 Edwards' defense of the objectivity of the new spiritual sense has four steps. (1) Benevolence agrees with the nature of things. The world is an interconnected system of minds and ideas in which the only true substance and cause is an infinite and omnipotent love. Human benevolence is thus an appropriate or fitting response to reality. (2) Benevolence is pleased by benevolence; it relishes it, or delights in it, for its own sake. Since benevolence is an appropriate response to reality, so too is benevolence's delight in benevolence. (3) But a delight in benevolence just is a perception of its spiritual beauty. It follows that (4) the redeemed's spiritual perceptions are veridical — “representations” of something “besides what [is] in [their] own minds” (True Virtue, 1765; Edwards 1957–, vol. 8, 622).