x VOLITION: LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 227 



but no such theory will account for the fact that in 

 1754, the famous Calvinistic divine, Jonathan 

 Edwards, President of the College of New Jersey, 

 produced, in the interests of the straitest ortho- 

 doxy, a demonstration of the necessarian thesis, 

 which has never heen equalled in power, and cer- 

 tainly has never been refuted. 



In the ninth section of the fourth part of Ed- 

 wards's " Inquiry," he has to deal with the Armin- 

 ian objection to the Calvinistic doctrine that "it 

 makes God the author of sin "; and it is curious to 

 watch the struggle between the theological con- 

 troversialist, striving to ward off an admission 

 which he knows will be employed to damage his 

 side, and the acute logician, conscious that, in 

 some shape or other, the admission must be made. 

 Beginning with a tu quoque, that the Arminian 

 doctrine involves consequences as bad as the Cal- 

 vinistic view, he proceeds to object to the term 

 "author of sin," though he ends by admitting 

 that, in a certain sense, it is applicable; he proves 

 from Scripture, that God is the disposer and 

 orderer of sin; and then, by an elaborate false 

 analogy with the darkness resulting from the 

 absence of the sin, endeavours to suggest that he 

 is only the author of it in a negative sense; and, 

 finally, he takes refuge in the conclusion that, 

 though God is the orderer and disposer of those 

 deeds which, considered in relation to their agents, 

 are morally evil, yet inasmuch as His purpose has 

 "l58 



