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Updated: June 26, 2025
I congratulated her upon the late arrangements of Government, which afforded her the prospect of speedily being rid of these neighbours; but she seemed to think the day of departure was still far distant, not over five hundred having as yet availed themselves of the offers held out to them, although the greater number of those remaining in the country had already disposed of their allotments to speculators and dissipated the money they had received for their land; having neglected to plant an ear of corn, or prepare the least provision for the present winter, an improvidence of character peculiar to the natives, and which it was, she said, impossible to guard against without depriving them of all free-agency.
God, creator, lawgiver, and preserver of the universe and of man, everywhere and always present and potent, in permanent connection, nay, communication, with man, at one time by natural and at another by supernatural means, at one time by the channel of authority and at another by that of free-agency, this is the point of departure, this the fixed idea of the philosopho-theologians of the middle ages.
In the moral as well as in the physical world, every thing that happens is a necessary consequence of causes, either visible or concealed; which are, of necessity, obliged to act after their peculiar essences. In man, free-agency is nothing more than necessity contained within himself. An examination of the Opinion which pretends that the System of Fatalism is dangerous.
The law of his nature, which wills that a sensible being shall constantly labour to preserve himself, has not left to man the power to choose, or the free-agency to prefer pain to pleasure vice to utility crime to virtue.
Is it not evident, then, that those who assert the impossibility of a divine influence, on the ground that it would destroy the free-agency of man, have proceeded on a wonderful confusion of the phenomena of the human mind?
We must suppose then, that Edwards has given his own definition of liberty in the Inquiry, or we must conclude that he defended his system by the use of an idea of liberty which he did not believe to be correct; that when he alleged that he “had demonstrated” his doctrine to be consistent with free-agency, he only meant with a false and atheistical notion of free-agency.
Now, when the advocates of free-agency insist that motive is not the efficient cause of volition, and that mind is the efficient cause thereof, we suppose them to employ the expression, efficient cause, in one and the same sense in both branches of the proposition.
The gospel as understood by the Latter-day Saints affirms the unconditional free-agency of man his right to accept good or evil, to choose the means of eternal progression or the opposite, to worship as he elects, or to refuse to worship at all and then to take the consequences of his choice.
Or, to express myself in other terms, the principle of the antique poetry is ideal; that of the romantic is mystical: the former subjects space and time to the internal free-agency of the mind; the latter honours these incomprehensible essences as supernatural powers, in which there is somewhat of indwelling divinity.
The fact that the mind requires certain conditions or occasions, on which to exercise its active power, does not at all interfere with its freedom; and hence the advocates of free-agency have readily admitted that motives are the occasional causes of volition. We must look out for some other meaning of the term, then, if we would clearly and distinctly fix our minds on the point in controversy.
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