direction, will does not lose its simplicity and become reason; and when we do obey the sensitivity, will does not become sensitivity--will is still simply cause, and its act the _nisus_ of power: thought, and conviction, and design, hold their place in the reason alone: emotion and passion their place in the sensitivity alone. ARGUMENT FROM THE DIVINE PRESCIENCE. Edwards's argument against a contingent, self-determining will, drawn from the divine prescience, remains to be considered. The argument is introduced as follows: "That the acts of the wills of moral agents are not contingent events, in such a sense as to be without all necessity, appears by God's certain foreknowledge of such events." (sec. xi. p. 98.) Edwards devotes this section to "the evidence of God's certain foreknowledge of the volitions of moral agents." In the following section, (sec. xii. p. 114,) he proceeds formally with his argument. Before examining this argument, let us look at the consequences of his position. God foresees all volitions; that he foresees them makes their existence necessary. If their existence were not necessary, he could not foresee them; or, to express it still more generally, foreknowledge extends to all events, and foreknowledge proves the necessary existence of everything to which it extends. It follows from this, that all events exist with an absolute necessity, all physical phenomena, all volitions, and moral, phenomena, whether good or evil, and all the divine volitions, for God cannot but foresee his own volitions. In no part of his work, does Edwards lay down more summarily and decidedly, the doctrine of absolute and universal necessity. We have already, in part II. of this treatise, deduced the consequences of this doctrine. If then we are placed upon the alternative of denying the divine prescience of volitions, or of acknowledging the doctrine of necessity, it would practically be most desirable and wisest to take the first part of the alternative. "If it could be demonstrated," remarks Dugald Stewart, (vol. 5. app. sec. viii.) "which in my opinion has not yet been done, that the prescience of the volitions of moral agents is incompatible with the free agency of man, the logical inference would be, _not_ in favour of the scheme of necessity, but that there are some events, the foreknowledge of which implies an impossibility. Shall we venture to affirm, that it exceeds the power of God to permit such a train of contingent events to take place, as his own foreknowledge shall not extend to? Does not such a proposition detract from the omnipotence of God, in the same proportion in which it aims to exalt his omniscience?" If the divine foreknowledge goes to establish the doctrine of necessity, there is nothing left that it is worth while to contend for; all moral and theological interests vanish away. But let us examine the argument of Edwards. This argument consists of three parts; we shall consider them in order.