of reasoning at the best which may illustrate something but prove nothing And of all comparisons this is one of the worst which is drawn from the sensual appetite to the rational appetite The rational appetite and the sensual appetite are even as like one to another as an apple and an oyster The one is a natural Agent the other is a free Agent The one acts necessarily the other acts contingently I take the word largly The one is determined to one the other is not determined to one The one hath under God a Dominion over it self and its own acts The other hath no Dominion over it self or its own acts Even the will it self when it acts after a natural manner which is but rarely in some extraordinary cases as in the appetite of the chiefest good being fully revealed or in a panical terrour which admitteth no deliberation acts not freely but necessarily How much more must Agents meerly Natural which have neither reason to deliberate nor dominion or liberty to elect act necessarily and determinately So to answer a comparison with a comparison his Argument is just such another as this The Gally-slave which is chained to the oare is a man as well as the Pilot that sits at the sterne therefore the Gally-slave hath as much dominion in the ship as the Pilot and is as free to turn it hither and thither So falls this dreadfull engine all in pieces which should have battered down the Fort of Liberty His gentle reprehension That if I have not been able to distinguish between these two questions I have not done well to meddle with either And if I have understood them I have dealt uningenuously and frandulently would better become me who defend liberty than him who supposeth an irresistible necessity of all events If he think I have not done well yet according to his own grounds he may rather blame the causes that do necessitate me than blame me who am irresistibly necessitated to do what I do Fraud and deceit have no place in necessary Agents who can do no otherwise then they do He might as well accuse the Sea to have dealt fraudulently with him because he mistook the tide and could not passe over the Foard at an high water as he purposed Such is the power of truth that it comes to light many times when it is not sought for He doth see in part already that I understand the vanity of his distinction and shall see it better yet before this Treatise be ended Yet if I would be so courteous as to forgive him all this his distinction would not prejudice me The places of Scripture alledged by me in my former defence do not onely prove that a man is free to do if he will but much more that a man is free to chuse and to elect that is as much to say as to will and determine it self An answer to his Fountains of Arguments in this Question IT is a certain rule Contraries being placed one besides another do appear much more clearly He who desires to satisfie his judgment in this controversie must compare our writings one with another without partiality the Arguments and Answers and pretended absurdities on both sides But T. H. seeketh to ingratiate himself and his cause before hand and if it be possible to anticipate and preoccupate the judgements of his readers with a Flourish or Preludium under the specious name of Fountains of Arguments So before a serious war Cities use to personate their adverse party and feign mock-combats and skirmishes to encourage their friends wherein you may be sure their own side shall conquer As Players make their little puppets prate and act what they please and stand or fall as they lend them motion which brings to my mind the Lions answer in the Fable when the picture of a man beating a Lion was produced to him If a Lion had made this picture he would have made the Lioâ—… above and the man beneath It is a sufficient answer to this prologue That Mr. Hobbes that is an adversary made it Nihil est quin male narrando possit depravarier What had he to do to urge arguments foâ—… me or to give solutions for me or to presâ—… the inconveniences and absurdities which flow from fatal destiny on my behalf I gaâ—… him no commission I need none of his help yet by this personated conflict he hoped to have stolen an easie victory withouâ—… either blood or sweate I will not tire out my selfe and the reader with the superfluous repetition of those things which we shall meet with again much more opportunely in their proper places Some Authours are like those people who measuring all others by themselves believe nothing is well understood until it be repeated over and over again Qui nihil alios credunt intelligere nisi idem dictum est centies But whatsoever is new in this Preface if it have but any one grain of weight I will not faile to examine and answer it either here or there And first I cannot chuse but wonder at his confidence that a single person who never took degree in schooles that I have heard of except it were by chance in Malmesbury should so much sleight not onely all the scholars of this present Age but all the Fathers Schoole-men and old Philosophers which I dare say he hath not studied much and forget himself so far as to deny all their authorities at once if they give not him satisfaction to make his private and crasy judgement to be the standard and seale of truth and himself an universal Dictatour among Scholars to plant and to pull up to reform and new modulate or rather turn upside down Theology Phylosophy Morality and all other Arts and Sciences which he is pleased to favour so much as not to eradicate them or pluck them up root and branch as if he was one of Aesops fellows who could do all things and say all things He is not the first man in the World who hath lost himself by grasping and ingrossing too much As the Athenians used to say of Metiochus Metiochus is Captain Metiochus is Surveier Metiochus bakes the bread Metiochus grinds the Corn Metiochus doth all an evill year to Metiochus He mentioneth the Scriptures indeed but his meaning is to be the sole Interpreter of them himself without any respect to the perpetuall and universall tradition of the Catholick Church or the sense of all ancient Expositors Well for once I will forbear all the advantage which I have from the authority of Councells Fathers Schoolmen and Philosophers meet him singly at his own weapon yet with this protestation that if he value his own single judgement above all theirs he comes within the compasse of Solomons censure Seest thou a man wise in his own eyes there is more hope of a fool than of him He telleth us That the Attributes of God are oblations given onely for honour but
the one shall be a true Prophet the other a false And Christ who had the approbation of no Soveraign Prince upon his grounds was to be reputed a false Prophet every where Every man therefore ought to consider who is the Soveraign Prophet that is to say who it is that is Gods Vicegerent upon earth and hath next under God the authority of governing Christian men and to observe for a rule that doctrine which in the name of God he hath commanded to be taught and thereby to examine and try out the truth of those doctrines which pretended Prophets with miracle or without shall at any time advance c. And if he disavow them then no more to obey their voice or if he approve them than to obey them as men to whom God hath given a part of the spirit of their Soveraign Upon his principles the case holdeth as well among Jews and Turks and Heathens as Christians Then he that teacheth transubstantiation in France is a true Prophet he that teacheth it in England a false Prophet He that blasphemeth Christ in Constantinople a true Prophet he that doth the same in Italy a false Prophet Then Samuel was a false Prophet to contest with Saul a Soveraign Prophet So was the man of God who submitted not to the more divine and prophetick spirit of Jeroboam And Elijah for reproving Ahab Then Micaiah had but his deserts to be clapt up in prison and fed with bread of affliction and water of affliction for daring to contradict Gods Vicegerent upon earth And Jeremiah was justly thrown into a Dungeon for prophesying against Zedekiah his Liege Lord. If his principles were true it were strange indeed that none of all these Princes nor any other that ever was in the World should understand their own priviledges And yet more strange that God Almighty should take the part of such rebellious Prophets and justifie their prophesies by the event if it were true that none but the Soveraign in a Christian the reason is the same for Jewish Common-wealth can take notice what is or what is not the word of God Neither doth he use God the holy Ghost more favourably than God the Son Where S. Peter saith Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the holy Spirit He saith By the Spirit is meant the voice of God in a dream or vision supernatural which dreams or visions he maketh to be no more than imaginations which they had in their sleep or in an extasie which in every true Prophet were supernatural but in false Prophets were either natural or feined and more likely to be false than true To say God hath spoken to him in a dream is no more than to say He dreamed that God spake to him c. To say he hath seen a vision or heard a voice is to say That he hath dreamed between sleeping and waking So S. Peters holy Ghost is come to be their own imaginations which might be either feined or mistaken or true As if the holy Ghost did enter onely at their eyes and at their eares not into their understandings nor into their minds Or as if the holy Ghost did not seale unto their hearts the truth and assurance of their Prophesies Whether a new light be infused into their understandings or new graces be inspired into their heart they are wrought or caused or created immediately by the holy Ghost And so are his imaginations if they be supernatural But he must needs fall into these absurdities who maketh but a jest of inspiration They who pretend Divine inspiration to be a supernatural entering of the holy Ghost into a man are as he thinks in a very dangerous dilemma for if they worship not the men whom they conceive to be inspired they fall into impiety And if they worship them they commit idolatry So mistaking the holy Ghost to be corporeal something that is blown into a man and the graces of the holy Ghost to be corporeal graces And the words impowered or infused virtue and inblown or inspired virtue are as absurd and insignificant as a round qnadrangle He reckons it as a common errour That faith and sanctity are not attained by study and reason but by supernatural inspiration or infusion And laieth this for a firm ground Faith and sanctity are indeed not very frequent but yet they are not miracles but brought to passe by education discipline correction and other natural waeyes I would see the greatest Pelagian of them all flie higher Why should he trouble himself about the holy Spirit who acknowledgeth no spirit but either a subtile fluide invisible body or a ghost or other idol or phantasme of the imagination who knoweth no inward grace or intrinsecal holinesse Holy is a word which in Gods kingdome answereth to that which men in their kingdoms use to call publick or the kings And again wheresoever the word holy is taken properly there is still something signified of propriety gotten by consent His holinesse is a relation not a quality but for inward sanctification or reall infused holinesse in respect whereof the third person is called the holy Ghost because he is not onely holy in himself but also maketh us holy he is so great a stranger to it that he doth altogether deny it and disclaim it We are taught in our Creed to believe the Catholick or Universal Church But T. H. teacheth us the contrary That if there be more Christian Churches than one all of them together are not one Church personally And more plainly Now if the whole number of Christians be not contained in one Common-wealth they are not one person nor is there an Universal Church that hath any authority over them And again The Universal Church is not one person of which it can be said that it hath done or decreed or ordained or excommunicated or absolved This doth quite overthrow all the authority of general Councils All other men distinguish between the Church and the Common-wealth Onely T. H. maketh them to be one and the same thing The Common-wealth of Christian men and the Church of the same are altogether the same thing called by two names for two reasons For the matter of the Church and of the Common-wealth is the same namely the same Christian men And the form is the same which consisteth in the lawful power of convocating them And hence he concludeth That every Christian Common-wealth is a Church endowed with all spiritual authority And yet more fully The Church if it be one person is the same thing with the Common-wealth of Christians called a Common-wealth because it consisteth of men united in one person their Soveraign And a Church because it consisteth in Christian men united in one Christian Soveraign Upon which account there was no Christian Church in these parts of the World for some hundreds of years after Christ because there was no Christian
aut faciendum quod cognoscit the understanding extended to injoy or do that which it knoweth it must needs be that the more reason the lesse passion the lesse reluctance and consequently the more liberty He saith When we mark not the force that moves us we think that it is not causes but liberty that produceth the action I rendred him thus The ignornnce of the true causes and their power is the reason that we ascribe the effect to liberty Where lieth the fault that which he calleth force and strength I call power and for that which moves us I say causes as he himself doth exexpresse himself in the same place Where I say the will causeth he saith the man chuseth As if there were any difference between these two the eye seeth and the man seeth This and a confounding of voluntas with volitio the faculty of willing with the act of willing and a young suckling contradiction which he hath found out That the will hath power to refuse what he willeth that is before it have willed it not after is the substance of this Animadversion which deserve no other answer but that a man should change his risibility into actual laughter I produced two reasons to prove that true liberty is a freedom not only from compulsion but from necessity The former drawn from the nature of election or the act of the will which is allwayes inter plura the later which I called a new Argument because it had not formerly been touched in this Treatise taken from the nature of the faculty of the will or of the soul as it willeth which is not capable of any other compulsion but necessitation And if it be physically necessitated it is thereby acquitted from all guilt and the fault transferred upon those causes that did necessitate it This argument indeed began with a distinction but proceeded to a demonstration which was reduced by me into form in my defence to which he hath given no shew of satisfaction either in his first answer or in these Animadversions except it be a concedo omnia or a granting of the conclusion The same ground which doth warrant the names of Tyrant Praemunire Sunday Monday Tuesday that is Use Quem penes arbitrium est vis norma loquendi doth likewise justifie these generally received terms of the Elicite and Imperate Acts of the will there being scarcely one Authour who hath written upon this subject in Latine that doth not use them and approve them In the councel of Dort which he himself mentioneth he may find this truth positively maintained that voluntas elicit actum suum Where he may likewise find what morall perswasives or motives are if he have a desire to learn Allthough he be convicted that it followeth from his principles That God is the cause of all sin in the world yet he is loath to say so much for that is an unseemly phrase to say that God is the cause of sin because it soundeth so like a saying that God sinneth yea it is even as like it as one egge is like another or rather it is not like it for it is the very same Nullum simile est idem He that is the determining cause of sin in others sinneth himself It is as well against the eternall law that is the rule of justice which is in God himself to make another to sin as to sin Yet though he will not avow such an unseemly phrase That God is the cause of sin Yet he doth indeavour to prove it by four texts of holy Scripture which are alltogether impertiuent to his purpose The first is that of the Prophet Amos Shall there be evill in a City and the Lord hath not done it But that is clearly understood of the evill of punishment not of the evill of sin To the three other places That the Lord said unto Shimei curse David and that the Lord put a lying spirit into the mouth of Ahabs Prophets And that of Rehoboams not hearkning to the people the Reader may find a satisfactory answer formerly But because he seemeth to ground much upon those words which are added to the last place for the cause was from the Lord conceiving some singular virtue to lie in them and an ovation at least to be due unto himself I will not say least the Bishop exclaim against me applauding himself like the flie upon the Cart-wheel See what a dust I do raise I will take the liberty to tell him further That there is nothing of any cause of sin in the text but of a cause of Jeroboams advancement as he might have perceived plainly by the words immediately following The cause was from the Lord that he might perform his saying which the Lord spake by Ahijah the Shilonite unto Ieroboam the son of Nebat Which saying was this I will rent the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and will give ten tribes to thee So he hath produced an evil effect of punishment for an evil effect of sin and a cause of advancement for a cause of sin and a permitting or ordering or disposing of sin for a necessitating or determining to sin Yet he produceth six witnesses to prove that liberty is not opposed to necessity but to compulsion Luther Zanchy Bucer Calvin Moulin and the Synod of Dort First Reader I desire thee to judge of the partiality of this man who rejecteth all humane authority in this cause as he hath reason for it were an easie thing to overwhelme and smother him and his cause with testimonies of Councels Fathers Doctours of all Ages and Communions and all sorts of Classick Authours and yet to seek for protection under the authority of a few Neoterick Writers A double weight and a double measure are an abomination Aut haec illis sunt habenda aut illa cum his amittenda sunt Harum duarum conditionum nunc utram malis vide If he will reap the benefit of humane authority he must undergoe the inconvenience also Why may he use the testimony of Calvine against me in this cause and I may not make use of the testimonies of all the Ancients Greek and Latine against him whom Calvine himself confesseth to have been for liberty against necessiry Semper apud Latinos liberi arbitrii nomen extitit Graecos vero non puduit multo arrogantius usurpare vocabulum siquidem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dixerunt acsi potest as suiipsius penes hominem fuisset But I am able to give him that advantage in this cause Secondly a man may see by his citing of these testimonies that he hath taken them up upon trust without ever perusing them in the Authours themselves I demand therefore whether he will be tried by his own witnesses in this case in difference between him and me that is concerning universal necessity in natural civil and external actions by reason of a necessary connextion of second causes and a natural determination of
Soveraign Neither is he more orthodox concerning the Holy Scriptures Hitherto that is for the books of Moses the power of making the Scripture canonical was in the civil Soveraign The like he saith of the Old Testament made canonical by Esdras And of the New Testament That it was not the Apostles which made their own writings canonical but every convert made them so to himself Yet with this restriction That until the Soveraign ruler had prescribed them they were but counsel and advise which whether good or bad he that was counselled might without injustice refuse to observe and being contrary to the Laws established could not without injustice observe He maketh the Primitive Christians to have been in a pretty condition Certainly the Gospel was contrary to the Laws then established But most plainly The word of the Interpreter of the Scripture is the word of God And the same is the Interpreter of the Scripture and the Soveraign Iudge of all Doctrines that is the Soveraign Magistrate to whose authority we must stand no lesse than to Theirs who at first did commend the Scripture to us for the canon of faith Thus if Christian Soveraigns of different communions do clash one with another in their interpretations or misinterpretation of Scripture as they do daily then the word of God is contradictory to it self or that is the word of God in one Common-wealth which is the word of the the devil in another Common-wealth and the same thing may be true and not true at the same time which is the peculiar priviledge of T. H. to make contradictories to be true together All the power virtue use and efficacy which he ascribeth to the holy Sacraments is to be signes or commemorations As for any sealing or confirming or conferring of grace he acknowledgeth nothing The same he saith particularly of Baptisme upon which grounds a Cardinals red hat or a Serjeant at arms his mace may be called Sacraments as well as Baptisme or the holy Eucharist if they be only signes or commemorations of a benefit If he except that Baptisme and the Eucharist are of divine institution but a Cardinals red hat or a Serjeant at arms his mace are not he saith truely but nothing to his advantage or purpose seeing he deriveth all the authority of the Word and Sacraments in respect of Subjects and all our obligation to them from the authority of the Soveraign Magistrate without which these words repent and be baptized in the Name of Iesus are but counsel no command And so a Serjeant at arms his mace and baptisme proceed both from the same authority And this he saith upon this silly ground That nothing is a command the performance whereof tendeth to our own benefit He might as well deny the Ten Commandements to be commands because they have an advantagious promise annexed to them Do this and thou shalt live And cursed is every one that continueth not in all the words of this Law to doe them Sometimes he is for holy orders and giveth to the Pastors of the Church the right of ordination and absolution and infallibility too much for a particular Pastor or the Pastours of one particular Church It is manifest that the consecration of the chiefest Doctours in every Church and imposition of hands doth pertein to the Doctours of the same Church And it cannot be doubted of but the power of binding and loosing was given by Christ to the future Pastours after the same manner as to his present Apostles And our Saviour hath promised this infallibility in those things which are necessary to salvation to his Apostles until the day of judgement that is to say to the Apostles and Pastours to be consecrated by the Apostles successively by the imposition of hands But at other times he casteth all this meale down with his foot Christian Soveraignes are the supreme Pastors and the only persons whom Christians now hear speak from God except such as God speaketh to in these daies supernaturally What is now become of the promised infallibility And it is from the civil Soveraign that all other Pastours derive their right of teaching preaching and all other functions pertaining to that office and they are but his Ministers in the same manner as the Magistrates of Towns or Iudges in Courts of Justice and Commanders of Armies What is now become of their Ordination Magistrates Judges and Generals need no precedent qualifications He maketh the Pastoral authority of Soveraigns to be jure divino of all other Pastors jure civill He addeth neither is there any Iudge of Heresie among Subjects but their own civil Soveraign Lastly The Church excommunicateth no man but whom she excommunicateth by the authorty of the Prince And the effect of excommunication hath nothing in it neither of dammage in this World nor terrour upon an Apostate if the civil power did persecute or not assist the Church And in the World to come leaves them in no worse estate than those who never believed The damage rather redoundeth to the Church Neither is the excommunication of a Christian Subject that obeyeth the laws of his own Soveraign of any effect Where is now their power of binding and loosing It may be some of T. H. his disciples desire to know what hopes of heavenly joies they have upon their masters principles They may hear them without any great contentment There is no mention in Scripture nor ground in reason of the coelum empyreum that is the Heaven of the blessed where the Saints shall live eternally with God And again I have not found any text that can probably be drawn to prove any ascension of the Saints into Heaven that is to say into any coelum empyreum But he concludeth positively that salvation shall be upon earth when God shall reign at the coming of Christ in Ierusalem And again In short the Kingdom of God is a civil Kingdom c. called also the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Glory All the Hobbians can hope for is to be restored to the same condition which Adam was in before his fall So saith T. H. himself From whence may be inferred that the Elect after the resurrection shall be restored to the estate wherein Adam was before he had sinned As for the beatifical vision he defineth to be a word unintelligible But considering his other principles I do not marvel much at his extravagance in this point To what purpose should a coelum empyreum or Heaven of the blessed serve in his judgement who maketh the blessed Angels that are the inhabitants of that happy mansion to be either idols of the brain that is in plain English nothing or thin subtile fluid bodies destroying the Angelical nature The unvierse being the aggregate of all bodies there is no real part thereof that is not also body And elsewhere Every part of the universe is body and that which is not