The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University

The dispute about grace's being resistible or irresistible is altogether perfect nonsense, for the effect of grace is upon the will. So that it is nonsense, except it be proper to say that a man can with his will resist his own will, or except it be possible for him to desire to resist his own will; that is, except it be possible for a man to will a thing and not will it at the same time. Or if you speak of enlightening grace, and say this grace is upon the understanding, it is nothing but the same nonsense in other words. For then the sense runs thus, that a man, after he has seen so plainly that a thing is best for him that he wills it, yet he can at the same [time] nill it. If you say, he can will anything when he pleases, that is most certainly true. For who can deny that a man can will anything that he wills, that he doth already will? That a man can will anything that he pleases, is just so certain as that what is, is.

Wherefore it is most enormous nonsense, to say that after a man has seen so plainly a thing to be so much best for him that he wills it, to say that he could not have willed itIn this and the next three cases, the "not" is to be construed with "have" rather than with "could." As in the previous paragraph, JE is speaking of ability to nill (a now archaic term meaning "to be unwilling"), not inability to will, as he makes clear in "if he had willed not to have willed it." His argument would have been easier to follow had he written "could not-have-willed it" or (as JE, Jr. emended the MS at these points to read) "could have not willed it." See Paul Ramsey's introduction to the Freedom of the Will (Works, 1, 44–47), where an earlier transcription of No. o is printed and the meaning of its terms discussed. if he had pleased. That is to say, he could not have willed [it]Ibid. if he had willed not to have willed it; that is, if he had not willed it he could not have willed it.Ibid. That is certain, that a man never doth anything but what he can do. But to say, after a man has willed a thing, that he could not have willed itIbid. if he had pleased, is to suppose two wills in a man: the one to will, which goes last,JE, Jr. altered this word to "first," a very troublesome reading which I still accepted as JE's in the text furnished to Ramsey in 1956 (ibid., p. 45). The microscope has since made it possible to disengage JE's text from his son's emendations. JE, Jr. 's edition of this entry is reprinted in the Worcester rev. ed. (2, 566). the other to please to will. And so with the same reason we may say, there is ten

thousand: another to please to please to will, etc.For JE's later expansion of this infinite-regress argument, see Freedom of the Will, Pt. II, § 1 Works, 1, 172–74). Wherefore, to say that the man could have willed otherwise if he had pleased, is just all one as to say (only a hundred times as nonsensically spoken) that if he had willed otherwise, then we might be sure he could will otherwise.