Edwards has not always, though frequently, mis-stated the doctrine of his adversaries. The liberty of indifference, says he, in one place, consists in this, "that the will, in choosing, is subject to _no prevailing_ influence," p. 64. Now this is a fair statement of the doctrine in question. Why did not Edwards, then, combat this idea? Why transform it into the monstrous absurdity, that "the will chooses without choosing," or exerts an act of choice at the same time that it exerts no act of choice; and then proceed to demolish it? Was it because he did not wish to march up, fairly and squarely, in the face of the enemy, and contend with them in their strongholds and fastnesses? By no means. There never was a more honest reasoner than Edwards. But his psychology is false; and hence, he has not only misrepresented the doctrine of his opponents, but also his own. He confounds the sensitive part of our nature with the will, expressly in his definitions, though he frequently distinguishes them in his arguments. This is the reason why he sometimes asserts, that the choice of the mind is always as the sense of the most agreeable; and, at others, throws this fundamental doctrine into the form, as we have seen in our third section, that the choice of the mind is always as the choice of the mind; and holds that to deny it is a plain contradiction. By reason of the same confusion of things, the doctrine of his opponents, that "the will, in choosing, is subject to no prevailing influence," seemed to him to mean that the will, in choosing, does not choose. In both cases, he confounds the most agreeable impression upon the sensibility with the choice of the mind; and thus misrepresents both his own doctrine, and that of his opponents, by reducing the one to an insignificant truism, and the other to a glaring absurdity. President Day should have avoided the error of Edwards, in thus misconceiving the doctrine of his opponents; for he expressly distinguishes the sensibility from the will. But there is this difference between Edwards and Day; the first expressly confounds these two parts of our nature, and then proceeds to reason, in many cases, as if they were distinct; while the last most explicitly distinguishes them, and then frequently proceeds to reason as if they were one and the same. It is in this way that he also gravely teaches that the mind chooses when it chooses; and makes his adversaries assert that the mind chooses without choosing, or that the will is inclined without being inclined. Start from whatever point he will, the necessitarian never feels so strong, as when he finds himself securely intrenched in the truism, that a thing is always as itself; there manfully contending against those who assert that a thing is different from itself.