There is, I admit, a "sufficient ground and reason" for our actions; but not an _efficient_ cause of them. This is the all-important distinction which has been overlooked in the present controversy. Edwards frequently asks, if a volition is without a cause? Now we call for a division of this question. Has volition an efficient cause? I answer, No. Has it a "sufficient ground and reason" of its existence? I answer, Yes. No one ever imagined that there are no indispensable antecedents to choice, without which it could not take place; but Edwards has framed this question in such a manner, that we cannot give a categorical answer to it, without either denying our own doctrine, or else subscribing to his. Unless there were a mind, there could be no act of the mind; and unless the mind possessed a power of acting, it could not put forth volitions. The mind, then, and the power of the mind called will, constitute the ground of action or volition. But a power to act, it will be said, is not a sufficient reason to account for the existence of action. This is true. The _reason_ is to come. The sufficient reason, however, is not an efficient cause; for there is some difference between a blind impulse or force, and rationality. The mind is endowed with various appetites, passions, and desires,--with noble affections, and, above all, with a feeling of moral approbation and disapprobation. These are not the "active principles," or the "motive powers," as they have been called; they are the ends of our acting: we simply act in order to gratify them. They exert no influence over the will, much less is the will controlled by them; and hence, we are perfectly free, to gratify the one or the other of them;--to act in obedience to the dictates of conscience, or in order to gratify the lowest appetites of our nature. We see that certain means must be used, in order to gratify the passion, desire, affection, or feeling, which we _intend_ to gratify; and we act accordingly. In all this, we form our designs or _intentions_ free from all influence whatever: nothing acts upon the will: we fix upon the end, and we choose the means to accomplish it. We adapt the means to our end; because there is a fitness in them to accomplish that end or design; and because, as rational creatures, we perceive that fitness. Thus, we act according to reason, but not from the influence of reason. We act with a view to our desires, but not from the influence of our desires; and our volition is virtuous or vicious according to the intention with which it is put forth,--according to the design with which it is directed. Passion is not "the gale," it is "the card." Reason is not the force, it is the law. All the power resides in the free, untrammelled will. He who overlooks this, and blindly seeks for something to "move the mind to volition," loses sight of the grand and distinctive peculiarity of man's nature, and brings it down to the dust, subjecting it to the laws of