Preaching can produce good effects only by producing good volitions; and good volitions can be produced only by good motives: but good motives can exist under preaching only when the subjects of the preaching are correlated with the state of mind. But by supposition this is not the case, for the heart is totally depraved. To urge the unregenerate man to put forth volitions in reference to his regeneration, may consist with a self-determining power of will, but is altogether irrelevant on this system. It is urging _him_ to do what _he_ cannot do; and indeed what all persuasion must fail to do _in him_ as a mere passive subject. To assure him that the affair is quite easy, because nothing is required of him but to will, is equivalent to assuring him that the affair is quite easy, because it will be done when he has done it. The man may reply, the affair would indeed be quite easy if there existed in me a motive to produce the volition; but as there does not, the volition is impossible. And as I cannot put forth the volition without the motive, so neither can I make the motive which is to produce the volition--for then an effect would make its cause. What I cannot do for myself, I fear neither you, nor indeed an angel from heaven will succeed in doing for me. You array the truths, and duties, and prospects of religion before my mind, but they cannot take the character of motives to influence my will, because they are not agreeable to my heart. You indeed mean well; but do you not perceive that on your own principles all your zeal and eloquence must necessarily have an opposite effect from what you intend? My affections not being in correlation with these subjects, the more you urge them, the more intense becomes my sense of the most disagreeable, or my positive refusal; and this, my good friends, by a necessity which holds us all alike in an inevitable and ever-during chain. It is plainly impossible to escape from this conclusion, and yet maintain the philosophy. All efforts of this kind, made by appealing to the common sentiments of mankind, we have seen are self-contradictory. It will not do to press forward the philosophy until involved in difficulty and perplexity, and then to step aside and borrow arguments from another system which is assumed to be overthrown. There is no necessity more absolute and sovereign, than a logical necessity.[3] XVIII. The cardinal principles of Edwards's system in the sections we have been examining, from which the above consequences are deduced, are the three following: 1. The will is always determined by the strongest motive. 2. The strongest motive is always "the most agreeable." 3. The will is necessarily determined. I shall close this part of the present treatise with a brief examination of the reasoning by which he endeavours to establish these points.