This position may be easily established. "I humbly conceive," says he, "that the affections of the soul are not properly distinguished from the will, as though they were two faculties in the soul." . . . . "The affections are no other than the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul." These passages are referred to by President Day to prove, that Edwards regarded our "emotions or affections as acts of the will," p. 39. Having confounded the will and the sensibility, it became exceedingly easy for Edwards to show that a volition may be produced or caused: all that he had to do was to show, that an emotion may be produced, which is the same thing with an act of the will or a volition. It is upon this confusion of things, that his whole system rests; for if the sensibility is different from the will, as most persons, at the present day, will admit it is; then to excite an emotion, or to make a passive impression upon the sensibility, is very different from producing a volition. Edwards has taken great pains with the superstructure of his system, while he has left its foundations without support. He has not shown, nor can any man show, that the sensibility and the will are one and the same faculty of the soul. He assumes that an emotion is an act of the will, and then proceeds to build upon it, and to argue from it, as if it were a clear and unquestionable truth. Thus, he repeatedly says, that whatever pleases us most, or excites the most agreeable sensation, is that which "operates to induce a volition;" and to say otherwise, is to assert that that which pleases us most, does not please us most. Such assertions, (and I have already had occasion to adduce many such,) clearly identify a sense of the most agreeable, or the most pleasing emotion, with an act of the will. His definition, as we have already seen, laid the foundation for this, and his arguments are based upon it. The passive impression, or the sensation produced, is, according to Edwards, a volition! No wonder, then, that he could conceive of an action of the mind _as being produced_. The wonder is, how he could conceive of it _as being an action at all_. Let us suppose, now, that a feeling or an emotion is produced by an object in view of the mind. It will follow, that the mind is passive in feeling, or in experiencing emotion. We are conscious of such feeling or emotion; and hence we infer, that we are susceptible of feeling or emotion. This susceptibility we call the sensibility, the heart, the affections, &c. But there is another phenomenon of our nature, which is perfectly distinct in nature and in kind from an emotion or a feeling. We are conscious of a volition or choice; and hence we infer that we have a power of acting, or putting forth volitions. This power we call the will.