The manner in which the necessitarian speaks of cause in his maxims, and reasonings, and pretended demonstrations, is of very great service to him. It includes, as we are told, every condition or cause of volition; (what a heterogeneous mass!) every thing without which volition could not come to pass. Yea, it is used in this sense, when it is said that motive is the cause of volition. What shall we do, then, with this broad, this most ambiguous proposition? Shall we deny it? If so, then we deny that volition has any cause of its existence, and fall into the great absurdity of supposing "volition to produce itself." Shall we assent to it, then? If so, we really admit that motive is the efficient cause of volition; and thus, by denying, we are made to reject our own doctrine, while, by affirming, we are made to receive that of our opponents. This way of proposing the doctrine of necessity very strongly reminds one of a certain trick in legislation, by which such things are forced into a bill, that in voting upon it, you must either reject what you most earnestly desire, or else sanction and support what you most earnestly detest. We should, therefore, neither affirm nor deny the whole proposition as it is set forth by the necessitarian; we should touch it with the dissecting knife, and cure it of its manifold infirmities. The ambiguity of the term cause is, indeed, one of the most powerful weapons, both of attack and defence, in the whole armory of the necessitarian. Do you affirm the mind to be the cause of volition? Then, forthwith, as if the word could have only one meaning, it is alleged, that if the mind is the cause of volition, it can cause it only by a preceding volition; and so on _ad infinitum_. Hence, your doctrine must needs be absurd; because the word is understood, yea, and will be understood, in its most restrained and narrow sense. But do you deny motive to be the cause of volition? Then, how absurd are you again; you are no longer understood to use the word in the same sense; you now mean, not only that motive is not the producing cause of volition, but that there is absolutely nothing upon which it depends for its existence, and that "it produces itself." Does Edwards affirm that motive is the cause of volition; that motive causes volition to arise and come forth into existence; that it is not merely "the negative occasion" thereof, but the cause in the most proper sense of the word; that it is "the effectual power which produces volition?" What then? Dare you assert, in the face of such teaching, that motive is not the cause of volition? If so, then you are a most obstinate and perverse caviller; and you are silenced by the information that he _sometimes_ uses the word cause to signify any antecedent, whether it has any positive influence or no. Yea, he gives this information, he declares, to "cut off occasion from any that might seek occasion to cavil and object against his doctrine," p. 51.