Amazon.com description: Product Description: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1851 Excerpt: ... PART IV. THEREIN THE CfflE GROUNDS OF THE REASONINGS OF ARMINlAjto, at arrt J». «OTi DEFENCE OF THE FOREMENTIONED NOTIONS OF LIBERTY, MOKni, iv»£NCT, ojfC., AND AGAINST THE OPPOSITE DOCTRINE, ARE CONSIDERED. SECTION I. The Essence of the Virtue and Vice of Dispositions of the Hear, and A«t« of the WiL. lies not in their Cause, but their Nature. One main foundation of the reasons which are brought to establish the forementioned notions of liberty, virtue, vice, &c., is a supposition, that the virtuousness of the dispositions, or acts of the Will, consist, not in the nature of these dispositions or acts, but wholly in the origin or cause of them: so that if the disposition of the mind, or act of the Will, be ever so good, yet if the cause of the disposition or act be not our virtue, there is nothing virtuous or praiseworthy in it; and, on the contrary, if the Will, in its inclination or acts, be ever so bad, yet, unless it arises from something that is our vice or fault, there is nothing vicious or blameworthy in it. Hence their grand objection and pretended demonstration, or self-evidence, against any virtue and v:ommendableness, or vice and blameworthiness, of those habits or acts of the Will, which are not from some virtuous or vicious determination of the Will itslf. Now if this matter be well considered, it will appear to be altogether a mistake, yea, a gross absurdity; and that it is most certain, that if there be any such things as a virtuous or vicious disposition, or volition of mind, the virtuousness or viciousness of them consists, not in the origin or cause of these things, but in the nature of them. If the essence of virtuousness or commendableness, and of viciousness or fault, does not lie in the nature of the dispo...