Jonathan Edwards

Quotes From

Freedom of the Will (1754)

• Where there is absolutely no preferring or choosing, but a perfect, continuing equilibrium, there is no volition.#
• All time is perceived by the mind, only by the successive change of its own ideas. Therefore while the perceptions of the mind remain precisely in the same state, there is no perceivable length of time, because no sensible succession at all.#
• Choice and preference can no more be in a state of indifference, than motion can be in a state of rest.#
• It is as absurd to say, that God decreed the dependence of the world upon himself, as it is to say, he decreed that two and two shall be equal to four, rather than five.#
• Language is indeed very deficient, in regard of terms to express precise truth concerning our own minds, and their faculties and operations. Words were first formed to express external things; and those that are applied to express things internal and spiritual, are almost all borrowed, and used in a sort of figurative sense. Whence they are, most of them, attended with a great deal of ambiguity and unfixedness in their signification, occasioning innumerable doubts, difficulties, and confusions, in inquiries and controversies about things of this nature. But language is much less adapted to express things existing in the mind of the incomprehensible deity, precisely as they are.#
• It is equally improper to talk of months and years of the Divine Existence, as of square miles of Deity: and we equally deceive ourselves, when we talk of the world being differently fixed, with respect to wither of these sorts of measures.#
• Inasmuch as sin is not the fruit of of any positive agency or influence of the Most High, but, on the contrary, arises from the withholding of his action and energy, and, under certain circumstances, necessarily follows on the want of his influence; this is no argument that he is sinful, or his operation evil, or has anything of the nature of evil; but, on the contrary, that he, and his agency, are altogether good and holy, and that he is the fountain of all holiness.#
• These events will be ordered by something. They will either be disposed by wisdom, or they will be disposed by chance; that is, they will be disposed by blind and undesigning causes, if that were possible, and could be called a disposal. Is it not better, that the good and evil which happen in God’s world, should be ordered, regulated, bounded, and determined by the good pleasure of an infinitely wise being, who perfectly comprehends within his understanding and constant view, the universality of things, in all their extent and duration, and sees all the influence of every event, with respect to every individual thing and circumstance, throughout the grand system, and the whole of the eternal series of consequences; than to leave these things to fall out by chance, and to be determined by those causes which have no understanding or aim?#
• On the whole, it is manifest, that God may be, in the manner which has been described, the orderer and disposer of that event, which, in the inherent subject and agent, is moral evil; and yet his so doing may be no moral evil.#

Concerning the End for which God Created the World (1765)

• That perfection of God which we call his faithfulness, or his inclination to fulfil his promises to his creatures, could not properly be what moved him to create the world.#
• If we suppose God has real pleasure and happiness in the holy love and praise of his saints, as the image and communication of his own holiness, it is not properly any pleasure distinct from the pleasure he has in himself; but is truly an instance of it.#
• Though these communications of God – these exercises, operations, and expressions of his glorious perfections, which God rejoices in – are in time; yet his joy in them is without beginning or change.#
• We must suppose that God’s revealed law, and the law of nature, agree; and that his will, as a lawgiver, must agree with his will as a creator. Therefore we justly infer, that the same thing which God’s revealed law requires intelligent creatures to seek, as their last and greatest end, that God their creator had made their last end.#

A Dissertation Concerning the Nature of True Virtue (1755)

• The present state of the world is so constituted by the wisdom and goodness of its supreme Ruler, that these natural principles [of conscience arising from self-love], for the most part, tend to the good of mankind.#