 Edwards believed that indeterminism is incompatible with our dependence on God and hence with his sovereignty. If our responses to God's grace are contra-causally free, then our salvation depends partly on us and God's sovereignty isn't “absolute and universal.” Freedom of the Will defends theological determinism. Edwards begins by attempting to show that libertarianism is incoherent. For example, he argues that by ‘self-determination’ the libertarian must mean either that one's actions including one's acts of willing are preceded by an act of free will or that one's acts of will lack sufficient causes. The first leads to an infinite regress while the second implies that acts of will happen accidentally and hence can't make someone “better or worse, any more than a tree is better than other trees because it oftener happens to be lit upon by a swan or nightingale; or a rock more vicious than other rocks, because rattlesnakes have happened oftener to crawl over it” (Freedom of the Will, 1754; Edwards 1957–, vol. 1, 327). On the second alternative, acts of choosing (volitions) are neither chosen by us nor determined by reasons or our character or by other states of the soul. But if they are not, then they aren't truly ours and we cannot be held responsible for them. Edwards also argues that libertarianism is inconsistent with ordinary moral concepts. If, for example, the necessity of sinning wholly excuses, then a bias to sin should partially excuse. But it doesn't; a person who acts from settled habits of maliciousness is deemed “so much the more worthy to be detested and condemned” (Freedom of the Will, 1754; Edwards 1957–, vol. 1, 360). Since libertarianism implies that necessity excuses, it is inconsistent with the way we attribute blame.