The man who confounds the sensibility with the will should, indeed, have no difficulty in reconciling the divine agency with the human. If the state of the mind in willing is purely passive, like a state of the mind in feeling; then to say that it is produced by the power of God, would create no difficulty whatever. Hence, the great difficulty of reconciling the human with the divine agency, which has puzzled and perplexed so many, should not exist for one who identifies the will with the sensibility; and it would exist for no one holding this psychology, if there were not more in the operations of his nature than in the developments of his system. Perhaps no one ever more completely lost sight of the true characteristic of the manifestations of the will, by thrusting them behind the phenomena of the sensibility, than President Edwards; and hence the difficulty in question seemed to have no existence for him. So far from troubling himself about the line which separates the human agency from the divine, he calmly and quietly speaks as if such a line had no existence. According to his view, the divine agency encircles all, and man is merely the subject of its influence. It is true, he uses the terms active and actions, as applicable to man and his exertions; but yet he regards his very acts, his volitions, as being produced by God. “In efficacious grace,” says he, “God does all, and we do all. God produces all, and we act all. For that is what he produces; namely, our own acts.” Now I think Edwards could not have used such language, if he had attached any other idea to the term act, than what really belongs to it when it is applied, as it often is, to the passive states of the intelligence and the sensibility. An _act_ of the intellect, or an _act_ of the affections, may be produced by the power of God; but not an act of the will. For, as the Princeton Review well says, “a necessary volition is an absurdity, a thing inconceivable.” It is scarcely necessary to add, that in causing all real human agency to disappear before the divine sovereignty, Edwards merely reproduced the opinion of Calvin; which he endeavoured to establish, not by a fierce, unreasoning dogmatism, but upon the principles of reason and philosophy. “The apostle,” says Calvin, “ascribes everything to the Lord’s mercy, _and leaves nothing to our wills or exertions_.”(138) He even contends, that to “suppose man to be a coöperator with God, so that the validity of election depends on his consent,” is to make the “will of man superior to the counsel of God;”(139) as if there were no possible medium between nothing and omnipotence. Section V. The danger of mistaking distorted for exalted views of the divine sovereignty.