Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2011
Jonathan Edwards believed that the crucial point which divided Calvinists and Arminians was the freedom of the will; that by establishing the doctrine of moral necessity, the Calvinists would have a firm basis from which to confute Arminian objections to the doctrines of total depravity, efficacious grace, absolute, eternal, and particular election, and the perseverance of the saints. His treatise on the Freedom of the Will was intended to give a final and crushing reply to his opponents, and in preparation for it he read widely and thought deeply. He believed that he had answered all objections, stopped all crevices in the argument, and written an unanswerable work. It appeared in 1754.
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22 Ibid., 111.
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44 Ibid., 109.
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46 Dana, Examination, 11; Examination Continued, 36.
47 Dana, Examination Continued, 24.
48 Dana, Examination, 1.
49 Ibid., 3.
50 Ibid., 23.
51 Ibid., 44, 45.
52 Edwards, Works, II, 6–8.
53 Dana, Examination, 49.
54 Ibid., 53, 54.
55 Ibid., 81.
56 Dana, Examination Continued, vi.
57 Dana, Examination, 12.
58 Ibid., 75.
59 Dana, Examination Continued, 20, 21.
60 Dana, Examination, v.