to desire. But the direct object of his desire is not the motion of his arm; it is simply relief from pain: and the direct object of his continued will is not the continuance of pain; it is simply the extension of his arm. He knows indeed that relief from pain will be immediately procured by drawing back his arm; but he knows also that a severer punishment will follow that motion; and, therefore, preferring the less pain to the greater, he directly desires or wills the continued extension of his arm, as what alone can preserve him from greater suffering. If the direct object of his desire were not relief from pain, but the actual muscular motion which would bring down his weary arm, there can be no doubt that the motion of his arm would immediately ensue.

"With regard to our actions,' says Dr. Reid, we may desire what we do not will, and will what we do not desire, nay, what we have a great aversion to. A man athirst has a strong desire to drink, but for some particular reason, he determines not to gratify his desire. A judge, from a regard to justice and the duty of his office, dooms a criminal to die, while from his humanity or particular affection, he desires the criminal to live. A man for health may take a nauseous draught, for which he has no desire but a great aversion. Desire, therefore, even when its object is some action of our own, is only an incitement to will, but it is not volition. The determination of the mind may be not to do what we desire to do.'

"In all these instances adduced by Dr. Reid, his mistake consists in neglecting or forgetting that part of the process, in which there is a real opposition of desires, and supposing an opposition in another part of the process in which there is really none; for in no one of the instances, is there the smallest opposition, in that particular desire on which the action immediately depends, and which must, therefore, according to his own system, be denominated by him the will. The determination of the mind never is, and never can be to do what, in the particular circumstances of the moment, we do not desire to do. When we take a nauseous

draught, there is a dislike indeed of the sensation which follows the motion, but there is no dislike of the motion itself, which alone depends upon our will, and which is desired by us, not from any love of the disagreeable sensation which follows it-for a love of what is disagreeable would be an absurd contradiction of terms-but from our greater dislike of that continuance of bad health, which we suppose to be the probable consequence of omitting the motion. The desire of moving the hand and the muscles of deglutition; or to use a word which Dr. Reid would have preferred, the will to move them, is a state of mind as different and as distinguishable from the dislike of bad health as from the dislike of the draught. It is a new feeling to which the wide view of many feelings has given birth-a desire, not of pleasure in the draught, but of a less evil in one of two unavoidable evils.

"In like manner a judge who condemns a criminal to death, when, if he yielded to his humanity alone, he would spare him, does not will a single action which he is not desirous of performing, whatever opposition there may have been in those primary desires, of which his secondary desires or will is not a part but only the consequence. He has a desire of saving from death an unfortunate individual, but he has a desire of the public good, and of acting in a manner worthy of his high station. Both these desires exist previously to those that are termed his volitions, by which alone in the muscular motion that follows them, he dooms the criminal to death; the final will to utter the awful words of punishment, arising only from the belief of greater good upon the whole, in the same manner as the desire of fame, arising from the contemplation of fame, or any other desire from the contemplation of its object.”—Cause and Effect, p. 56–58.

President Edwards was long ago of the same opinion respecting the identity of desire with volition. "God," says he," has endued the soul with two faculties: one is that by which it is capable of perception and speculation, or by which it discerns, and views, and judges of things; which is

T

called the understanding. The other faculty is that by which the soul does not merely perceive and view things, but is some way inclined with respect to the things it views or considers; either is inclined to them, or is disinclined and averse from them or is the faculty by which the soul does not behold things, as an indifferent unaffected spectator, but either as liking or disliking, pleased or displeased, approving or rejecting. This faculty is called by various names: it is sometimes called the inclination: and, as it has respect to the ac tions that are determined and governed by it, is called the will: and the mind, with regard to the exercises of this faculty, is often called the heart.

"The will, and the affections of the soul, are not two faculties; the affections are not essentially distinct from the will, nor do they differ from the mere actings of the will and inclination of the soul, but only in the liveliness and sensibleness of exercise.

"It must be confessed, that language is here somewhat imperfect, and the meaning of words in a considerable measure loose and unfixed, and not precisely limited by custom, which governs the use of language. In some sense, the affection of the soul differs nothing at all from the will and inclination, and the will never is in any exercise any further than it is affected; it is not moved out of a state of perfect indifference, any otherwise than as it is affected one way or other, and acts nothing any further. But yet there are many actings of the will and inclination, that are not so commonly called affec tions: in every thing we do, wherein we act voluntarily, there is an exercise of the will and inclination, it is our inclination that governs us in our actions: but all the actings of the inclination and will, in all our common actions of life, are not ordinarily called affections. Yet, what are commonly called affections are not essentially different from them, but only in the degree and manner of exercise. In every act of the will whatsoever, the soul either likes or dislikes, is either inclined or disinclined to what is in view these are not essentially different from those affections of love and hatred: that liking