how uningenuously did he charge me in the last Section to have confessed That nothing can move it self And in this Section accuse me of contradiction for saying That when a stone descendeth the beginning of its motion is intrinsecal Now to justifie himself he saith that from this which I did say That finite things cannot be produced by themselves he can conclude that the act of willing is not produced by the faculty of willing If he could do as much as he saith yet it was not ingenuously done to feign that I had confessed all that which he thinketh he can prove that I contradicted my self when I contradicted his conclusions But let us see how he goeth about to prove it He that hath the faculty of willing hath the faculty of willing something in particular In good time This looketh not like a demonstration But let that passe And at the same time he hath the faculty of nilling the same How two faculties the one of willing the other of nilling Hola He hath but one faculty and that is a faculty of willing or nilling something in particular not of willing and nilling He proceedeth If therefore the faculty of willing be the cause he willeth any thing whatsoever for the same reason the faculty of nilling will be the cause at the same time of nilling it And so he shall will and nill the same thing at the same time which is absurd I deny his consequence It doth not follow that because the Agent hath power to will or nill indifferently therefore he hath power to will and nill contradictorily He may chuse indifferently whether he will write or not but he cannot chuse both to write and not to write at the same time contradictorily It doth not follow that because the Agent hath power to will or nill indifferently before he do actually either will or nill therefore when he doth will actually he hath power to nill at the same time Hath he forgotten that old foolish rule Whatsoever is when it is is necessarily so as it is How often must I tell him that in the place of an absolute antecedent necessity he seeketh to obtrude upon us hypothetical necessity He proceedeth It seems the Bishop had forgotten that matter and power are indifferent to contrary formes and contrary acts No I had not forgotten it but he had fogotten it To say that the matter is indifferent to contrary formes and yet necessitated antecedently to one form or that power is indifferent to contrary acts and yet necessitated antecedently to one act is a ratling contradiction He saith That it is somewhat besides the matter that determineth to a certain form and something besides the power that produceth a certain act I acknowledge it and it is the onely piece of sense that is in this Section I made this objection to my self in my defence and answered it in these words Yet I do not deny that there are other beginnings of humane actions which do concur with the will some outward as the first cause by general influence which is evermore requisite Angels or men by perswading evil spirits by tempting the object or end by its appetibility some inward as the understanding by directing so passions and acquired habits But I deny that any of these do necessitate or can necessitate the will of man by determining it physically to one except God alone who doth it rarely in extraordinary cases And where there is no antecedent determination to one there is no absolute necessity but true liberty Where he maketh The beginning of motion in a stone thrown upwards and a stone descending downwards to be both in the stone it is but a poor trifling homonymy as the most part of his Treatise is The beginning of motion in a stone ascending is in the stone subjectively but not effectively because that motion proceedeth not from the form of the stone But in the descent of the stone the beginning of motion is both subjectively and effectively in the stone And what he telleth us of a former motion in the ambient body aire or water to make the stone descend is needlesse and frustraneous Let him but withdraw the pin that holdeth the slate upon the house against its natural inclination and he shall see presently there needeth no motion in the ambient body to make the stone drop down He adviseth me to consider with what grace I can say that necessary causes do not alwayes produce their effects except those effects be also necessarily produced Rather let him consider with what grace he can mis-recite that which I say by leaving out the word necessary I said necessary causes do not alwayes produce necessary effects and I can say that with better grace than he can deny it When necessary Agents and free Agents are conjoynt in the production of the same effect the effect is not antecedently necessary I gave him an instance Protagoras writ a book against the gods De dis utrum sint utrum non sint nihil habeo dicere The Senate ordered his book to be burned for it Although the fire be a necessary Agent yet because the Senators were free Agents the burning of his book was not antecedently necessary Where I say that the will is not a necessary cause of what it willeth in particular actionâ—… He inferreth That there are no universal actions and if it be not a necessary cause of particular actions it is the necessary cause of no actions And again he would be glad to have me set down what voluntary actions not particular those are which are necessitated It is scarcely possible for a man to expresse himself more clearly than I did but clearly or unclearly all is one to him who is disposed to cavil I did not oppose particular acts to universal acts but to a collection of all voluntary acts in general qua tales as they are voluntary It is necessary That all acts generally which proceed from the will should be voluntary and so the will is a necessary cause of voluntary acts that is of the voluntarinesse of them But the will is not a necessary cause of the particular acts themselves As upon supposition that a man be willing to write it is necessary that his writing be voluntary because he willeth it But put the case without any supposition and it is not necessary that he should write or that he should will to write because it was in his own power whether he would write or not So the voluntarinesse of all acts in general proceeding from the will is necessary but the acts themselves were not necessary before the free Agent had determined himself and then but upon supposition His excepting against these common expressions The will willeth or the will may either will or suspend its acts is but seeking of a knot in a bullrush It is all one whether one say the will willeth or the man willeth or the will may will or suspend its
act or the man may will or suspend his acts Scaliger saith that volo velle is a proper speech I will will and received by the common consent of all nations If he had any thing of moment to insert into his Animadversions he would not make use of such Leptologies Canting is not chargable upon him who useth common and known terms of art but upon him who deviseth new terms as Canters do which die with their inventers He asketh How can he that willeth at the same time suspend his will Rather why doth he insert into his demand at the same time It is enough to liberty if he that willeth could have suspended his will All this answer of mine to his second argument was illustrated by the instance of the election of a Pope to which he opposeth nothing but It may be and it doth not follow and I would be glad to know by what arguments he can prove that the election was not necessitated I have done it sufficiently all over in this Treatise I am now answering to what he produceth not proving If he have any thing to demand let him go to the Cardinals and inquire of them whether they be such fools to keep such a deal of needlesse stir if they were atecedently necessitated to chuse one certain man Pope and no other Castigations of the Animadversion Num. 31. and Num. 32. I Joyne these two Sections together because they concern one and the same thing namely Whether every sufficient cause do necessarily effect whatsoever it is sufficient for Or which is the same in effect Whether a free Agent when all things are present which are needful to produce an effect can neverthelesse not produce it Which question may be understood two wayes either inclusively or exclusively either including and comprehending the will of the Agent under the notion of sufficiency and among things requisite to the producing of the effect so as the cause is not reputed to be sufficient except it have both ability and will to produce the effect and so as both requisite power and requisite will do concur and then there is no question but the effect will infallibly follow Posita causa ponitur effectus or else it may be understood exclusively not comprehending the will under the notion of sufficiency or not reckoning it among the necessary requisites to the production of the effect so as the Agent is supposed to have power and ability to produce the effect but no will And then it is as infallibly true on the other side that the effect cannot be produced Thus far this question is a meer Logomachy or contention about words without any reall difference And T. H. doth but abuse his Readers to keep a jangling and a stir about nothing But in truth the water stopeth not here If he should speak to the purpose he should leave these shallows If the will of the free Agent be included under the notion of sufficiency and comprehended among those things which are requisite to the production of the effect so as both sufficient ability and sufficient wil are required to the making a sufficient cause Then it cometh to be considered in the second place whether the will in things external be under God in the power and disposition of the free Agent himself which is the common opinion of all men who understand themselves And then the production of the effect is onely necessary hypothetically or upon supposition that the free Agent is willing Or else Whether the will of the free Agent be not in his own power and disposition but determined antecedently by extrinsecal causes which is the paradoxical opinion of T. H. and then the production of the the effect is absolutely and antecedently necessary So still the question is where it was and all his bustling about sufficiency and efficiency and deficiency is but labour in vain If he would have spoken any thing at all to the purpose he should have attempted to prove that every sufficient cause excluding the will that is every cause which hath sufficient power and ability doth necessaryly produce whatsoever it is able to produce though the Agent be unwilling to produce it or that the will of the Agent is not in his own power and disposition We expect proofs not words But this he could not do for he himself in this very Treatise hath several times distinguished between liberty and power telling us that a sick man hath liberty to go but wanteth power And that a man who is bound hath power to go but wanteth liberty If he that is bound hath power to go then he hath sufficient power to go for unsufficient power cannot produce the effect And so by his own confession an Agent may have sufficient power and yet cannot necessarily nor yet possibly produce the effect I urged That God is sufficient to produce many Worlds but he doth not produce them therefore a sufficient cause dorh not necessarily produce all those effects which it is sufficient to produce He answereth That the meaning is that God is sufficient to produce them if he will Doth he not see that it followeth inevitably from hence That there may be a sufficient cause without will Doth he not see likewise from hence plainly that for those things which are within the power of man he is sufficient also to produce them if he will So still he would obtrude a necessity of supposition If a man will for an absolute necessity That which is but necessary conditionally If a man will is not necessary absolutely And he confesseth that without this supposition If he will a man is not sufficient to produce any voluntary action I added other instances as this That the passion of Christ is a sufficient ransom for all mankind and so is acknowledged by all Christians yet all mankind shall not be saved by virtue of his passion therefore there may be a sufficient cause without production of the effect This is the language of holy Scripture Which of you intending to build a Tower sitteth not down first and counteth the cost whether he have sufficient to finish it That is as our Saviour expoundeth himself in the next verse whether he be able to finish it So St. Paul saith Who is sufficient for these things that is Who is able for these things When God saith What could I have done more for my vineyard that I have not done God had given them sufficient means and could have given them more if they had been more capable but because they were wanting to themselves these sufficient means were not efficacious I looked for grapes saith God How could God look for grapes if he had not given them sufficient means to bring forth grapes yet these sufficient means were not efficacious These things being premised do answer whatsoever he saith as this The Bishop thinks two Horses may be sufficient to draw a Coach though they will not draw c. I say they
given him a reasonable soul may as well seek for a necessary cause of the Egyptian Pyramides among the Crocodiles of Nilus This distinction of a mans time is an act of dominion done on purpose to maintain his domion over his actions against the encroachments of sensual delights He saith here upon the by That he knoweth no action that proceedeth from the liberty of mans will And again A mans will is something but the liberty of his will is nothing Yet he hath often told us That a man is free to do if he will and not to do if he will If no action proceed from the liberty of the will then how is a man free to do if he will Before he told us He is free to do a thing that may do it if he have the will to do it and may forbear it if be have the will to forbear it If the liberty of the will be nothing then this supposition If he have the will is nothing but an impossibility And here to all that I have said formerly against that frivolous distinction I shall adde an undoubted rule both in law and Logick A conditional proposition having an impossible condition annexed to it is equipollent to a simple negative He who is free to write if he will if it be impossible for him to will is not free to write at all no more than he is free to will But this Castle in the aire hath been beaten down often enough about his ears Where I say that contingent actions do proceed from the indetermination or contingent concurrence of natural causes my intention was not to exclude contingent determination but necessary determination according to an antecdent necessity which he hath been so far from proving unanswerably that he hath as good as yeilded the cause in his case of Ames ace by making the necessity to be onely upon supposition Concerning mixt actions partly free and partly necessary he saith That for proof of them I instance in a tile falling from an house which breaketh a mans head How often must I tell him that I am not now proving but answering that which he produceth He may find proofes enough to content him or rather to discontent him in twelve Sections together from the fifth to the eighteenth And upon the by thoroughout the whole book He who proveth that election is alwayes inter plura and cannot consist with antecedent determination to one proveth that that man who did elect or chuse to walk in that street at that very time when the stone fell though he knew not of it was not antecedently necessitated to walke there And if any one of all those causes which concur to the production of an effect be not antecedently necessary then the effect is not antecedently necessary for no effect can exceed the virtue of its cause He saith I should have proved that such contingent actions are not antecedently necessary by a concurrence of natural causes though a little before I granted they are First he doth me wrong I never granted it either before or after It is a foule fault in him to mistake himself or his adversary so often Secondly it is altogether improper and impertinent to our present controversie Let him remember what he himself said If they the instances of casting ambs ace and raining to morrow be impertinent to his opinion of the liberty of mans will he doth impertinently to meddle with them Not so neither by his leave Though I refuse to prove them formally or write Volumes about them yet I do not refuse to answer any thing which he doth or can produce Such is his argument which followeth immediately Whatsoever is produced by concurrence of natural causes was antecedently determined in the cause of such concurrence though contingent concurrence He addeth That though I perceive it not concurrence and contingent concurrence are all one It may be in his Dialect which differs from the received Dialect of all Schollars but not in the Dialect of wiser and learneder men To his argument pardoning his confounding of natural and voluntary causes I answer That if he speak of the immediate adaequate cause as it is a cause in act without doubt he saith truth Causa proxima in actu posita impossible est non sâ—…qui effectum But he told us of a necessary connexion of all causes from eternity and if he make not this good he saith nothing If he intend it in this sense I deny his assertion That whatsoever is produced by concurrence of natural causes was antecedently determined from eternity As for instance that the generation of a monster which nature or the Agent never intended was necessary from eternity or necessary before the contingence was determined Concerning the individual actions of brute beasts that they should be necessitated to every act they do from eternity As the bee for example how often she shall hum in a day and how often she shall flie abroad to gather thyme and whither and how many flowers precisely she must suck and no more and such like acts I had reason to say I see no ground for it Yet the least of all these acts is known to God and subject to his disposition He telleth us That he hath pointed out the ground in the former discourse If he have it is as the blind Senator of whom I told him formerly pointed the wrong way All his intimations have received their answers But whereas I made an objection to my self Are not two sparrows sould for a farthing and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your father He doth not deale clearly to urge mine own objection and conceale my answer He doth not say which your father casteth not down or which your father doth not necessitate to fall but without your father That is without your fathers knowledge without his protection without the influence of his power or which is exemted from your fathers disposition The last sort of actions are the natural actions of inanimate creatures which have not the least pretence to liberty or so much as spontaneity and therefore were declined by me as impertinent to this question Out of my words concerning these he argueth thus If there be a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning then there is no doubt but that all things happen necessarily But there is a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning First I deny his consequence and by it he who is so busie to take other mens heights in Logick wherein he never medled yet but he was baffelled may have his own height taken by them that are so disposed There is scarce a freshman in the University but could have taught him the difference between causa efficiens physica and voluntaria the one acting by necessity of nature the other freely according to deliberation The former cannot defer nor moderate its act nor act opposite actions indifferently but the later
God decreeing Or else the decree of God may be taken passively for the execution of this decree or the order set by God for the government and disposition of the World which is an act done in time and ad extra or without the Deity This executive decree was that which I intended as he might easily have perceived if he had pleased He himself saith the same which he dislikes in me This concourse of causes whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes may well be called in respect they were all set and ordered by the eternal cause of all things God Almighty the decree of God What difference is there whether one say this decree was made or it was set and ordered as he himself saith My argument holds as well the one way as the other God was not necessitated to set this order and yet this distinctive proposition was alwayes necessarily true either God will order it thus or he will not order it thus To my last argument used in this Section he answereth nothing but this If God had made either causes or effects free from necessity he had made them free from his own prescience which had been imperfection Which reason besides all the inconsequences thereof and all the other absurdities which flow from it doth deny to the infinite knowledge of God the knowledge of possibilities and future contingents Whereas it is most certain That God doth perfectly know not onely all future contingents not in their causes onely but in themselves but also all possibilities upon supposition of a condition such as were never to be actually produced Woe unto thee Chorazin Woe unto thee Bethsaida for if the mighty woks which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sydon they would have repented long agoe in sackcloath and ashes To know certainly future possibilities which shall never come into act is more than to know future events though never so contingent and voide of necessity Take another instance Will the men of Keilah deliver me up Will Saul come down He will come down they will deliver thee up And again He was speedy by taken away least wickednesse should alter his understanding Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 35. HIs first endeavour in this Section is to reduce his argument into better form and when all is done it proveth but a Sorites The only commendation that I can give it is this That the matter and form are agreeable both stark naught Thus he argueth That which is an Agent worketh That which worketh wanteth nothing requisite to produce the action and consequently is therefore a sufficient cause and if a sufficient cause then also a necessary cause I deny his first proposition That every Agent worketh There are causes and Agents in power as well as in act But it may be he meaneth an Agent in act then he proveth the same by it self That which acteth worketh and when they returned then they came home again He taketh pains to prove that which no man in his right wits can doubt of His second proposition conteineth such another sublime point of Apodeictical learning called idem per idem the same by the same That which worketh wanteth nothing requisite to produce the action or the effect it produceth It may want truth that is requisite to the production of that which it ought to produce But it can want nothing to produce that which it doth produce Whatsoever acteth when it acteth doth necessarily act what it doth act He is still stumbling upon that old foolish rule What is all this to his antecedent necessity His third proposition follows And consequently is thereof a sufficient cause Yes in his canting language which makes deficience and sufficience to be all one Whereunto tendeth all this Hitherto he hath not advanced one hairs breadth But now he uniteth all his force to pull down the Castle of Liberty And if a sufficient cause then also a necessary cause I denyed his consequence And gave him a reason for it otherwise God himself should not be allsufficient He replieth That Gods allsufficience signifieth no more than his omnipotence and omnipotence signifieth no more than the power to do all things that he will Yes Gods infinite power and sufficience ought not to be limited to those things which he doth actually will or which have actual being No more than his eternity is commensurable by time He was sufficient to raise up children to Abraham of stones which he never did and probably never will do If God did all which he could do and could justy do who was able to abide it we were in a wretched condition A covetous person may have more than sufficient for his back and his belly and yet no will to bestow it upon himself So he hath proved himself a sufficient Agent sufficient to make this Sorites though very unsufficient to prove his intention But I took pity on him to see him toile himself to no purpose and was contented out of grace and curtesie to admit these two things First that every effect in the World hath sufficient causes Secondly that supposing the determination of the free and contingent causes every effect in the World is necessary that is necessary upon supposition But this will do him no good Necessity upon supposition is far enough from antecedent necessity He objecteth That necessity is onely said truly of somewhat in future I deny iâ—… He proveth it thus Necessary is that which cannot possibly be otherwise And possibility is alwayes understood of some future time Good Where are his eyes that he cannot distinguish between possible and not possible If necessary had been that which could possibly be otherwise or if impossibility had alwayes reference to the future as well as possibility he had said something By this argument he might prove that yesterday is not past but to come because it is not possible to bring back yesterday and possibility is alwayes understood of the time to come But out of pure necessity he is contented to make use of my curtesie Seeing he granteth so favourably that sufficient causes are necessary causes I shall easily conclude from it that whatsoever those causes do cause are necessary antecedently He may easily prove it if he can make possible and impossible all one I gave him an inch and he takes an ell I admitted that every effect in the World is necessary upon supposition and he taketh it for granted that they are necessary without supposition But that is more than I can yeild him If that be his meaning he had best stick to his own grounds But they will afford him no more relief than my concession Howsoever thus he argueth If the necessity of the thing produced when produced be in the same instant of time with the existence of its immediate cause then also that immediate cause was in the same instant with the
CASTIGATIONS OF Mr. HOBBES HIS LAST ANIMADVERSIONS IN The case concerning LIBERTY and Universal NECESSITY Wherein all his Excepâ—…ions about that Controversie are fully satisfied By Iohn Bramhall D. D. and Bishop of Derry Prov. 12. 19. The lip of truth shall be established for ever but a lying tongue is but for a moment London Printed by E. T. for I. Crook 1657. An Answer to Mr. Hobs his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and first to his Epistle to the Reader CHristian Reader thou hast here the testimony of Mr. Hobs that the questions concerning Necessity Freedom and Chance are clearly discussed between him and me in that little volume which he hath lately published If they be it were strange whilest we agree not much better about the terms of the controversie than the builders of Babel did understand one anothers language A necessity upon supposition which admits a possibility of the contrary is mistaken for an absolute and true necessity A freedom from compulsion is confounded with a freedom from necessitation meer spontaneity usurpeth the place of true liberty no chance is acknowledged but what is made chance by our ignorance or nescience because we know not the right causes of it I desire to retein the proper terms of the Schools Mr. Hobs flies to the common conceptions of the vulgar a way seldom troden but by false Prophets and seditious Oratours He preferreth their terms as more intelligible I esteem them much more obscure and confused In such intricate questions vulgar brains are as uncapable of the things as of the terms But thus it behoved him to prevaricate that he might not seem to swim against an universal stream nor directly to oppose the generall current of the Christian World There was an odde phantastick person in our times one Thomas Leaver who would needs publish a Logick in our mothers tongue You need not doubt but that the publick good was pretended And because the received terms of art seemed to him too abstruce he translated them into English stiling a Subject an Inholder an Accident an Inbeer A Proposition a Shewsay an affirmative Proposition a Yeasav a negative proposition a Naysay the subject of the Proposition the Foreset the predicate the Backset the conversion the turning of the Foreset into the Backset and the Backset into the Foreset Let M. Hobs himself be judge whether the common Logical notions or this new gibrish were lesse intelligible Haec à se non multum abludit imago But Reader dost thou desire to see the question discussed clearly to thy satisfastion observe but Mr. Hobs his practicks and compare them with his principles and there needs no more He teacheth that all causes and all events are absolutely necessary yet if any man crosse him he frets and fumes and talkes his pleasure jussit quod splendida bilis Doth any man in his right wits use to be angry with causes that act necessarily He might as well be angry with the Sun because it doth not rise an hour sooner or with the Moon because it is not alwayes full for his pleasure he commands his servant to do thus to as much purpose if he be necessitated to do otherwise as Canutus commanded the waves of the Sea to flow no higher He punisheth him if he transgresse his commands with as much justice if he have no dominion over his own actions as Xeâ—…xes commanded so many stripes to be given to the Hâ—…llespont for breaking down his Bridge He exhorts him and reprehends him He might as well exhort the fire to burne or reprehend it for burning of his cloaths He is as timerous in a thunder or a storme as cautelous and deliberative in doubtful cases as if he believed that all things in the World were contingent and nothing necessary Sometimes he chideth himself how ill advised was I to do thus or so O that I had thought better upon it or had done otherwise Yet all this while he believeth that it was absolutely necessary for him to do what he did and impossible for him to have done otherwise Thus his own practise doth sufficiently confute his tenets He will tell us that he is timerous and solicitous because he knows not how the causes will determine To what purpose Whether their determination be known or unknown he cannot alter it with his endeavours He will tell us that deliberation must concur to the production of the effect Let it be so but if it do concur necessarily Why is he so solicitous and so much perplexed Let him sleep or wake take care or take no care the necessary causes must do their work Yet from our collision some light hath proceeded towards the elucidation of this question and much more might have arisen if Mr. Hobbes had been pleased to retain the ancient Schoole terms for want of which his discourse is still ambiguous and confused As here he tells thee That we both maintain that men are free to do as they will and to forbear as they will My charity leads me to take him in the best sense onely of free acts and then with dependence upon the first cause That man who knows not his idiotismes would think the cause was yeilded in these words whereas in truth they signifie nothing His meaning is He is as free to do and forbear as he is free to call back yesterday He may call until his heart ake but it will never come He saith A man is free to do if he will but he is not free to will if he will If he be not free to will then he is not free to do Without the concurrence of all necessary causes it is impossible that the effect should be produced But the concurrence of the will is necessary to the production of all free or voluntary acts And if the will be necessitated to nil as it may be then the act is impossible And then he saith no more in effect but this A man is free to do if he will that which is impossible for him to do By his doctrine all the powers and faculties of a man are as much necessitated and determinated to one by the natural influence of extrinsecal causes as the will And therefore upon his own grounds a man is as free to will as to do The points wherein he saith we disagree are set down loosely in like manner What our Tenets are the Reader shall know more truely and distinctly by comparing our writings together then by this false dimme light which he holds out unto him He is pleased if not ironically yet certainly more for his own glory than out of any respect to me to name me a learned Schoole-Divine An honour which I vouchsafe not to my self My life hath been too practical to attend so much to those speculative Studies It may be the Schoole-men have started many superfluous questions and some of dangerous conse quence But yet I say the weightier Ecclesiastical controversies will never be understood and
logge in the fable which terrified the poor Frogs with the noise it made at the first falling of it into the water but afterwards they insulted over it and took their turns to leap upon it Some take it to be pure nonsense Whether a man be free in such things as be within his power That is whether he be free wherein he is free or that be within his power which is in his power I have formerly shewed and shall demonmonstrate further as there is occasion that this distinction is contradictory and destructive to his own grounds according to which all the other powers and faculties of a man are determined to one by an extrinsecal fluxe of natural causes equally with the will And therefore a man is no more necessitated to will or chuse what he will do than to do what he wills Secondly I have shewed that this distinction is vain and unuseful and doth not hold off so much as one blow from Mr. Hobâ—…es and his bleeding cause All those grosse absurdities which do necessarily follow the inevitable determinations of all actions and events by extrinsecal causes do fall much more heavily and insupportably upon the extrinsecal determination of the will So he stickes deeper by means of this distinction in the same mire All the ground of justice that he can find in punishments is this That though mens actions be necessary yet they do them willingly Now if the will be irresistibly determined to all its individial acts then there is no more justice to punish a man for willing necessarily than for doing necessarily Thirdly I have shewed already in part that this distinction is contrary to the sense of the whole World who take the will to be much more free than the performance Which may be thus enlarged Though a man were thrust into the deepest dungeon in Europe yet in despite of all the second causes he may will his own liberty Let the causes heap a conglomeration of diseases upon a man more than Herod had yet he may will his own health Though a man be withheld from his friend by Seas and Mountains yet he may will his presence He that hath not so much as a cracked groat towards the payment of his debts may yet will the satisfaction of his Creditors And though some of these may seem but pendulous wishes of impossibilities and not so compatibile with a serious deliberation yet they do plainly shew the freedom of the will In great things said the Poet it is sufficient to have willed that is to have done what is in our power So we say God accepteth the will that which we can for the deed that which we cannot If there be first a willing mind it is accepted according to that a man hath that is to will And not according to that he hath not that is to perform And yet more plainly To will is present with me but how to perform that which is good that find I not Yet saith T. H. A man is free to do what he willes but not to will what he will do To come yet a little nearer to T. H. For since he refuseth all humane authority I must stick to Scripture It is called a mans own will and his own voluntary will If it be determined irresistibly by outward causes it is rather their own will than his own will Nay to let him see that the very name of free-will it self is not such a stranger in Scripture as he imagineth it is called a mans own free will How often do we read in the books of Moses Ezra and the Psalms of free-will offerings This free-will is opposed not onely to compulsion but also to necessity not of necessity but willingly And is inconsistent with all extrinsecal determination to one with which election of this or that indifferently is incompatible Is not the whole land before thee said Abraham to Lot If thou wilt take the left hand then I will go to the right or if thou depart to the right hand then I will go to the left God said to David I offer thee three things chuse one of them And to Solomon Because thou hast asked this thing and hast not asked long life or riches And Herod to his daughter Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt And Pilate to the Jews Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you And St. Paul unto the Corinthians What will ye shall I come unto you with a rod or in love Both were in their choice Yet T. H. doth tell us That all these were free to do this or that indifferently if they would but not free to will To chuse and to elect is of all others the most proper Act of the will But all these were free to chuse and elect this or that indifferently or else all this were meer mockery And therefore they were free to will The Scripture koweth no extrinsecal determiners of the will but iâ—…self So it is said of Eli's sons Give flesh to roast for the Priest for he will not have sodden flesh of thee but raw And if thou wilt not give it I will take it by force Sic volo sic jubeo stat pro ratione voluntas Here was more will than necessity So it is said of the rich man in the Gospel What shall I do This I will do I will pull down my barnes and build greater and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods And I will say to my soul take thine ease eat drink and be merry Both his purse and person were under the command of his wâ—…ll So St. Iames saith Go to now ye that say to day or tomorrow we will go into such a City and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain whereas ye know not what shall be to morrow c. for that ye ought to say if the Lord will we shall live and do this or that The defect was not in their will to resolve but in their power to perform So T. H. his necessity was their liberty and their liberty was his necessity Lastly the Scriptures teach us that it is in the power of a man to chuse his own will for the future All that thou commandest us we will do And whithersoever thou sendest us we will go As we hearkened unto Moses in all things so will we hearken unto thee So saith St. Paul What I do that I will do And in another place I do rejoyce and I will rejoyce And they that will be rich When Christ inquired of his Disciples Will ye also go away According to T. H. his principles he should have said Must ye also go away We have viewed his distinction but we have not answered his comparison Will is an appetite And it is one question whether he be free to eat that hath an appetite And another Whether he be free to have an appetite Comparisons are but a poor kind
his advantages much good may they do him First he erreth grossely in affirming that all deliberation is onely of what a man will do or not do And not at all of what a man will suffer or not suffer Deliberation is as well about evil to be eschewed as about good to be pursued Men deliberate equally of their doings and of their sufferings if they be not inevitably determined but if they be then neither of the one nor of the other A Martyr or a Confessor may deliberate what torments he will suffer for his Religion Many of those acts whereabout we do usually deliberate are mixt motions partly active and partly passive as all our senses Secondly it is a shame for him to distinguish between actions and sufferings in this cause when all the actions of all the free Agents in the World by his doctrine are meer sufferings A free Agent is but like a bullet rammed up into the barrel by the outward causes and fired off by the outward causes the will serves for no use but to be a touchhole and the poor Agent hath no more aime or understanding of what he doth than the arrow which is forced out of the bow towards the mark without any sense or concurrent in it self A condemned person may be reprieved and deliberate about that but the sentence of the causes produceth a necessity from eternity as he phraseth it never to be interrupted or altered Thirdly he erreth in this also That he affirmeth all my three instances to be onely of passions or sufferings Growing up in stature is a vegetative act Respiration is a sensitive act or an act of the moving and animal faculty Some question there hath been whether respiration were a natural motion or a voluntary motion or a mixt motion but all conclude that it is an act or motion which is performed whilst we sleep when we are uncapable of deliberation Lastly to say that a man may deliberate of a thing that is not possible if he know not of the impossibility will not advantage his cause the value of a rush for supposing an universal necessity of all events from eternity there can be no such case seeing all men know that upon this supposition all acts and events are either antecedently and absolutely necessary or antecedently and absolutely impossible boâ—… which are equally uncapable of deliberation So the impertinence will prove to be in 〈◊〉 answer not in my instances My second argument out of his own wordâ—… was this To resolve a mans self is to determine his own will and if a man determine his own will then he is free from outward necessity But T. H. confesseth that a man 〈◊〉 resolve himself I resolved once c. And 〈◊〉 further to resolve is to will after deliberation Now to will after deliberation is to elect but that he hateth the very term of electing or chusing as being utterly destructive to his new modeled fabrick of universal necessity And for that very reason he confounds and blunders together the natural sensitive and intellectual appetites Either the will determineth it self in its resolution or both will and deliberation and resolution are predetermined by a necessary fluxe of natural causes if the will determine it self in its resolution then we have true liberty to will or nill If both the will and the deliberation and the resolution be predetermined by outward causes then it is not the resolution of the will it self nor of the Agent but of the outward causes then it was as much determined that is to say resolved before the deliberation as after because the deliberation it self and the whole event of it particularly the last resolution was outwardly predetermined from eternity To this he answereth nothing but according to his usual manner he maketh three objections First No man can determine his own will for the will is an appetite and it is not in mans power to have an appetite when he will This argument would much better become the kitchin than the Schooles to argue from the lesser to the greater negatively which is against all rules of Logick Just thus A brute beast cannot make a Categorical Syllogisme thererefore a man cannot make one So here the sensitive appetite hath no dominion over its own acts therefore neither hath the rationall appetite any dominion over its own acts Yet this is the onely pillar that supporteth his main distinction which must uphold his Castle in the aire from tumbling down about his ears But be what it will be it hath been sufficiently answered allready His second oblection hath so little solidity in it that it is ridiculous Over whatsoever things there is dominion those things are not free but over a mans actions there is the dominion of his wil. What a medius terminus hath he light upon This which he urgeth against liberty is the very essence of liberty If a mans actions were under the dominion of another mans will or under the dominion of his extrinsecall causes then they were not free indeed but for a mans own actions to be in his own power or in the power or under the dominion of his own wil that is that which makes them free Thirdly he objects If a man determine himself the question will yet remain What determined him to determine himself If he speak properly in his own sense of physicall determination by outward causes he speaketh plain non-sense for if he was so determined by another then he did not determine himself But if he mean onely this What did concur with the will in the determination of it self I answer That a friend by perswasion might concur morally and the understanding by representing might concur intrinsecally but it hath been demonstrated to him over and over that neither of these concurrences is inconsistent with true liberty from necessitation and physicall determination to one Something I say afterwards which doth not please him which he calleth a talking to my self at random My aime in present is onely to answer his exceptions a little more punctually then he hath done mine not at all to call him to an account for his omissions that part I leave to the Readers own observation He telleth me plainly That I neither understand him nor what the word necessary signifieth if I think he holds no other necessity then that which is expressed in that old foolish rule what soever is when it is is necessarily so as it is If I understand him not I cannot help it I understand him as well as I can and wish that he understood himself a little better to make him speak more significantly Let us see where the fault lies that he is no better understood First he defineth what is necessary That is necessary which is impossible to be otherwise Whence he inferreth That Necessary Possible and Impossible have no signification in reference to the time past or time present but onely the time to come I think all men
by special influence did necessitate the second causes to operate as they did and if they being thus determined did necessitate man inevitably unresistably by an essential subordination of causes to do whatsoever he did then one of these two absurdities must follow either That there is no such thing as sin in the World or That God is more guilty of it than man as the motion of the watch is more from the Artificer who makes it and winds it up than from the watch it self To this he answereth onely this That my consequence is no stronger then if out of this That a man is lame necessarily one should inferre That either he is not lame or that his lamenesse proceeded necessarily from the will of God And is it possible that he doth not see that this inference followeth clearly and necessarily from his principles If he doth not I will help his eye-sight All actions and accidents and events whatsoever do proceed from the will of God as the principal cause determining them to do what they are by a naturall necessary subordination of causes This is the principle I assume that which no man can deny But the lamenesse of this man whom he mentioneth is an accident or event Therefore this lamenesse upon his principles is from the will of God c. Castigations upon the Animadversions Num. 12. IN this Section he behaveth himself as the Hound by Nilus drinketh and runneth as if he were afraid to make any stay quite omitting the whole contexture and frame of my discourse onely catching here and there at some phrase or odd ends of broken sentences The authority of St. Paul was formerly his Palladium the fate of his opinion of Fate or his seven-fold shield which he bore up against all assailants And now to desert it as the Oestredge doth her egges in the sand and leave it to the judgement of the Reader to think of the same as he pleaseth seemeth strange That man usually is in some great distresse who quitteth his buckler I desire but the judicious Reader upon the By to compare my former defence with his trifling exceptions and I do not fear his veredict He saith it is blasphemy to say that God can sin so it is blasphemy also to say that God is the authour or cause of any sinne This he himself saith at least implicitly and this he cannot but say so long as he maintaineth an universal antecedent necessity of all things flowing from God by a necessary flux of second causes He who teacheth that all men are determined to sin antecedently without their own concurrence irresistibly beyond their own power to prevent it and efficaciously to the production of sinne He who teacheth that it is the antecedent will of God that men should sinne and must sinne He who maketh God to be not onely the cause of the act and of the law but likewise of the irregularity or deviation and of that very anomy wherein the being of sin so far as sin hath a being doth consist maketh God to be the principall cause and authour of sin But T. H. doth all this He saith it is no blasphemy to say that God hath so ordered the World that sin may necessarily be committed That is true in a right sense if he understand onely a necessity of infallability upon Gods presence or a necessity of supposition upon Gods permission But what trifling minsing of the matter is this Let him cough out and shew us the bottom of his opinion which he cannot deny that God hath so ordered the World that sin must of necessity be committed and inevitably be committed that it is beyond the power of man to help it or hinder it and that by vertue of Gods omnipotent will and eternall decree This is that which we abominate Yet he telleth us That it cannot be said that God is the authour of sin because not he that necessitateth an action but he who doth command or warrant it is the authour First I take that for granted which he admitteth that by his opinion God necessitateth men to sinfull actions which is a blasphemy as well as the other Secondly his later part of his assertion is most false That he onely who commandeth or warranteth sin is the authour of it He who acteth sin he who necessitateth to sin he who first bringes sin into the World is much more the authour of it than the bare commander of it They make God to be the proper and predominate cause of sin by an essential subordination of the sin of man to the will of God and in essential subordinates allwayes the cause of the cause is the cause of the effect If there had never been any positive commandment or law given yet sin had still been sin as being contrary to the eternall law of justice in God himself If an Heathen Prince should command a Christian to sacrifice to Idols or Devils and he should do it not the commander onely but he who commits the idolatry is the cause of the sin His instance in the Act of the Israelites robbing the Egyptians of their Jewels is impertinent For it was no robbery nor sin God who is the Lord Paramount of Heaven and Earth having first justly transfered the right from the Egyptians to the Israelites and in probability to make them some competent satisfaction for all that work and drudgery which they had done for the Egyptians without payment This is certain if God necessitate the Agent to sin either the act necessitated is no sin or God is the principall cause of it Let him chuse whether of these two absurdities this Scylla or that Charybdis he will fall into The reason which he gives of Gods objurgations to convince men that their wills were not in their own power but in Gods power is senselesse and much rather proveth the contrary that because they were chidden therefore their wills were in their own power And if their wills had not been in their own power most certainly God would not have reprehended them for that which was not their own fault He saith That by interpreting hardening to be a permission of God I attribute no more to God in such actions then I might attribute to any of Pharaohs servants the not perswading their master c. As if Pharaohs servants had the same power over their master that God Allmighty had to hinder him and stop him in his evill courses As if Pharaohs servants were able to give or withhold grace as if Pharoahs servants had divine power to draw good out of evill and dispose of sin to the advancement of Gods glory and the good of his Church As if an humble petition or perswasion of a servant and a physicall determination of the will by a necessary flux of naturall causes were the same thing He who seeth a water break over its banks and suffers it to run out of its due channel that he may draw it by furrows into
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
to this subject which we are about it is most impertinent and improper He himself as partial as he is cannot think that this liberty is any thing to that moral liberty which renders a man capable of reward or punishment any more that a Taylors measure is to the measure of motion I said and say again That nothing can begin to be without a cause and that nothing can cause it self Yet I say many things do begin to act of themselves This he saith is to contradict my self because I make the action to begin without a cause This is not the first time that he hath noted this for a contradiction I shall sooner salve the contradiction than he save his credit As if the Agent and the Action were the same thing Or as if the Agent was not the cause of the Action Or as if there were any consequence in this The Agent cannot begin to be of himself therefore he cannot begin to act of himself Or he cannot cause himself therefore he cannot cause his action Nothing can cause it self but that which is caused by one thing may cause another Whereas he addeth That it hath been proved formerly that every sufficient cause is a necessary cause and that is but Iargon to say free causes determine themselves it is but a puffe of his vain glorious humour He hath made nothing to appear but his own ignorance and mistakes In the later end of this Section I made bold to make some serious demands to Mr. Hobs which did not at all reflect upon him in particular but at those natural notions which are common to all mankind The first demand was Whether he doth not find by experience that he doth many things which he might have left undone if he would c. He answereth Yet if he would but he maketh it impossible for him to have had any other will So he doth as good as tell us that he might have done them upon an impossible condition or supposition as he himself might have flown over sea if he had had a paire of wings This is a contradiction indeed implied first to say he might have done otherwise and then to adde an impossible condition which makes his proposition negative I am sure it is not fairly done to avoide the scope and meaning of the demand The second question was Whether he do not some things out of meer animosity and will without regard to the direction of right reason c. He answereth This question was in vain unlesse I thought my self his confessor No it is enough I desire not to intrude into his secrets My third demand as he saith was Whether he writ not this defence of necessity against liberty onely to shew that he will have a dominion over his own actions He answereth No but to shew that he had no dominion over his will and this at my request My request was That what he did upon this subject should rather be in writing than by word of mouth It seemeth that I had the dominion over his will So might I come to be questioned for all his Paradoxes The truth is This was no distinct question but a Corollary of the second question My third demand was Whether he be not angry with those who draw him from his study or crosse him in his desires and why he is angry with them if they be necessitated to do what they do any more than he is angry with a sharp winter c. This is wholly omitted by him The last demand was Whether he do not sometimes blame himself and say O what a fool was I to do thus or thus Or with to himself O that I had been wise and why he doth this if he were irresistibly necessitated to do all things that he doth He might as well have wished O that I had not breathed or O what a fool was I to grow old To this he answereth nothing but subtle questions and full of Episcopal gravity And that he thinks in this question I will appear the greater fool supposing that I meant to put the fool upon him which I professe my self to be innocent of as he might have found by these words inserted among the questions Which wise men find in themseves sometimes Though I jest sometimes with his cause or his arguments I do not meddle with his person further than to condemne his vain-glorious presumption to arrogate so much to himself Though I have not half so great an opinion of him as he hath of himself yet I wish his humilility were answerable to his wit Thus of four questions he hath quite omitted one neglected another refused to answer a third and answered the fourth contrary to the scope of the question Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 34. HIs bragging humour will not leave him he still forgetteth Epictetus his sheep He saith When I shall have read over his Animadversions Num. 31. I will think otherwise whatsoever I will confesse Male ominatis parcito verbis I should sooner turn Manichee and make two Gods one of good the other of evil than to make the true God to be the cause of all evill But there is no danger either of the one or of the other I have read over his Animadversions Num. 31. I have weighed them and I professe I find nothing in them worthy of a Divine or a Philosopher or an ingenious person who made a sad inquisition after truth nor any thing that doth approach within a German mile of the cause in controversie And so I leave him to the Castigations That his two instances of casting ambs ace and raining to morrow are impertinent appeareth by these two reasons First the question is of free actions these two instannes are of contingent actions Secondly the question is of antecedent necessity these instances are of an hypothetical necessity And though I used the beauty of the World as a Medium to prove liberty wherein contingency is involved yet this doth not warrant him to give over the principal question and to start and pursue new questions at his pleasure But let him be of good comfort be they pertinent or impertinent they shall not be neglected Because I would not blonder as he doth I distinguished actions into four sorts First The actions of free Agents Secondly The actions of free and natural Agents mixed Thirdly The actions of bruit beasts Fourthly The actions of natural inanimate causes Of these four sorts the first onely concerneth the question and he according to his custom quite omitteth it yet it was of more moment and weight than all he saith in this Section put together A man proportioneth his time each day and allotteth so much to his devotions so much to his study so much to his dyet so much to his recreations so much to necessary or civil visit so much to his rest He that will seek for I know not what necessary causes of all this without himself except that good God who hath
and with the mouth is confession made unto salvation If a man deny Christ with his mouth the faith of the heart will not serve his turn Sixthly Christ denounceth damnation to all those who for saving of their lives do deny their Religion and promiseth eternal life to all those who do seale the truth of their Christian faith with their blood against the commands of heathenish Magistrates Who soever will save his life shall lose it and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it Christ doth not promise eternal life for violation of true Religion Lastly no Christian Soveraign or Common-wealth did ever assume any such authority to themselves Never any subjects did acknowledge any such power in their Soveraigns Never any Writer of Politicks either waking or dreaming did ever phansie such an unlimitted power and authority in Princes as this which he ascribeth to them not onely to make but to justifie all doctrines all laws all religions all actions of their Subjects by their commands as if God Almighty had reserved onely Soveraign Princes under his own Jurisdiction and quitted all the rest of mankind to Kings and Common-wealths In vain ye worship me teaching for doctrine the commandments of men that is to say making true religion to consist in obedience to the commands of men If Princes were heavenly Angels free from all ignorance and passions such an unlimited power might better become them But being mortal men it is dangerous least Phaeton-like by their violence or unskilfulnesse they put the whole Empire into a flame It were too too much to make their unlawful commands to justifie their Subjects If the blind lead the blind both fall into the ditch He who imposeth unlawful commands and he who obeyeth them do both subject themselves to the judgements of God But if true religion do consist in active obedience to their commands it justifieth both their Subjects and themselves True religion can prejudice no man He taketh upon him to refute the distinction of obedience into active and passive As if a sin against the law of nature could be expiated by arbitrary punishments imposed by men Thus it happeneth to men who confute that which they do not understand Passive obedience is not for the expiation of any fault but for the maintenance of innocence When God commands one thing and the soveraign Prince another we cannot obey them both actively therefore we chuse to obey God rather than men and yet are willing for the preservation of peace to suffer from man rather than to resist If he understood this distinction well it hath all those advantages which he fancieth to himself in his new platform of government without any of those inconveniences which do attend it And whereas he intimateth that our not obeying our Soveraign actively is a sin against the law of nature meaning by the violation of our promised obedience it is nothing but a grosse mistake no Subjects ever did nor ever could make any such pact to obey the commands of their Soveraign actively contrary to the law of God or nature This reason drawn from universal practise was so obvious that he could not misse to make it an objection The greatest objection is that of the practice when men ask where and when such power has by Subjects been acknowledged A shrewd objection indeed which required a more solid answer then to say That though in all places of the World men should lay the foundation of their houses on the sand it could not thence be inferred that so it ought to be As if there were no more difficulty in founding and regulating a Common-wealth then in distinguishing between a loose sand and a firm rock or as if all Societies of men of different tempers of different humours of different manners and of different interests must of necessity be all ordered after one and the same manner If all parts of the World after so long experience do practise the contrary to that which he fancieth he must give me leave to suspect that his own grounds are the quick-sands and that his new Common-wealth is but a Castle founded in the aire That a Soveraign Prince within his own dominions is custos utriusque tabulae the keeper of both the Tables of the Law to see that God be duely served and justice duely administred between man and man and to punish such as transgresse in either kind with civil punishment That he hath an Architectonical power to see that each of his Suctjects do their duties in their several callings Ecclesiasticks as well as Seculars That the care and charge of seeing that no doctrine be taught his Subjects but such as may consist with the general peace and the authority to prohibit seditious practices and opinions do reside in him That a Soveraign Prince oweth no account of his actions to any mortal man That the Kings of England in particular have been justly declared by Act of Parliament Supreme Governours in their own kingdoms in all causes over all persons as well Ecclesiastical as Civil is not denyed nor so much as questioned by me Otherwise a kingdom or a Common-wealth should be destitute of necessary means for its own preservation To all this I do readily assent all this I have vindicated upon surer grounds than those desperate and destructive principles which he supposeth But I do utterly deny that true religion doth consist in obedience to Soveraign Magistrates or that all their injunctions ought to be obeyed not onely passively but actively or that he is infallible in his laws and commands or that his Soveraign authority doth justifie the active obedience of his Subjects to his unlawful commands Suppose a King should command his Judges to set Naboth on high among the people and to set two sons of Belial before him to bear witnesse against him saying Thou didst blaspheme God and the King and then carry him out and stone him that he may dye The regal authority could neither justifie such an unlawful command in the King nor obedience in the Judges Suppose a King should set up a golden Image as Nebucadnezar did and command all his Subjects to adore it his command could not excuse his Subjects from idolatry much lesse change idolatry into true religion His answer to the words of Peter and John do signifie nothing The High Priest and his Councel commanded the Apostles not to teach in the name of Jesus Here was sufficient humane authority yet say the Apostles Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God judge ye The question was not what were the commands that was clear enough what God commanded and what man commanded but who was to be obeyed which could admit no debate He asketh What has the Bishop to doe with what God sayes to me when I read the Scriptures more than I have to do with what God sayes to him when he reads them
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
Church he gives sufficient grace to prevent hardnesse of heart if they will If man have lost his primogenious power if he will not make use of those supplies of grace which Gods mercy doth afford him that is his own fault But still here is no physical determination to evil here is no antecedent extrinsecal determination of any man to hardnesse of heart here is nothing but that which doth consist with true liberty Lastly he saith We make God onely to permit evil and to will good actions conditionally and consequently if man will them So we ascribe nothing at all to God in the causation of any action good or bad He erreth throughout God is the total cause of all natures and all essences In evil actions God is cause of the power to act of the order in acting of the occasion and of the disposition thereof to good In good actions freely done he is the author original of liberty he enableth by general influence he concurreth by speciall assistance and cooperation to the performance of them and he disposeth of them to good He doth not will that meerly upon condition which himself hath prescribed nor consequently which he himself hath antecedently ordained and instituted Now having cleared all his exceptions it remaineth next to examine how he reconcileth the first and the third sort of Texts The will of God saith he sometimes signifieth the word of God or the commandments of God that is his revealed will or the signs or significations of his will Sometimes it signifieth an internal act of God that is his counsel and decree By his revealed will God would have all men to be saved but by his internal will he would not By his revealed will he would have gathered Ierusalem not by his inward will So when God saith What could I have done more to my vineyard that is to be understood outwardly in respect of his revealed will What directions what laws what threatnings could have been used more And when he saith It came not into my mind the sense is to command it This I take to be the scope and summe of what he saith Thus far he is right that he distinguisheth between the signifying will of God and his good pleasure for which he is beholding to the Schooles And that he makes the revealed will of God to be the rule of all our actions And that many things happen against the revealed will of God but nothing against his good pleasure But herein he erreth grossely that he maketh the revealed will of God and his internal will to be contrary one to another as if God did say one thing and mean another or command one thing and necessitate men to do another which is the grossest dissimilation in the World Odi illos seu claustrâ—… erebi quicunque loquuâ—…nr Ore aliud tacitoque aliud sub pectore condunt He saith It is not Christian to think if God had a purpose to save all men that any could be damned because it were a sign of want of power to â—…ffect what he would It is true if God had an absolute purpose to work all mens salvation irresistibly against their wills or without themselves But God hath no such absolute will to save all men He loves his creatures wel but his own justice better And he that made men without themselves will not save them without themselves He co-operates with all his creatures according to their distinct natures which he hath given them with necessary Agents necessarily with free Agents freely God hath given men liberty to assent to saving truth They abuse it He hath proposed a condition under which they may be saved They reject it So he willeth their salvation by an antecedent will and their damnation by a consequent will which two wills in God or within the Divine Essence are no way distinct for they are the same with the Divine Essence But they are distinguished onely in order to the things willed of God Neither is there the least contradiction between them The one shews us what God would have us to do The other is what God himself will do The one looks upon man as he was created by God or as he should have been or might have been without his own fault The other looks upon man as he is with all circumstances The one regards onely the order of the causes and means designed by God for our salvation The other regards also the application or misapplication of these meanes by our selves In answering to these words Say not thou it is through the Lord I fell away Say not thou he hath caused me to erre He distinguisheth between say not and think not as if it were unlawful to say so but not unlawful to think so Curse not thy King saith Solomon no not in thy thought much lesse thy God Thought is free from man but not from God It is not honourable saith he to say so No more is it to think so It is not lawful saith he to say that any action can be done which God hath purposed shall not be done that is in his language which shall not actually come to passe in due time Our Saviour was of another mind Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my father and he shall presently give me more than twelve Legions of Angels He knew some things can be done which never will be done Next he proceedeth to touch those inconveniencies which flow from the opinion of universal necessity but very gently and sparingly Arts and armes and bookes and consultations and medicines c. are not superfluous though all events be necessary because the means are equally necessitated with the event Suppose it were so so much the worse This must needs utterly destroy all care and solicitude of free Agents He is a madman that will vexe and trouble himself and take care and consult about things that are either absolutely necessary or absolutely impossible as about the rising of the Sun or about the draining of the sea with a sieve Yet such are all events and all the means to effect them in his opinion either as absolutely necessary as the rising of the Sun or as absolutely impossible as the draining of the Ocean with a sieve What need he take care for a Medicine or a Physician who knows that if he must recover and if a Medicine or a Physician be a necessary means for his recovery the causes will infallibly provide him one and it may be a better Medicine or a better Physician than he should have used If a man may recover or not recover both means and care to use means do well But if a man must recover or not recover that is if the end and the means be both predetermined the meanes may be necessary but all care and sollicitude is altogether vain and superfluous But he telleth the Reader that this absurdity followeth as much from my opinion as from his For as I
intuition with God And therefore as my present beholding of a man casting himself down headlong from some precipice whilest â—…e is in the act of casting himself down is not â—…he cause of his precipitation nor doth any way neccessitate him to precipitate himself yet upon supposition that I do see him precipitate himself it is necessarily that is infalâ—…ibly true that he doth precipitate himself but not necessarily true by any antecedent and extrinsecall determination of him to do that act nor so necessarily true as to exclude his freedom or liberty in the act Even so Gods knowledge of future contingents being a present intuition or beholding of them by reason of his infinite intellect doth not at all determine free Agents nor necessitate contingent events but onely infers an infallibility that is as we use to call it an hypotheticall necessity or a necessity upon supposition which doth consist with true liberty Much of this is confessed by Mr. Hobbes himself That the foreknowledge of God should be the cause of any thing cannot be truely said seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge dependeth on the existence of thing known and not they on it I desire to know whether God do his own works ad extra as the creation and destruction of the World freely or necessarily aâ—… whether he was necessitated to create the World precisely a such at time in such a manner Certainly God foreknoweth his own works as much as he foreknoweth the determinate acts of free Agents Yet his foreknowledge of his own works ad extra doth not necessitate himself If he say that God himself determineth his own acts ad extra so I say doth the free Agent also with this difference That God is infinite and independent upon any other but the free Agent is finite and dependent upon God both for his being and for his acting Then if Gods freedom in his own works ad extra doth not take away his prescience neither doth the liberty of free Agents take it away To his second inconvenience That it is impossible that that which is for known by God should not come to passe or come to passe otherwise than it is foreknown I answer That Gods foreknowledge is not such an act as T. H. imagineth that is an act that is expired or an act that is done and past but it is alwayes in doing an eternall act a present act a present intuition and consequently doth no more make the Agent unfree or the contrary event impossible untill it be actually produced than my knowing that such a man stabbed himself upon such a day made it then unpossible for him to have forborn stabbing of himself or my seeing a man eat in present made it unpossible for him before he did eat to have forborn eating God is the totall cause of all natures and essences but he is not the totall cause of all their acts and operations Neither did he create his Creatures to be idle but that they should each of them exercise such acts as are agreeable to their respective natures necessary Agents necessary Acts free Agents free Acts. And untill the free Agent have determined it self that is untill the last moment before production the contrary Act is not made unpossible and then only upon supposition He that precipated himself untill the very moment that he did precipitate himself might have withheld himself And if he had withheld himself then I had not seen him precipitate himself but withhold himself His frequent invectives against unsignificant words are but like the complaints of that old Belldam Harpaste in Seneca who still cried out against the darknesse of the room and desired to be brought into another chamber little believing that her own blindnesse was the true cause of it What Suares saith As I know neither what nor where so neither doth it concern either me or the cause His last assault against liberty in his fountains of Arguments is this Certainly to will is impossible without thinking on what a man willeth but it is in no mans election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on A man might well conjecture by this very reason that his fountain was very near drying up This Argument is levied rather against the memory or against the understanding than against the will and may serve as well against freedom to do as against freedom to will which is contrary to his principles It is as impossible to do without thinking on what a man doth as it is to will without thinking on what he willeth but it is in no mans election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on Therefore a man is not free to chuse what he will do I know not what this word to think signifies with him but I know what other Authours make it to signifie to use reason to understand to know and they define a thought to be the understanding actually imployed or busied about some object Hath not he spun us a fair thred He undertaketh to shew a defect in the will and he alleadeth a defect in the understanding Is a man therefore not free to go to his dinner because perhaps he thinks not on it just at dinner time Let the free Agent be free to will or nill and to chuse which part he will without necessitation or determination to one when he doth think on it and we shall not want true liberty An Answer to the Animadversions upon the Epistle to my Lord of Newcastle IT was no passion but a sad truth To call the opinion of fatall destiny blasphemous which maketh God to be directly the authour of sin which is a degree worse then Athisme and desperate which taketh away all care and solicitude and thrusts men headlong without fear or wit upon rocks and precipices and destructive which turneth all government divine and humane off from their hinges the practicall consequences whereof do utterly ruine all societies Neither am I guilty that I know of yet so much as of one uncivill word either against Mr. Hobbes his person or his parts He is over unequall and indulgent to himself who dare assume the boldnesse to introduce such insolent and paradoxicall opinions into the World and will not allow other men the liberty to wellcome them as they deserve I wish he himself in his Animadversions and his parasiticall publisher of his former treatise had observed the same temper and moderation particularly towards the lights of the Shools whom he slighteth and vilifieth every where as a company of pedantick dunses who understood not themselves yet held the World in awe under contribution by their â—…stian jargon untill a third Cato dropped down from Heaven to stand up for the vindication of Christian liberty from Scholastick tyranny and Stoicall necessity from naturall and morall liberty But this is certain if these poor despised Schoolmen were necessitated by antecedent and extrinsecall causes to speak such gibrish and non-sense and the Christian World to
doth by reason of an antecedent extrinsecal and inevitable determination to one I say of being or of acting because there is a double necessity in essendo in operando and both considerable in this cause That which is necessarily may act freely as God Almighty without himself And that which is freely or contingently as fire kindled by the help of a tinderbox or by the stumbling of an horse upon the pavement of a street may act and burn necessarily Here he may see if he please how necessity and will or spontaneity may meet together because that which is antecedently and extrinsecally determined to one may agree well enough with my appetite or the appetite of another But necessity and liberty can never meet together because that which is antecedently and extrinsecally determined to one cannot possibly be free that is undetermined to one nor capable of election which must be inter plura nor a fit subject for deliberation He urgeth that seeing I say necessity and spontaneity may meet together he may say that necessity and will may stand together He doth but betray his own ignorance and intolerable boldnesse to censure all the World for that which he never read nor understood We all say in like manner That necessity and will may stand together for will and spontaneity aâ—…e the same thing But necessity and liberty can never stand together If he will shut his eyes against the light he may stumble as often as he pleaseth He saith He doth not fear that it will be thought too hot for his fingers to shew the vanity of such words as these Intellectual appetite Conformity of the appetite to the object Rational will Elective power of the rational will Reason is the root of liberty Reason representeth to the will Reader behold once more the unparalelled presumption of this man Words and terms are not by nature but by imposition And who are fit to impose terms of Art but Artists who understand the Art Thus were all these terms imposed Again verborum ut nummorum words are as money is The most current is the best This was the current language of all Schooles of learning which we learned from our Tutours and Professours But a private man starteth up not bred in the Schooles who opposeth his own authority to the authority of the whole World and cryes down the current coin that is the generally received terms of Art Where is his commission What is his reason Because he doth not understand them he guesseth that they did not understand themselves Is his private understanding which is filled up to the brime with prejudice and presumption fit to be the publick standard and seal of other mens capacities They who will understand Schoole-terms must learn and study them which he never did Those things that are excellent and rare are alwayes difficult He who shall affirm that all the famous Divines and Philosophers in the World for so many succeeding Ages did speak nonsense deserveth to be contemned His respect to weak capacities must not serve his turn Nullae sunt occultiores insidiae quam hae quae latent in simulatione officii If he could shew any authour before himself wherein these terms were not used or wherein his new terms were used it were something There is no Art in the World which hath not proper terms which none understand but they who understand that Art But cui bono If we should be so mad to quit all received Schoole-terms and distinctions and lose all the advantage which we might reap by the labours and experience of so many great wits What advantage would this be to him None at all at long running Whatsoever be the terms the state of the question must be the same And those very reasons which convince him now in the old language of the Schooles would convince him likewise in the new language which he desireth to introduce after it was formed and generally understood All the benefit that he could make of it would be onely a little time between the suppression of the one and the introduction of the other wherein he might jugle and play hocus pocus under the cloak of harmonymies and ambiguous expressions And that is the reason why he is so great a friend to definitions and so great an enemy to distinctions Whereas I affirmed that necessity of supposition may consist with true liberty he objecteth That all necessity is upon supposition as the fire burneth necessarily upon supposition that the ordinary course of nature be not hindered by God for the fire burnt not the three children in the furnace And upon supposition that fewell be put unto it His supposition if the ordinary course of nature be not hindred is impertinent and destructive to his own grounds For though it be true that those things which are impossible to the second causes as to make a Camel go thorough the eye of a needle are all possible with God Yet upon his opinion that all things are necessary from eternity God hath tied his own hands and nothing is possible to God which is not absolutely necessary and impossible to be otherwise His other instance of putting fewell to the fire is a necessary supposition to the continuance or duration of the fire but not to the acting or burning of the fire So long as there is fire it doth and must burn When all requisites to action are present the will is still free to chuse or refuse When all things requisite to action are present to the fire it cannot chuse but burn and cannot do otherwise Thirdly I answer That there is a twofold necessity upon supposition the one a necessity upon an antecedent extrinsecall supposition This cannot consist with liberty because it implieth an antecedent determination and the thing supposed was never in the power of the Agent The other is a necessity upon a consequent supposition where the thing supposed is in the power of the free Agent or depends upon something or supposeth something that is in his power this is very well consistent with true liberty As for example If T. H. do run then it is necessary that he moves This necessity is no impediment at all to liberty because the thing supposed that is to run or not to run is in the power of the free Agent If a mans will be determined antecedently by extrinsecall causes to chuse such a woman for his wife and her will to chuse him for her husband then it is necessary that they elect one another This necessity is upon an antecedent supposition and is utterly destructive to liberty because the determination of the extrinsecall causes is not in the power of the free Agent Lastly T. H. his two instances of the fire are alltogether impertinent For first The fire is a naturall necessary Agent and therefore no supposition antecedent or consequent can make it free Secondly Godâ—… hindering the ordinary course of nature is an antecedent
is impossible I argued thus If a man be free to act he is much more free to will because quod efficit tale illud magis est tale To which he answereth with an ignorant jeere As if he should say if I make him angry then I am more angry Pardon me I will free him from this feare I see nothing in him that should move a man to anger but rather to pity That Canon holdeth onely in causis perse such causes as by nature or the intention of the free Agent are properly ordained to produce that effect such as his outward causes are supposed by him to be in the determination of the will And therefore my instance was proper Not in causis per accidens where the effect is not produced naturally or intentionally but accidentally as in his ridiculous instance My last argument which he vouchsafeth to take notice of was this If the will be determined then the writing is determined And then he ought not to say he may write but he must write His answer is It followeth that he must write but it followeth not that I ought to say he must write unlesse he would have me say more than I know as he himself doth What poor crotchets are these unworthy of a man that hath any thing of reality in him as if my argument did regard the saying of it and not the thing it self If it follow precisely that he must write then he hath no freedom in utramque partem either to write or not to write then he is no more free to do than to will both which are contrary to his assertion I demanded if a mans will be determined without his will Why we do ask him whether he will do such a thing or not His answer is because we desire to know But he wholly mistaketh the scope of the question The emphasis lieth not in the word we but in the word his how it is his will For if his will be determined by natural causes without his will then it is the will of the causes rather than his own will I demanded further why we do represent reasons to men why we do intreate them He answereth Because we think to make them have the will they have not So he teacheth us First that the will is determined by a necessary influence of natural causes and then prateth of changing the will by advice and moral perswasions Let him advise the clock to strike sooner or later than it is determined by the weight of the plumb and motion of the wheeles Let him disswade the Plants from growing and see how much it availeth He saith the will doth will as necessarily as the fire burneth Then let him intreat the fire to leave burning at his request But thus it falleth out with them who cannot or will not dishinguish between natural and moral efficacy I asked then why do we blame free Agents since no man blameth fire for burning Cities nor accuseth poison for destroying men First he returneth an answer We blame them because they do not please us Why may a man blame every thing that doth not please his humour Then I do not wonder why T. H. is so apt to blame others without cause So the Schollar may blame his Master for correcting him deservedly for his good So he who hath a vitious stomack may blame healthful food So a Lethargical person may blame his best friend for endeavouring to save his life And now having shot his bolt he begins to examine the case Whether blaming be any more than saying the thing blamed is ill or imperfect Yes moral blame is much more It is an imputation of a fault If a man be born blind or with one eye we do not blame him for it But if a man have lost his sight by his intemperance we blame him justly He inquireth May not we say a lame horse is lame Yes but you cannot blame the horse for it if he was lamed by another without his own fault May not a man say one is a fool or a knave saith he if he be so though he could not help it If he made himself a sot we may blame him though if he be a stark sot we lose our labour But if he were born a natural idiot it were both injurious and ridiculous to blame him for it Where did he learn that a man may be a knave and cannot help it Or that knavery is imposed inevitably upon a man without his own fault If a man put fire to his neighbours house it is the fault of the man not of the fire He hath confessed formerly that a man ought not to be punished but for crimes The reason is the very same that he should not be blamed for doing that which he could not possibly leave undone no more than a servant whom his Master hath chained to a pillar ought to be blamed for not waiting at his elbow No chaine is stronger than the chaine of fatal Destiny is supposed to be That piece of eloquence which he thinks I borrowed from Tully was in truth taken immediately out of St. Austine who applieth it most properly to this case now in question He urgeth That a man might as well say that no man halteth which can not chuse but halt as say That no man sinneth in those things which he cannot shun for what is sin but halting This is not the first time that he hath contradicted himself Before he told us that there can be no punishment but for crimes that might have been left undone Now he telleth us that a man may sin who cannot chuse but sin Then sin is not a punishable crime He might even as well say that there is no such thing as sin in the World Or if there be that God is the authour of it Reader whosoever thou art if thou reverence God eschew such doctrines His comparison of halting is frivolous and impertinent Halting is not against the eternal rule of Gods justice as sinning is Neither doth a man chuse his halting freely as he doth his sinning In the conclusion of his Animadversions upon Num. 3. there is nothing that is new but that he is pleased to play with a wooden toppe He calleth my argument from Zenos cudgelling of his man a wooden argument Let him chuse whether I shall call his a wooden or a boyish comparison I did never meet with a more unfortunate instancer than he is He should produce an instance of natural Agents and he produceth an instance of voluntary Agents Such are the boyes that whip his wooden toppe He should produce an instance of a natural determination so he affirmeth that the will is determined and he produceth an instance of a violent determination for such is the motion of his toppe I hope he doth not mean that the will is compelled if he do he may string it up with the rest of his contradictions Hath not he brought his hogs to a faire market
when God hath created him a free man a noble creature to make himself like a wooden toppe Deserveth not he to be moved as the toppe is with a whip until he confesse his errour and acknowledge his own liberty If this wooden toppe should chance to hit T. H. on the shinnes I desire to know whom he would accuse The toppe That were as mad a part as it is in the dog to run after the stone and bite it never looking at the man who did throw it What then should he accuse the boyes that whipped the toppe No that were equally ludibrious seeing the boyes are as much necessitated and to use his own phrase as much lasht to what they do by the causes as the toppe is by the boyes So he may sit down patiently and at last think upon his liberty which he had abandoned and if the causes will give him leave get a plantin leafe to heale his broken shinne Such an unruly thing as this toppe which he fancieth is he himself sometimes dictating errours sometimes writing paradoxes sometimes justling out Metaphysicks sometimes wounding the Mathematicks And in a word troubling the World and disordering all things Logick Philosophy Theology with his extravagant conceits And yet he is offended that men will go about to keep possession of their ancient Principles against his upstart innovations and is ready to implead them with that quarrelsome Roman because they would not receive his weapon fairly with their whole bodies It were a much more Christian contemplation to elevate his thoughts from this wooden toppe to the organical body of a man wherein he may find God an hundred times from the external form or figure of the one which affords it onely an aptitude to move and turn to the internall and substantiall form of the other which is the subordinate beginning of animal motion from the turning of his toppe which is so swift that it prevents the discovery of the sharpest eye-sight and seemeth to stand stock still to the eternity of God where motion and rest do meet together or all motion is swallowed up into rest Lastly from these boyes who hold the toppe up by their continued lashings to the infinite power of an Almighty God who is both the procreating and conserving cause of all our life being and motion and to magnifie him for his wonderful workes wherein he hath manifested to the World his own power and wisdom An answer to his Animadversions upon Num. 4. THese Animadversions will produce no great trouble either to me or the Reader I did demonstrate in this Section the difference between liberty of exercise or contradiction and liberty of specification or contrariety He onely takes notice of it and calls it Jargon and so without one word more shaketh hands and withdraweth himself I said it was a rule in art that homonymous words or words of a double or doubtful signification ought first to be distinguished that Disputants may understand one another rightly and not beat the aire to no purpose I shewed out of the Scriptures that the word liberty or freedom was such an ambiguous word and shewed further what this liberty is whereof we dispute A liberty from necessitation or determination to one by extrinsecal causes He confesseth that this is the question adding That he understandeth not how such a liberty can be Then what remained but to go to our proofes Yet here he raiseth a storm of words upon the by and foameth out his own disgrace He denieth that there is any such rule of Art I am sure saith he not in the art of reason which men call Logick And all Logicians are sure of the contrary who give not onely one but many such rules in treating of simple terms of complex terms of fallacies They teach that an ambiguous term before it be distinguished signifieth nothing That it cannot be placed in any predicament That it cannot be defined nor divided And they give this general Rule Distinctio vocis ambiguae prima sit in omni rerum consideratione Either this man never read one word of Logick in his life or it is most strange how pride hath defaced all Logicall notions out of his mind He telleth us that the signification of an ambiguous word may be rendered perspicuous by a definition But Logicians teach us better that it cannot be defined before it be distinguished How should a man define he knoweth not what Suppose I should aske him the definition of a degree Can he or any man define a degree before they know what degree is to be defined whether a degree in the Heavens or a degree in the Schooles or a degree of Consanguinity or a degree of Comparison He may as well define a crabbe before he know whether it be a crab-fish or a crabbe-fruit The difinition and the thing defined are the same thing But ambiguous words have several significations which cannot be of the same thing His definition of liberty is this Liberty is the absence of external impediments to motion Before I have done I shall make him out of love with his definitions Liberty is an absence If liberty be an absence then liberty is nothing for an absence is nothing in the nature of things but a meer privation An absence of impediments Impediments may take away the liberty of execution not the liberty of election There may be true liberty where there are impediments and there may be no impediments yet without liberty An absence of outward impediments And why of outward impediments may not inward impediments withhold a man from acting freely as well as outward May not a fit of sicknesse keep a man at home as well as a shower of rain A man may be free and act freely notwithstanding impediments Many impediments are vincible A man may go out of his house though there be a great logge laid at his door Lastly an absence of impediments to motions Election is the most proper intrinsecall act of liberty which may be without locall motion I durst not stile my poor description by the name of a definition Yet it set down the right nature of liberty and shewed what was the difference between us His definition hath nothing to do with liberty and cometh not near our question by twenty furlongs Our controversie is Whether the will be antecedently determined by extrinsecall causes we have nothing to do with impediments of motion But to let him see the vanity of his definitions I will demonstrate out of them That the most necessary Agents are free Agents and the most free Agents necessary Agents that the will is free and necessity is liberty First when a stone falleth from a steeple to the ground or when a fire burneth there is an absence of all externall impediments to motion yet by his own confession these are not free nor so much as voluntary but naturall necessary actions The stone falleth necessarily not freely The fire burneth necessarily not freely So his
not practically practical because it takes not effect by reason of the dissent of the will But whensoever the will shall give its free assent to the practical judgement of the understanding and the sentence of reason is approved by the acceptation of the will then the judgement of the understanding becomes practically practical Then the election is made which Philosophers do therefore call a consultative appetition Not that the will can elect contrary to the judgement of reason but that the will may suspend its consent and require a new deliberation and a new judgement and give consent to the later So we have this seeming piece of non-sense judicium intellectus practice practicum not onely translated but explained in English consonantly to the most received opinions of Classical Authours If he have any thing to say against it let him bring arguments not reproaches And remember how Memnon gave a railing souldier a good blow with his Lance saying I hired thee to fight and not to raile The absurdity which he imputeth to me in natural Philosophy That it is ridiculous to say that the object of the sight is the cause of seeing which maketh him sorry that he had the ill fortune to be ingaged with me in a dispute of this kind is altogether impertinent and groundlesse The cause of seeing is either the cause of the exercise of seeing or the cause of the specification of the act of seeing The object is the cause of the specification why we see this or that and not the cause of the exercise He that should affirm that the object doth not concurre in the causation of sight especially going upon those grounds that I do that the manner of vision is not by sending out beames from the eye to the object but by receiving the species from the object to the eye was in an errour indeed For in sending out the species there is action and in the reception of them passion But he that should affirm that the object is the cause of the exercise of sight or that it is that which maketh that which is facultate espectabile to be actu aspectabile or that it is that which judgeth of the colour or light or to come home to the scope of the place that the object doth necessitate or determine the faculty of sight or the sensitive soul to the exercise of seeing were in a greater errour Among many answers which I gave to that objection that the dictate of the understanding doth determine the will this was one That supposing it did determine it yet it was not naturally but morally not as an efficient by physical influence into the will but by proposing and representing the object which is not my single opinion but the received judgement of the best Schoole-men And in this sense and this sense onely I said truely that the understanding doth no more by proposing the object determine and necessitate the will to will than the object of sight doth determine and necessitate the sensitive soul to the actual exercise of seeing whereas all men know that the sensitive Agent notwithstanding any efficacy that is in the object may shut his eyes or turn his face another way So that which I said was both true and pertinent to the question But his exception is altogether impertinent and if it be understood according to the proper sense and scope of the place untrue And this is the onely Philosophical notion which hitherto I have found in his Animadversions Castigations of his Animadversions Num. 8. WHosoever desireth to be secure from T. H. his arguments may hold himself close to the question where he will find no great cause of fear All his contention is about terms Whatsoever there was in this Section which came home to the principal question is omitted and nothing minded but the meaning or signification of voluntary and spontaneous acts c. which were well enough understood before by all Scholars until he arose up like another Davus in the Comedy to trouble all things So he acts his part like those fond Musicians who spent so much time in tuning of their Instruments that there was none left to spare for their musick Which are free which are voluntary or spontaneous and which are necessary Agents I have set down at large whither to prevent further trouble I refer the Reader And am ready to make it good by the joynt testimonies of an hundred Classick Authours that this hath been the common and current language of Scholars for many Ages If he could produce but one Authour Stoick or Christian before himself who in the ventilation of this question did ever define liberty as he doth it were some satisfaction Zeno one of the fairest flowers in the Stoicks Garland used to boast that he sometimes wanted opinions but never wanted arguments He is not so lucky never wanting opinions ever wanting proofes Hitherto we have found no demonstrations either from the cause or from the effect few topical arguments or authorities that are pertinent to the question except it be of country men and common people with one comparison But to come to the Animadversions themselves He chargeth me or rather the Schoole-men for bringing in this strange word Spontaneous meerely to shift off the difficulty of maintaining our Tenet of free-will If spontaneous and voluntary be the same thing as we affirm and use them both indifferently I would gladly know how the one can be a subterfuge more than the other or why we may not use a word that is equipollent to his own word But to cure him of his suspition I answer That the same thing and the same terme of spontaneous both in Greek and Latine in the same sense that we take it as it is distinguished from free and just as we define it was used by Philosophers a thousand years before either I or any Schoole-men were borne as we find in Aristotle That is spontaneous or voluntary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whose beginning is in it self with knowledge of the end or knowing every thing wherein the action doth consist And the same Authour in the very next Chapter makes the very same difference between that which is voluntary and that which is free or eligible that we do His second exception is against these words Spontaneity consists in a conformity of the appetite either intellectual or sensitive to the object which words saith he do signifie that spontaneity is a conformity or likeness of the appetite to the object which to him soundeth as if I had said that the appetite is like the object which is as proper as if I had said that the hunger is like the meat And then he concludes triumphantly If this be his meaning as it is the meaning of the words he is a very fine Philosopher All his Philosophy consists in words If there had been an impropriety in the phrase as there is none this exception had been below an Athenian
Sophister I had allmost said saving the rigorous acception of the word as it was used afterwards an Athenian Sycophant Conformity signifies not onely such a likenesse of feature as he imagineth but also a convenience accommodation and agreeablenesse So the savoury meat which Rebeckah made for her husband was conform to his appetite So Daniel and his fellows conformed their appetites to their pulse and water Thus Tully saith Ego me comformo ad ejus voluntatem I conform my self to his will Where there is an agreeablenesse there is a conformity as to conform ones self to another mans humour or to his councel or to his commands He resolveth to have no more to do with spontaneity I thought that it had not been himself but the causes that resolved him without his own will But whether it be himself or the causes I think if he hold his resolution and include liberty therein for company it will not be much amisse for him Here he readeth us a profound Lecture what the common people on whose arbitration dependeth the signification of words in common use among the Latines and Greeks did call all actions and motions whereof they did perceive no cause spontaneous and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And in the conclusion of his Lecture according to his custom he forgeteth not himself The Bishop understanding nothing of this might if it pleased him have called it Iargon What pitty is it that he hath not his Gnatho about him to ease him of this trouble of stroaking his own head Here is a Lecture able to make all the Blacksmiths and Watchmakers in a City gape and wonder to see their workmanship so highly advanced Thus he vapoureth still when he lights upon the blind side of an equivocall word For my part I not onely might have called it but do still call it meer Iargon and no better To passe by peccadillo's First he telleth us How the common people did call all actions spontaneous and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. How doth he know what the common people called them The books which we have are the books of Scholars not of the common people Secondly he saith That the signification of all words dependeth upon the arbitration of the common people Surely he meaneth onely at Athens where it is observed That wise men did speak and fools did judge But neither at Athens nor at any other place were the common people either the perfecters or arbitrators of language who neither speak regularly nor properly much lesse in words that are borrowed from learned languages Thirdly he supposeth that these words liberty necessity and spontaneity are words in common use which in truth are terms of art There is as much difference between that liberty and necessity which ordinary people speak and the liberty and necessity intended in this question whereof we are agreed as there is between the pointing out of a man with ones finger and a logicall demonstration or between an habit in a Tailers shop and an habit in Logick or Ethicks Fourthly He confoundeth spontaneity and chance comprehending them both under the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I confesse that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Poets and Oratours is a word of very ambiguous signification sometimes signifieing a necessary sometimes a voluntary or spontaneous sometimes a casuall sometimes an artificiall Agent or Event Such equivocall words are his delight But as they are terms of art all these words are exactly distinguished and defined and limitted to their proper and certain signification That which is voluntary or spontaneous is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as we see plainly in Aristotle That which is freely elected is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that which is by chance is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he may see in the places cited in the margent where all these words are exactly distinguished and defined Fifthly He saith the Latines and Greeks did call all actions and motions whereof they did perceive no cause 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which according to Aristotle and other Philosophers doth signifie things done by chance And in his reason whereof they did perceive no cause He is mistaken on hoth sides For first the causes of many things are apparent which yet are said to be done by chance as when a tile falleth down accidentally from an house breaketh a mans head And on the other side many things whereof the causes were not known as the ebbing and flowing of the sea were not said to be done by chance I shall not need for the present to make any further inquiry into his extravagant interpretations of words which he maketh gratis upon his own head and authority and which no man admitteth but himself Rectum est Index sui obliqui Sixthly he saith Not every appetite but the last is esteemed the will when men do judge of the regularity or irregularity of one anothers actions I do acknowledge that de non apparentibus non existentibus eadem est ratio If it do not appear outwardly to be his will man cannot judge of it as his will But if it did appear to be his will first or last though he change it over and over it was his will and is judged by God to have been his will and may be justly judged so by man so far as it did appear to have been his will by his words and actions If he mean his last will and testament that indeed taketh place and not the former yet the former will was truly his will untill it was revoked But of this and of his deliberation I shall have cause to speak more hereafter I come now to his contradictions His first contradiction is this All voluntary acts are deliberate Some voluntary acts are not deliberate The former part of his contradiction is proved out of these words Voluntary presupposes some precedent deliberation that is to to say some consideration and meditation of what is likely to follow both upon the doing and abstaining from the action deliberated of The second part is proved as plainly When a man hath time to deliberate but deliberates not because never any thing appeared that could make him doubt of the consequence the action follows his opinions of the goodnesse or harm of it These actions I call voluntary c. because these actions that follow immediately the last appetitite are voluntary And here where there is one onely apppetite that one is the last To this he answereth Voluntary presupposes deliberation when the judgement whether the action be voluntary or not is not in the Actor but in the Iudge who regardeth not the will of the Actor when there is nothing to be accused in the action of deliberate malice yet knoweth that though there be but one appetite the same is truely will for the time and the action if it follow a voluntary action To which term doth he answer Of what term doth he distinguish Some
to chuse well But that Solomon was necessitated by God to ask wisdom and not to ask long life or riches or the life of his enemy is clearly against the text First God said to Solomon Ask what I shall give thee If God had predetermined precisely what Solomon must ask and what he must have and what he must not ask and what he must not have it was not onely a superfluous but a ludicrous thing to bid him ask what gift he would have from God Then followeth Solomons deliberation to enable him to chuse what was most fit for him If God had predetermined what he would give and what Solomon must ask how ridiculous had it been for him to deliberate of what God had done Thirdly it is said The speech pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing There is no doubt but all the works of God do please him God saw all that he made and it was very good But what had Solomon done to please God if God did necessitate Solomon irresistibly to do what he did Then follow the words alleadged by me Because thou hast asked this thing and hast not asked for thy self long life c. which words if this opinion of universall necessity were true can bear no other sence but this Because thou hast done this which was inevitably imposed upon thee to do and hast not done that which was alltogether impossible for thee to have done As if a master should first bind his servant head and foot head and heels together and chain him fast to a post and then tell him Because thou hast staid here and didst not run away He urgeth That Solomon knew nothing to the contrary but that it was in his power to have done otherwise If Solomon the wisest of men did not know it there is little probability that T. H. should know it But he must know that it is not Solomon who speaketh these words but God I hope he will not suspect God Allmighty either of ignorance or of nescience Lastly we see what a corollary God gave Solomon for asking well about that which he did ask riches and honour No man deserveth either reward or punishment for doing that which it was not in his power to leave undone I urged these words of St. Peter After it was sold was it not in thine own power to shew that power which a man hath over his own actions He answereth That the word power signifieth no more than right not a reall naturall but a civill power made by a Covenant or a right to do with his own what he pleased I answer the word power doth not cannot signifie any such right to do with his own as he pleased in this place For that which St. Peter complaineth of was Annanias his unjust and sacrilegious detention of part of that which he had devoted to God when it was in his power to have offered the whole that is to have performed his vow If sacriledge be right then this was right If that which he had purloined sacrilegously were his own then this was his own If Ananias had been necessitated by external causes to hold back that part of the price it had been no more sacriledge than if Theeves had robbed him of it before he could offer it The reason is thus made evident If it was in the power of Ananias to have done that which he did not do and to have offered that according to his vow which he did detain contrary to his vow then all actions and events are not necessitated and it is in mens power to do otherwise than they do But St Peter saith it was in Ananias his power to have offered that which he did not offer c. Castigations upon the Animadversions Num. 10. MY reason against universal necessity in this Section was this To necessitate all men to all the individual actions which they do inevitably And to expostulate with them and chide them and reprehend them for doing of those very things which they were necessitated to do is a counterfeited hypocritical exaggaration But according to T. H. his doctrine God doth necessitate all men inevitably to do all the individual actions which they do and yet expostulates with them and chides them and reprehends them for doing of those very things which he did necessitate them inevitably to do This assumption which onely can be questioned is proved by the expostulations and objurations and reprehensions themselves contained in holy Scripture Therefore according to his opinâ—…on God himself is guilty of counterfeited hypocritical exaggarations It were more ingenuous to confesse that this is not to be answered than to bustle and keep a coile and twist new errours with old and taxe others ignorantly of ignorance and say nothing to the purpose His first answer is generally That I would have men believe that because he holds necessity therefore he denyes liberty A dangerous accusation to accuse him of a matter of truth But he saith He holds as much that there is true liberty as I do or more Yea such a liberty as children and fooles and madmen and brute beasts and rivers have A liberty that consists in negation or nothing He saith indeed that he holds a liberty from outward impediments But it is not true for external causes are external impediments And if he say truly all other causes are hindered from all other actions than what they do by external causes But true liberty from necessitation and dtermination to one he doth not acknowledge and without acknowledging that he doth acknowledge nothing I wonder to which of my Propositions or to what term in them this answer is accommodated His second answer is particular to the expostulations themselves That these words spoken by God to Adam Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded that thou shouldest not eat do convince Adam that notwithstanding that God had placed him in the Garden a means to keep him perpetually from dying in case he should accomodate his will to obedience of Gods Commandment concerning the tree of knowledge of good and evil Yet Adam was not so much master of his own will as to do it What ridiculous or rather deplorable stuffe is this How should it be expected that Adam should be master of his own will if God did necessitate his will without his will and determine him inevitably to what he did If his doctrine were true this doth not convince Adam but God Almighty who did first necessitate his will and then chide him for that which was Gods own act Can any man be so blind as not to see the absurdity of this doctrine That God did place in the Garden a means to keep man perpetually from dying and yet did deprive him of it inevitably without his own fault And this is all that he answereth to the other places as that to Eve Why hast thou done this And to Cain Why art thou wroth And Why will
righteous with the wicked Necessity may justifie the sufferings of innocent persons in some cases But no necessity can warrant the punishment of innocent persons Innocentium lachrimae diluvio periculosiores Whether they did well or ill for the manner of the act who put out their bodily eyes because they supposed them to be an impediment to the eye of the soul is not pertinent to our purpose yet was apt enough to prove my intention that bodily blindnesse may sometimes be a benefit His instance in brute beasts which are afflicted yet cannot sin is extravagant I did not go about to prove that universal necessity doth take away afflictions it rather rendereth them unavoidable But I did demonstrate and he hath not been able to make any shew of an answer to it that it taketh away all just rewards and punishments which is against the universal notion and common belief of the whole World Brute beasts are not capable of punishment They are not knocked down out of vindictive justice for faults committed but for future use and benefit I said there was a vast difference between the light and momentany pangs of brute beasts and the intollerable and endlesse pains of Hell Sure enough Dionysius the Tyrant seeing an oxe knocked down at one blow said to his friends What a folly it is to quit so fair a command for fear of dying which lasts no longer a space He himself when his wits are calmer doth acknowledge as much as I and somewhat more Perhaps saith he if the death of a sinner were an eternall life in extream misery a man might as far as Job hath done expostulate with God Allmighty not accusing him of injustice c. but of litle tenderness love to mankind But now he is pleased to give another judgement of it As if the length or greatnesse of the pain made any difference of the justice or unjustice of inflicting it yes very much According to the measure of the fault ought to be the number of the stripes If the punishment exceed the offence it is unjust On the other side it is not onely an act of justice but of favour and grace to inflict temporary paines for a greater good Otherwise a Master could not justly correct his Scholler Otherwise a Chirurgion might not lance an impostume or put a man to pain to cure him of the stone If God afflict a man with a momentary sicknesse and make this sicknesse a means to fit him for an eternall weight of glory he hath no cause to complain of injustice He is angry that I would make men believe that he holds all things to be just that are done by them who have power enough to avoid punishment He doth me wrong I said no such thing If he be guilty of this imputation either directly or by consequence let him look to it he hath errours enough which are evident I did indeed con44te this tenet of his That irresistible power is the rule of justice of which he is pleased to take no notice in his Animadversions But whereas he doth now restrain this priviledge to that power alone which is absolutely irresistible he forgetteth himself over much having formerly extended it to all Soveraignes and Supreme Councels within their own dominions It is manifest therefore that in every Common-wealth there is some one man or Councel which hath c. a Soveraign and absolute power to be limited by the strength of the Common wealth and by no other thing What neither by the Law of God nor nature nor nations nor the municipall laws of the land nor by any other thing but his power and strength Good doctrine Hunc tu Romane caveto Lastly to make his presumtion compleat he indeavoureth to prove that God is not only the author of the Law which is most true and the cause of the act which is partly true because he is the onely fountain of power but that he is the cause of the irregularity that is in plain English which he delighteth in the sin it self I think saith he there is no man but understands c. That where two things are compared the similitude or dissimilitude regularity or irregularity that is between them is made in and by the things themselves that are compared The Bishop therefore that denies God to be the cause of the irregularity denies him to be the cause both of the law and of the action This is that which he himself calleth blasphemy elsewhere that God is the authour or cause of sin Sin is nothing but the irregularity of the Act. So St. John defineth it in expresse terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sin is an anomy or an irregularity or a transgression of the law For sin is nothing else but a declination from the rule that is an irregularity Another definition of sin is this Sin is that which is thought or said or done against the eternall law Still you see the formall reason of sin doth consist in the contrariety to the law that is the irregularity Othets define sinne to be a want of rectitude or a privation of conformity to the rule that is irregularity An irregular action is sin materially Irregularity is sin formally Others define sinne to be a free transgression of the commandement Every one of these definitions demonstrate that Mr. Hobbes maketh God to be properly the cause of sinne But let us weigh his argument He who is the cause of the law and the cause of the action is the cause of the irregularity but God is the cause of the law and the cause of the action I deny his assumption God indeed is the cause of the law but God is not the total or adaequate cause of the action Nay God is not at all the cause of the action qua talis as it is irregular but the free Agent To use our former instance of an unjust judge The Prince is the authour or cause of the law and the Prince is the cause of the judiciary action of the Judge in generall because the Judge deriveth all his power of judicature from the Prince But the Prince is not the cause of the irregularity or repugnance or non-conformity or contrariety which is between the Judges actions and the law but the Judge himself who by his own fault did abuse and misapply that good generall power which was committed and entrusted to him by the Prince he is the only cause of the anomy or irregularity Or as a Scrivener that teacheth one to write and sets him a copy is both the cause of the rule and of the action or writing and yet not the cause of the irregularity or deviation from the rule Sin is a defect or deviation or irregularity No defect no deviation no irregularity can proceed from God But herein doth consist T. H. his errour that he distinguisheth not between an essential and an accidentall subordination Or between a good generall power and the derermination or
their own Countries and if the Governour will allow no religion then Atheisme is the true religion Then the blessed Apostles were very unwise to suffer for their conscience because they would obey God rather than man Then the blessed Martyrs were ill advised to suffer such torments for a false religion which was not warranted or indeed which was for bidden by the Soveraign Magistrates And so I have heard from a Gentleman of quality well deserving credit that Mr. Hobbes and he talking of self-preservation he pressed Mr. Hobbes with this argument drawn from holy Martyrs To which Mr. Hobbes gave answer They were all fools This bolt was soon shot but the primitive Church had a more venerable esteem of the holy Martyrs whose sufferings they called palms their Prison a Paradise and their death-day their birth-day of their glory to whose memory they builded Churches and instituted festivalls whose monuments God himself did honour with frequent miracles He asketh why the Bible should not be canonicall in Constantinople as well as in other places if it were not as he saith His question is Apocryphall and deserveth no other answer but another question Why a ship being placed in a stream is more apt to fall down the stream than to ascend up against the stream It is no marvel if the World be apt to follow a sensuall religion which is agreeable to their own appetites But that any should embrace a religion which surpasseth their own understandings and teacheth them to deny themselves and to saile against the stream of their own natural corruptions this is the meer goodnesse of God He saith That a Conquerour makes no laws over the conquered by virtue of his power and conquest but by virtue of their assent Most vainly urged like all the rest Unjust Conquerours gain no right but just Conquerours gain all right Omnia dat qui justa negat Just conquerors do not use to ask the assent of those whom they have conquered in lawfull war but to command obedience See but what a pretâ—…y liberty he hath found out for conquered persons They may chuse whether they will obey or dye Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem What is this to the purpose to prove that Conquerours make laws by the assent of those whom they have conquered nothing at all And yet even thus much is not true upon his principle Conquered Persons are not free to live or die indifferently according to his principles but they are necessitated either to the one or the other to live slaves or dye captives He hath found out a much like assent of children to the laws of their Ancestors without which he would make us believe that the laws do not bind When a child cometh to strength enough to do mischief and to judgement that they are preserved from mischief by fear of the sword that doth protect them in the very act of receiving protection and not renouncing it they obliege themselves to the laws of their protectours And here he inserteth further some of his peculiar errours as this That Parents who are not subject to others may lawfully take away the lives of their children and Magistrates take away the lives of their Subjects without any fault or crime if they do but doubt of their obedience Here is comfortable doctrine for children that their parents may knock out their brains lawfully And for Subjects that their Soveraigns may lawfully hang them up or behead them without any offence committed if they do but doubt of their obedience And for Soveraigns that their Subjects are quitted of their allegiance to them so soon as they do but receive actual protection from another And for all men if they do receive protection from a Turk or an heathen or whomsoever they are obliged to his Turkish Heathenish Idolatrous Sacrilegious or impious laws Can such opinions as these live in the World surely no longer â—…han men recover their right wits Demadesâ—…hreatned â—…hreatned Phocion That the Athenians would destroy him when they fall into their mad fits And thee Demades said Phocion when they returne to their right minds He saith That I would have the Iudge to condemn no man for a chrime that is necessitated As if saith he the Iudge could know what acts are neressary unlesse he knew all that had anteceded both visible and invisible If all acts be necessary it is an easie thing for the Judge to know what acts are necessey I say more that no crime can be necessitated for if it be necessitated it is no crime And so much all Judges know firmly or else they are not fit to be Judges Surely he supposeth there are or have been or may be some Stoicall Judges in the World He is mistaken no Stoick wss ever fit to be a Judge either Capitall or Civill And in truth Stoicall principles do overthrow both all Judges and Judgments He denieth that he ever said that all Magistrates at first were elective Perhaps not in so many words but he hath told us again that no law can be unjust because every Subject chuseth his law in chusing his Law-giver If every Law-giver be elective then every Soveraign Magistrate is elective for every Soveraign Magistrate is a Law-giver And he hath justified the laws of the Kings of Egypt of Assyria of Persia upon this ground because they were made by him to whom the people had given the Legislative power He addeth That it appears that I am of opinion that a law may be made to command the will Nothing lesse if he speaks of the law of man My argument was drawn from the lesser to the greater thus If that law be unjust which commands a man to do that which is impossible for him to do then that law is likewise unjust which commands him to will that which is impossible for him to will He seeth I condemne them both but much more the later Yet upon his principles he who commandeth a man to do impossibilities commandeth him to will impossibilities because without willing them he cannot do them My argument is ad hominem and goes upon his own grounds That though the action be necessitated neverthelesse the will to break the law maketh the action unjust And yet he maintaineth that the will is as much or more necessitated than the action because he maketh a man free to do if he will but not free to will If a man ought not to be punished for a necessitated act then neither ought he to be punished for a necessitated will I said truely That a just law justly executed is a cause of justice He inferreth that he hath shewed that all laws are just and all just laws are justly executed And hereupon he concludeth That I confesse that all I reply unto here is true Do I confesse that all laws are just No I have demonstrated the contrary or do I believe that all just laws are justly executed It may be so in Platos Common-wealth or in Sr.
shew such another grant for the Lions to devour men When God said Whoso sheddeth mans blood by man shall his blood be shed for in the Image of God made he man Was it intended onely that his blood should be preserved for the Lions or do not their teeth deface Gods Image as much as mans weapons But the Lion had liberty to eat man long before He is mistaken the creatures did beare a more awful respect to the Image of God in man before his fall But mans rebellion to God was punished with their rebellion of the creatures to him He saith it was impossible for most men to have Gods license to use the creatures for their sustenance Why so as if all the world were not then comprised in the family of Noah Or as if the Commandments and dispensations of God were not then delivered from father to son by tradition as they were long after by writing He asketh how I would have been offended if he should have spoken of man as Pliny doth Then whom there is no living creature more wretched or more proud Not half so much as now Pliny taxeth onely the faults of men he vilifieth not their humane nature Most wretched What is that but an argument of the immortality of the soul God would never have created the most noble of his creatures for the most wretched being Or more proud that is then some men Corruptio optimi pessima The best things being corrupted turn the worst But he acknowledgeth two advantages which man hath above other creatures his tongue and his hand Is it possible that any man who believeth that he hath an immortal soul or that reason and understanding are any thing but empty names should so far forget himself and his thankfulnesse to God as to prefer his tongue and his hands before an immortal soul and reason Then we may well change the definition of a man which those old dunses the Philosophers left us Man is a reasonable creature into this new one Man is a prating thing with two hands How much more was the humane nature beholden to Tully an Heathen who said That man differed from other creatures in reason and speech Or to Ovid who stileth man Sanctius his animal mentâ—…sque capacius altae If he have no better luck in defending his Leviathan he will have no great cause to boast of his making men examples And now it seemeth he hath played his masterprise For in the rest of his Animadversions in this Section we find a low ebbe of matter Concerning consultations he saith nothing but this That my writing was caused physically antecedently extrinsecally by his answer In good time By which I see right well that he understandeth not what a physical cause is Did he think his answer was so Mathematical to compel or necessitate me to write No I confesse I determined my self And his answer was but a slender occasion which would have had little weight with me but for a wiser mans advice to prevent his over-weening opinion of his own abilities And then followeth his old dish of twice sodden colewortes about free and necessary and contingent and free to do if he will which we have had often enough already His distinction between seen and unseen necessity deserveth more consideration The meaning is that seen necessity doth take away consultation but unseen necessity doth not take away consultation or humane indeavours Unseen necessity is of two sorts either it is altogether unseen and unknown either what it is or that it is Such a necessity doth not take away consultation or humane endeavours Suppose an office were privately disposed yet he who knoweth nothing of the disposition of it may be as solicitous and industrious to obtain it as though it were not disposed at all But the necessity which he laboureth to introduce is no such unseen unknown necessity For though he know not what the causes have determined particularly or what the necessity is yet he believeth that he knoweth in general that the causes are determined from eternity and that there is an absolute necessity The second sort of unseen necessity is that which is unseen in particular what it is but it is not unknown in general that it is And this kind of unseen necessity doth take away all consultation and endeavours and the use of means as much as if it were seen in particular As supposing that the Cardinals have elected a Pope in private but the declaration of the person who is elected is kept secret Here is a necessity the Papacy is full and this necessity is unseen in particular whilest no man knoweth who it is Yet for as much as it is known that it is it taketh away all indeavours and consultations as much as if the Pope were publickly enthroned Or suppose a Jury have given in a privy veredict no man knoweth what it is until the next Court-day yet it is known generally that the Jurers are agreed and the veredict is given in Here is an unseen necessity Yet he who should use any further consultations or make further applications in the case were a fool So though the particular determination of the causes be not known to us what it is yet if we know that the causes are particularly determined from eternity we know that no consultation or endeavour of ours can alter them But it may be further objected that though they cannot alter them yet they may help to accomplish them It was necessary that all who sailed with St. Paul should be saved from shipwrack Yet St. Paul told them that except the shipmen did abide in the ship they could not be saved So though the event be necessarily determined yet consultation or the like means may be necessary to the determination of it I answer the question is not whether the means be necessary to the end for that is agreed upon by all parties But the question is to whom the ordering of the means which are necessary to the production of the event doth properly belong whether to the first cause or to the free Agent If it belong to the free Agent under God as we say it doth then it concerneth him to use consultations and all good endeavours as requisite means to obtain the desired end But if the disposition of the means belong soly and wholly to God as he saith it doth and if God have ordered all means as well as ends and events particularly and precisely then it were not onely a thanklesse and superfluous office to consult what were the fittest means to obtain an end when God hath determined what must be the onely means and no other but also a saucinesse and a kind of tempting of God for a man to intrude himself into the execution of God Almighties decrees whereas he ought rather to cast away all care and all thought on his part and resign himself up wholly to the disposition of the second causes which act nothing but by
the special determination of God Concerning admonition he saith lesse than of consultation The reason saith he why we admonish men of understanding rather than children fooles and madmen is because they are more capable of the good and evil consequences of their actions and have more experience and their passions are more conform to their Admonitors that is to say moderate and stayed And then after his Bragadochio manner he concludeth There be therefore reasons under heaven which the bishop knows not of My one reason because they have the use of reason and true liberty with a dominion over their ownactions which children fools and mad-men have not includeth more than all his three reasons put together What is it that weigheth the good and evill consequences of our actions Reason What is it that preserveth us from being transported with our passions Reason And what is experienced of good and evil Reason impoproved by observation So we have gained nothing by the change of my reason but three crackt groats fore one good shilling But he hath omitted the principal part of my answer that is the liberty and dominion over their actions which men of understanding have much more than children fools or madmen Without which all his capablenesse of good and evill consequences all his experience of good and evil all his calmness and moderation do signifie just nothing Let a man have as much capacity as Solomon as much experience as Nestor as much moderation as Socrates yet if he have no power to dispose of himself nor to order his own actions but be hurried away by the second causes inevitably irresistiblity without his own willl it is to as much purpose to admonish him as when Icarus had his wings melted by the Sun and was tumbling down headlong into the Sea to have admonished him to take heed of drowning A seasonable admonition may do much good but that is upon our principles not upon his If all events with all their circumstances and the certain means to effect them were precisely determined from eternity it were high presumption in us to interpose without speciall warrant Those means which we judge most convenient are often not looked upon by God Allmighty who doth use to bring light out of darkness and restore sight by clay and spittle and preserve men from perishing by perishing No Perigraph escapeth him without some supererogatory absurdities As here that a man may deliberate without the use of reason that bruit beasts may deliberate that madnesse or phrensie is strength of passion He insisteth longer upon morall praise and dispraise or moral goodnesse or badnesse but speedeth worse entangling himself in twenty errours as these which follow Metaphysicall goodnesse is but an idle term That is good wherewith a man is pleased Good is not of absolute signification to all men Nothing is good of evill but in regard of the action proceeding from it and the person to whom it doth good or hurt Satan is evill to us but good to God If there were laws among Beasts an Horse would be as morally good as man The difference between naturall and morall goodnesse procedeth from the civill law The law is all the right reason that we have We make it right reason by our approbation All actions of Subjects if they be conformable to the law of the land are morally good Morall praise is from obedience to the law Morall dispraise is from disobedience to the law To say a thing is good is to say It is as I or another or the state would have it That is good to every man which is so far good as he can see All the reall good which we call honest and morally virtuous is that which is not repugnant to the law The law is the infallible rule of morall goodnesse Our particular reason is not right reason The reason of our Governour whom we have set over our selves is right reason His Laws whatsoever they be are in the place of right reason to us As in playmorality consisteth in not renoncing the trump So all our morality consisteth in not disobeying the law Is not here an hopefull litter of young errours to be all formed out of three penfulls of inke as if he had been dreaming lately in errours den One Antycira will not afford Hellebore enough to cure him perfectly I was apt to flatter my self a while that by the law he understood the law of right reason But I found it too evident that by right reason he understands the arbitrary edicts of an elective Governoour I could not chuse but cal to mind that of our Laureate Poet God help the man so wrapt in errours endlesse train The Reader might well have expected matter of more edification upon this Subject As wherein the formal reason of goodnesse doth consist in convenience or in the obtainining of all due perfections As likewise the distinction of good either subjectively into the goods of the mind the goods of the body and the goods of fortune Or formally into bonum honestum utile delectabile or honestly good profitably good and delightfully good That which is honestly good is desirable in it self and as it is such That which is profitably good is that which is to be desired as conducing to the obtaining of some other good Thirdly delightfully good is that pleasure which doth arise from the obtaining of the other goods desired But he hath quite cashiered the two former sorts of good That which is honestly good and that which is profitably good and acknowledgeth onely that which is delightfully good or that which pleaseth him or me So as if our humours differ goodnesse must differ and as our humours change goodness must change as the Chamaeleon changeth her colours Many things are good that please not us and many things please us that are not good Thus he hath left no reall good in the World but only that which is relatively good Thus he hath made the Devil himself to become good and which is yet worse good to God Thus he hath made horses to be as capable of morall goodnesse as men if they had but onely laws I wonder why he should stick at that laws are but commands and commands may be intimated to horses as we might see in Bankes his horse which we might call upon his principles an honest virtuous and morally good horse There is a woe denounced against them who call evill good and good evill This is not all he confesseth that law-makers are men and may erre and think that law good for the people which is not yet with the same breath he telleth us That there is no other right reason but their law which is the infallible rule of morall goodnesse So right reason and erring reason a fallible rule and an infallible rule are all one with him What no other rule but this one Lesbian rule the arbitrary dictates of a Governour What is become of the eternall
law or the rule of justice in God himself What is become of the divine positive law recorded in holy Scriptures What is become of the law of nature imprinted naturally in the heart of every man by the finger of God himself What is become of the law of nations that is those principles which have been commonly and universally received as laws by all nations in all ages or at least the most prudent pious and civill nations What is become of that Synteresis or noble light of the soul which God hath given mankind to preserve them from vices Are they all gone all vanished and is no rule remaining but only the arbitrary edicts of a mortal Law-giver who may command us to turn Turks or Pagans to morrow who by his own confession may erre in his law-giving Then not onely power absolutely irresistible doth justifie whatsoever it doth but also the power of mortall man may justifie the violation of the laws of the immortal God But I have shewed him sufficiently that there are unjust laws not onely towards God but likewise towards men That unjust laws do not acquit our active obedience to them from damnable sin That it is not onely lawful but necessary to disobey them That God himself hath approved such disobedience and rewarded it To conclude it is not the pleasing of him or me or some private benefit that may redound from thence to him or me that makes any thing to be truely good but the meeting of all perfection in it whereof that thing is capable Bonum ex integra causa malum ex quolibet defectu all requisite perfections must concur to make a thing good but one onely defect makes it evill Nothing is morally good nothing is praiseworthy but that which is truly honest and virtuous And on the other side nothing is morally bad nothing is dispraise worthy but that which is dishonest and vicious To wrangle everlastingly whether those incouragements which are given to Setting-dogs and Coyducks and the like be rewards were a childish fighting with shadows seeing it is confessed that they are not recompenses of honest and virtuous actions to which the laws did appoint rewards Swine that run by a determinate instinct of nature to succour their fellows of the same Herd in distresse do not desire a civicall crown like him who saved the life of a Citizen Nor the Spiders whose phancies are fitted by nature to the weaving of their webs deserve the like commendation with Arachne who atteined to her rare arts of weaving by assidious industry There is a great difference between natural qualities and moral virtues Where nature hath bestowed excellent gifts the chief praise redoundeth to the God of nature And where the bruits have attained to any such rare or beneficial qualities by the instruction of man the chief praise redoundeth unto him that taught them The Harp was not crowned in the Olympian Games but the Harper nor the Horses but the Chariotter And though the incouragements of men and bruits be sometimes the same thing materially yet they are not the same thing formally But where he confoundeth a necessity of specification with a necessity of exercise and affirmeth that the Bees and Spiders are necessitated by nature as well to all their individuall actions as to their severall kinds of works it deserveth no answer but to be sleighted His opinion doth require that he should say that they are determined to their individual actions by the second causes and circumstances though it be untrue but to say they are determined by nature to each individuall act admitteth no defence In the last Paragraph I am beholden to him that he would instruct me but I am of his mind that it would be too great a labour for him For I approve none of his newfangled principles and think he might have spent his time better in meditating upon somewhat else that had been more proper for him I see that where the inferiour faculty doth end the superiour doth begin As where the vegetative doth end there the sensitive doth begin comprehending all that the vegetative doth and much more So where the sensitive ends the intellectual begins And should I confine the intellectual soul which is inorganical immaterial impassible seperable within the bounds of the sensitive or to the power and proceedings thereof when I see the understanding doth correct the sense as about the greatnesse of the Sun Sense hath nothing to do with universalls but reason hath Even in memory which he mentioneth the intellectuall remembrance is another manner of thing than the sensitive memory But this belongs not to this question and therefore I pass by it and leave him to the censure of others Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 15. IN this Section he chargeth me first with a double breach of promise yet there is no promise if they had been promises both are accomplished One of my promises was That I would not leave one grain of his matter unweighed yet I leave these words unanswered Our Saviour bids us pray thy will not our will be done and by example teacheth us the same For he prayed thus Father if it be thy will let this cup passe First this was no promise but mine own private resolution which I might lawfully change at any time upon better grounds Secondly it had been an easie thing to omit two lines in a whole discourse unwillingly Thirdly the intent was onely to omit nothing that was material but this was meerly impertinent Lastly without any more to do it was fully answered in my defence in these words In the last place he urgeth That in our prayers we are bound to submit our wills to Gods will Who ever made a doubt of this We must submit to the preceptive will of God or his commandments We must submit to the effective will of God when he declares his pleasure by the event or otherwise But we deny and deny again that God wills ad extra necessarily or that it is his pleasure that all second causes should act necessarily at all times which is the question And that which he aledgeth to the contrary comes not near it Where were his eyes That inference which seemeth at least to imply that our prayers cannot change the will of God is now first added And if it had been there formerly is answered abundantly in the same Section The second breach of promise is this that I said here is all that passed between us upon this subject without any addition or the least variation from the original But I have added these words Yes I have seen those silliest of creatures and seeing their rare works I have seen enough to confute all the boldfaced Atheists of this Age and their hellish blasphemies What a stirre is here about two lines which contain neither argument nor answer nor authority nor anything material I did not apply these words to him nor gave the least intimation of any such thing
know that this shall turn to my salvation thorough your prayers Hannah prayed and the Lord granted her request We see the like in Achab in Zachary in Cornelius and many others Hezekias prayed and the Lord said I have heard thy prayer I have seen thy teares Behold I will adde unto thy dayes fifteen years Nothing can be plainer than Solomons prayer at the dedication of the Temple If there be famine in the land if there be pestilence c. If their enemy besiege them in their Cities whatsoever plague whatsoever sicknesses there be what prayer or supplication soever be made by any man or by all thy people Israel c. and spread forth his hands toward this house heare thou in Heaven thy dwelling Place and forgive and do c. To all which God himself condescended and promised to do accordingly His reason to the contrary That no creature living can work any effect upon God is most true but neither pertinent to his purpose nor understood by himself It is all one as to the efficacy of prayer if it work upon us as though it had wrought upon God himself if it render us more capable of his mercies as if it rendered him more merciful Though the Sword and the Crown hang immovable yet prayer translateth us from one capacity to another from being under the sword to be under the Crown Lastly he telleth us in great sadnesse That though our prayers to man be distinguished from our thanks it is not necessary it should be so in our prayers and thanks to God Almighty Prayers and thanksgiving are our acts not Gods acts and have their distinction from us not from God Prayer respects the time to come thanksgiving the time past Prayer is for that we want thanksgiving for that we have All the ten Lepers prayed Jesus Master have mercy on us but onely one of them returned to give God thanks S. Paul distinguisheth prayer and thanksgiving even in respect of God By granting the prayers of his people God putteth an obligation upon them to give thanks He might as well have said that Faith Hope and Charity are the same thing He passeth over the rest of this Chapter in silence I think him much the wiser for so doing If he had done so by the rest likewise it had been as much credit for his cause Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 16. HEere are three things questionable in this Section First whether he who maketh all things make all things necessary to be or whether it be a contradiction of me to my self to say so First this is certain there can be no formal contradiction where there is but one proposition but here is but one proposition Secondly here is no implicite contradiction First because there is a vast difference between making all things necessary to be and making all things to be necessary Agents The most free or contingent Agents in the World when they are are necessarily such as they are that is necessary to be But they are not necessarily necessary Agents And yet he is still harping upon this string to prove such a necessity as no man did ever deny Thirdly I told him that this which he contends for here is but a necessity of supposition As supposing a garment to be made of the French fashion when it is made it is necessarily of the French faction But it was not necessary before it was made that it should be made of the French fashion nor of any other fashion for it might not have been made at all He excepteth That the burning of the fire is no otherwise necessary then upon supposition That is supposing fuell be cast upon the fire the fire doth burn it necessarily But herein he is altogether mistaken For that onely is called necessary upon supposition where the thing supposed is or was in some sort in the power of the free Agent either to do it or to leave it undone indifferently But it is never in the power of the fire to burn or not to burn indifferently He who did strike the fire out of the flint may be said to be a necessary cause of the burning that proceeded from thence upon supposition because it was in his power either to strike fire or not to strike fire And he who puts more fuell to the fire may be said to be a necessary cause of the continuance of the fire upon supposition because it was in his choice to put to more fuell or not But the fire it self cannot chuse but burne whilest it is fire and therefore it is a necessary cause of burning absolutely and not upon supposition What unseen necessity doth prejudice liberty and what doth not I have shewed formerly How mean an esteem soever he hath of the Tailor either he or his meanest apprentise have more sense than himself in this cause The Tailor knows that there was no necessity from eternity that he should be a Tailor or that that man for whom he made the garment should be his customer and much lesse yet of what fashion he should make it But he is still fumbling to no purpose upon that old foolish rule as he pleased once to call it Whatsoever is when it is is necessarily so as it is The second question is Whether there be any Agents in the World which are truly free or truly contingent Agents according to his grounds And it is easily demonstrated that there are not Because he maintaineth that all Agents are necessary and that those Agents which we call free Agents and contingent Agents do act as necessarily as those Agents which we see and know to be necessary Agents And that the reason why we stile them free Agents and contingent Agents is because we do not know whether they work necessarily or not He hath told us hitherto that all Agents act necessarily otherwise there could not be an universal necessity Now he telleth us that there be sundry Agents which we know not whether they work necessarily or not If we do not know whether they work necessarily or not then we do not know whether there be universal necessity or not But we may well passe by such little mistakes in him That which I deduce from hence is this That the formal reason of liberty and contingency according to his opinion doth consist in our ignorance or nescience and then it hath no reall being in the nature of things Hitherto the world hath esteemed nothing more than liberty Mankind hath been ready to fight for nothing sooner than liberty Now if after all this there be no such thing as liberty in the world they have contended all this while for a shadow It is but too apparent what horrible disorders there are in the world and how many times right is troden under foot by might and how the worst of men do flourish and prosper in this world whilest poor Hieremy is in the Dungeon or writing bookes of lamentation If
there be true liberty in the world we know well whereunto to impute all these disorders but if there be no true liberty in the world free from antecedent necessitation then they all fall directly upon God Almighty and his Providence The last question is concerning his definition of contingent That they are such Agents as work we know not how Against which I gave him two exceptions in my defence One was this Many Agents work we know not how as the Loadstone draweth iron the Jet chaff and yet they are known and acknowledged to be necessary and not contingent Agents Secondly many Agents do work we know how as a stone falling down from an house upon a mans head and yet we do not account it a necessary but a contingent event by reason of the accidental concurrence of the causes I have given him other instances in other parts of this Treatise And if need be he may have twenty more And yet though his definition was shewed formerly to halt down-right on both sides yet he good man is patient and never taketh the least notice of it But onely denyeth the consequence and over-looketh the proofes His objection about the indetermination of the causes That indetermination doth nothing because it maketh the event equal to happen and not to happen is but a flash without any one grain of solidity For by indetermination in that place is clearly understood not to be predetermined to one by extrinsecal causes but to be left free to its own intrinsecal determination this way or that way indifferently So the first words By reason of the indetermination have referrence to free Agents and free Events And the other words Or accidentall concurrence of the causes have referrence to casuall Events And both together referendo sigul◅ singulis do include all contingents as the word is commonly and largely taken by old Philosophers Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 17. REader I do not wonder now and then to see T. H. sink under the weight of an absurdity in this cause A back of steel were not able to bear all those unsupportable consequences which flow from this opinion of fatall destiny But why he should delight to multiplle needlesse absurdities I do not know Allmost every Section produceth some new monster In this seventeenth Section I demonstrated clearly that this opinion of universal necessity doth take away the nature of sinne That which he saith in answer thereunto is that which followeth First it is true he who taketh away the liberty of doing according to the will taketh away the nature of sinne but he that denieth the liberty to will doth not so This answer hath been sufficiently taken away already both in the defence and in these Castigations Inevitable and unresistible necessity doth as much acquit the will from sin as the action Again whereas I urged That whatsoever proceedeth essentially by way of physicall determination from the first cause is good and just and lawfull he opposeth That I might as well have concluded that what soever man hath been made by God is a good and just man So I might What should hinder me to conclude that every man and every creature created by God is good qua talis as it is created by God but being but a creature it is not immutably good as God himself is If he be not of the same opinion he must seek for companions among those old Hereticks the Manichees or Marcionites So he cometh to his main answer Sin is not a thing really made Those things which at first were actions were not then sins though actions of the same nature with those which were afterwards sins Nor was then the will to any thing a sin though it were a will to the same thing which in willing now we should sin Actions became then sins first when the Commandemens came c. There can no action be made sin but by the law Therefore this opinion though it derive actions essentially from God it derives not sins essentially from him but relatively and by the Cōmandement The first thing I observe in him is a contradiction to himself Now he maketh the anomy or the irregularity and repugnance to the law to be the sinne before he conceiveth the action it self to be the sin Doth not the Bishop think God to be the cause of all actions And are not sins of commission actions Is murther no action And doth not God himself say there is no evil in the City which I have not done And was not murther one of those evills c. I am of opinion that the distinction of causes into efficient and deficient is Bohu and signifieth nothing This might have been pardoned to him But his second slip is worse That the World was I know not how long without sin I did demonstrate That upon his grounds all sins are essentially from God and consequently are lawfull and just He answereth That the actions were from God but the actions were not sins at the first untill there was a law What is this to the purpose It is not materiall when sin did enter into the World early or late so as when it did enter it were essentially from God which it must needs be upon his grounds that both the murther and the law against murther are from God And as it doth not help his cause at all so it is most false What actions were there in the World before the sinne of the Angell He charged the Angels with folly And if God spared not the Angels that sinned but cast them down to hell and the Angels which kept not their first estate What were those first actions that were before the sinne of Adam By one man sinne entred into the World and death by sinne Thirdly he erreth most grossely in supposing that the World at first was lawlesse The World was never without the eternall law that is the rule of justice in God himself and that which giveth force to all other laws as the Divine Wisdom saith By me Kings raign and Princes decree justice And sinne is defined to be that which is acted said or thought against the eternall law But to let this passe for the present because it is transcendentally a law How was the World ever without the law of nature which is most properly a law the law that cannot lie not mortal from mortal man not dead or written in the paper without life but incorruptible written in the heart of man by the finger of God himself Let him learn sounder doctrine from St. Paul For when the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law these having not the law are a law unto themselves which shew the work of the law written in their hearts their consciences also bearing witnesse and their thoughts the mean while accusing or excusing one another I passe by those Commandements of God which were delivered by tradition from hand to
teeth though he cannot bite and leaving counterfeiting in hope of quarter to himself as a person much more capable of that design the next new Subject that presenteth it self is Whether there be any mixt actions partly voluntary partly unvoluntary He denieth it positively upon this ground That one and the same action can never be both voluntary and unvoluntary I answer first to his argument That voluntary and unvoluntary are not opposed contradictorily so as to admit no mean but privatively which do admit a mean as the dawning of the day or the twilight is a mean between light and darknesse when it may be truly said it is partly light and partly dark Melancthon hath an excellent rule to this purpose Privative opposita nequeunt esse in eodem subjecto gradibus excellentibus Privative opposites cannot be in the same subject in eminent degrees but in remisse degrees they may As to avoid importunity a man may do a free act with reluctance All reluctance is a degree of unwillingnesse When Nero in the beginning of his Quinquennium was to sign the condemnation of a malefactor he used to wish that he had never learned to write to shew that though he did it willingly to satisfie Justice for otherwise he might have pardoned him yet he did it unwillingly in his own nature And with this Aristotle agreeth fully There are some actions which are neither properly voluntary nor unvoluntary but of a middle kind or mixed actions as things done for fear of a greater evil or for some honest cause And he giveth two instances This is one of a man who throws his goods into the sea willingly in respect of the end to save his life but the action being simply considered in it self unwillingly The other instance of one commanded to do some dishonest act by a Tyrant who hath his parents and children in his power And so he concludeth truly That they are mixt actions but participate more of the voluntary than of the unvoluntary Whereas I urged that election of one out of more could not consist with determination to one he answereth That a man forced to prison may chuse whether he will walk upon his feet or be haled upon the ground Which as it is false as I have shewed in my former defence so it is wholly wide from his purpose There is no doubt but he who is necessitated in one particular may be left free in another as he who is appointed the time and place for a Duel may chuse his weapon But in that particular wherein he is necessitated he cannot chuse If they will tie him to an horsetaile he must be tied If they will fasten him to a sled and draw him to prison he must be drawn There cannot possibly be any election where there is and so far as there is an antecedent determination to one He disliketh the terme of rational will saying There is nothing rational but God Angels and men I hope he is not in earnest Surely he believeth there is a reasonable soul or otherwise he deserts his Athanasian creed that is The soul of a rational man as a will is the will of a rational man Whether he make the will to be a faculty of the reasonable soul or to be the reasonable soul as it willeth I am indifferent As the appetite of a sensitive creature is called the sensitve appetite So the appetite of a rational or intellectual creature is called the rational or intellectual will He saith he would not have excepted against this expression but that every where I speak of the will and other faculties as of men or spirits in mens bellies I do not confine the reasonable soul to the belly but it is a spirit in a mans body If it be not let him say what it is The will is either a faculty of the reasonable soul or which is all one the reasonable soul it self as it dischargeth the duties of such a faculty Sometimes he confesseth as much himself Indeed as the will is a faculty or power of a mans soul so to will is an act of it according to that power He jesteth at my five terrible things saying I had no more reason for five than fifteen It seemeth that when he should have been reading Authors he was meditating upon a dry Summer Let him consult with Aristotle and his Expositors That which determined the three children was no antecedent extrinsecal cause but conscience and their own judgement which dictated to them their duty to their God He seemeth to be troubled at sundry passages in my former defence as exâ—…mpting Subjects from active obedience to unjust laws which he saith makes it impossible for any nation in the world to preserve it self from Civil wars Whether was it want of memory or rather subtilty in him among these passages to omit that Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God judge ye It is hard that we who have formerly been accused to maintain blind obedience should now be charged with seditious principles which our souls abhor But we sail securely between this Scylla and that Charybdis by steering the ancient and direct course of passive obedience We justifie no defensive armes against a Soveraign Prince We allow no Civil wars for conscience sake When we are persecuted for not complying with the unlawful commands of a lawful Soveraign we know no other remedy but to suffer or to flee according to that memorable example of the Thebaean Legion consisting wholy of Christians of unmatchable valour and such as might in probability have defended themselves from the Emperours fury Yet when Maximian commanded them to sacrifice to Idols they refused suffering every tenth man of them to be slain without a blow smitten And when the bloody Emperour came among them again to renew his command and to see them decimated the second time they cryed out with one voice Cognosce O Imperator c. Know O Emperour that we are all Christians we submit our bodies to thy power but our free souls flee unto our Saviour Neither our known courage nor desperation it self hath armed us against thee because we chuse rather to die innocents than to live nocents Thou shalt find our hands empty of weapons but our breast armed with the Catholick Faith And so having power to resist yet they suffered themselves without resistance to be cut in pieces They are T. H. his own principles which make no difference between just and unjust power between a sword given by God and a sword taken by man which do serve to involve Nations in Civil Wars He saith it seemeth that I call compulsion force and he calleth it a fear of force I called it as all the World called it and as it hath been defined in the Schooles for two thousand years Yet I do not believe that it is alwayes necessary to all sorts of compulsion that the force be actually
advantage and that it is not without cause men use improper language when they mean to keep their errours from being detected to let him see that this is the sense of all men and that this assertion will advantage his cause nothing I am contented to answer his Animadversions upon this subject in the same phrase that he proposeth them He pleadeth that the election of the free Agent doth necessarily follow his last judgement and therefore his election is not free My first answer to this is that determination which he maintaineth and which taketh away freedom and liberty is extrinsecal and antecedent But the determination of the Agents election by his judgement is intrinsecall made by himself and concomitant being together in time with the election To this now he replyeth That the will and the last dictate of the understanding are produced in the same instant but the necessity of them both was antecedent before they were produced At when a stone is falling the necessity of touching the earth is antecedent to the touch it self unlesse it be hindered by some contrary external motion and then the stop is as necessary as the proceeding would have been To this I give three clear solutions First That his instance of the stone is altogether impertinent the stone is a naturall Agent the man is a voluntary Agent Natural Agents act necessarily and determinately Voluntary Agents act freely and undeterminately The stone is determined to its motion downwards intrinsecally by its own nature that is by the weight or gravity of it but he maketh the will of the free Agent to be determined extrinsecally by causes without himself Secondly There is not the like necessary or determinate connexion between the will and its antecedent causes as is between the stone falling and its touching the ground It was in the power of the man to deliberate or not deliberate to elect or not elect but it is not in the power of the stone to fall or not to fall So the motion of the stone was determined to one antecedently in its causes but the elective will of man is not determined to one antecedently in its causes until the man determine himself by his choice Thirdly Though the stone be not such a free undetermined Agent as the man is and therefore this concerneth not liberty yet he himself confesseth that casually it may be hindred from touching the ground unlesse it be hindred by some contrary externall motion So the stones touching of the ground is necessary onely upon supposition unlesse it be hindred But that necessity which he maintaineth is a necessity antecedent which cannot possible be otherwise But there is this difference between the man and the stone That the thing supposed to deliberate or not deliberate is in the power of the man but the thing supposed to be hindred or not hindred is not in the power of the stone He pleadeth further That supposing the stone be hindred then the stop is necessary So still there is necessity Nay by his favour if the event be necessary to fall out this way upon one supposition and necessary to fall out another way upon a contrary supposition then there is no absolute or antecedent necessity at all for absolute necessity admitteth no such contrary suppositions absolute or antecedent necessity being that which cannot possibly be otherwise My second answer was negative That the free Agent in electing doth not alwayes chuse what is best or most convenient in his judgement He affirmeth that I say this is but a probable opinion nay I said it was probable at the least and if he presse me further I say it is but too evident Otherwise there should be no sin against conscience for what is conscience but the practical judgement or dictate of reason concerning things to be done or to be shunned here and now with these or those circumstances And such a man is truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 condemned by himself A man who hath two dishes of meat set before him the one more agreeable to his health the other more pleasing to his palate may and many times doth chuse the later and the worse his judgement at the same time disallowing it Saint Paul confesseth that he had done that which he allowed not He saith it is impossible for a man to will any thing which appeareth not first in his understanding to be good for him That is very true but it cometh not home If he would speak to the purpose he should say It is impossible for a man to will any thing which appeareth not in his understanding to be best for him But this is false As suppose one thing appear to a man to be honest that is one good Another thing appeareth to be delightfull that is another good Every man knoweth in his own judgement and conscience That that which is honestly good is better than that which is delightfully good yet men often chuse pleasure before honesty their conscience at the same time accusing them for it I said a man is bound to follow his conscience as the last practicall dictate of reason There is no doubt of it The Scripture is plain He ihat doubteth is damned if he eat because he eateth not of faith for whatsoever is not of faith that is to say is not done upon a firm resolution that it is lawful is sin Reason is as plain all circumstances must concur to make an action good but one single defect doth make it evil The approbation of conscience is required to every good action and the want thereof maketh it sinful not simply in it self but to that person at that time He excepteth That a man ought not to follow the dictate of his understanding when it is erroneous That is most true with this limitation Wherein it is erroneous or as it is erroneous But there is an expedient for this in Case-divinity which I easily beleive he did never meet with He who hath an erroneous conscience is doubly obliged first to reform it and then to follow it The dictates of right reason ought ever to be followed and erroneous reason ought ever to be reformed and made right reason I said that reason was the true root of liberty That is plain The object of the will is good either reall or apparent And a man cannot will any thing as good but that which he judgeth in his understanding to be good Nothing can affect that which it doth not know And therefore reason must of necessity be the root of Liberty This he taketh to be contradictory to what I say here That actions and objects may be so equally circumstantiated or the case so intricate that reason cannot give a positive sentence but leaves the election to liberty or chance How then saith he can a man leave that to liberty when his reason can give no sentence And if by chance I mean that which hath no causes I destroy Providence
if that which hath causes I leave it to necessity So where I say That reason cannot give a positive sentence he maketh me say That reason can give no sentence There is a great difference between these two The Judges name three men to the Sherifwick of of a County Here is a nomination or judgement but not yet positive The King picks one of these three then the nomination or judgement is positive So reason representeth to the free Agent or the free Agent judgeth in his understanding three means to obtain one end either not examining or not determining any advantage which one mean hath above another Here is an indefinite judgement for three good meanes though it be not positive for any one more than the rest In this case the will or the free Agent chuseth one of these three meanes as good without any further examination which is best Reason is the root of liberty in representing what is good even when it doth give no positive or determinate sentence what is best I am neither so vain to think there is any thing that hath a being which hath not causes nor so stupid on the other side as to think that all causes are necessary causes Chance proceedeth neither from the want nor from the ignorance but from the accidental concurrence of causes His next charge is That it is false that actions may be so equally circumstantiated that reason cannot give a positive that is a determinate sentence Yet he confesseth that in these things elected there may be an exact equality If he did not confesse it it is most evident in it self as appeareth in my former instance of two plaisters of equal virtue Or if he please in two peices of gold of the same stampe weight and alloy sent to one man upon condition to chuse the one and leave the other He judgeth them both to be good and is not such a foole as they are who say that he would hang in a perpetual equilibrium and could chuse neither for want of determination which was best Therefore he chuseth one of them without more to do But he saith There may be circumstances in him that is to elect that he do not spend time in vain or lose both It is true there are reasons to move him to elect because they are both good but there are no reasons to move him to elect the one rather than the other this rather than that or that rather than this but only the wil of him that electeth all things being so equally circumstantiated that reason can give sentence for them both as good but not for the one positively and determinately as better than the other Whatsoever is good is the object of the will though it be not alwayes the best I said that reason doth not weigh every individual object or action to the uttermost grain He pleadeth in answer True but does it therefore follow a man gives no sentence The will may follow the dictate of the judgement whether the man weigh or not weigh all that might be weighed I acknowledge it but he mistaketh the scope of my argument The lesse exactly that reason doth weigh actions or objects the lesse exactly it doth determine the free Agent but leaveth him as in a case of indifferency or having no considerable difference to chuse what he will as being not much material or not at all material whether he chuse the one part or the other Passions and affections saith he prevaile often against wisdom but not against the judgement or dictate of the understanding The will of a peevish passionate foole doth no lesse follow the dictate of his nuderstanding than the will of a wiser man He must pardon me passions prevaile not onely against wisdom but against the dictates of reason It was Medeas passion which dictated to her that to revenge her self upon her husband was more eligible than the lives of her children Her reason dictated the contrary Aliudque cupido Mens aliud suadet vidio meliora proboque Deteriora sequor It was St. Peters feare not his judgement which dictated to him to deny his Master Every man is tempted when he is drawn aside of his own lust not of his intellectual judgement Jacob did not curse his misunderstanding of Simeon and Levi but their passion Cursed be their anger for it was fierce and their wrath for it was cruel As the law is silent among armes so is reason silent among passions Passion is like an unruly passenger which thrusts reason away from the rudder for the time Therefore they use to say that the dominion of reason or of a reasonable man over his sensitive appetite is not despotical like the government of a Master over his slave but political like that of a Magistrate over the people which is often disturbed by seditious tumults and rebellions Passion is an eclipse of reason a short madnesse the metamorphosis of a man into a wild beast that is goared which runneth upon every thing that comes in her way without consideration or like a violent torrent descending down impetuously from a steep hill which beareth down all respects before it Divine and humane Whilest passion is at the height there is no room for reason nor any use of the dictates of the understanding the minde for the time being like the Cyclopian cave where no man heard what another said The last part of this Section is not concerning the fortunes of Asia but the weighing of an horse-load of feathers a light and trivial subject wherein there is nothing but a contempt of Schoole-termes without any ground bold affirmations without any proof and a continued detraction from the dignity of the humane nature as if a reasonable man were not so considerable as a Jack-daw When God created man he made him a mean Lord under himself to have dominion over all his creatures and put all things in subjection under his feet And to fit him for this command he gave him an intellectual soul. But T. H. maketh him to be in the disposition of the second causes sometimes as a sword in a mans hand a meer passive instrument sometimes like a toppe that is lashed hither and thither by boyes sometimes like a foot-ball which is kicked hither and thither by every one that comes nigh it and here to a pair of scales which are pressed down now one way then another way by the weight of the objects Surely this is not that man that was created by God after his own Image to be the Governour of the World and Lord and Master of the creatures This is some man that he hath borrowed out of the beginning of an Almanack who is placed immoveable in the middest of the twelve Signes as so many second causes If he offer to stir Aries is over his head ready to push him and Taurus to goare him in the neck and Leo to teare out his heart and Sagittarius to shoote an arrow
this rule hath been said by some men thought by no man for whatsoever is thought is understood Said by some men Nay said and approved by all men that ever had occasion to discourse upon this subject and received without contradiction as a received principle of Theology They who say against it do wittingly or unwittingly destroy the nature of God That which followeth is equally presumptuous Thought by no man for whatsoevor is thought is understood It was too much to censure all the Shool-men for Pies or Parrots prating what they did not understand But to accuse all learned Christians of all Communions throughout all ages who have either approved it or not contradicted it of not understanding themselves is too high an insolence God being an infinite essence doth intrinsecally include all perfection and needeth not to have his defects supplyed by accidents Where I say to day all eternity is coexistent with this day and to morrow all eternity will be coexistent with to morrow he inferreth It is well that his eternity is now come from a nunc stans to be a nunc fluens flowing from this day to to morrow It were better if he would confesse that it is a meer deception of his sight like that of fresh-water passengers when they come first to sea terraeque urbesque recedunt who think the shoare leaveth them when they leave the shoare It is time that floweth and moveth not eternity Non tellus Cymbam tellurem cymba relinquit To conclude this point of eternity and this Section God gave himself this name I am that I am to shew the truth the simplicity the independence and immutability of his essence wherein there is neither fuit not erit hath been not shall be but onely present I am Eternity onely eternity is truely simply independently immutably Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 25. HIs first contradictions have been handled before whither I refer the Reader but because he expresseth his sense more clearly here than there I will take the liberty to adde a few words I charged him with contradictions in making Voluntary to presuppose deliberation and yet making many voluntary acts to be without deliberation He distinguisheth between deliberation and that which shall be construed for deliberation by a Iudge Some voluntary acts are rash and undeliberate in themselves yet the Iudge judgeth them to be deliberate because they ought to have deliberated and had time enough to deliberate whether the action were lawfull or not First This answer is a meer subterfuge The question between us is not what actions are punishable by law and what are not but what is deliberation in its own nature and whether all voluntary actions be deliberate or not not in order to a trial before a Judge but in order to the finding out of the truth Secondly Many of these rash actions do imply no crime nor are cognoscible before a Judge as tending onely to the Agents particular prejudice or perhaps no prejudice but advantage In all these cases the sentence of the Judge cannot help to reconcile his contradiction Thirdly The ground of his distinction is not true The Judge doth not alwayes judge of such rash acts to be deliberate acts but judgeth them to have been indeliberate acts whensoever he findeth them to have been justly destitute of all manner of deliberation From whence did arise the well known distinction between Man-slaughter and Willfull murther in our law Murther committed upon actual deliberation is held to be done maliciously ex malitia sua But if it proceed out of suddain passion it is found only Man-slaughter The same equity is observed in the Judicial law He who did kill another suddainly without enmity was allowed the benefit of the City of refuge Lastly In many cases the Judge cannot judge that the Agent had sufficient time to deliberate nor that it was his fault that he did not deliberate for really he had not sufficient time to deliberate And where he talketh that the Iudge supposeth all the time after the making of the law to have been time of deliberation he erreth most pitifully There needeth little or no time to deliberate of the law All the need of deliberation is about the matter of fact and the circumstances thereof As for example A sudain affront is put upon a man which he did not expect nor could possibly imagine such as he apprehendeth that flesh and blood cannot endure and conceiveth himself ingaged in honour to vindicate it forthwith This is that which required deliberation the nature and degree of the affront the best remedies how to procure his own reparation in honour the inconveniences that may arise from a sudain attempt and the advantage which he may make of a little forbearance with all the circumstances of the accidents How could he possible deliberate of all these things before any of these things were imaginable He could neither certainly divine nor probably conjecture that ever such an accident should happen And therefore it remaineth still a grosse contradiction in him to say that voluntary alwayes supposeth deliberation and yet to confesse that many voluntary acts are undeliberate Whereas he saith That he alway used the word spontaneous in the same sense He mustexcuse me if I cannot assent unto it In one place he telleth us That by spontaneity is meant inconsiderate proceeding or else nothing is meant by it In another place he telleth us That to give out money for merchandise is a spontaneous action All the World knoweth that to buy and sell doth require consideration He defineth liberty to be the absence of all extrinsecal impediments to action But extrinsecal causes are extrinsecal impediments and no man is free according to his grounds from the determination of extrinsecal causes Therefore no man is free from extrinsecal impediments His answer is That impediment or hinderance signifieth an oppsition to endeavour and consequently extrinsecal causes that take away endeavour are not to be called impediments He is very seldom stable to his own grounds but is continually interfereing with himself Now he telleth us that an impediment signifieth an opposition to endeavour Elsewhere he telleth us That a man that is tied is not free to walk and that his bonds are impediments without any regard to his endeavour It were meer folly for him to endeavour to walk who can neither stir hand nor foot This is not all He telleth us further That an inward impediment is not destructive to liberty as a man is free to go though he be lame And men do not say that the river wants liberty to ascend but the power because the water cannot ascend And is not want of endeavour intrinsecal as well as lamenesse Or did he ever hear of a river that endeavoured to ascend up the channel It is not true therefore that endeavour is of the essence of liberty or that impediment alwayes signifieth opposition to endeavour Lastly
can So though a necessary connexion of all natural causes were supposed yet it inferreth not a necessary connexion of all voluntary causes Secondly I deny his assumption that there is a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning for proof whereof he produceth nothing nor is able to produce any thing All he saith he alledgeth out of me That it deserveth further examination And from thence according to his wild roving imaginations he draweth consequences from the staff to the corner that have not the least grain of salt or weight in them As these Hitherto he knows not whether it be true or no. And consequently all his arguments hitherto have been of no effect nor hath he shewed any thing to prove that elective actions are not necessitated Thus his pen runneth over without time or reason He that would learn to build Castles in the air had best be his Apprentise The truth is I was not willing to go out of mine own profession and therefore desired to hold my self to the question of liberty without medling with contingency But yet with the same reservation that the Romans had in their Military Discipline nec sequi nec fugere not to seek other questions nor yet to thuâ—… them if they were put upon me And now we are come to his two famous instances of casting ambs ace and raining or not raining to morrow I said that I had already answered what he produceth to prove all sufficient causes to be necessary causes Now saith he It seemeth that distrusting his former answer he answereth again O memory he did not urge them in that place neither did I answer them at all in that place But though he had urged them and I answered them there yet he repeating them or enforcing them here would he not have me to answer him It is true that in another Section upon the by he hath been gravelled about his ambs ace and therefore he treadeth tenderly still upon that foot He saith I bring no other argument to prove the cast thrown not to be necessarily thrown but this that the caster did not deliberate By his leave it is not truly said I shewed undeniably that the necessity upon which he buildeth is onely hypothetical I enumerated all the causes which were or could be recited to make the necessity As the dice the positure of the casters hand the measure of the force the positure of the table c. And shewed clearly that there was not the least grain of antecedent necessity in any of them which he is not able to answer and therefore he doth well to be silent But if I had urged nothing else This alone had been sufficient to prove the caster a free Agent from his own principles A free Agent saith he is he that hath not done deliberating He who never began to deliberate hath not done deliberating There can be no necessity imaginable why the caster should throw these dice rather than those other or cast into this table rather than that or use so much force and no more but the casters will or meer chance The caster never deliberated nor so much as thought of any one of these things And therefore it is undeniably apparent that there was no necessity of casting ambs ace but onely upon supposition which is far enough from antecedent necessity But he pleadeth further That from our ignorance of the particular causes that concurring make the necessity I infer that there was no such necessity at all which is that indeed which hath deceived me and all other men in this question Whose fault was it then first to make this an instance and then to plead ignorance Before he was bold to reckon up all the causes of the antecedent necessity of this cast and now when he is convinced that it is but a necessity upon suppositon he is fain to plead ignorance He who will not suffer the Loadstone to enjoy its attractive virtue without finding a reason for it in a fiddle-string as Scoggin sought for the Hare under the leades as well where she was not as where she was is glad to plead ignorance about the necessary causes of ambs ace Whereas my reasons did evince not onely that the causes are unknown but that there are no such causes antecedently necessitating that cast Thus If any causes did necessitate ambs ace antecedently it was either the caster but he thought not of it or the dice but they are square no more inclinable to one cast than another or the positure of the table but the caster might have thrown into the other table or the positure of the hand but that was by chance or the measure of the force but that might have been either more or lesse or all of these together But to an effect antecedently necessary all the causes must be antecedently determined where not so much as one of them is antecedently determined there is no pretence of antecedent necessity Or it is some other cause that he can name but he pleadeth ignorance Yet I confesse the deceit lieth here but it is on the other side in the ignorant mistaking of an hypothetical necessity for absolute antecedent necessity And here according to the advice of the Poet Nec deus inter sit nisi dignus vindice nodus Inciderit He calleth in the fore knowledge of God to his aid as he doth alwayes when he findeth himself at a losse but to no purpose He himself hath told us That it cannot be truly said that the foreknowledge of God should be a cause of any thing seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge dependeth on the existence of the thing known God seeth not future contingents in an antecedent certainty which they have in their causes but in the events themselves to which Gods infinite knowledge doth extend it self In order of time one thing is before another one thing is after another and accordingly God knoweth them in themselves to be one before another But his knowledge is no beginning no expiring act Nothing is past nothing is to come but all things present to his knowledge even those things which are future with the manner of their futurition His casting ambs ace hath been unfortunate to him he will speed no better with his shower of rain In the enterance to my answer and as it were the stating of the cause I shewed that rain was more contingent in our Climate than in many other parts of the World where it is almost as necessary as the seasons of the year I do not find so much weight in his discourse as to occasionme to alter one word for which I could have produced authours enough if I had thought it needful but I alledged onely the Scriptures mentioning the former and the later rain And even this is objected to me as a defect or piece of ignorance I thought saith he he had known it by experience of some Travellers but I see he onely
c. 1. Rational will Eth. l. 3. c. 6 7 8. Passive obedience Act. 4. 19. Compulsion what it is Fear of hurt doth not abrogate a law Cap. 2. d. 18. C. 6. d. 13. Natural Agents act determinately Not voluntary Seal exerc 307. d. 3. T. H. maketh God the cause of sin Amos c. 3. 6. 2 Sam. 16. 10. 1 King 22. 23. 1 King 12. 15. Fount of Argu. Six witnesses for universal necessity answeted Cal. Instit. l. 2. c. 2. d. 4. Visit. Saxon. Cal. Instir. l. 2. c. 4. d. 7. Iudic. Theol. Lorit de lib. A rb Thes. 4. Mentall terms Metaphorical drawing Jam. 4. 8. Joh. 6. 44. Joh. 12. 32. Pro. 20. 5. Paradoxes what they are Whether a feather make a Diamant yeild Or a falling drop move the whole World Power of objects concerneth the moral Philosopher Eth. l. 3 c. 2. Still he seeketh to obtru de hypothetical necessity for absolute Num. 1. Num. 3. Hearing speaking all one with T. H. Eth. l. 3. c. 2. There are other motions than local Spirits moved as well as bodies Both bodies and spirits move themselves Quality infused by God Joel 2. Acts 2. 33. Rom. 5. 5. Tit. 3. 6. 1 Cor. 12. Num. 9. The understanding and will two powers of the reasonablesoul Mans willing is not like a falling stone Absolute necessity admitteth no contrary supposition A man may will contrary to the dictate of reason Rom. 7. 15. Ro. 14. 23. An erroneous conscience obligeth first to reform it then to follow it Reason is the true root of liberty Actions may be equally circumstantiated Passions often preâ—…ile aâ—…inst reaâ—… Jam. 1. 13. Man was created to be Lord of the creatures Psal. 8. 6. How the understanding giveth to objects their properweight Blasphmy in the abstract and in the concrete differ much Aman may know a truth certainly yet not know the manner The Doctrine of liberty an ancient truth Liberty to will more reconciliable with prescience than liberty to do How the will of God is the necessity of all things Dei Gen. ad lit l. 6. c. 15. Ibid. c. 17. De Civit. Dei c. 5. c. 10. What it is to permit only and to permit barely Eternity is no successive duration Why God is said to be justice it self c. Joh. 14. 6. Act. 17. 29. Prov. 8. 9. God is indivisible Joh. 4. 24. 1 Tim. 1. 17. God is eternity it self Exo. 3. 13. Num. 8. What a Judge judgeth to be indeliberate is impertinent And his assertion false Num. 35. A man cannot predeliberate perfectly of contingent events Num. 33. Num. 8. Endeavour is not of the essence of liberty Num. 29. There may be impediments before deliberation be done And liberty when it is ended Some undeliberated acts may be punishable Virtual deliberation Children not punishable with death Num. 8. He knoweth no reason but imagination The faculty of willing is the will Num. 20. Of concupiscence Jam. 1. 15. Of the intellectualâ—… and sensitive appetite Not the same thing His deliberation is no deliberation His liberty no true liberty His definition of liberty Analogical matter 〈◊〉 4. d. 7. By his definition a stone is free to ascend Beginning of motion from the mover The same faculty willeth or nilleth Other causes concur with the will Necessary causes do not allwaies act necessarily Two sorâ—…s of sufficiency Luk. 14. 28. 2 Cor. 2. 16. Isa. 5. 4. Our conceptions are not the touchstone of truth His grosse mistakes about eternity What is his deliberation Man is free to will or he is not free to do He maketh a stone as free to ascend as descend A Hawke saith he is free to flie when her wings are plucked Abegining of being acting His answer to some demands Free to do if he will yet not free to wil is against law and Logick Num. 3. Num. 3. A necessary effect requires all necessary causes Math. 10. 29. His instance of Ambs ace Num. 31 32. Num. 3. Num. 11. His other idstance of raining or not raining to morrow Deut 11. 14. Jer. 5. 24. Hos. 6. 3. Gods decree consideredactually and passively Num. 11. God knows all future possibilities Math. 11. 21. 1 Sam 23. 11. His argument to prove universal necessity answered Possible and impossible all one with T. H. Remote causes are not together with the effect Nor doth all time make one instant T. H. admitteth no absurdities but impossibilities Abuses do not flow essentially from good doctrines as from universal necessity Solid reasons work soonest upon solid judgements Three sorts of men The doctrine of liberty maketh no â—…man careless or thanklesse God hath no faculties Num. 24. Q. 1. Levi. c. 38. God is incomprehensible Rom. 1. â—…0 Psal. 119. Yet so far as we can we are obliged to search after him Act. 17. 24. To admit that God is infinite is enough to confute T. H. Tophet True Religion consisteth not in obedience to Princes Lev. c. 42. Lev. c. 17 18. Lev. c. 42. 1 Tim. 3. 14. Num. 14. 1. King 12. 30. 1 King 22. 52. â—…ev c. 22. Act. 4. 19. De Cive e. 3. Num. 29. 31. Lev. c. 29. c. 26. Leviath c. 34. De Cive c. 15. Num. 18. C. 31. Ibidem De cive c. 15. Dan. 3. 4. Dan. 6. 7. Math. 10. 33. 27. Hierome Epist. ad Chromat Ezek. 28. 3. Rom. 10. 10. De Cive c. 14. Active and passive obedience Lev. c. 20. Universal practise against him The just power of Priences 1 King 21. 9. Acts 4. 19. He confesseth that Ecclesiastical persons have a priviledg above himself De Cive c. 17. D R. C. P. I. S. Qu. p. 20. ibid. p. 340. Qu. p. 20. Qu. p. 80. Leviathan a meer phantasme Job 41. 1. Psal. 104. 25. T. H. The true Leviathan Job 41. 34. 1 Cor. 1. 27. Leviathan no Soveraign of the sea Nature dictates the existence and worship of God C. c. 15. s. 14. T. H. no friend to religion Cic. Har. Respons Orat. in P. Clod. C. c. 3. s. 8. Le. p. 54. Ci. c. 16. s. 1. Excuseth Atheisme Ci. c. 14. s. 19. Ci. c. 15. s. 7. Qu. p. 137. Ci. c. 15. s. 19. 1 Cor. 9 7. Rev. 4. 11. Destroyes Gods ubiquity Ci. c. 15. s. 14. Le. p. 11. His eternity Qu. p. 266. Le. p. 374. His simplâ—…city Qu. p. 267. Ci. c. 15. s. 14. Qu. p. 266. His existence Le. p. 214. Qu. p. 160 Joh. 4. 24. Le. p. 208. The Trinity Le. p. 268. Le. p. 21. Le. p. 271. Ci. c. 17. s. 5. 6. Le. p. 248. Le. p. 261. Le. p. 36. Le. p. 169. Le. p. 232. 1 Sam. 15. 1 King 13. 1 King 18. 2 Chr. 18. Jer. 38. Le. p. 250. Lev. p. 214. Lev. p. 227. Lev. p. 196. Lev. p. 361. Lev. p. 17. Lev. p. 169. Lev. p. 220. De Cive c. 17. s. 22. Le. p. 206. Ci. c. 17. 〈◊〉 26. Ci. c. 17. s. 21. Ci. c. 18. s. 1. Le. p. 205. Le. p. 283. Le. p. 284. Ci. c. 17. s. 18.