A. Will defined.—Will is the soul’s power to choose between motives and to direct its subsequent activity according to the motive thus chosen,—in other words, the soul’s power to choose both an end and the means to attain it. The choice of an ultimate end we call immanent preference; the choice of means we call executive volition. In this definition we part company with Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, in Works, vol. 2. He regards the will as the soul’s power to act according to motive, _i. e._, to act out its nature, but he denies the soul’s power to choose between motives, _i. e._, to initiate a course of action contrary to the motive which has been previously dominant. Hence he is unable to explain how a holy being, like Satan or Adam, could ever fall. If man has no power to change motives, to break with the past, to begin a new course of action, he has no more freedom than the brute. The younger Edwards (Works, 1:483) shows what his father’s doctrine of the will implies, when he says: “Beasts therefore, according to the measure of their intelligence, are as free as men. Intelligence, and not liberty, is the only thing wanting to constitute them moral agents.” Yet Jonathan Edwards, determinist as he was, in his sermon on Pressing into the Kingdom of God (Works, 4:381), urges the use of means, and appeals to the sinner as if he had the power of choosing between the motives of self and of God. He was unconsciously making a powerful appeal to the will, and the human will responded in prolonged and mighty efforts; see Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 109.