my will determines itself. Now to determine one's self to a will is
to modify one's self, and therefore my will modifies itself. God
may prevent my soul, but He does not give it the will in the same
manner as He gives motion to bodies. If it is God who modifies me,
I modify myself with Him, and am with Him a real cause of my own
will. My will is so much my own that I am only to blame if I do not
will what I ought. When I will a thing it is in my power not to
will it, and when I do not will it it is likewise in my power to
will it. I neither am nor can be compelled in my will; for I cannot
will what I actually will in spite of myself, since the will I mean
evidently excludes all manner of constraint. Besides the exemption
from all compulsion, I am likewise free from necessity. I am
conscious and sensible that I have, as it were, a two-edged will,
which at its own choice may be either for the affirmative or the
negative, the yes or the no, and turn itself either towards an
object or towards another. I know no other reason or determination
of my will but my will itself. I will a thing because I am free to
will it; and nothing is so much in my power as either to will or not
to will it. Although my will should not be constrained, yet if it
were necessitated it would be as strongly and invincibly determined
to will as bodies are to move. An invincible necessity would have
as much influence over the will with respect to spirits as it has
over motion with respect to bodies; and, in such a case, the will
would be no more accountable for willing than a body for moving. It
is true the will would will what it would; but the motion by which a
body is moved is the same as the volition by which the willing
faculty wills. If therefore volition be necessitated as motion it
deserves neither more nor less praise or blame. For though a
necessitated will may seem to be a will unconstrained, yet it is
such a will as one cannot forbear having, and for which he that has