The term necessary, in its common or vulgar use, does not relate to this question, for in that use as we have seen, it refers to the connexion between volition considered as a cause, and its effects. In this question, we are considering volition as an effect in relation to its cause or the motive. If the connexion then of motive and volition be necessary, it must be necessary in the philosophical or metaphysical sense of the term. Now this philosophical necessity Edwards does hold to characterize the connexion of motive and volition. This section opens with the following distinction of philosophical necessity: "That necessity which has been explained, consisting in an infallible connexion of the things signified by the subject and predicate of a proposition, as intelligent beings are the subjects of it, is distinguished into _moral_ and _natural_ necessity." He then appropriates _moral philosophical necessity_ to express the nature of the connexion between motive and volition: "And sometimes by moral necessity is meant that necessity of connexion and _consequence_ which arises from _moral causes_, as the strength of inclination, or motives, and the connexion which there is in many cases between these, and such certain volitions and actions. And it is in _this_ sense that I use the phrase _moral necessity_ in the following discourse." (p. 32.) Natural _philosophical_ necessity as distinguished from this, he employs to characterize the connexion between natural causes and phenomena of our being, as the connexion of external objects with our various sensations, and the connexion between truth and our assent or belief. (p. 33.) In employing the term _moral_, however, he does not intend to intimate that it affects at all the absoluteness of the necessity which it distinguishes; on the contrary, he affirms that "moral necessity may be as absolute as natural necessity. That is, the effect may be as perfectly connected with its moral cause, as a natural necessary effect is with its natural cause. It must be allowed that there may be such a thing as a _sure_ and _perfect_ connexion between moral causes and effects; so this only (i. e. the sure and perfect connexion,) is what I call by the name of _moral necessity_." (p. 33.)