LECTURE L.

THE NOTION OF INABILITY

PROPER METHOD OF ACCOUNTING FOR IT.

I HAVE represented ability or the freedom of the will as a first-truth of reason. I have also defined first-truths of reason to be those truths that are necessarily known to all moral agents. From these two representations the inquiry may naturally arise, how then is it to be accounted for that so many men have denied the liberty of the will or ability to obey God? That these first-truths of reason are frequently denied is a notorious fact. A recent writer thinks this denial a sufficient refutation of the affirmation that ability is a first-truth of reason. It is important that this denial should be accounted for. That mankind affirm their obligation upon the real though often latent and unperceived assumption of ability, there is no reasonable ground of doubt. I have said that first-truths of reason are frequently assumed and certainly known without being often the direct object of thought or attention; and also that these truths are universally held in the practical jugdments of men while they sometimes in theory deny them. They know them to be true and in all their practical judgments assume their truth while they reason against them, think they prove them untrue, and not unfrequently affirm that they are conscious of an opposite affirmation. For example, men have denied, in theory, the law of causality, while they have at every moment of their lives acted upon the assumption of its truth. Others have denied the freedom of the will, who have every hour of their lives assumed and acted and judged upon the assumption that the will is free. The same is true of ability, which, in respect to the commandments of God, is identical with freedom. Men have often denied the ability of man to obey the commandments of God while they have always in their practical judgments of themselves and of others assumed their ability in respect to those things that are really commanded by God. Now, how is this to be accounted for?

1. Multitudes have denied the freedom of the will, because they have loosely confounded the will with the involuntary powers-with the intellect and the sensibility. Locke, as is well known, regarded the mind as posssessing but two primary faculties, the understanding and the will. President Edwards, as was said in a former lecture, followed Locke, and regarded all the states of the sensibility as acts of the will. Multitudes, nay the great mass of Calvinistic di. vines, with their hearers, have held the same views. This confounding of the sensibility with the will has been common for a long time. Now every body is conscious that the states of the sensibility or mere feelings cannot be produced or changed by a direct effort to feel thus or thus. Every body knows from consciousness that the feelings come and go, wax and wane, as motives are presented to excite them. And they know also that these feelings are under the law of necessity and not of liberty; that is, that necessity is an attribute of these feelings in such a sense, that under the circumstances, they will exist in spite of ourselves, and that they can not be controlled by a direct effort to control them. Every body knows that our feelings or the states of our sensibility can be controlled only indirectly, that is, by the direction of our thoughts. By directing our thoughts to an object calculated to excite certain feelings, we know that when the excitability is not exhausted, feelings correlated to that object will come into play of course and of necessity. So when any class of feelings exist, we all know that by diverting the attention from the object that excites them, they subside of course, and give place to a class correlated to the new object that at present occupies the attention. Now it is very manifest how the freedom of the will has come to be denied by those who confound the will proper with the sensibility. These same persons have always known and assumed that the actions of the will proper were free. Their error has consisted in not distinguishing in theory between the action of the proper will and the involuntary states of the sensibility. In their practical judgments, and in their conduct, they have recognized the distinction which they have failed to recognize in their speculations and theories. They have every hour been exerting their own freedom, have been controlling directly their attention and their outward life by the exercise of the freedom of their proper will. They have also, by the free exercise of the same faculty, been indirectly controlling the states of their sensibility. They have all along assumed

the absolute freedom of the will proper, and have always acted upon the assumption, or they would not have acted at all or even attempted to act. But since they did not in theory distinguish between the sensibility and the will proper, they denied in theory the freedom of the will. If the actions of the will be confounded with desires and emotions, as President Edwards confounded them, and as has been common, the result must be a theoretical denial of the freedom of the will. In this way we are to account for the doctrine of inábility as it has been generally held. It has not been clearly understood that moral law legislates directly, and, with strict propriety of speech, only over the will proper, and over the involuntary powers only indirectly through the will. It has been common to regard the law and the gospel of God as directly extending their claims to the involuntary powers and states of mind; and as was shown in a former lecture, many have regarded, in theory, the law as extending its claims to those states that lie wholly beyond either the direct or indirect control of the will. Now of course, with these views of the claims of God, ability is and must be denied. I trust we have seen in past lectures, that, strictly and properly speaking, the moral law restricts its claims to the actions of the will proper, in such a sense that if there be a willing mind, it is accepted as obedience; that the moral law and the lawgiver legislate over involuntary states only indirectly, that is, through the will; and that the whole of virtue, strictly speaking, consists in good will or disinterested benevolence. Sane minds never practically deny or can deny the freedom of the will proper, or the doctrine of ability, when they make the proper discriminations between the will and the sensibility, and properly regard moral law as legislating directly only over the will. It is worthy of all consideration that those who have denied ability have almost always confounded the will andthe sensibility; and that those who have denied ability have always extended the claims of moral law beyond the pale of proper voluntariness; and many of them even beyond the limits of either the direct or the indirect control of the will.

But the inquiry may arise, how it comes to pass that men have so extensively entertained the impression that the moral law legislates directly over those feelings and over those states of mind which they know to be involuntary? I answer that this mistake has arisen out of a want of just discrimination between the direct and indirect legislation of the law and of the law-giver. It is true that men are conscious of being re

sponsible for their feelings and for their outward actions, and even for their thoughts. And it is really true that they are responsible for them in so far forth as they are under either the direct or indirect control of the will. And they know that these acts and states of mind are possible to them, that is, that they have an indirect ability to produce them. They however loosely confound the direct and indirect ability and responsibility. The thing required by the law directly and presently is benevolence or good will. This is what and all that the law strictly presently or directly requires. It indirectly requires all those outward and inward acts and states that are connected directly and indirectly with this required act of will by a law of necessity; that is, that those acts and states should follow as soon as by a natural and necessary law they will follow from a right action of the will. When these feelings and states and acts do not exist, they blame themselves generally with propriety, because the absence of them is in fact owing to a want of the required act of the will. Sometimes, no doubt, they blame themselves unjustly, not considering that although the will is right, of which they are conscious, the involuntary state or act does not follow because of exhaustion, or because of some disturbance in the established and natural connection between the acts of the will and its ordinary sequents. When this exhaustion or disturbance exists, men are apt, loosely and unjustly, to write bitter things against themselves. They often do the same in hours of temptation when Satan casts his fiery darts at them, lodging them in the thoughts and involuntary feelings. The will repels them, but they take effect, for the time being, in spite of himself in the intellect and sensibility; blasphemous thoughts are suggested to the mind, unkind thoughts of God are suggested, and in spite of one's self, these abominable thoughts awaken their correlated feelings. The will abhors them and struggles to suppress them, but for the time being, finds itself unable to do any thing more than to fight and resist.

Now it is very common for souls in this state to write the most bitter accusations against themselves. But should it be hence inferred that they really are as much in fault as they assume themselves to be? No, indeed. But why do ministers, of all schools, unite in telling such tempted souls, You are mistaken, my dear brother or sister, these thoughts and feelings, though exercises of your own mind, are not yours in such a sense that you are responsible for them. The thoughts are

suggested by Satan, and the feelings are a necessary consequence. Your will resists them, and this proves that you are unable, for the time being, to avoid them. You are, therefore, not responsible for them while you resist them with all the power of your will, any more than you would be guilty of murder should a giant overpower your strength and use your hand against your will to shoot a man. In such cases, it is, so far as I know, universally true that all schools admit that the tempted soul is not responsible or guilty for those things which it can not help. The inability is here allowed to be a bar to obligation; and such souls are justly told by ministers, You are mistaken in supposing yourself guilty in this case. The like mistake is fallen into when a soul blames itself for any state of mind whatever that lies wholly and truly beyond the direct or indirect control of the will, and for the same reason inability in both cases is alike a bar to obligation. It is just as absurd in the one case as in the other to infer real responsibility from a feeling or persuasion of resposibility. To hold that men are always responsible because they loosely think themselves to be so, is absurd. In cases of temptation such as that just supposed, as soon as the attention is directed to the fact of inability to avoid those thoughts and feelings, and the mind is conscious of the will's resisting them and of being unable to banish them, it readily rests in the assurance that it is not responsible for them. Its own irresponsibility in such cases appears self-evident to the mind the moment the proper in ability is considered, and the affirmation of irresponsibility attended to. Now if the soul naturally and truly regarded itself as responsible when there is a proper inability and impossibility, the instructions above referred to could not relieve the mind. It would say, To be sure I know that I can not avoid having these thoughts and feelings, any more than I can cease to be the subject of consciousness, yet I know I am resposible, notwithstanding. These thoughts and feelings are states of my own mind and no matter how I come by them or whether I can control or prevent them or not, Inability, you know is no bar to obligation; therefore my obligation and my guilt remain. Wo is me, for I am undone. The idea, then, of responsibility when there is in fact real inability is a prejudice of education, a mistake.

The mistake, unless strong prejudice of education has taken possession of the mind, lies in overlooking the fact of a real and proper inability. Unless the judgment has been strongly biased by education, it never judges itself bound to