Note 31 — Chapter VI · MORAL AGENCY.

The contradiction thus involved is well put by Prof. E. D. Roe, of Oberlin, O., in Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct., 1894: "This law (autonomy) pre-supposes the freedom of the will, for without freedom 'oughtness,' 'responsibility' and 'repentance' would possess no significance. Every one, as the necessarians admit, acts under the idea of freedom. Their hypothesis to explain this is, that the subject acts under illusion (necessary illusion, of course). But here an hypothesis is necessary to explain the hypothesis. Why, if necessity is the truth, is the subject necessitated to believe falsity? A very strange truth it is which necessitates itself to be disbelieved." Pp. 656, 657.