; but yet I am very desirous to meet with some judicious experimental treatise, in which the doctrine, with the Scriptures on which it is grounded, is set forth more at large; as likewise the rules by which it may be applied to the purposes of support and comfort, without danger of causing presumption and without diminishing the dread of sin.
Above all, I am anxious to see the subject treated with as little reference as possible to the divine predestination and foresight; the argument from the latter being a mere identical proposition followed by an assertion of God's prescience.
Those who will persevere, will persevere, and God foresees; and as to the proof from predestination, that is, that he who predestines the end necessarily predestines the adequate means, I can more readily imagine logical consequences adverse to the sense of responsibility than Christian consequences, such as an individual may apply for his own edification.
And I am persuaded that the doctrine does not need these supports, according, I mean, to the ordinary notion of predestination. The predestinative force of a free agent's own will in certain absolute acts, determinations, or elections, and in respect of which acts it is one either with the divine or the devilish will; and if the former, the conclusions to be drawn from God's goodness, faithfulness, and spiritual presence; these supply grounds of argument of a very different character, especially where the mind has been prepared by an insight into the error and hollowness of the antithesis between liberty and necessity.
Ib.
p. 178.
But how contrary to this is the walk and conduct of some who profess to be pilgrims, and yet can wilfully and deliberately go upon the Devil's ground, and indulge themselves in carnal pleasures and sinful diversions.
Note in Edwards on the Enchanted Ground.
But what pleasures are carnal, — what are sinful diversions, — so I mean as that I may be able to determine what are not? Shew us the criterion, the general principle; at least explain whether each individual case is to be decided for the individual by his own experience of the effects of the pleasure or the diversion, in dulling or distracting his religious feelings; or can a list, a complete list, of all such pleasures be made beforehand?