just by reason of his absolute dominion and irresistible power As fire doth assimilate other things to it self and convert them into the nature of fire This were to make the eternall Law a Lesbian rule Sin is defined to be that which is done or said or thought contrary to the eternall Law But by this doctrine nothing is done nor said nor thought contrary to the will of God St. Anselm said most truly then the will of man is good and just and right when he wills that which God would have him to will but according to this doctrine every man alwayes wills that which God would have him to will If this be true we need not pray Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven T. H. hath devised a new kind of heaven upon earth The worst is it is an heaven without Justice Justice is a constant and perpetuall act of the will to give every one his own But to inflict punishment for those things which the Judge himself did determine and necessitate to be done is not to give every one his own right punitive Justice is a relation of equallity and proportion between the demerit and the punishment But supposing this opinion of absolute and universall necessity there is no demerit in the world we use to say that right springs from Law and fact as in this Syllogism Every thief ought to be punished there 's the Law But such an one is a thief there 's the fact therefore he ought to be punished there 's the right But this opinion of T. H. grounds the right to be punished neither upon Law nor upon Fact but upon the irresistible power of God Yea it overturneth as much as in it lies all Law First the eternall Law which is the ordination of divine Wisdom by which all Creatures are directed to that end which is convenient for them That is not to necessitate them to eternall flames Then the Law participated which is the ordination of right reason instituted for the common good to shew unto man what he ought to do and what he ought not to do To what purpose is it to shew the right way to him who is drawn and haled a contrary way by Adamantine bonds of inevitable necessity Lastly howsoever T. H. cries out that God cannot sin yet in truth he makes him to be the principall and most proper cause of all sin For he makes him to be the cause not onely of the Law and of the action but even of the irregularity it self and the difference between the action and the Law wherein the very essence of sin doth consist He makes God to determin Davids will and necessitate him to kill Uriah In causes physically and essentially subordinate the cause of the cause is evermore the cause of the effect These are those deadly fruits which spring from the poisonous root of the absolute necessity of all things which T. H. seeing and that neither the sins of Esau nor Pharaoh nor any wicked person do proceed from the operative but from the permissive will of God And that punishment is an act of justice not of dominion onely I hope that according to his promise he will change his opinion Numb 13. J. D. Proofs of Liberty drawn from reason argument 1 THe first argument is Herculeum or Baculinum drawn from that pleasant passage between Zeno and his man The servant had committed some pettilarceny and the master was cudgelling him well for it The servant thinks to creep under his masters blind-side and pleades for himself That the necessity of destiny did compell him to steal The master answers the same necessity of destiny compells me to beat thee He that denies liberty is fitter to be refuted with rodds than with arguments untill he confess that it is free for him that beates him either to continue striking or to give over that is to have true liberty T. H. OF the Arguments from reason the first is that which he saith is drawn from Zenos beating of his man which is therefore called Argumentum baculinum that is to say a wooden Argument The story is this Zeno held that all actions were necessary His man therefore being for some fault beaten excused himself upon the necessity of it To avoid this excuse his master pleaded likewise the necessity of beating him So that not he that mainteined but he that derided the necessity of things was beaten contrary to that he would infer And the argument was rather withdrawn than drawn from the story J. D. WHether the argument be withdrawn from the story or the answer withdrawn from the argument let the Reader judge T. H. mistakes the scope of the reason the strength whereof doth not lie neither in the authority of Zeno a rigid Stoick which is not worth a button in this cause Nor in the servants being an adversary to Stoicall necessity for it appeares not out of the story that the servant did deride necessity but rather that he pleaded it in good earnest for his own justification Now in the success of the fray we were told even now that no power doth justifie an action but onely that which is irresistible Such was not Zenos And therefore it advantageth neither of their causes neither that of Zeno nor this of T. H. What if the servant had taken the staff out of his masters hand and beaten him soundly would not the same argument have served the man as well as it did the master that the necessity of destiny did compell him to strike again Had not Zeno smarted justly for his Paradox And might not the spectators well have taken up the Judges Apothegm concerning the dispute between Corax and his Schollar An ill egg of an ill bird But the strength of this argument lies partly in the ignorance of Zeno that great Champion of necessity and the beggarliness of his cause which admitted no defence but with a cudgell No man saith the servant ought to be beaten for doing that which he is compelled inevitably to do but I am compelled inevitably to steal The major is so evident that it cannot be denied If a strong man shall take a weak mans hand perforce and do violence with it to a third person he whose hand is forced is innocent and he only culpable who compelled him The minor was Zenos own doctrine what answer made the great patron of destiny to his servant very learnedly he denied the conclusion and cudgelled his servant telling him in effect that though there was no reason why he should be beaten yet there was a necessity why he must be beaten And partly in the evident absurdity of such an opinion which deserves not to be confuted with reasons but with rods There are four things said the Philosoher which ought not to be called into question First such things whereof it is wickedness to doubt as whether the soul be immortall whether there be a God such an one should not be confuted with reasons
free to make it either of the Italian Spanish or French fashion indifferently But after it is made it is necessary that it be of that fashion whereof he hath made it that is by a necessity of supposition But this doth neither hinder the cause from being a free cause nor the effect from being a free effect but the one did produce freely and the other was freely produced So the contradiction is vanished In the second part of his answer he grants that there are some free Agents and some contingent Agents and that perhaps the beauty of the world doth require it but like a shrewd Cow which after she hath given her milk casts it down with her foot in the conclusion he tells us that nevertheless they are all necessary This part of his answer is a meer Logomachy as a great part of the controversies in the world are or a contention about words What is the meaning of necessary and free and contingent actions I have shewed before what free and necessary do properly signifie but he misrecites it He saith I make all Agents which want deliberation to be necessary but I acknowledge that many of them are contingent Neither do I approove his definition of contingents though he say I concur with him that they are such agents as work we know not how For according to this description many necessary actions should be contingent and many contingent actions should be necessary The Loadstone draweth Iron the Jet chaff we know not how and yet the effect is necessary and so it is in all Sympathies and Antipathies or occult qualities Again a man walking in the streets a Tile falls down from an house and breaks his head We know all the causes we know how this came to pass The man walked that way the pin failed the Tile fell just when he was under it And yet this is a contingent effect The man might not have walked that way and then the Tile had not fallen upon him Neither yet do I understand here in this place by contingents such events as happen besides the scope or intention of the Agents as when a man digging to make a grave finds a Treasure though the word be sometimes so taken But by contingents I understand all things which may be done and may not be done may happen or may not happen by reason of the in determination or accidentall concurrence of the causes And those same things which are absolutely Incontingent and yet Hypothetically necessary As supposing the Passenger did walk just that way just at that time and that the pin did fail just then and the Tile fall it was necessary that it should fall upon the Passengers head The same defence will keep out his shower of rain But we shall meet with his shower of rain again Numb 34. Whither I refer the further explication of this point Numb 17. J. D. argument 5 FIftly take away liberty and you take away the very nature of evill and the formall reason of sin If the hand of the Painter were the law of painting or the hand of the Writer the law of writing whatsoever the one did write or the other paint must infallibly be good Seeing therefore that the first cause is the rule and Law of goodness if it do necessitate the will or the person to evill either by it self immediatly or mediatly by necessary flux of second causes it will no longer be evill The essence of sin consists in this that one commit that which he might a void If there be no liberty to produce sin there is no such thing as sin in the world Therefore it appeares both from Scripture and reason that there is true Liberty T. H. TO the fift Argument from reason which is that if liberty be taken away the nature and formall reason of sin is taken away I answer by denying the consequence The nature of sin consisteth in this that the action done proceed from our will and be against the Law A Judge in judging whether it be sin or not which is done against the Law looks at no higher cause of the action then the will of the doer Now when I say the action was necessary I do not say it was done against the will of the doer but with his will and so necessarily because mans will that is every act of the will and purpose of man had a sufficient and therefore a necessary cause and consequently every voluntary action was necessitated An action therefore may be voluntary and a sin and nevertheless be necessary And because God may afflict by right derived from his Omnipotency though sin were not And the example of punishment on voluntary sinners is the cause that produceth Justice and maketh sin less frequent For God to punish such sinners as I have shewed before is no injustice And thus you have my answer to his objections both out of Scripture and reason J. D. SCis tu simulare cupressum quid hoc It was shrewd counsail which Alcibiades gave to Themistocles when he was busy about his accounts to the State that he should rather study how to make no accounts So it seemes T. H. thinks it a more compendious way to baulk an argument then to satisfie it And if he can produce a Rowland against an Oliver if he can urge a reason against a reason he thinks he hath quitted himself fairely But it will not serve his turn And that he may not complain of misunderstanding it as those who have a politick deafness to hear nothing but what liketh them I will first reduce mine argument into form and then weigh what he saith in answer or rather in opposition to it That opinion which takes away the formall reason of sin and by consequence sin it self is not to be approoved this is cleer because both Reason and Religion Nature and Scripture do proove and the whole world confesseth that there is sin But this opinion of the necessity of all things by reason of a conflux of second causes ordered and determined by the first cause doth take away the very formall reason of sin This is prooved thus That which makes sin it self to be good and just and lawfull takes away the formall cause and distroyes the essence of sin for if sin be good and just and lawfull it is no more evill it is no sin no anomy But this opinion of the necessity of all things makes sin to be very good and just and lawfull for nothing can flow essentially by way of Physicall determination from the first cause which is the Law and Rule of Goodness and Justice but that which is good and just and lawfull but this opinion makes sin to proceed essentially by way of Physicall determination from the first cause as appeares in T. H. his whole discourse Neither is it materiall at all whether it proceed immediatly from the first cause or mediately so as it be by a necessary flux of second and determinate causes which
produce it inevitably To these proofs he answers nothing but onely by denying the first consequence as he calls it and then sings over his old song That the nature of sin consisteth in this that the action proceeds from our will and be against the Law which in our sense is most true if he understand a just Law and a free rationall will But supposing as he doth that the Law injoines things impossible in themselves to be done then it is an unjust and Tyrannicall Law and the transgression of it is no sin not to do that which never was in our power to do And supposing likewise as he doth that the will is inevitably determined by speciall influence from the first cause then it is not mans will but Gods Will and flowes essentially from the Law of Goodness That which he addes of a Judge is altogether impertinent as to his defence Neither is a Civill Judge the proper Judge nor the Law of the Land the proper Rule of Sin But it makes strongly against him for the Judge goes upon a good ground and even this which he confesseth that the Judge looks at no higher cause then the will of the doer prooves that the will of the doer did determine it self freely and that the malefactor had liberty to have kept the Law if he would Certainly a Judge ought to look at all materiall circumstances and much more at all essentiall causes Whether every sufficient cause be a necessary cause will come to be examined more properly Numb 31. For the present it shall suffice to say that liberty flowes from the sufficiency and contingency from the debility of the cause Nature never intends the generation of a monster If all the causes concur sufficiently a perfect creature is produced but by reason of the insufficiency or debility or contingent aberration of some of the causes sometimes a Monster is produced Yet the causes of a Monster were sufficient for the production of that which was produced that is a Monster otherwise a Monster had not been produced What is it then A Monster is not produced by vertue of that order which is set in Nature but by the contingent aberration of some of the naturall causes in their concurrence The order set in Nature is that every like should beget its like But supposing the concurrence of the causes to be such as it is in the generation of a Monster the generation of a Monster is necessary as all the events in the world are when they are that is by an hypotheticall necessity Then he betakes himself to his old help that God may punish by right of omnipotence though there were no sin The question is not now what God may do but what God will do according to that Covenant which he hath made with man Fac hoc vives Do this and thou shalt live whether God doth punish any man contrary to this Covenant Hosea 13.9 O Israel thy destruction is from thy self but in me is thy help He that wills not the death of a Sinner doth much less will the death of an innocent Creature By death or destruction in this discourse the onely separation of Soul and Body is not intended which is a debt of nature and which God as Lord of Life and Death may justly do and make it not a punishment but a blessing to the party but we understand the subjecting of the Creature to eternall torments Lastly he tells of that benenefit which redounds to others from Exemplary Justice which is most true but not according to his own grounds for neither is it Justice to punish a man for doing that which it was impossible alwayes for him not to do Neither is it lawfull to punish an innocent person that good may come of it And if his opinion of absolute necessity of all things were true the destinies of men could not be altered either by examples or fear of punishment Numb 18. J. D. BUt the Patrons of necessity being driven out of the plain field with reason have certain retreats or distinctions which they fly unto for refuge First they distinguish between Stoicall necessity and Christian necessity between which they make a threefold difference First say they the Stoicks did subject Jupiter to destiny but we subject destiny to God I answer that the Stoicall and Christian destiny are one and the same fatum quasi effatum Jovis Hear Seneca Destiny is the necessity of all things and actions depending upon the disposition of Jupiter c. I add that the Stoicks left a greater liberty to Jupiter over destiny than these Stoicall Christians do to God over his decrees either for the beginnings of things as Euripides or for the progress of of them as Chrysippus or at least of the circumstances of time and place as all of them generally So Virgil Sed trahere moras ducere c. So Osyris in Apuleius promiseth him to prolong his life Ultra fato constituta tempora beyond the times set down by the destinies Next they say that the Stoicks did hold an eternall flux and necessary connexion of causes but they believe that God doth act praeter contra naturam besides and against nature I answer that it is not much materiall whether they attribute necessity to God or to the Starrs or to a connexion of causes so as they establish necessity The former reasons do not onely condemn the ground or foundation of necessity but much more necessity it self upon what ground soever Either they must run into this absurdity that the effect is determined the cause remaining undetermined or els hold such a necessary connexion of causes as the Stoicks did Lastly they say the Stoicks did take away liberty and contingence but they admit it I answer what liberty or contingence was it they admit but a titular liberty and an empty shadow of contingence who do profess stifly that all actions and events which either are or shall be cannot but be nor can be otherwise after any other manner in any other Place Time Number Order Measure nor to any other end than they are and that in respect of God determining them to one what a poor ridiculous liberty or contingence is this Secondly they distinguish between the first cause and the second causes they say that in respect of the second causes many things are free but in respect of the first cause all things are necessary This answer may be taken away two wayes First so contraries shall be true together The same thing at the same time shall be determined to one and not determined to one the same thing at the same time must necessarily be and yet may not be Perhaps they will say not in the same respect But that which strikes at the root of this question is this If all the causes were onely collaterall this exception might have some colour but where all the causes being joined together and subordinate one to another do make but one totall
hand Secondly he makes but an empty shew of a power in the will either to write or not to write If it be precisely and inevitably determined in all occurrences whatsoever what a man shall will and what he shall not will what he shall write and what he shall not write to what purpose is this power God and Nature never made any thing in vain but vain and frustraneous is that power which never was and never shall be deduced into Act. Either the agent is determined before he acteth what he shall will and what he shall not will what he shall act and what he shall not act and then he is no more free to act than he is to will Or els he is not determined and then there is no necessity No effect can exceed the vertue of its cause if the action be free to write or to forbear the power or faculty to will or nill must of necessity be more free Quod efficit tale illud magis est tale If the will be determined the writing or not writing is likewise determined and then he should not say he may write or he may forbear but he must write or he must forbear Thirdly this answer contradicts the sense of all the world that the will of man is determined without his will or without any thing in his power Why do we ask men whether they will do such a thing or not Why do we represent reasons to them Why do we pray them Why do we intreat them Why do we blame them if their will come not upon them according to their will Wilt thou be made clean said our Saviour to the Paralitike person John 5.6 to what purpose if his will was extrinsecally determined Christ complains We have piped unto you and ye have not danced Matth. 11.17 How could they help it if their wills were determined without their wills to forbear And Matth. 23.37 I would have gathered your children together as the Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings but ye would not How easily might they answer according to T. H. his doctrine Alas blame not us Our wills are not in our own power or disposition if they were we would thankfully embrace so great a favour Most truly said St. Austin De lib. Au. l. 3. c. 30. Our will should not be a will at all if it were not in our power This is the belief of all mankind which we have not learned from our Tutors but is imprinted in our hearts by nature We need not turn over any obscure books to find out this truth The Poets chant it in the Theaters the Shepheards in the mountains The Pastors teach it in their Churches the Doctors in the Universities The common people in the marketts and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto it except an handfull of men who have poisoned their intellectualls with paradoxicall principles Fourthly this necessity which T. H. hath devised which is grounded upon the necessitation of a mans will without his will is the worst of all others and is so far from lessening those difficulties and absurdities which flow from the fatall destiny of the Stoicks that it increaseth them and rendreth them unanswerable No man blameth fire for burning whole Cities No man taxeth poison for destroying men but those persons who apply them to such wicked ends If the will of man be not in his own disposition he is no more a free agent than the fire or the poison Three things are required to make an act or omission culpable First that it be in our power to perform it or forbear it Secondly that we be obliged to perform it or forbear it respectively Thirdly that we omit that which we ought to have done or do that which we ought to have omitted No man sins in doing those things which he could not shun or forbearing those things which never were in his power T. H. may say that besides the power men have also an appetite to evill objects which renders them culpable It is true but if this appetite be determined by anothers not by themselves Or if they have not the use of reason to curb or restrain their appetites they sin no more than a stone descending downeward according to its naturall appetite or the brute beasts who commit voluntary errours in following their sensitive appetites yet sin not The question then is not whether a man be necessitated to will or nill yet free to act or forebear But having the ambiguous acceptions of the word free the question is plainly this whether all agents and all events natural civill moral for we speak not now of the conversion of a sinner that concerns not this question be predetermined extrinsecally and inevitably without their own concurrence in the determination so as all actions and events which either are or shall be cannot but be nor can be otherwise after any other manner or in any other place time number measure order nor to any other end than they are And all this in respect of the supreme cause or a concourse of extrinsecall causes determining them to one So my preface remaines yet unanswered Either I was extrinsecally and inevitably predetermined to write this discourse without any concurrence of mine in the determination and without any power in me to change or oppose it or I was not so predetermined If I was then I ought not to be blamed for no man is justly blamed for doing that which never was in his power to shun If I was not so predetermined then mine actions and my will to act are neither compelled nor necessitated by any extrinsecall causes but I elect and choose either to write or to forbear according to mine own will and by mine own power And when I have resolved and elected it is but a necessity of supposition which may and doth consist with true liberty not a real anteeedent necessity The two hornes of this Dilemma are so strait that no mean can be given nor room to pass between them And the two consequences are so evident that in stead of answering he is forced to decline them Numb 4. J. D. AND so to fall in hand with the question without any further proems or prefaces By liberty I do understand neither a liberty from sin nor a liberty from misery nor a liberty from servitude nor a liberty from violence but I understand a liberty from necessity or rather from necessitation that is an universall immunity from all inevitability and determination to one whether it be of the exercise only which the Schooles call a liberty of contradiction and is found in God and in the good and bad Angells that is not a liberty to do both good and evill but a liberty to do or not to do this or that good this or that evill respectively or whether it be a liberty of specification and exercise also which the Schooles call liberty of contrariety and is found in men indowed with reason and
this They who may do and might have done many things which they leave undone and who leave undone many things which they might do are not necessitated nor precisely and antecently determined to do what they do But we might do many things which we do not and we do many things which we might leave undone as appeares evidently by the texts alledged Therefore we are not antecedently and precisely determined nor necessitated to do all things which he do What is here of election in this Argument To what proposition to what tearm doth T. H. apply his answer He neither affirmes nor denieth nor distinguisheth of any thing contained in my argument Here I must be bold to call upon him for a more pertinent answer Numb 10. J. D. argument 3 THirdly if there be no true liberty but all things come to pass by inevitable necessity then what are all those interrogations and objurgations and reprehensions and expostulations which we find so frequently in holy Scriptures be it spoken with all due respect but feined and hypocriticall exaggerations Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded that thou shouldest not eat Gen. 3.11 And ver 13. he saith to Eve Why hast thou done this And to Cain Why art thou wroth and why is thy countenance cast down And why will ye dy O house of Israel Doth God command openly not to eat and yet secretly by himself or by the second causes necessitate him to eat Doth he reprehend him for doing that which he hath antecedently determined that he must doe Doth he propose things under impossible conditions Or were not this plain mockery and derision Doth a loving Master chide his servant because he doth not come at his call and yet knowes that the poor servant is chained and fettered so as he cannot moove by the Masters own order without the servants default or consent They who talk here of a twofold will of God secret and revealed and the one opposite to the other understand not what they say These two wills concerne severall persons The secret will of God is what he will do himself The revealed will of God is what he would have us to do It may be the secret will of God to take away the life of the Father yet it is Gods revealed will that his Son should wish his life and pray for his life Here is no contradiction where the Agents are distinct But for the same person to command one thing and yet to necessitate him that is commanded to do another thing To chide a man for doing that which he hath determined inevitably and irresistibly that he must do This were I am afraid to utter what they are not afraid to assert the highest dissimulation Gods chiding prooves mans liberty T. H. TO the third and fift arguments I shall make but one answer J. D. CErtainly distinct Arguments as the third and fift are the one drawn from the truth of God the other drawn from the Justice of God the one from his objurgations and reprehensions the other from his Judgments after life did require distinct answers But the plain truth is that neither here nor in his answer to the fift Argument nor in this whole Treatise is there one word of solution or satisfaction to this Argument or to any part of it All that looks like an answer is contained Numb 12. That which he does is made just by his doing Just I say in him not alwayes just in us by the example for a man that shall command a thing openly and plot secretly the hinderance of the same if he punish him whom he commanded so for not doing it is unjust I dare no insist upon it I hope his meaning is not so bad as the words intimate and as I apprehend That is to impute falshood to him that is Truth it self and to justifie feining and dissimulation in God as he doth tyranny by the infiniteness of his power and the absoluteness of his dominion And therefort by his leave I must once again tender him a new summons for a full and clear Answer to this Argument also He tells us that he was not surprised Whether he were or not is more than I know But this I see plainly that either he is not provided or that his cause admits no choise of answers The Jews dealt ingenuously when they met with a difficult knot which they could not untie to put it upon Elias Elias will answer it when he comes Numb 11. J. D. argument 4 FOurthly if either the decree of God or the foreledge of God or the influence of the Stars or the concatenation of causes or the physicall or morall efficacy of objects or the last dictate of the understanding do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty For he was subjected to the same decrees the same praescience the same constellations the same causes the same objects the same dictates of the understanding But quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulus odi The greatest opposers of our liberty are as earnest maintainers of the liberty of Adam Therefore none of these supposed impediments take away true liberty T. H. THe fourth Argument is to this effect If the decree of God or his foreknowledge or the influence of the Stars or the concatenation of causes or the physicall or morall efficacy of causes or the last dictate of the understanding or whatsoever it be do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty Quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulus odi That which I say necessitateth and determinateth every action that be may no longer doubt of my meaning is the sum of all those things which being now existent conduce and concurre to the production of that action hereafter whereof if any one thing now were wanting the effect could not be produced 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 eternall cause of all things God Almighty the decree of God But that the fore-knowledge of God should be a cause of any thing cannot be truly said seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge depends on the existence of the things known and not they on it The influence of the Stars is but a small part of the whole cause consisting of the concourse of all Agents Nor doth the concourse of all causes make one simple chain or concatenation but an innumerable number of chains joyned together not in all parts but in the first link God Almighty and consequently the whole cause of an event does not alwaies depend upon one single chain but on many together Naturall efficacy of objects does determine voluntary Agents and necessitates the will and consequently the action but for morall efficacy I understand not what he means by it The last dictate of the judgement concerning the good or bad that
may follow on any action is not properly the whole cause but the last part of it And yet may be said to produce the effect necessarily in such manner as the last feather may be said to break an Horses back when there were so many laid on before as there wanted but that to do it Now for his Argument That if the concourse of all the causes necessitate the effect that then it follows Adam had no true liberty I deny the consequence for I make not onely the effect but also the election of that particular effect to be necessary in as much as the will it self and each propension of a man during his deliberation is as much necessitated and depends on a sufficient cause as any thing else whatsoever As for example it is no more necessary that fire should burn then that a man or other creature whose limbs be moved by fancy should have election that is liberty to do what he has a fancy to though it be not in his will or power to choose his fancy or choose his election or will This Doctrin because he saies he hates I doubt had better been suppressed as it should have been if both your Lordship and he had not pressed me to an answer J. D. THis Argument was sent forth onely as an espie to make a more full discovery what were the true grounds of T. H. his supposed necessity which errand being done and the foundation whereupon he builds being found out which is as I called it a concatenation of causes and as he calles it a concourse of necessary causes It would now be a superfluous and impertinent work in me to undertake the refutation of all those other opinions which he doth not undertake to defend And therefore I shall wave them for the present with these short animadversions Concerning the eternall decree of God he confounds the decree it self with the execution of his decree And concerning the fore-knowledge of God he confounds that speculative knowledge which is called the knowledge of vision which doth not produce the intellective objects no more then the sensitive vision doth produce the sensible objects with that other knowledge of God which is called the knowledge of approbation or a practicall knowledge that is knowledge joyned with an act of the will of which Divines do truly say that it is the cause of things as the knowledge of the Artist is the cause of his work God made all things by his word Joh. 1. that is by his wisdom Concerning the influences of the Stars I wish he had expressed himself more clearly For as I do willingly grant that those Heavenly Bodies do act upon these sublunary things not onely by their motion and light but also by an occult vertue which we call influence as we see by manifold experience in the Loadstone and Shell-fish c. So if he intend that by these influences they do naturally or physically determine the will or have any direct dominion over humane Counsels either in whole or in part either more or less he is in an errour Concerning the concatenation of causes whereas he makes not one chain but an innumerable number of chains I hope he speaks hyperbolically and doth not intend that they are actually infinite the difference is not materiall whether one or many so long as they are all joyned together both in the first linck and likewise in the effect It serves to no end but to shew what a shadow of liberty T. H. doth fancy or rather what a dream of a shadow As if one chain were not sufficient to load poor man but he must be clogged with innumerable chains This is just such another freedom as the Turkish Galli-slaves do injoy But I admire that T. H. who is so versed in this question should here confess that he understands not the difference between physicall or naturall and morall efficacy And much more that he should affirm that outward objects do determine voluntary agents by a naturall efficacy No object no second agent Angell or Devill can determine the will of man naturally but God alone in respect of his supreme dominion over all things Then the will is determined naturally when God Almighty besides his generall influence whereupon all second causes do depend as well for their being as for their acting doth moreover at sometimes when it pleaseth him in cases extraordinary concurre by a speciall influence and infuse something into the will in the nature of an act or an habit whereby the will is moved and excited and applied to will or choose this or that Then the will is determined morally when some object is proposed to it with perswasive reasons and arguments to induce it to will Where the determination is naturall the liberty to suspend its act is taken away from the will but not so where the determination is morall In the former case the will is determined extrinsecally in the latter case intrinsecally The former produceth an absolute necessity the latter onely a necessity of supposition If the will do not suspend but assent then the act is necessary but because the will may suspend and not assent therefore it is not absolutely necessary In the former case the will is moved necessarily and determinately In the latter freely and indeterminately The former excitation is immediate the latter is mediate mediante intellectu and requires the help of the understanding In a word so great a difference there is between naturall and morall efficacy as there is between his opinion and mine in this question There remains onely the last dictate of the understanding which he maketh to be the last cause that concerneth to the determination of the will and to the necessary production of the act as the last feather may be said to break an Horses back when there were so many laid on before that there wanted but that to do it I have shewed Numb 7. that the last dictate of the understanding is not alwaies absolute in it self nor conclusive to the will and when it is conclusive yet it produceth no Antecedent nor Extrinsecall necessity I shall onely adde one thing more in present That by making the last judgement of right reason to be of no more weight then a single feather he wrongs the understanding as well as he doth the will the indeavours to deprive the will of its supreme power of application and to deprive the understanding of its supreme power of judicature and definition Neither corporeall agents and objects nor yet the sensitive appetite it self being an inferiour faculty and affixed to the Organ of the Body have any direct or immediate dominion or command over the rationall will It is without the sphear of their activity All the access which they have unto the will is by the means of the understanding sometimes clear and sometimes disturbed and of reason either right or mis-informed Without the help of the understanding all his second causes were not able of
same if he punish him he so commanded for not doing it is unjust So also his counsailes they be therefore not in vain because they be his whether we see the use of them or not When God afflicted Job he did object no sin to him but justified that afflicting him by telling him of his power Hast thou sayes God an arm like mine Where wast thou when I layd the foundations of the earth and the like So our Saviour concerning the man that was born blind said it was not for his sin nor his parents sin but that the power of God might be shewn in him Beasts are subject to death and torment yet they cannot sin It was Gods will it should be so Power irresistible justifieth all actions really and properly in whomsoever it be found Less power does not And because such power is in God only he must needs be just in all his actions And we that not comprehending his Counsailes call him to the Bar commit injustice in it I am not ignorant of the usuall reply to this answer by distinguishing between will and permission As that God Almighty does indeed permit sin sometimes And that he also foreknoweth that the sin he permitteth shall be committed but does not will it nor necessitate it I know also they distinguish the action from the sin of the action saying God Almighty does indeed cause the action whatsoever action it be but not the sinfulness or irregularity of it that is the discordance between the Action and the Law Such distinctions as these dazell my understanding I find no difference between the will to have a thing done and the permission to do it when he that permitteth it can hinder it and knowes it will be done unless he hinder it Nor find I any difference between an action that is against the Law and the sin of that action As for example between the killing of Uriah and the sin of David in killing Uriah Nor when one is cause both of the action and of the Law how another can be cause of the disagreement between them no more than how one man making a longer and shorter garment another can make the inequallity that is between them This I know God cannot sin because his doing a thing makes it just and consequenly no sin And because whatsoever can sin is subject to anothers Law which God is not And therefore t is blasphemy to say God can sin But to say that God can so order the world as a sin may be necessarily caused thereby in a man I do not see how it is any dishonour to him Howsoever if such or other distinctions can make it clear that St. Paul did not think Esaus or Pharaohs actions proceed from the will and purpose of God or that proceeding from his will could not therefore without injustice be blamed or punished I will as soon as I understand them turn unto J. D's opinion For I now hold nothing in all this question between us but what seemeth to me not obscurely but most expresly said in this place by Saint Paul And thus much in answer to his places of Scripture J. D. T. H. thinks to kill two birds with one stone and satisfies two Arguments with one answer whereas in truth he satisfieth neither First for my third reason Though all he say here were as true as an Oracle Though punishment were an act of dominion not of Justice in God yet this is no sufficient cause why God should deny his own Act or why he should chide or expostulate with men why they did that which he himself did necessitate them to do and whereof he was the actor more than they they being but as the stone but he the hand that threw it Notwithstanding any thing which is pleaded here this Stoicall opinion doth stick hypocrisy and dissimulation close to God who is the Truth it self And to my fift Argument which he chargeth and relateth amiss as by comparing mine with his may appear His chiefest answer is to oppose a difficult place of St. Paul Rom. 9.11 Hath he never heard that to propose a doubt is not to answer an Argument Nec bene respondet qui litem lite resolvit But I will not pay him in his own coin Wherefore to this place alledged by him I answer The case is not the same The question moved there is how God did keep his promise made to Abraham to be the God of him and of his seed if the Jewes who were the legitimate progeny of Abraham were deserted To which the Apostle answers ver 6. 7 8. That that promise was not made to the carnall seed of Abraham that is the Jewes but to his spirituall Sons which were the Heirs of his Faith that is to the beleeving Christians which answer he explicateth first by the Allegory of Isaack and Ishmael and after in the place cited of Esau and of Jacob. Yet neither doth he speak there so much of their persons as of their posterities And though some words may be accommodated to Gods praedestination which are there uttered yet it is not the scope of that text to treat of the reprobation of any man to hell-fire All the posterity of Esau were not eternally reprobated as holy Job and many others But this question which is now agitated between us is quite of another nature how a man can be a criminal who doth nothing but that which he is extrinsecally necessitated to do or how God in Justice can punish a man with aeternall torments for doing that which it was never in his power to leave undone That he who did impresite the motion in the heart of man should punish man who did onely receive the impression from him So his answer looks another way But because he grounds so much upon this text that if it can be cleared he is ready to change his opinion I will examin all those passages which may seem to favour his cause First these words ver 11. being not yet borne neither having done any good or evill upon which the whole weight of his argument doth depend have no reference at all to those words ver 13. Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated for those words were first uttered by the Prophet Malachy many ages after Jacob and Esau were dead Mal. 1.2 and intended of the posterity of Esau who were not redeemed from captivity as the Israelites were But they are referred to those other words ver 12. The elder shall serve the younger which indeed were spoken before Jacob or Esau were Born Gen. 5.23 And though those words of Malachy had been used of Jacob and Esau before they were Born yet it had advantaged his cause nothing for hatred in that text doth not signify any reprobation to the flames of hell much less the execution of that decree or the actuall imposition of punishment nor any act contrary to love God saw all that he made and it was very good Goodness it self cannot hate that
Covenant of works with mankind in Adam and therefore he punisheth not man contrary to his own Covenant but for the transgression of his duty And Divine Justice is not measured by Omnipotence or by irresistible power but by Gods will God can do many things according to his absolute power which he doth not He could raise up children to Abraham of stones but he never did so It is a rule in Theology that God cannot do any thing which argues any wickedness or imperfection as God cannot deny himself 2 Tim. 2.13 He cannot lie Tit. 1.2 These and the like are fruits of impotence not of power So God cannot destroy the righteous with the wicked Gen. 18.25 He could not destroy Sodome whilst Lot was in it Gen. 19.22 not for want of dominion or power but because it was not agreeable to his Justice nor to that Law which himself had constituted The Apostle saith Heb. 6.10 God is not unrighteous to forget your work As it is a good consequence to say this is from God therefore it is righteous so is this also This thing is unrighteous therefore it cannot proceed from God We see how all Creatures by instinct of nature do love their young as the Hen her Chickens how they will expose themselves to death for them And yet all these are but shadowes of that love which is in God towards his Creatures How impious is it then to conceive that God did creat so many millions of souls to be tormented eternally in hell without any fault of theirs except such as he himself did necessitate them unto meerly to shew his dominion and because his power is irresistible The same privilege which T. H. appropriates here to power absolutely irresistible a friend of his in his book de Cive cap. 6. pag. 70. ascribes to power respectively irresistible or to Soveraign Magistrates whose power he makes to be as absolute as a mans power is over himself not to be limitted by any thing but only by their strength The greatest propugners of Soveraign power think it enough for Princes to challenge an immunity from coercive power but acknowledge that the Law hath a directive power over them But T. H. will have no limits but their strength Whatsoever they do by power they do justly But saith he God objected no sin to Job but justified his afflicting him by his power First this is an Argument from authority negatively that is to say worth nothing Secondly the afflictions of Job were no vindicatory punishments to take vengeance of his sins whereof we dispute but probatory chastisements to make triall of his graces Thirdly Job was not so pure but that God might justly have laid greater punishments upon him then those afflictions which he suffered Witness his impatience even to the cursing of the day of his nativity Job 3.3 Indeed God said to Job where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth Job 38.4 that is how canst thou judge of the things that were done before thou wast born or comprehend the secret causes of my judgments And Job 42.9 Hast thou an arm like God As if he should say why art thou impatient doest thou think thy self able to strive with God But that God should punish Job without desert here is not a word Concerning the blind man mentioned John 9. his blindness was rather a blessing to him than a punishment being the means to raise his Soul illuminated and to bring him to see the face of God in Jesus Christ The sight of the body is common to us with Ants and Flies but the sight of the soul with the blessed Angells We read of some who have put out their bodily eyes because they thought they were an impediment to the eye of the Soul Again neither he nor his parents were innocent being conceived and born in sin and iniquity Psal 51.5 And in many things we offend all Jam. 3.2 But our Saviours meaning is evident by the Disciples question ver 2. They had not so sinned that he should be born blind Or they were not more grievous sinners than other men to deserve an exemplary judgment more than they but this corporall blindness befell him principally by the extraordinary providence of God for the manifestation of his own glory in restoring him to his sight So his instance halts on both sides neither was this a punishment nor the blind man free from sin His third instance of the death and torments of beasts is of no more weight then the two former The death of brute beasts is not a punishment of sin but a debt of nature And though they be often slaughtered for the use of man yet there is a vast difference between those light and momentary pangs and the unsufferable and endless pains of hell between the meer depriving of a creature of temporall life and the subjecting of it to eternall death I know the Philosophicall speculations of some who affirme that entity is better than non-entity that it is better to be miserable and suffer the torments of the damned than to be annihilated and cease to be altogether This entity which they speak of is a Metaphysicall entity abstracted from the matter which is better than non-entity in respect of some goodness not morall nor naturall but transcendentall which accompanies every being But in the concrete it is far otherwise where that of our Saviour often takes place Matth. 26.24 Woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed It had been good for that man that he had not been born I add that there is an Analogicall Justice and Mercy due even to the brute beasts Thou shalt not mussle the mouth of the Oxe that treadeth out the corn And a just man is mercifull to his beast But his greatest errour is that which I touched before to make Justice to be the proper result of Power Power doth not measure and regulate Justice but Justice measures regulates Power The will of God and the Eternall Law which is in God himself is properly the rule and measure of Justice As all goodness whether Naturall or Morall is a participation of divine goodness and all created Rectitude is but a participation of divine rectitude so all Lawes are but participations of the eternall Law from whence they derive their power The rule of Justice then is the same both in God and us but it is in God as in him that doth regulate and measure in us as in those who are regulated and measured As the will of God is immutable alwayes willing what is just and right and good So his justice likewise is immutable And that individuall action which is justly punished as sinfull in us cannot possibly proceed from the speciall influence and determinative power of a just cause See then how grossely T. H. doth understand that old and true principle that the Will of God is the rule of Justice as if by willing things in themselves unjust he did render them
but cast into the sea with a millstone about his neck as unworthy to breath the aire or to behold the light Secondly such things as are above the capacity of reason as among Christians the mystery of the holy Trinity Thirdly such principles as are evidently true as that two and two are foure in Arithmetick that the whole is greater than the part in Logick Fourthly such things as are obvious to the senses as whether the snow be white He who denied the heat of the fire was justly sentenced to be scorched with fire and he that denied motion to be beaten untill he recanted So he who denies all liberty from necessitations should be scourged untill he become an humble suppliant to him that whips him and confess that he hath power either to strike or to hold his hand Numb 14. J. D. argument 2 SEcondly this very perswasion that there is no true liberty is able to overthrow all Societies and Commonwealths in the world The Lawes are unjust which prohibite that which a man cannot possibly shun All consultations are vain if every thing be either necessary or impossible Who ever deliberated whether the Sun should rise to morrow or whether he should sail over mountains It is to no more purpose to admonish men of understanding than fools children or madmen if all things be necessary Praises and dispraises rewards and punishments are as vain as they are undeserved if there be no liberty All Councells Arts Arms Books Instruments are superfluous and foolish if there be no liberty In vain we labour in vain we study in vain we take Physick in vain we have Tutours to instruct us if all things come to pass alike whether we sleep or wake whether we be idle or industrious by unalterable necessity But it is said that though future events be certain yet they are unknown to us And therefore we prohibite deliberate admonish praise dispraise reward punish study labour and use means Alas how should our not knowing of the event be a sufficient motive to us to use the means so long as we believe the event is already certainly determined and can no more be changed by all our endeavours than we can stay the course of Heaven with our finger or add a cubite to our stature Suppose it be unknown yet it is certain We cannot hope to alter the course of things by our labours Let the necessary causes do their work we have no remedy but patience and shrug up the shoulders Either allow liberty or destroy all Societies T. H. THE second argument is taken from certain inconveniences which he thinks would follow such an opinion It is true that ill use may be made of it and therefore your Lordship and J. D. ought at my request to keep private that I say here of it But the inconveniences are indeed none and what use soever be made of truth yet truth is truth and now the question is not what is fit to be preached but what is true The first inconvenience he sayes is this that Lawes which prohibite any action are then unjust The second that all consultations are vain The third that admonitions to men of understanding are of no more use than to fools children and mad-men The fourth that praise dispraise reward and punishment are in vain The fift that Councells Arts Armes Books Instruments Study Tutours Medicines are in vain To which argument expecting I should answer by saying that the ignorance of the event were enough to make us use means he adds as it were a reply to my answer foreseen these words Alas how should our not knowing the event be a sufficient motive to make us use the means Wherein he saith right but my answer is not that which he expecteth I answer First that the necessity of an action doth not make the Law which prohibits it unjust To let pass that not the necessity but the will to break the Law maketh the action unjust because the Law regardeth the will and no other precedent causes of action And to let pass that no Law can be possibly unjust in as much as every man makes by his consent the Law he is bound to keep and which consequently must be just unless a man can be unjust to himself I say what necessary cause soever preceds an action yet if the action be forbidden he that doth it willingly may justly be punisht For instance suppose the Law on pain of death prohibit stealing and there be a man who by the strength of temptation is necessitated to steal and is thereupon put to death does not this punishment deterr others from thest is it not a cause that others steal not doth it not frame and make their will to justice To make the Law is therefore to make a cause of Justice and to necessitate justice and consequently it is no injustice to make such a Law The institution of the Law is not to grieve the delinquent for that which is passed and not to be undone but to make him and others just that els would not be so And respecteth not the evill act past but the good to come In so much as without this good intention of future no past Act of a delinquent could justifie his killing in the sight of God But you will say how is it just to kill one man to amend another if what were done were necessary To this I answer that men are justly killed not for that their actions are not necessitated but that they are spared and preserved because they are not noxious for where there is no Law there no killing nor any thing els can be unjust And by the right of Nature we destroy without being unjust all that is noxious both beasts and men And for beasts we kill them justly when we do it in order to our own preservation And yet J. D. confesseth that their actions as being only spontaneous and not free are all necessitated and determined to that one thing which they shall do For men when we make Societies or Commonwealths we lay down our right to kill excepting in certain cases as murther theft or other offensive actions So that the right which the Commonwealth hath to put a man to death for crimes is not created by the Law but remaines from the first right of nature which every man hath to preserve himself for that the Law doth not take that right away in case of criminalls who were by Law excepted Men are not therefore put to death or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election but because it was noxious and contrary to mens preservation and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest In as much as to punish those that do voluntary hurt and none els frameth and maketh mens wills such as men would have them And thus it is plain that from necessity of a voluntary action cannot be inferred the injustice of the Law that forbiddeth it or of the Magistrate that punisheth it Secondly I
deny that it makes consultations to be in vain 't is the consultation that causeth a man and necessitateth him to choose to do one thing rather than another So that unless a man say that cause to be in vain which necessitateth the effect he cannot infer the superfluousness of consultation out of the necessity of the election proceeding from it But it seemes he reasons thus If I must needs do this rather than that then I shall do this rather than that though I consult not at all which is a false proposition a falfe consequence and no better than this If I shall live till to morrow I shall live till to morrow though I run my self through with a sword to day If there be a necessity that an action shall be done or that any effect shall be brought to pass it does not therefore follow that there is nothing necessarily required as a means to bring it to pass And therefore when it is determined that one thing shall be chosen before another 't is determined also for what cause it shall be chosen which cause for the most part is deliberation or consultation And therefore consultation is not in vain and indeed the less in vain by how much the election is more necessitated The same answer is to be given to the third supposed inconveniency Namely that admonitions are in vain for admonitions are parts of consultations The Admonitor being a Counsailer for the time to him that is admonished The fourth pretended inconveniency is that praise and dispraise reward and punishment will be in vain To which I answer that for praise and dispraise they depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised or dispraised For what is it els to praise but to say a thing is good Good I say for me or for some body els or for the State and Commonwealth And what is it to say an action is good but to say it is as I would wish or as another would have it or according to the will of the State that is to say according to Law Does J. D. think that no action can please me or him or the Commonwealth that should proceed from necessity Things may be therefore necessary and yet prayseworthy as also necessary and yet dispraised and neither of both in vain because praise and dispraise and likewise reward and punishment do by example make and conform the will to good or evill It was a very great praise in my opinion that Velleius Paterculus gives Cato where he sayes he was good by nature Et quia aliter esse non potuit The fift and sixt inconvenience that Councells Arts Arms Books Instruments Study Medicines and the like would be superfluous the same answer serves that to the former That is to say that this consequence if the effect shall necessarily come to pass then it shall come to pass without its cause is a false one And those things named Councells Arts Arms c. are the causes of those effects J. D. NOthing is more familiar with T. H. than to decline an argument But I will put it into form for him The first inconvenience is thus pressed Those Lawes are unjust and Tyrannicall which do prescribe things absolutely impossible in themselves to be done and punish men for not doing of them But supposing T. H. his opinion of the necessity of all things to be true all Lawes do prescribe absolute impossibilities to be done and punish men for not doing of them The former proposition is so clear that it cannot be denied Just Lawes are the Ordinances of right reason but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not the Ordinances of right reason Just Lawes are instituted for the publick good but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not instituted for the publick good Just Laws do shew unto a man what is to be done and what is to be shunned But those Lawes which prescribe impossibilities do not direct a man what he is to do and what he is to shun The Minor is as evident for if his opinion be true all actions all transgressions are determined antecedently inevitably to be done by a naturall and necessary flux of extrinsecall causes Yea even the will of man and the reason it self is thus determined And therefore whatsoever Laws do prescribe any thing to be done which is not done or to be left undone which is done do prescribe absolute impossibilities and punish men for not doing of impossibilities In all his answer there is not one word to this argument but only to the conclusion He saith that not the necessity but the will to break the Law makes the action unjust I ask what makes the will to break the Law is it not his necessity What getts he by this A perverse will causeth injustice and necessity causeth a perverse will He saith the Law regardeth the will but not the precedent causes of action To what proposition to what tearm is this answer he neither denies nor distinguisheth First the question here is not what makes actions to be injust but what makes Lawes to be unjust So his answer is impertinent It is likewise untrue for First that will which the Law regards is not such a will as T. H. imagineth It is a free will not a determined necessitated will a rationall will not a brutish will Secondly the Law doth look upon precedent causes as well as the voluntariness of the action If a child before he be seven years old or have the use of reason in some childish quarrell do willingly stab another whereof we have seen experience yet the Law looks not upon it as an act of murther because there wanted a power to deliberate and consequently true liberty Man-slaughter may be as voluntary as murther and commonly more voluntary because being done in hot blood there is the less reluctation yet the Law considers that the former is done out of some sudden passion without serious deliberation and the other out of prepensed malice and desire of revenge and therefore condemnes murther as more wilfull and more punishable than man-slaughter He saith that no Law can possibly be unjust And I say that this is to deny the conclusion which deserves no reply But to give him satisfaction I will follow him in this also If he intended no more but that unjust Lawes are not Genuine Lawes nor bind to active obedience because they are not the ordinations of right reason nor instituted for the common good nor prescribe that which ought to be done he said truly but nothing at all to his purpose But if he intend as he doth that there are no Lawes de facto which are the ordinances of reason erring instituted for the common hurt and prescribing that which ought not to be done he is much mistaken Pharaohs Law to drown the Male Children of the Israelites Exod. 1.22 Nebuchadnezzars Law that whosoever did not fall down and worship the golden image which he
had set up should be cast into the fiery furnace Dan. 3. â—… Darius his Law that whosoever should ask a Petition of any God or man for thirty dayes save of the King should be cast into the Den of Lions Dan. 6.7 Ahashuerosh his Law to destroy the Jewish Nation root branch Esther 3.13 The Pharisees Law that whosoever confessed Christ should be excommunicated John 9.22 were all unjust Lawes The ground of this errour is as great an errour it self Such an art he hath learned of repacking Paradoxes which is this That every man makes by his consent the Law which he is bound to keep If this were true it would preserve them if not from being unjust yet from being injurious But it is not true The positive Law of God conteined in the old and new Testament The Law of Nature written in our hearts by the Finger of God The Lawes of Conquerors who come in by the power of the Sword The Lawes of our Ancestors which were made before we were born do all oblige us to the observation of them yet to none of all these did we give our actuall consent Over and above all these exceptions he builds upon a wrong foundation that all Magistrates at first were elective The first Governors were Fathers of Families And when those petty Princes could not afford competent protection and security to their subjects many of them did resign their severall and respective interests into the hands of one joint Father of the Country And though his ground had been true that all first Legislators were elective which is false yet his superstructure fails for it was done in hope and trust that they would make just Laws If Magistrates abuse this trust and deceive the hopes of the people by making Tyrranicall Lawes yet it is without their consent A precedent trust doth not justifie the subsequent errours and abuses of a Trustee He who is duely elected a Legislator may exercise his Legislative power unduely The peoples implicite consent doth not render the Tyrannicall Lawes of their Legislators to be just But his chiefest answer is that an action forbidden though it proceed from necessary causes yet if it were done willingly it may be justly punished which according to his custome he prooves by an instance A man necessitated to steal by the strength of temptation yet if he steal willingly is justly put to death Here are two things and both of them untrue First he failes in his assertion Indeed we suffer justly for those necessities which we our selves have contracted by our own fault but not for extrinsecall antecedent necessities which were imposed upon us without our fault If that Law do not oblige to punishment which is not intimated because the subject is invincibly ignorant of it How much less that Law which prescribes absolute impossibilities unless perhaps invincible necessity be not as strong a plea as invincible ignorance That which he addes if it were done willingly though it be of great moment if it be rightly understood yet in his sense that is if a mans will be not in his own disposition and if his willing do not come upon him according to his will nor according to any thing els in his power it weighs not half so much as the least feather in all his horse-load For if that Law be unjust and tyrannicall which commands a man to do that which is impossible for him to do then that Law is likewise unjust and tyrannicall which commands him to will that which is impossible for him to will Secondly his instance supposeth an untruth and is a plain begging of the question No man is extrinsecally antecedently and irresistibly necessitated by temptation to steal The Devill may sollicite us but he cannot necessitate us He hath a faculty of perswading but not a power of compelling Nos ignem habemus spiritus flammam ciet as Nazianzen He blowes the coles but the fire is our own Mordet duntaxat sese in fauces illius objicientem as St. Austin he bites not untill we thrust our selves into his mouth He may propose he may suggest but he cannot moove the will effectively Resist the Devill and he will flie from you Jam. 4.7 By faith we are able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked Eph. 6.16 And if Sathan who can both propose the object and choose out the fittest times and places to worke upon our frailties and can suggest reasons yet cannot necessitate the will which is most certain then much less can outward objects do it alone They have no naturall efficacy to determine the will Well may they be occasions but they cannot be causes of evill The sensitive appetite may engender a proclivity to steal but not a necessity to steal And if it should produce a kind of necessity yet it is but Moral not Natural Hypothetical not Absolute Coexistent not Antecedent from our selves nor extrinsecall This necessity or rather proclivity was free in its causes we our selves by our own negligence in not opposing our passions when we should and might have freely given it a kind of dominion over us Admit that some sudden passions may and do extraordinarily surprise us And therefore we say motus primo primi the first motions are not always in our power neither are they free yet this is but very rarely and it is our own fault that they do surprise us Neither doth the Law punish the first motion to theft but the advised act of stealing The intention makes the thief But of this more largely numb 25. He pleades moreover that the Law is a cause of justice that it frames the wills of men to justice and that the punishment of one doth conduce to the preservation of many All this is most true of a just Law justly executed But this is no god-a-mercy to T. H. his opinion of absolute necessity If all actions and all events be predetermined Naturaly Necessarily Extrinsecally how should the Law frame men morally to good actions He leaves nothing for the Law to do but either that which is done already or that which is impossible to be done If a man be chained to every individual act which he doth and from every act which he doth not by indissolvible bonds of inevitable necessity how should the Law either deterre him or frame him If a dog be chained fast to a post the sight of a rod cannot draw him from it Make a thousand Lawes that the fire shall not burn yet it will burn And whatsoever men do according to T. H. they do it as necessarily as the fire burneth Hang up a thousand Theeves and if a man be determined inevitably to steal he must steal notwithstanding He addes that the sufferings imposed by the Law upon delinquents respect not the evill act past but the good to come and that the putting of a delinquent to death by the Magistrate for any crime whatsoever cannot be justified before God except there be a real intention to
the like he answereth not a word more than what is already satisfied And therefore I am silent Numb 15. J. D. argument 3 THirdly let this opinion be once radicated in the minds of men that there is no true liberty and that all things come to pass inevitably and it will utterly destroy the Study of piety Who will bewaile his sinns with teares what will become of that Grief that Zeal that Indignation that holy Revenge which the Apostle speaks of if men be once throughly persuaded that they could not shun what they did A man may grieve for that which he could not help but he will never be brought to bewall that as his own fault which flowed not from his own errour but from an antecedent necessity Who will be carefull or sollicitous to perform obedience that believeth there are inevitable bounds and limits set to all his devotions which he can neither go beyond nor come short of To what end shall he pray God to avert those evills which are inevitable or to confer those favours which are impossible We indeed know not what good or evill shall happen to us but this we know that if all things be necessary our devotions and indeavours cannot alter that which must be In a word the onely reason why those persons who tread in this path of fatall destiny do sometimes pray or repent or serve God is because the light of nature and the strength of reason and the evidence of Scripture do for that present transport them from their ill chosen grounds and expell those Stociall fancies out of their heads A complete Stoick can neither pray nor repent nor serve God to any purpose Either allow liberty or destroy Church as well as Commonwealth Religion as well as Policy T. H. HIs third Argument consisteth in other inconveniences which he saith will follow namely impiety neglicence of Religious duties repentance and zeal to Gods service To which I answer as to the rest that they follow not I must confess if we consider far the greatest part of mankind not as they should be but as they are that is as men whom either the study of acquiring wealth or preferments or whom the appetite of sensuall delights or the impatience of meditating or the rash imbracing of wrong principles have made unapt to discuss the truth of things that the dispute of this question will rather hurt than help their piety And therefore if he had not desired this answer I would not have written it Nor do I write it but in hope your Lordship and he will keep it in private Nevertheless in very truth the necessity of events does not of it self draw with it any impiety at all For piety consisteth onely in two things One that we honour God in our hearts which is that we think of his power as highly as we can for to honour any thing is nothing els but to think it to be of great power The other that we signifie that honour and esteem by our words and actions which is called cultus or worship of God He therefore that thinketh that all things proceed from Gods Eternall Will and consequently are necessary does he not think God Omnipotent does he not esteem of his power as highly as possible which is to honour God as much as can be in his heart Again he that thinketh so is he not more apt by externall acts and words to acknowledge it then he that thinketh otherwise Yet is this externall acknowledgement the same thing which we call worship So this opinion fortifieth piety in both kinds externally internally and therefore is far from destroying it And for repentance which is nothing but a glad returning into the right way after the grief of being out of the way though the cause that made him go astray were necessary yet there is no reason why he should not grieve and again though the cause why he returned into the way were necessary there remaines still the causes of joy So that the necessity of the actions taketh away neither of those parts of repentance grief for the errour nor joy for the returning And for prayer whereas he saith that the necessity of things destroyes prayer I deny it For though prayer be none of the causes that moove Gods will his will being unchangeable yet since we find in Gods Word he will not give his blessings but to those that ask them the motive to prayer is the same Prayer is the gift of God no less than the blessings And the prayer is decreed together in the same decree wherein the blessing is decreed T is manifest that thanksgiving is no cause of the blessing past And that which is past is sure and necessary Yet even amongst men thanks is in use as an acknowledgment of the benefit past though we should expect no new benefit for our gratitude And prayer to God Almighty is but thanksgiving for his blessings in generall and though it precede the particular thing we ask yet it is not a cause or means of it but a signification that we expect nothing but from God in such manner as he not as we will And our Saviour by word of mouth bids us pray Thy will not our will be done and by example teaches us the same for he prayed thus Father if it be thy will let this cup pass c. The end of prayer as of thanksgiving is not to move but to honour God Almighty in acknowledging that what we ask can be effected by him only J. D. I Hope T. H. will be persuaded in time that it is not the Covetousness or Ambition or Sensuallity or Sloth or Prejudice of his Readers which renders this doctrine of absolute necessity dangerous but that it is in its own nature destructive to true godliness And though his answer consist more of oppositions than of solutions yet I will not willingly leave one grain of his matter unweighed First he erres in making inward piety to consist meerly in the estimation of the judgment If this were so what hinders but that the Devills should have as much inward piety as the best Christians for they esteem Gods power to be infinite and tremble Though inward piety do suppose the act of the understanding yet it consisteth properly in the act of the will being that branch of Justice which gives to God the honor which is due unto him Is there no Love due to God no Faith no Hope Secondly he erres in making inward piety to ascribe no glory to God but only the glory of his Power or Omnipotence What shall become of all other the divine attributes and particularly of his Goodness of his Truth of his Justice of his mercy which beget a more true and sincere honour in the heart than greatness it self Magnos facile laudamus bonos lubenter Thirdly this opinion of absolute necessity destroyes the truth of God making him to command one thing openly and to necessitate another privately to chide a
how can he be understood to have a liberty to eat flesh more than he that hath no license at all You may by this again see the vanity of distinctions used in the Schooles And I do not doubt but that the imposing of them by authority of Doctours in the Church hath been a great cause that men have laboured though by sedition and evill courses to shake them off for nothing is more apt to beget hatred than the tyrannising over mans reason and understanding especially when it is done not by the Scripture but by pretense of learning and more judgment than that of other men J. D. HE who will speak with some of our great undertakers about the grounds of learning had need either to speak by an Interpreter or to learn a new Language I dare not call it Jargon or Canting lately devised not to set forth the truth but to conceal falshood He must learn a new Liberty a new Necessity a new Contingency a new Sufficiency a new Spontaneity a new kind of Deliberation a new kind of Election a new Eternity a new Compulsion and in conclusion a new Nothing This proposition the will is free may be understood in two senses Either that the will is not compelled or that the will is not alwayes necessitated for if it be ordinarily or at any time free from necessitation my assertion is true that there is freedom from necessity The former sense that the will is not compelled is acknowledged by all the world as a truth undeniable Voluntas non cogitur For if the will may be compelled then it may both will and not will the same thing at the same time under the same notion but this implies a contradiction Yet this Author like the good woman whom her husband sought up the stream when she was drowned upon pretense that when she was living she used to go contrary courses to all other people he holds that true compulsion and fear may make a man will that which he doth not will that is in his sense may compell the will As when a man willingly throwes his goods into the Sea to save himself or submits to his enemy for fear of being killed I answer that T. H. mistakes sundry wayes in this discourse First he erreth in this to think that actions proceeding from fear are properly compulsory actions which in truth are not only voluntary but free actions neither compelled nor so much as Physically necessitated Another man at the same time in the same Ship in the same storm may choose and the same individuall man otherwise advised might choose not to throw his goods overboard It is the man himself who chooseth freely this means to preserve his life It is true that if he were not in such a condition or if he were freed from the grounds of his present fears he would not choose neither the casting of his goods into the Sea nor the submitting to his enemy But considering the present exigence of his affaires reason dictates to him that of two inconveniences the less is to be chosen as a comparative good Neither doth he will this course as the end or direct object of his desires but as the means to attaine his end And what Fear doth in these cases Love Hope Hatred c. may do in other cases that is may occasion a man to elect those means to obtain his willed end which otherwise he would not elect As Jacob to serve seven years more rather than not to enjoy his beloved Rachel The Merchant to hazard himself upon the rough Seas in hope of profit Passions may be so violent that they may necessitate the will that is when they prevent deliberations but this is rarely and then the will is not free But they never properly compell it That which is compelled is against the will and that which is against the will is not willed Secondly T. H. erres in this also where he saith that a man is then onely said to be compelled when fear makes him willing to an action As if force were not more prevalent with a man then fear we must know therefore that this word compelled is taken two wayes sometimes improperly that is when a man is mooved or occasioned by threats or fear or any passion to do that which he would not have done if that threats or that passion had not been Sometimes it is taken properly when we do any thing against our own inclination mooved by an externall cause the will not consenting nor concurring but resisting as much as it can As in a Rape or when a Christian is drawn or carried by violence to the Idolls Temple Or as in the case of St. Peter John 21.18 Another shall guide thee and carry thee whither thou wouldst not This is that compulsion which is understood when we say the will may be letted or changed or necessitated or that the imperate actions of the will that is the actions of the inferiour faculties which are ordinarily moved by the will may be compelled but that the immanent actions of the will that is to will to choose cannot be compelled because it is the nature of an action properly compelled to be done by an extrinsecall cause without the concurrence of the will Thirdly the question is not whether all the actions of a man be free but whether they be ordinarily free Suppose some passions are so suddaine and violent that they surprise a man and betray the succours of the soul and prevent deliberation as we see in some motus primo primi or antipathies how some men will run upon the most dangerous objects upon the first view of a loathed creature without any power to contain themselves Such actions as these as they are not ordinary so they are not free because there is no deliberation nor election But where deliberation and election are as when a man throwes his goods over-board to save the Ship or submitts to his enemy to save his life there is alwayes true liberty Though T. H. slight the two reasons which I produce in favour of his cause yet they who urged them deserved not to be slighted unless it were because they were School-men The former reason is thus framed A necessity of supposition may consist with true liberty but that necessity which flowes from the naturall and extrinsecall determination of the will is a necessity of supposition To this my answer is in effect That a necessity of supposition is of two kinds sometimes the thing supposed is in the power of the Agent to do or not to do As for a Romish Priest to vow continence upon supposition that he be a Romish Priest is necessary but because it was in his power to be a Priest or not to be a Priest therefore his vow is a free act So supposing a man to have taken Physick it is necessary that he keep at home yet because it was in his power to take a Medicine or not to take it therefore
for help and did what he could to defend himself but all would not serve The servant is innocent if he was to be tried before a Court of Areopagites Or suppose the Ruffians did not take it from him by force but drew their swords and threatned to kill him except he delivered it himself no wise man will conceive that it was either the Masters intention or the servants duty to hazard his life or his limbes for saving of such a trifling sum But on the other side suppose this servant passing by some Cabaret or Tennis-court where his Camerads were drinking or playing should stay with them and drink or play away his mony and afterwards plead as T. H. doth here that he was overcome by the meer strength of temptation I trow neither T. H. nor any man els would admit of this excuse but punish him for it because neither was he necessitated by the temptation and what strength it had was by his own fault in respect of that vitious habit which he had contracted of drinking or gaming Jam. 1 14. Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and entised Disordered passions of anger hatred lust if they be consequent as the case is here put by T. H. and flow from deliberation and election they do not only not diminish the fault but they aggravate it and render it much greater He talks much of the motives to do and the motives to forbear how they work upon and determine a man as if a reasonable man were no more than a Tennis-ball to be tossed to and fro by the Racketts of the second causes As if the will had no power to moove it self but were meerly passive like an artificiall Popingay remooved hither and thither by the bolts of the Archers who shoot on this side and on that What are motives but reasons or discourses framed by the understanding and freely mooved by the will What are the will and the understanding but faculties of the same soul and what is liberty but a power resulting from them both To say that the will is determined by these motives is as much as to say that the Agent is determined by himself If there be no necessitation before the judgment of right reason doth dictate to the will then there is no antecedent no extrinsecall necessitation at all All the world knowes that when the Agent is determined by himself then the effect is determined likewise in its cause But if he determined himself freely then the effect is free Motives determine not naturally but morally which kind of determination may consist with true liberty But if T. H. his opinion were true that the will were naturally determined by the Physicall and speciall influence of extrinsecall causes not onely motives were vain but reason it self and deliberation were vain No saith he they are not vain because they are the means Yes if the means be superfluous they are vain what needed such a circuit of deliberation to advise what is fit to be done when it is already determined extrinsecally what must be done He saith that the ignorance of the true causes and their power is the reason why we ascribe the effect to liberty but when we seriously consider the causes of things we acknowledge a necessity No such thing but just the contrary The more we consider and the cleerer we understand the greater is the liberty and the more the knowledge of our own liberty The less we consider and the more incapable that the understanding is the lesser is the liberty and the knowledge of it And where there is no consideration nor use of reason there is no liberty at all there is neither morall good nor evill Some men by reason that their exteriour senses are not totally bound have a trick to walk in their sleep Suppose such an one in that case should cast himself down a pair of staires or from a bridge and break his neck or drown himself it were a mad Jury that would find this man accessary to his own death Why because it was not freely done he had not then the use of reason Lastly he tells us that the will doth choose of necessity as well as the fire burnes of necessity If he intend no more but this that election is the proper and naturall act of the will as burning is of the fire or that the elective power is as necessarily in a man as visibility he speaks truly but most impertinently For the question is not now of the elective power in actu primo whether it be an essentiall faculty of the soul but whether the act of electing this or that particular object be free undetermined by any antecedent and extrinsecall causes But if he intend it in this other sense that as the fire hath no power to suspend its burning nor to distinguish between those combustible matters which are put unto it but burnes that which is put unto it necessarily if it be combustible So the will hath no power to refuse that which it wills nor to suspend its own appetite He erres grossely The will hath power either to will or nill or to suspend that is neither to will nor nill the same object Yet even the burning of the fire if it be considered as it is invested with all particular circumstances is not otherwise so necessary an action as T. H. imagineth Two things are required to make an effect necessary First that it be produced by a necessary cause such as fire is Secondly that it be necessarily produced Protagoras an Atheist began his Book thus Concerning the gods I have nothing to say whether they be or they be not for which his Book was condemned by the Athenians to be burned The fire was a necessary agent but the sentence or the application of the fire to the Book was a free act and therefore the burning of his Book was free Much more the rationall will is free which is both a voluntary agent and acts voluntarily My second reason against this distinction of Liberty from Compulsion but not from necessitation is new and demonstrates cleerly that to necessitate the will by a Physicall necessity is to compell the will so far as the will is capable of Compulsion and that he who doth necessitate the will to evill after that manner is the true cause of evill and ought rather to be blamed than the will it self But T. H. for all he saith he is not surprised can be contented upon better advise to steal by all this in silence And to hide this tergiversation from the eyes of the Reader he makes an empty shew of braving against that famous and most necessary distinction between the elicite and imperate acts of the will first because the termes are improper secondly because they are obscure What Triviall and Grammaticall objections are these to be used against the universall currant of Divines and Philosophers Verborum ut nummorum It is in words as
it is in mony Use makes them proper and currant A Tyrant at first signified a lawfull and just Prince Now use hath quite changed the sense of it to denote either an Usurper or an Oppressor The word praemunire is now grown a good word in our English Lawes by use and tract of time And yet at first it was meerly mistaken for a praemonere The names of Sunday Munday Tuesday were derived at first from those Heathenish Deities the Sun the Moon and the warlike God of the Germans Now we use them for distinction sake onely without any relation to their first originall He is too froward that will refuse a piece of coin that is currant throughout the world because it is not stamped after his own fancy So is he that rejects a good word because he understands not the derivation of it We see forreine words are daily naturalized and made free Denizons in every Country But why are the tearmes improper Because saith he It attributes command and subjection to the faculties of the soul as if they made a Common-wealth or family among themselves and could speak one to another Therefore he saith they who invented this tearm of Actus Imperatus understood not any thing what it signified No why not It seemeth to me they understood it better than those who except against it They knew there are mentall tearmes which are onely conceived in the mind as well as vocall tearmes which are expressed with the tongue They knew that howsoever a Superiour do intimate a direction to his inferiour it is still a command Tarquin commanded his son by onely striking off the topps of the Poppies and was by him both understood and obeyed Though there be no formall Common-wealth or family either in the body or in the soul of man yet there is a subordination in the body of the inferiour members to the head there is a subordination in the soul of the inferiour faculties to the rationall will Far be it from a reasonable man so far to dishonour his own nature as to equall fancy with understanding or the sensitive appetite with the reasonable will A power of command there is without all question though there be some doubt in what faculty this command doth principally reside whether in the will or in the understanding The true resolution is that the directive command for counsel is in the understanding And the applicative command or empire for putting in execution of what is directed is in the will The same answer serves for his second impropriety about the word Elicite For saith he as it is absurdly said that to dance is an act allured or drawn by fair means out of the ability to dance So it is absurdly said that to will or choose is an act drawn out of the power to will His objection is yet more improper than their expression The art of dancing rather resembles the understanding than the will That drawing which the Schools intend is cleer of another nature from that which he conceives By elicitation he understands a perswading or enticing with flattering words or sweet alluring insinuations to choose this or that But that elicitation which the Schools intend is a deducing of the power of the will into act that drawing which they mention is meerly from the appetibility of the object or of the end as a man drawes a Child after him with the sight of a fair Apple or a Shepheard drawes his sheep after him with the sight of a green bough So the end drawes the will to it by a Metaphoricall motion What he understands here by an ability to dance is more than I know or any man els untill he express himself in more proper tearmes whether he understand the locomotive faculty alone or the art or acquired habit of dancing alone or both of these jointly It may be said aptly without any absurdity that the act of dancing is drawn out elicitur of the locomotive faculty helped by the acquired habit He who is so scrupulous about the received phrases of the Schools should not have let so many improper expressions have dropped from his pen as in this very passage he confounds the compelling of a voluntary action with the commanding of a voluntary action and willing with electing which he saith are all one Yet to will properly respects the end to elect the means His other objection against this distinction of the acts of the will into Elicite and Imperate is obscurity Might it not saith he have been as easily said in English a voluntary action Yes it might have been said as easily but not as truly nor properly Whatsoever hath its originall from the will whether immediatly or mediatly whether it be a proper act of the will it self as to elect or an act of the understanding as to deliberate or an act of the inferiour faculties or of the members is a voluntary action but neither the act of reason nor of the senses nor of the sensitive appetite nor of the members are the poper acts of the will nor drawn immediatly out of the will it self but the members and faculties are applyed to their proper and respective acts by the power of the will And so he comes to cast up the totall sum of my second reason with the same faith that the unjust Steward did make his accounts Luk. 16. The sum of J. D.'s distinction is saith he that a voluntary act may be done on compulsion just contrary to what I have maintained that is to say by foul means But to will that or any act cannot be but by allurement or fair means I confess the distinction is mine because I use it as the Sun is mine or the Air is mine that is common to me with all who treat of this subject But his mistakes are so thick both in relating my mind and his own that the Reader may conclude he is wandered out of his known way I will do my duty to shew him the right way First no acts which are properly said to be compelled are voluntary Secondly acts of terrour which he calls foul means which are sometimes in a large improper sense called compulsory actions may be and for the most part are consistent with true liberty Thirdly actions proceeding from blandishments or sweet persuasions which he calls fair means if they be indeliberated as in children who want the use of reason are not presently free actions Lastly the strength of consequent and deliberated desires doth neither diminish guilt nor excuse from punishment as just fears of extreme and imminent dangers threatned by extrinsecall agents often do because the strength of the former proceeds from our own fault and was freely elected in the causes of it But neither desires nor fears which are consequent and deliberated do absolutely necessitate the will Numb 21. J. D. THE rest are umbrages quickly dispelled first the Astrologer steps up and subjects Liberty to the motions of Heaven to the aspects and ascensions of
an infallibility or an hypotheticall necessity as we say Quicquid est quando est necesse est esse A necessity of consequence but not a necessity of consequent Though an Agent have certainly determined and so the action be become infallible yet if the Agent did determine freely the action likewise is free T. H. THE fourth opinion which he rejecteth is of them that make the will necessarily to follow the last dictate of the understanding but it seems he understands that Tenet in another sense than I do For he speaketh as if they that held it did suppose men must dispute the sequell of every action they do great small to the least grain which is a thing that he thinks with reason to be untrue But I understand it to signifie that the will followes the last opinion or judgment immediatly preceding the action concerning whether it be good to do it or not whether he hath weighed it long before or not all And that I take to be the meaning of them that hold it As for example when a man strikes his will to strike followes necessarily that thought he had of the sequell of his stroke immediately before the lifting of his hand Now if it be understood in that sense the last dictate of the understanding does certainly necessitate the action though not as the whole cause yet as the last cause as the last feather necessitates the breaking of an horses-back when there are so many laid on before as there needeth but the addition of that one to make the weight sufficient That which he alledgeth against this is first out of a Poet who in the person of Medaea sayes Video Meliora proboque Deteriora sequor But the saying as pretty as it is is not true for though Medaea saw many reasons to forbear killing her children yet the last dictate of her judgment was that the present revenge of her husband out-weighed them all And thereupon that wicked action followed necessarily Then the story of the Romans that of two competitors said one had the better reasons but the other must have the office This also maketh against him for the last dictate of his judgment that had the bestowing of the office was this that it was better to take a great bribe than reward a great merit Thirdly he objects that things neerer the senses moove more powerfully than reason What followeth thence but this That the sense of the present good is commonly more immediate to the Action than the foresight of the evill consequents to come Fourthly whereas he sayes that do what a man can he shall sorrow more for the death of his son than for the sin of his soul it makes nothing to the last dictate of the understanding but it argues plainly that sorrow for sin is not voluntary And by consequence repentance proceedeth from causes J. D. THE fourth pretense alledged against Liberty was that the will doth necessarily follow the last dictate of the understanding This objection is largely answered before in severall places of this Reply and particularly Numb 7. In my former discourse I gave two answers to it The one certain and undoubted That supposing the last dictate of the understanding did alwayes determine the will yet this determination being not antecedent in time nor proceeding from extrinsecall causes but from the proper resolution of the Agent who had now freely determined himself it makes no absolute necessity but onely hypotheticall upon supposition that the Agent hath determined his own will after this or that manner Which being the main answer T. H. is so farr from taking it away that he takes no notice of it The other part of mine answer was probable That it is not alwayes certain that the will doth alwayes actually follow the last dictate of the understanding though it alwayes ought to follow it Of which I gave then three reasons one was that actions 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 To this he answers not a word Another of my reasons was because reason doth not weigh nor is bound to weigh the convenience or inconvenience of every individuall action to the uttermost grain in the balance of true judgement The truth of this reason is confessed by T. H. though he might have had more abetters in this than in the most part of his discourse that nothing is indifferent that a man cannot stroak his beard on one side but it was either necessasary to do it or sinfull to omit it from which confession of his it followes that in all those actions wherein reason doth not define what is most convenient there the will is free from the determination of the understanding And by consequence the last feather is wanting to break the horses back A third reason was because passions and affections sometimes prevail against judgment as I prooved by the example of Medaea and Caesar by the neerness of the objects to the senses and by the estimation of a temporall loss more than sin Against this reason his whole answer is addressed And first he explaneth the sense of the assertion by the comparison of the last feather wherewith he seems to be delighted seeing he useth it now the second time But let him like it as he will it is improper for three reasons First the determination of the judgment is no part of the weight but is the sentence of the trier The understanding weigheth all Things Objects Means Circumstances Convenience Inconvenience but it self is not weighed Secondly the sensitive passion in in some extraordinary cases may give a counterfeit weight to the object if it can detein or divert reason from the ballance but ordinarily the Means Circumstances and Causes concurrent they have their whole weight from the understanding So as they do not press the horses back at all untill reason lay them on Thirdly he conceives that as each feather hath a certain naturall weight whereby it concurres not arbitrarily but necessarily towards the overcharging of the horse So all objects and causes have a naturall efficiency whereby they do Physically determin the will which is a great mistake His Objects his Agents his Motives his Passions and all his concurrent causes ordinarily do onely moove the will morally not determine it naturally So as it hath in all ordinary actions a free dominion over it self His other example of a man that strikes whose will to strike followeth necessarily that thought he had of the sequell of his stroke immediately before the lifting up of his hand as it confounds passionate indeliberate thoughts with the dictates of right reason So it is very uncertain for between the cup and the lipps between the lifting up of the hand and the blow the will may alter and the judgment also And lastly it is impertinent for that necessity of striking proceeds from the free determination of the Agent and not
from the speciall influence of any outward determining causes And so it is onely a necessity upon supposition Concerning Medaeas choise the strength of the argument doth not lye either in the fact of Medaea which is but a fiction or in the authority of the Poet who writes things rather to be admired than believed but in the experience of all men who find it to be true in themselves That sometimes reason doth shew unto a man the exorbitancy of his passion that what he desires is but a pleasant good that what he loseth by such a choise is an honest good That that which is honest is to be preferred before that which is pleasant yet the will pursues that which is pleasant and neglects that which is honest St. Paul saith as much in earnest as is feined of Medaea That he approoved not that which he did and that he did that which he hated Rom. 7.15 The Roman Story is mistaken There was no bribe in the case but affection Whereas I urge that those things which are neerer to the senses do moove more powerfully he layes hold on it and without answering to that for which I produced it infers That the sense of present good is more immediate to the action than the foresight of evill consequents Which is true but it is not absolutely true by any antecedent necessity Let a man do what he may do and what he ought to do and sensitive objects will lose that power which they have by his own fault and neglect Antecedent or indeliberate concupiscence doth sometimes but rarely surprise a man and render the action not free But consequent and deliberated concupiscence which proceeds from the rationall will doth render the action more free not less free and introduceth onely a necessity upon supposition Lastly he saith that a mans mourning more for the loss of his Child than for his sin makes nothing to the last dictate of the understanding Yes very much Reason dictates that a sin committed is a greater evill than the loss of a child and ought more to be lamented for yet we see daily how affection prevailes against the dictate of reason That which he inferrs from hence that sorrow for sin is not voluntary and by consequence that repentance proceedeth from causes is true as to the latter part of it but not in his sense The causes from whence repentance doth proceed are Gods grace preventing and mans will concurring God prevents freely man concurs freely Those inferiour Agents which sometimes do concur as subordinate to the grace of God do not cannot determine the will naturally And therefore the former part of his inference that sorrow for sin is not voluntary is untrue and altogether groundless That is much more truly and much more properly said to be voluntary which proceeds from judgment and from the rationall will than that which proceeds from passion and from the sensitive will One of the main grounds of all T. H. his errours in this question is that he acknowledgeth no efficacy but that which is naturall Hence is this wild consequence Repentance hath causes and therefore it is not voluntary Free effects have free causes necessary effects necessary causes voluntary effects have sometimes free sometimes necessary causes Numb 24. J. D. FIftly and lastly the Divine labours to find out a way how liberty may consist with the prescience and decrees of God But of this I had not very long since occasion to write a full discourse in answer to a Treatise against the prescience of things contingent I shall for the present only repeat these two things First we ought not to desert a certain truth because we are not able to comprehend the certain manner God should be but a poor God if we were able perfectly to comprehend all his Actions and Attributes Secondly in my poor judgment which I ever do ever shall submit to better the readiest way to reconcile Contingence and Liberty with the decrees and prescience of God and most remote from the altercations of these times is to subject future cōtingents to the aspects of God according to that presentiallity which they have in eternity Not that things future which are not yet existent coexistent with God but because the infinite knowledge of God incircling all times in the point of eternity doth attain to their future Being from whence proceeds their objective and intelligible Being The main impediment which keeps men from subscribing to this way is because they conceive eternity to be an everlasting succession and not one indivisible point But if they consider that whatsoever is in God is God That there are no accidents in him for that which is infinitely perfect cannot be further perfected That as God is not wise but Wisedom it self not just but Justice it self so he is not eternall but Eternity it self They must needs conclude that therefore this eternity is indivisible because God is indivisible and therefore not successive but altogether an infinite point comprehending all times within it self T. H. THE last part of this discourse conteineth his opinion about reconciling Liberty with the Prescience and Decrees of God otherwise than some Divines have done against whom he had formerly written a Treatise out of which he only repeateth two things One is that we ought not to desert a certain truth for not being able to comprehend the certain manner of it And I say the same as for example that he ought not to desert this certain truth That there are certain and necessary causes which make every man to will what he willeth though he do not yet conceive in what manner the will of man is caused And yet I think the manner of it is not very hard to conceive seeing that we see daily that praise dispraise reward punishment good and evill sequells of mens actions retained in memory do frame and make us to the election of whatsoever it be that we elect And that the memory of such things proceeds from the senses And sense from the operation of the objects of sense which are externall to us and governed onely by God Almighty And by consequence all actions even of free and voluntary Agents are necessary The other thing he repeateth is that the best way to reconcile Contingency and Liberty with the prescience and decrees of God is to subject future contingents to the aspect of God The same is also my opinion but contrary to what he hath all this while laboured to prove For hitherto he held liberty and necessity that is to say liberty and the decrees of God irreconcilable unless the aspect of God which word appeareth now the first time in this discourse signifie somewhat els besides Gods will and decree which I cannot understand But he adds that we must subject them according to that presentiality which they have in eternity which he sayes cannot be done by them that conceive eternity to be an everlasting succession but onely by them that conceive
Certainly the proper naturall motion of water as of all heavy bodies is to descend directly downwards towards the center as we see in rain which falls down perpendicularly Though this be far from a free act which proceeds from a rationall appetite yet it is a naturall act and proceeds from a naturall appetite and hath its reason within in self So hath not the current of the River in its channell which must not be ascribed to the proper nature of the water but either to the generall order of the universe for the better being and preservation of the creatures otherwise the waters should not moove in Seas and Rivers as they do but cover the face of the earth and possess their proper place between the aire and the earth according to the degree of their gravity Or to an extrinsecall principle whilest one particle of water thrusteth and forceth forward another and so comes a current or at least so comes the current to be more impetuous to which motion the position of the earth doth contribute much both by restraining that fluid body with its banks from dispersing it self and also by affording way for a faire and easy descent by its proclivity He tells us sadly that the water wants liberty to go over the banks because there is an extrinsecall impediment But to ascend up the channell it wants not liberty but power Why Liberty is a power if it want power to ascend it wants liberty to ascend But he makes the reason why the water ascends not up the channell to be intrinsecall and the reason why it ascends not over the banks to be extrinsecall as if there were not a rising of the ground up the channell as well as up the banks though it be not so discernible nor alwayes so sudden The naturall appetite of the water is as much against the ascending over the banks as the ascending up the channell And the extrinsecall impediment is as great in ascending up the channell as over the banks or rather greater because there it must moove not onely against the rising soile but also against the succeeding waters which press forward the former Either the River wants liberty for both or els it wans liberty for neither But to leave his metaphoricall faculties and his Catachresticall Liberty How far is his discourse wide from the true morall liberty which is in question between us His former description of a free Agent that is he who hath not made an end of deliberating though it was wide from the mark yet it came much neerer the truth than this definition of Liberty unless perhaps he think that the water hath done deliberating whether it will go over the banks but hath not done deliberating whether it will go up the channell Numb 30. T. H. SIxtly I conceive nothing taketh beginning from it self but from the action of some other immediate Agent without it self And that therefore when first a man had an appetite or will to something to which immediately before he had no appetite nor will the cause of his will is not the will it self but something els not in his own disposing So that where as it is out of controversy that of voluntary actions the will is a necessary cause And by this which is said the will is also caused by other things whereof it disposeth not it followeth that voluntary actions have all of them necessary causes and therefore are necessitated J. D. THis sixt point doth not consist in explicating of tearmes as the former but in two proofs that voluntary actions are necessitated The former proof stands thus Nothing takes beginning from it self but from some Agent without it self which is not in its own disposing therefore c. concedo omnia I grant all he saith The will doth not take beginning from it self Whether he understand by will the faculty of the will which is a power of the reasonable soul it takes not beginning from it self but from God who created and infused the Soul into man and endowed it with this power Or whether he understand by will the act of willing it takes not beginning from it self but from the faculty or from the power of willing which is in the Soul This is certain finite and participated things cannot be from themselves nor be produced by themselves What would he conclude from hence that therefore the act of willing takes not its beginning from the faculty of the will Or that the faculty is alwayes determined antecedently extrinsecally to will that which it doth will He may as soon draw water out of a pumice as draw any such conclusion out of these premisses Secondly for his taking a beginning Either he understands a beginning of being or a beginning of working and acting If he understand a beginning of being he saith most truly that nothing hath a beginning of being in time from it self But this is nothing to his purpose The question is not between us whether the Soul of man or the will of man be eternall But if he understand a beginning of working or mooving actually it is a gross errour All men know that when a stone descends or fire ascends or when water that hath been heated returnes to its former temper the beginning or reason is intrinsecall and one and the same thing doth moove and is mooved in a diverse respect It mooves in respect of the form and it is mooved in respect of the matter Much more man who hath a perfect knowledge and prenotion of the end is most properly said to moove himself Yet I do not deny but that there are other beginnings of humane actions which do concur with the will some outward as the first cause by generall influence which is evermore requisite Angells or men by perswading evill spirits by tempting the object or end by its appetibility 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 His second argument is ex concessis It is out of controversy saith he that of voluntary actions the will is a necessary cause The argument may be thus reduced Necessary causes produce necessary effects but the Will is a necessarie cause of voluntary actions I might deny his major Necessary causes do not alwayes produce necessary effects except they be also necessarily produced as I have shewed before the burning of Protagoras his book But I answer cleerly to the minor that the will is not a necessary cause of what it wills in particular actions It is without controversy indeed for it is without all probability That it wills when it wills is necessary but that it wills this or that now or then is free More expresly the act of the will may be considered three wayes
Either in respect of its nature or in respect of its exercise or in respect of its object First for the nature of the act That which the will wills is necessarily voluntary because the will cannot be compelled And in this sense it is out of controversy that the will is a necessary cause of voluntary actions Secondly for the exercise of its acts that is not necessary The will may either will or suspend its act Thirdly for the object that is not necessary but free the will is not extrinsecally determined to its objects As for example The Cardinalls meet in the conclave to chose a Pope whom they chose he is necessarily Pope But it is not necessary that they shall chose this or that day Before they were assembled they might defer their assembling when they are assembled they may suspend their election for a day or a week Lastly for the person whom they will choose it is freely in their own power otherwise if the election were not free it were void and no election at all So that which takes its beginning from the will is necessarily voluntary but it is not necessary that the will shall will this or that in particular as it was necessary that the person freely elected should be Pope but it was not necessary either that the election should be at this time or that this man should be elected And therefore voluntary acts in particular have not necessary causes that is they are not necessitated Numb 31. T. H. SEventhly I hold that to be a sufficient cause to which nothing is wanting that is needfull to the producing of the effect The same is also a necessary cause for if it be possible that a sufficient cause shall not bring forth the effect then there wanted somewhat which was needfull to the producing of it and so the cause was not sufficient But if it be impossible that a sufficient cause should not produce the effect then is a sufficient cause a necessary cause for that is said to produce an effect necessarily that cannot but produce it Hence it is manifest that whatsoever is produced is produced necessarily for whatsoever is produced hath had a sufficient cause to produce it or els it had not been And therefore also voluntary actions are necessitated J. D. THis section containes a third Argument to proove that all effects are necessary for clearing whereof it is needfull to consider how a cause may be said to be sufficient or insufficient First severall causes singly considered may be insufficient and the same taken conjointly be sufficient to produce an effect As two horses jointly are sufficient to draw a Coach which either of them singly is insufficient to do Now to make the effect that is the drawing of the Coach necessary it is not onely required that the two horses be sufficient to draw it but also that their conjunction be necessary and their habitude such as they may draw it If the owner of one of these horses will not suffer him to draw If the Smith have shod the other in the quick and lamed him If the horse have cast a shoe or be a resty jade and will not draw but when he list then the effect is not necessarily produced but contingently more or less as the concurrence of the causes is more or less contingent Secondly a cause may be said to be sufficient either because it produceth that effect which is intended as in the generation of a man or els because it is sufficient to produce that which is produced as in the generation of a Monster The former is properly called a sufficient cause the later a weak and insufficient cause Now if the debility of the cause be not necessary but contingent then the effect is not necessary but contingent It is a rule in Logick that the conclusion alwayes followes the weaker part If the premises be but probable the conclusion cannot be demonstrative It holds as well in causes as in propositions No effect can exceed the vertue of its cause If the ability or debility of the causes be contingent the effect cannot be necessary Thirdly that which concernes this question of Liberty from necessity most neerely is That a cause is said to be sufficient in respect of the ability of it to act not in respect of its will to act The concurrence of the will is needfull to the production of a free effect But the cause may be sufficient though the will do not concur As God is sufficient to produce a thousand worlds but it doth not follow from thence either that he hath produced them or that he will produce them The blood of Christ is a sufficient ransome for all mankind but it doth not follow therefore that all mankind shall be actually saved by vertue of his Blood A man may be a sufficient Tutour though he will not teach every Scholler and a sufficient Physitian though he will not administer to every patient Forasmuch therefore as the concurrence of the will is needfull to the production of every free effect and yet the cause may be sufficient in sensu diviso although the will do not concur It followes evidently that the cause may be sufficient and yet something which is needfull to the production of the effect may be wanting and that every sufficient cause is not a necessary cause Lastly if any man be disposed to wrangle against so clear light and say that though the free Agent be sufficient in sensu diviso yet he is not sufficient in sensu composito to produce the effect without the concurrence of the will he saith true but first he bewrayes the weakness and the fallacy of the former argument which is a meer trifling between sufficiency in a divided sense and sufficiency in a compounded sense And seeing the concurrence of the will is not predetermined there is no antecedent necessity before it do concur and when it hath concurred the necessity is but hypotheticall which may consist with liberty Numb 32. T. H. LAstly I hold that ordinary definition of a free Agent namely that a free Agent is that which when all things are present which are needfull to produce the effect can nevertheless not produce it Implies a contradiction and is non-sense being as much as to say the cause may be sufficient that is necessary and yet the effect not follow J. D. THis last point is but a Corollary or an Inference from the former doctrine that every sufficient cause produceth its effect necessarily which pillar being taken away the superstructure must needs fall to the ground having nothing left to support it Lastly I hold saith he what he is able to proove is something So much reason so much trust but what he holds concernes himself not others But what holds he I hold saith he that the ordinary definition of a free Agent implies a contradiction and is non-sense That which he calls the ordinary definition of liberty is the very definition
not truly empty and that the aire is a true body I might give an hundred such like instances He who leaves the conduct of his understanding to follow vulgar notions shall plunge himself into a thousand errours like him who leaves a certaine guide to follow an ignis fatuus or a Will with the wispe So his proposition is false His reason That matter of fact is not verified by other mens Arguments but by every mans own sense and memory is likewise maimed on both sides whether we hear such words or not is matter of fact and sense is the proper judge of it But what these words do or ought truely to signifie is not to be judged by sense but by reason Secondly reason may and doth oftentimes correct sense even about its proper object Sense tells us that the Sun is no bigger than a good Ball but reason demonstrates that it is many times greater than the whole Globe of the earth As to his instance How can it be proved that to love a thing and to think it good is all one to a man that doth not make his own meaning by these words I confess it cannot be proved for it is not true Beauty and likeness and love do conciliate love as much as goodness cos amoris amor Love is a passion of the will but to judge of goodness is an act of the understanding A Father may love an ungracious Childe and yet not esteem him good A man loves his own house better than another mans yet he cannot but esteem many others better than his own His other instance How can it be proved that eternity is not nunc stans to a man that sayes these words by custom and never considers how he can conceive the thing it self in his minde is just like the former not to be proved by reason but by fancie which is the way he takes And it is not unlike the counsel which one gave to a Novice about the choise of his wise to advice with the Bels as he fancied so they founded either take her or leave her Then for his assumption it is as defective as his proposition That by these words spontaneity c. men do understand as he conceives No rational man doth conceive a spontaneous action and an indeliberate action to be all one every indeliberate action is not spontaneous The fire considers not whether it should burn yet the burning of it is not spontaneous Neither is every spontaneous action indeliberate a man may deliberate what he will eat and yet eat it spontaneously Neither doth deliberation properly signifie the considering of the good and evil sequels of an action to come But the considering whether this be a good and fit means or the best and fittest means for obtaining such an end The Physician doth not deliberate whether he should cure his Patient but by what means he should cure him Deliberation is of the means not of the end Much less doth any man conceive with T. H. that deliberation is an imagination or an act of fancy not of reason common to men of discretion with mad men and natural fools and children and bruit beasts Thirdly neither doth any understanding man conceive or can conceive either that the will is an act of our deliberation the understanding and the will are two distinct faculties or that onely the last appetite is to be called our will So no man should be able to say this is my will because he knows not whether he shall persevere in it or not Concerning the fourth point we agree that he is a free Agent that can do if he will and forbear if he will But I wonder how this dropped from his pen what is now become of his absolute necessity of all things If a man be free to do and to forbear any thing will he make himself guilty of the non-sence of the School-men and run with them into contradictions for company It may be he will say he can do if he will and forbear if he will but he cannot will if he will This will not serve his turn for if the cause of a free action that is the will to be determined then the effect or the action it self is likewise determined a determined cause cannot produce an undetermined effect either the Agent can will and forbear to will or else he cannot do and forbear to do But we differ wholy about the fifth point He who conceives liberty aright conceives both a liberty in the subject to will or not to will and a liberty to the object to will this or that and a liberty from impediments T. H. by a new way of his own cuts off the liberty of the subject as if a stone was free to ascend or descend because it hath no outward impediment And the liberty towards the object as if the Needle touched with the Load-stone were free to point either towards the North or towards the South because there is not a Barrecado in its way to hinder it yea he cuts off the liberty from inward impediments also As if an Hawk were at liberty to fly when her wings are plucked but not when they are tied And so he makes liberty from extrinsecal impediments to be compleat liberty so he ascribes liberty to bruit beasts and liberty to Rivers and by consequence makes Beasts and Rivers to be capeable of sin and punishment Assuredly Xerxes who caused the Hellespont to be beaten with so many stripes was of this opinion Lastly T. H. his reason that it is custom or want of ability or negligence which makes a man conceive otherwise is but a begging of that which he should prove Other men consider as seriously as himself with as much judgement as himself with less prejudice than himself and yet they can apprehend no such sense of these words would he have other men feign that they see fiery Dragons in the Air because he affirms confidently that he sees them and wonders why others are so blinde as not to see them The reason for the sixth point is like the former a phantastical or imaginative reason How can a man imagine any thing to begin without a cause or if it should begin without a cause why it should begin at this time rather than at that time He saith truely nothing can begin without a cause that is to be but it may begin to act of it self without any other cause Nothing can begin without a cause but many things may begin and do begin without necessary causes A free cause may as wel choose his time when he will begin as a necessary cause be determined extrinsically when it must begin And although free effects cannot be foretold because they are not certainly predetermined in their causes yet when the free causes do determine themselves they are of as great certainty as the other As when I see a Bell ringing I can conceive the cause of it as well why it rings now as I know the
interposition of the earth to be the cause of the Eclipse of the Moon Or the most certain occurrent in the nature of things And now that I have answered T. H. his Arguments drawn from the private conceptions of men concerning the sense of words I desire him seriously without prejudice to examine himself and those natural notions which he findes in himself not of words but of things these are from nature those are by imposition whether he doth not finde by experience that he doth many things which he might have left undone if he would and omits many things which he might have done if he would whether he doth not somethings out of meer animosity and will without either regard to the direction of right reason or serious respect of what is honest or profitable onely to shew that he will have a dominion over his own actions as we see ordinarily in Children and wise men finde at some times in themselves by experience And I apprehend this very defence of necessity against liberty to be partly of that kinde Whether he is not angry with those who draw him from his study or cross him in his desires if they be necessitated to do it why should he be angry with them any more than he is angry with a sharp winter or a rainy day that keeps him at home against his antecedent will whether he doth not sometime blame himself and say O what a fool was I to do thus and thus or wish to himself O that I had been wise or O that I had not done such an act If he have no dominion over his actions if he be irresistibly necessitated to all things what he doth he might as well wish O that I had not breathed or blame himself for growing old O what a fool was I to grow old Numb 34. T. H. FOr the seventh point that all events have necessary causes it is there proved in that they have sufficient causes Further Let us in this place also suppose any event never so casuall as for example the throwing Ambs-ace upon a paire of Dice and see if it must not have been necessary before it was thrown for seeing it was thrown it had a beginning and consequently a sufficient cause to produce it consisting partly in the Dice partly in the outward things as the posture of the parties hand the measure of force applied by the caster The posture of the parts of the Table and the like In summe there was nothing wanting that was necessarily requisite to the producing of that particular cast and consequently that cast was necessarily thrown For if it had not been thrown there had wanted somewhat requisite to the throwing of it and so the cause had not been sufficient In the like manner it may be proved that every other accident how contingent soever it seeme or how voluntary soever it be is produced necessarily which is that J. D. disputes against The same also may be proved in this manner Let the case be put for example of the weather T is necessary that to morrow it shall rain or not rain If therefore it be not necessary it shall rain it is necessary it shall not rain Otherwise it is not necessary that the proposition It shall rain or it shall not rain should be true I know there are some that say it may necessarily be true that one of the two shall come to pass but not singly that it shall rain or it shall not rain Which is as much as to say One of them is necessary yet neither of them is necessary And therefore to seeme to avoid that absurdity they make a distinction that neither of them is true determinatè but indeterminatè Which distinction either signifies no more than this One of them is true but we know not which and so the necessity remains though we know it not Or if the meaning of the distinction be not that it has no meaning And they might as well have said One of them is true Tytyrice but neither of them Tupatulice J. D. HIs former proof that all sufficient causes are necessary causes is answered before Numb 31. And his two instances of casting Ambs-ace raining to morrow are altogether impertinent to the question now agitated between us for two reasons First our present controversie is concerning free actions which proceed from the liberty of mans will both his instances are of contingent actions which proceed from the indetermination or contingent concurrence of natural causes First that there are free actions which proceed meerly from election without any outward necessitation is a truth so evident as that there is a Sun in the Heavens and he that doubteth of it may as well doubt whether there be a shell without the Nut or a stone within the Olive A man proportions his time each day and allots so much to his Devotions so much to his Study so much to his Diet so much to his Recreations so much to necessary or civil visits so much to his rest he who will seek for I know not what causes of all this without himself except that good God who hath given him a reasonable Soul may as well seek for a cause of the Egyptian Pyramides among the Crocodiles of Nilus Secondly for mixt actions which proceed from the concurrence of free and natural Agents though they be not free yet they are not necessary as to keep my former instance a man walking through a street of a Citie to do his occasions a Tile falls from an House and breaks his head the breaking of his head was not necessary for he did freely choose to go that way without any necessitation neither was it free for he did not deliberate of that accident therefore it was contingent and by undoubted consequence there are contingent actions in the World which are not free Most certainly by the concurrence of free causes as God the good and bad Angels and men with natural Agents sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident many events happen which otherwise had never hapned many effects are produced which otherwise had never been produced And admitting such things to be contingent not necessary all their consequent effects not onely immediate but mediate must likewise be contingent that is to say such as do not proceed from a continued connexion and succession of necessary causes which is directly contrary to T. H. his opinion Thirdly for the actions of bruit beasts though they be not free though they have not the use of reason to restrain their appetites from that which is sensitively good by the consideration of what is rationaly good or what is honest and though their fancies be determined by nature to some kindes of work yet to think that every individual action of theirs and each animal motion of theirs even to the least murmure or gesture is bound by the chain of unalterable necessity to the extrinsecal causes or objects I see no ground for it Christ saith one
plainly acknowledged by T. H. Numb 11. That fore-knowledge is knowledge and knowledge depends on the existence of the things known and not they on it To conclude the prescience of God doth not make things more necessary than the production of the things themselves But if the Agents were free Agents the production of the things doth not make the events to be absolutely necessary but onely upon supposition that the causes were so determined Gods prescience prooveth a necessity of infallibility but not of antecedent extrinsecall determination to one If any event should not come to pass God did never foreknow that it would come to pass For every knowledge necessarily presupposeth its object Numb 37. T. H. THis is all thath hath come into my mind touching this question since I last considered it And I humbly beseech your Lordship to communicate it onely to J. D. And so praying God to prosper your Lordship in all your designes I take leave and am my most Noble and obliging Lord Your most humble servant T. H. J. D. HE is very carefull to have this discourse kept secret as appeares in this Section and in the 14. and 15. Sections If his answer had been kept private I had saved the labour of a Reply But hearing that it was communicated I thought my self obliged to vindicate both the truth and my self I do not blame him to be cautious for in truth this assertion is of desperate consequence and destructive to piety policy and morality If he had desired to have kept it secret the way had been to have kept it secret himself It will not suffice to say as Numb 14. that Truth is Truth This the common plea of all men Neither is it sufficient for him to say as Numb 15. That it was desired by me long before that he had discovered his opinion by word of mouth And my desire was to let some of my noble friends see the weakness of his grounds and the pernicious consequences of that opinion But if he think that this ventilation of the question between us two may do hurt truly I hope not The edge of his discourse is so abated that it cannot easily hurt any rationall man who is not too much possessed with prejudice Numb 38. T. H. POstscript Arguments seldom work on men of wit and learning when they have once ingaged themselves in a contrary opinion If any thing do it it is the shewing of them the causes of their errours which is this Pious men attribute to God Almighty for honour sake whatsoever they see is honourable in the world as seeing hearing willing knowing Justice Wisedom c. But deny him such poor things as eyes ears brains and other organs without which we wormes neither have nor can conceive such faculties to be and so far they do well But when they dispute of Gods actions Philosophically then they consider them again as if he had such faculties and in that manner as we have them this is not well and thence it is they fall into so many difficulties We ought not to dispute of Gods Nature he is no fit subject of our Philosophy True Religion consisteth in obedience to Christ's Lieutenants and in giving God such honour both in attributes and actions as they in their severall Lieutenancies shall ordain J. D. THough Sophisticall captions do seldom work on men of wit and learning because by constant use they have their senses exercised to discern both good and evill Heb. 5.14 Yet solide and substantiall reasons work sooner upon them than upon weaker judgments The more exact the balance is the sooner it discovers the reall weight that is put into it Especially if the proofs be proposed without passion or opposition Let Sophisters and seditious Oratours apply themselves to the many headed multitude because they despaire of success with men of wit and learning Those whose gold is true are not afraid to have it tryed by the touch Since the former way hath not succeeded T. H. hath another to shew as the causes of our errours which he hopes will proove more succesfull When he sees he can do no good by sight he seeks to circumvent us under colour of curtesy Fistula dulce canit volucrem dum decipit auceps As they who behold themselves in a glass take the right hand for the left and the left for the right T. H. knowes the comparison so we take our own errours to be truths and other mens truths to be errours If we be in an errour in this it is such an errour as we sucked from nature it self such an errour as is confirmed in us by reason and experience such an errour as God himself in his sacred Word hath revealed such an errour as the Fathers and Doctors of the Church of all ages have delivered Such an errour wherein we have the concurrence of all the best Philosophers both Natural and Moral such an errour as bringeth to God the glory of Justice and Wisedom Goodness and Truth such an errour as renders men more devout more pious more industrious more humble more penitent for their sins Would he have us resign up all these advantages to dance blindfold after his pipe No he persuades us too much to our loss But let us see what is the imaginary cause of an imaginary errour Forsooth because we attribute to God whatsoever is honourable in the world as seeing hearing willing knowing Justice Wisedom but deny him such poor things as eyes ears brains and so far he saith we do well He hath reason for since we are not able to conceive of God as he is the readiest way we have is by remooving all that imperfection from God which is in the creatures So we call him Infinite Immortall Independent Or by attribubuting to him all those perfections which are in the creatures after a most eminent manner so we call him Best Greatest most Wise most Just most Holy But saith he When they dispute of Gods actions Philosophically then they consider them again as if he had such faculties and in the manner as we have them And is this the cause of our errour That were strange indeed for they who dispute Philosophically of God do neither ascribe faculties to to him in that manner that we have them Nor yet do they attribute any proper faculties at all to God Gods Understanding and his Will is his very Essence which for the eminency of its infinite perfection doth perform all those things alone in a most transcendent manner which reasonable creatures do perform imperfectly by distinct faculties Thus to dispute of God with modesty and reverence and to clear the Deity from the imputation of tyranny in justice and dissimulation which none do throw upon God with more presumption than those who are the Patrons of absolute necessity is both comely and Christian It is not the desire to discover the originall of a supposed errour which drawes them ordinarily into these exclamations against those who dispute of the Deity For some of themselves dare anatomise God and publish his Eternall Decrees with as much confidence as if they had been all their lives of his cabinet councell But it is for fear lest those pernicious consequences which flow from that doctrine essentially and reflect in so high a degree upon the supreme goodness should be laid open to the view of the world Just as the Turks do first establish a false religion of their own devising and then forbid all men upon pain of death to dispute upon religion Or as the Priests of Molech the Abhomination of the Ammonites did make a noise with their timbrells all the while the poor Infants were passing through the fire in Tophet to keep their pitifull cries from the eares of their Parents So they make a noise with their declamations against those who dare dispute of the nature of God that is who dare set forth his Justice and his goodness and his truth and his Philanthropy onely to deaf the ears and dim the eyes of the Christian world least they should hear the lamentable ejulations and howlings or see that ruefull spectacle of millions of souls tormented for evermore in the flames of the true Tophet that is Hell onely for that which according to T. H. his doctrine was never in their power to shun but which they were ordered and inevitably necessitated to do Onely to express the omnipotence and dominion and to satisfie the pleasure of him who is in truth the Father of all mercies and the God of all consolation This is life eternall saith our Saviour to know the onely true God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent Joh. 17.3 Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to visite the fatherless and widowes in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world saith St. James Jam. 1.27 Fear God and keep his Commandements for this is the whole duty of man saith Salomon Eccles 12.13 But T. H. hath found out a more compendious way to heaven True Religion saith he consisteth in obedience to Christs Lieutenants and giving God such honour both in attributes and actions as they in their severall Lieutenances shall ordain That is to say be of the Religion of every Christian Country where you come To make the Civill Magistrate to be Christs Lieutenant upon earth for matters of Religion And to make him to be Supreme Judge in all controversies whom all must obey is a doctrine so strange and such an uncouth phrase to Christian eares that I should have missed his meaning but that I consulted with his Book De Cive c. 15. Sect. 16. and c. 17. Sect. 28. What if the Magistrate shall be no Christian himself What if he shall command contrary to the Law of God or Nature Must we obey him rather than God Act. 14.19 Is the Civill Magistrate become now the onely ground and pillar of Truth I demand then why T. H. is of a different mind from his soveraign and from the Lawes of the Land concerning the attributes of God and his Decrees This is a new Paradox and concerns not this question of liberty and necessity Wherefore I forbear to prosecute it further and so conclude my reply with the words of the Christian Poet Caesaris jussum est ore Galieni Princeps quod colit ut colemus omnes Aeternum colemus Principem dierum Factorem Dominumque Galieni FINIS
as for a man to consult and ponder with himself whether he should draw in his Breath or whether he should increase in stature Secondly to resolve implies a mans dominion over his own actions and his actuall determination of himself but he who holds an absolute necessity of all things hath quitted this dominion over himself and which is worse hath quitted it to the second extrinsecal causes in which he makes all his actions to be determined one may as well call again Yesterday as resolve or newly determine that which is determined to his hand already I have perused this treatise weighed T. H. his answers considered his reasons and conclude that he hath missed and misled the question that the answers are evasions that his Arguments are parologisms that the opinion of absolute and universall necessity is but a result of some groundless and ill chosen principles and that the defect is not in himself but that his cause will admit no better defence and therefore by his favour I am resolved to adhere to my first opinion perhaps another man reading this discourse with other eyes judgeth it to be pertinent and well founded How comes this to pass the treatise is the same the exteriour causes are the same yet the resolution is contrary Do the second causes play fast and loose do they necessitate me to condemn and necessitate him to maintain what is it then the difference must be in our selves either in our intellectuals because the one sees clearer then the other or in our affections which betray our understandings and produce an implicite adhaerence in the one more than in the other Howsoever it be the difference is in our selves The outward causes alone do not chain me to the one resolution nor him to the other resolution But T. H. may say that our severall and respective deliberations and affections are in part the causes of our contrary resolutions and do concur with the outward causes to make up one totall and adaequate cause to the necessary production of this effect If it be so he hath spun a fair thred to make all this stir for such a necessity as no man ever denied or doubted of when all the causes have actually determined themselves then the effect is in being for though there be a priority in nature between the cause and the effect yet they are together in time And the old rule is whatsoever is when it is is necessarily so as it is This is no absolute necessity but onely upon supposition that a man hath determined his own liberty When we question whether all occurrences be necessary we do not question whether they be necessary when they are nor whether they be necessary in sensu composito after we have resolved and finally determined what to do but whether they were necessary before they were determined by our selves by or in the praecedent causes before our selves or in the exteriour causes without ourselves It is not inconsistent with true liberty to determine it self but it is inconsistent with true liberty to be determined by another without it self T. H. saith further that upon your Lordships desire and mine he was contented to begin with this discourse of liberty and necessity that is to change his former resolution If the chain of necessity be no stronger but that it may be snapped so easily in sunder if his will was no otherwise determined from without himself but onely by the signification of your Lordships desire and my modest intreaty then we may safely conclude that humane affairs are not alwaies governed by absolute necessity that a man is Lord of his own actions if not in chief yet in mean subordinate to the Lord Paramount of Heaven and Earth and that all things are not so absolutely determined in the outward and precedent causes but that fair intreaties and morall perswasions may work upon a good nature so far as to prevent that which otherwise had been and to produce that which otherwise had not been He that can reconcile this with an Antecedent Necessity of all things and a Physicall or naturall determination of all causes shall be great Apollo to me Whereas T. H. saith that he had never uttered his opinion of this question I suppose he intends in writing my conversation with him hath not been frequent yet I remember well that when this question was agitated between us two in your Lordships Chamber by your command he did then declare himself in words both for the absolute necessity of all events and for the ground of this necessity the Flux or concatenation of the second causes Numb 2. T. H. ANd first I assure your Lordship I find in it no new Argument neither from Scripture nor from reason that I have not often heard before which is as much as to say that I am not surprised J. D. THough I be so unhappy that I can present no novelty to T. H. yet I have this comfort that if he be not surprised then in reason I may expect a more mature answer from him and where he failes I may ascribe it to the weakness of his cause not to want of preparation But in this case I like Epictetus his Counsell well that the Sheep should not brag how much they have eaten or what an excellent pasture they do go in but shew it in their Lamb and VVool. Apposite answers and down right Arguments advantage a cause To tell what we have heard or seen is to no purpose when a respondent leaves many things untouched as if they were too hot for his Fingers and declines the weight of other things and alters the true state of the question it is a shrewd sign either that he hath not weighed all things maturely or else that he maintains a desperate cause Numb 3. T. H. THe Praeface is an handsome one but it appears even in that that he hath mistaken the question for whereas he saies thus If I be free to write this discourse I have obteined the cause I deny that to be true for 't is not enough to his freedom of writing that he had not written it unless he would himself if he will obtein the cause he must prove that before he writ it it was not necessary he should write it afterward It may be he thinks it all one to say I was free to write it and it was not necessary I should write it But I think otherwise for he is free to do a thing that may do it if he have the will to do it and may forbear if he have the will to forbear And yet if there be a necessity that he shall have the will to do it the action is necessarily to follow And if there be a necessity that he shall have the will to forbear the forbearing also will be necessary The question therefore is not whether a man be a free agent that is to say whether he can write or forbear speak or be silent according to his
will but whether the will to write and the will to forbear come upon him according to his will or according to any thing else in his own power I acknowledge this liberty that I can do if I will but to say I can will if I will I take it to be an absurd speech Wherefore I cannot grant him the cause upon this Preface J. D. TAcitus speaks of a close kind of adversaries which evermore begin with a mans praise The Crisis or the Catastrophe of their discourse is when they come to their but As he is a good natured man but he hath a naughty quality or he is a wise man but he hath committed one of the greatest follies So here the Praeface is an handsome one but it appears even in this that he hath mistaken the question This is to give an Inch that one may take away an Ell without suspicion to praise the handsomness of the Porch that he may gain credit to the vilifying of the House Whether of us hath mistaken the question I refer to the judicious Reader Thus much I will maintain that that is no true necessity which he calls necessity nor that liberty which he calls liberty nor that the question which he makes the question First for liberty that which he calls liberty is no true liberty For the clearing whereof it behooveth us to know the difference between these three Necessity Spontaneity and Liberty Necessity and Spontaneity may sometimes meet together so may spontaneity and liberty but reall necessity and true liberty can never meet together somethings are necessary and not voluntary or spontaneous somethings are both necessary and voluntary somethings are voluntary and not free somethings are both voluntary free But those things which are truly necessary can never be free and those things which are truly free can never be necessary Necessity consists in an Antecedent determination to one Spontaneity consists in a conformity of the Appetite either intellectual or sensitive to the object True liberty consists in the elective power of the rational will That which is determined without my concurrence may nevertheless agree well enough with my fancy or desires and obtein my subsequent consent But that which is determined without my concurrence or consent cannot be the object of mine election I may like that which is inevitably imposed upon me by another but if it be inevitably imposed upon me by extrinsecall causes it is both folly for me to deliberate and impossible for me to choose whether I shall undergo it or not Reason is the root the fountain the originall of true liberty which judgeth and representeth to the will whether this or that be convenient whether this or that be more convenient Judge then what a pretty kind of liberty it is which is maintained by T. H. such a liberty as is in little Children before they have the use of reason before they can consult or deliberate of any thing Is not this a Childish liberty and such a liberty as is in brute Beasts as Bees and Spiders which do not learn their faculties as we do our trades by experience and consideration This is a brutish liberty such a liberty as a Bird hath to flie when her wings are clipped or to use his own comparison such a liberty as a lame man who hath lost the use of his lims hath to walk Is not this a ridiculous liberty Lastly which is worse then all these such a liberty as a River hath to descend down the Channell what will he ascribe liberty to inanimate Creatures also which have neither reason nor spontaneity nor so much as sensitive appetite Such is T. H. his liberty His necessity is just such another a necessity upon supposition arising from the concourse of all the causes including the last dictate of the understanding in reasonable creatures The adaequate cause and the effect are together in time and when all the concurrent causes are determined the effect is determined also and is become so necessary that it is actually in being But there is a great difference between determining and being determined if all the collaterall causes concurring to the production of an effect were antecedently determined what they must of necessity produce and when they must produce it then there is no doubt but the effect is necessary But if these causes did operate freely or contingently if they might have suspended or denied their concurrence or have concurred after another manner then the effect was not truly and Antecedently necessary but either free or contingent This will be yet clearer by considering his own instance of casting Ambs-Ace though it partake more of contingency then of freedom Supposing the positure of the parties hand who did throw the Dice supposing the figure of the Table and of the Dice themselves supposing the measure of force applied and supposing all other things which did concur to the production of that cast to be the very same they were there is no doubt but in this case the cast is necessary But still this is but a necessity of supposition for if all these concurrent causes or some of them were contingent or free then the cast was not absolutely necessary To begin with the Caster He might have denied his concurrence and not have cast at all He might have suspended his concurrence and not have cast so soon He might have doubled or diminished his force in casting if it had pleased him He might have thrown the dice into the other table In all these cases what becomes of his ambs-ace The like uncertainties offer themselves for the maker of the tables and for the maker of the dice and for the keeper of the tables and for the kind of wood and I know not how many other circumstances In such a mass of contingencies it is impossible that the effect should be antecedently necessary T. H. appeales to every mans experience I am contented Let every one reflect upon himself and he shall find no convincing much less constreining reason to necessitate him to any one of these particular acts more than another but onely his own will or arbitrary determination So T. H. his necessity is no absolute no antecedent extrinsecall necessity but meerly a necessity upon supposition Thirdly that which T. H. makes the question is not the question The question is not saith he Whether a man may write if he will and forbear if he will but whether the will to write or the will to forbear come upon him according to his will or according to any thing els in his own power Here is a distinction without a difference If his will do not come upon him according to his will then he is not a free nor yet so much as a voluntary agent which is T. H. his liberty Certainly all the freedom of the agent is from the freedom of the will If the will have no power over it self the agent is no more free than a staff in a mans
right object respectively God and good Angels have a power to do or not to do this or that good bad Angels have a power to do or not to do this or that evill so both joyntly considered have power respectively to do good or evill And yet according to the words of my discourse God and good and bad Angels being singly considered have no power to do good or evill that is indifferently as man hath Numb 5. J. D. THus the coast being cleared the next thing to be done is to draw out our forces against the enemy And because they are divided into two Squadrons the one of Christians the other of Heathen Philosophers it will be best to dispose ours also into two Bodies the former drawn from Scripture the latter from Reason T. H. THe next thing he doth after the clearing of the coast is the dividing of his forces as he calls them into two Squadrons one of places of Scripture the other of reasons which Allegory he useth I suppose because he adresseth the discourse to your Lordship who is a Military Man All that I have to say touching this is that I observe a great part of those his forces do look and march another way and some of them do fight among themselves J. D. IF T. H. could divide my forces and commit them together among themselves it were his onely way to conquer them But he will find that those imaginary contradictions which he thinks he hath espied in my discourse are but fancies And my supposed impertinencies will prove his own reall mistakings Numb 6. J. D. Proofs of liberty out of Scripture FIrst whosoever have power of election have true liberty for the proper act of liberty is election A Spontaneity may consist with determination to one as we see in Children Fools mad Men bruit Beasts whose fancies are determined to those things which they act spontaneously as the Bees makes Hony the Spiders Webs But none of these have a liberty of election which is an act of judgement and understanding and cannot possibly consist with a determination to one He that is determined by something before himself or without himself cannot be said to choose or elect unless it be as the Junior of the Mess chooseth in Cambridge whether he will have the least Paul or nothing And scarcely so much But men have liberty of election This is plain Numb 30.14 If a Wife make a vow it s left to her Husbands choice either to establish it or to make it void And Josh 24.15 Choose you this day whom ye will serve c. But I and my house will serve the Lord. He makes his own choice and leaves them to the liberty of of their election And 2 Sam. 24.12 I offer thee three things choose thee which of them I shall do If one of these three things was necessarily determined and the other two impossible how was it left to him to choose what should be done Therefore we have true liberty T. H. ANd the first place of Scripture taken from Numb 30.14 is one of them that look another way The words are If a Wife make a vow it is left to her Husbands choice either to establish it or make it void for it poooves no more but that the Husband is a free or voluntary Agent but not that his choice therein is not necessitated or not determined to what he shall choose by praecedent necessary causes J. D. argument 1 MY first Argument from Scripture is thus formed Whosoever have a liberty or power of election are not determined to one by praecedent necessary causes But Men have liberty of election The assumtion or minor proposition is prooved by three places of Scripture Numb 30.14 Josh 24.15 2 Sam. 24 12. I need not insist upon these because T. H. acknowledgeth that it is clearly prooved that there is election in Man But he denieth the major Proposition because saith he man is necessitated or determined to what he shall choose by praecedent necessary causes I take away this answer three wayes First by reason election is evermore either of things possible or at least of things conceived to be possible That is efficacious election when a man hopeth or thinketh of obteining the object Whatsoever the will chooseth it chooseth under the notion of good either honest or delightfull or profitable but there can be no reall goodness apprehended in that which is known to be impossible It is true there may be some wandring perdulous wishes of known impossibilities as a man also hath committed an offence may wish he had not committed it But to choose effiaciously and impossibly is as impossible as an impossibility it self No man can think to obtein that which he knows impossible to be obteined But he who knows that all things are antecedently determined by necessary causes knows that it is impossible for any thing to be otherwise then it is Therefore to ascribe unto him a power of election to choose this or that indifferently is to make the same thing to be determined to one and to be not determined to one which are contradictories Again whosoever hath an elective power or a liberty to choose hath also a liberty or power to refuse Isa 7.10 Before the Child shall know to refuse the evill and choose the good He who chooseth this rather then that refuseth that rather then this As Moses choosing to suffer affliction with the people of God did thereby refuse the pleasures of sin Heb. 11.24 But no man hath any power to refuse that which is necessarily praedetermined to be unless it be as the Fox refused the Grapes which were beyond his reach When one thing of two or three is absolutely determined the other are made thereby simply impossible Secondly I proove it by instances and by that universal notion which the world hath of election what is the difference between an elective and hereditary Kingdom but that in an elective Kingdom they have power or liberty to choose this or that Man indifferently But in an haereditary Kingdom they have no such power nor liberty Where the Law makes a certain Heir there is a necessitation to one where the Law doth not name a certain Heir there is no necessitation to one and there they have power or liberty to choose An haereditary Prince may be as gratefull and acceptable to his subjects and as willingly received by them according to that liberty which is opposed to compulsion or violence as he who is chosen yet he is not therefore an elective Prince In Germany all the Nobility and Commons may assent to the choise of the Emperour or be well pleased with it when it is concluded yet none of them elect or choose the Emperour but onely those six Princes who have a consultative deliberative and determinative power in his Election And if their votes or suffrages be equally divided three to three then the King of Bohemia hath the casting voice So likewise in Corporations
or Common-wealths sometimes the people sometimes the Common Councell have power to name so many persons for such an office and the Supreme Magistrate or Senate or lesser Councell respectively to choose one of those And all this is done with that caution and secrecy by billetts or other means that no man knowes which way any man gave his vote or with whom to be offended If it were necessarily and inevitably predetermined that this individuall person and no other shall and must be chosen what needed all this circuit and caution to do that which is not possible to be done otherwise which one may do as well as a thousand and for doing of which no rationall man can be offended if the Electors were necessarily predetermined to elect this man and no other And though T. H. was pleased to passe by my University instance yet I may not untill I see what he is able to say unto it The Junior of the Mess in Cambridge divides the meat into foure parts The Senior chooseth first then the second and third in their order The Junior is determined to one and hath no choise left unless it be to choose whether he will take that part which the rest have refused or none at all It may be this part is more agreable to his mind than any of the others would have been but for all that he cannot be said to choose it because he is determined to this one Even such a liberty of election is that which is established by T. H. Or rather much worse in two respects The Junior hath yet a liberty of contradiction left to choose whether he will take that part or not take any part but he who is precisely predetermined to the choise of this object hath no liberty to refuse it Secondly the Junior by dividing carefully may preserve to himself an equall share but he who is wholly determined by extrinsecall causes is left altogether to the mercy and disposition of another Thirdly I proove it by the texts alledged Numb 30.13 If a wife make a vow it is left to her husbands choise either to establish it or make it void But if it be predetermined that he shall establish it it is not in his power to make it void If it be predetermined that he shall make it void it is not in his power to establish it And howsoever it be determined yet being determined it is not in his power indifferently either to establish it or to make it void at his pleasure So Joshua 24.15 Choose you this day whom ye will serve But I and my house will serve the Lord. It is too late to choose that this day which was determined otherwise yesterday whom ye will serve whether the gods whom your fathers served or the gods of the Amorites Where there is an election of this or that these gods or those gods there must needs be either an indifferency to both objects or at least a possibility of either I and my house will serve the Lord. If he were extrinsecally predetermined he should not say I will serve but I must serve And 2 Sam. 24.12 I offer thee three things choose thee which of them I shall do How doth God offer three things to Davids choise if he had predetermined him to one of the three by a concourse of necessary extrinsecall causes If a soveraign Prince should descend so far as to offer a delinquent his choice whether he would be fined or imprisoned or banished and had under hand signed the sentence of his banishment what were it els but plain drollery or mockery This is the argument which in T. H. his opinion looks another way If it do it is as the Parthians used to fight flying His reason followes next to be considered Numb 7. T. H. FOr if there come into the husbands mind greater good by establishing than abrogating such a vow the establishing will follow necessarily And if the evill that will follow thereon in the husbands opinion outweigh the good the contrary must needs follow And yet in this following of ones hopes and feares consisteth the nature of election So that a man may both choose this and cannot but choose this And consequently choosing and necessity are joyned together J. D. THere is nothing said with more shew of reason in this cause by the patrons of necessity and adversaries of true liberty than this That the will doth perpetually and infallibly follow the last dictate of the understanding or the last judgment of right reason And in this and this onely I confess T. H. hath good seconds Yet the common and approved opinion is contrary And justly For First this very act of the understanding is an effect of the will and a testimony of its power and liberty It is the will which affecting some particular good doth ingage and command the understanding to consult and deliberate what means are convenient for atteining that end And though the will it self be blind yet its object is good in generall which is the end of all human actions Therefore it belongs to the will as to the Generall of an Army to moove the other powers of the soul to their acts and among the rest the understanding also by applying it and reducing its power into act So as whatsoever obligation the understanding doth put upon the will is by the consent of the will and derived from the power of the will which was not necessitated to moove the understanding to consult So the will is the Lady and Mistris of human actions the understanding is her trusty counseller which gives no advise but when it is required by the will And if the first consultation or deliberation be not sufficient the will may moove a review and require the understanding to inform it self better and take advise of others from whence many times the judgment of the understanding doth receive alteration Secondly for the manner how the understanding doth determine the will it is not naturally but morally The will is mooved by the understanding not as by an efficient having a causall influence into the effect but only by proposing and representing the object And therefore as it were ridiculous to say that the object of the sight is the cause of seeing so it is to say that the proposing of the object by the understanding to the will is the cause of willing and therefore the understanding hath no place in that concourse of causes which according to T. H. do necessitate the will Thirdly the judgment of the understanding is not alwayes practicè practicum nor of such a nature in it self as to oblige and determine the will to one Sometimes the understanding proposeth two or three means equally available to the altering of one and the same end Sometimes it dictateth that this or that particular good is eligible or fit to be chosen but not that it is necessarily eligible or that it must be chosen It may judge this or that to
be a fit means but not the onely meanes to atteine the desired end In these cases no man can doubt but that the will may choose or not choose this or that indifferently Yea though the understanding shall judge one of these means to be more expedient than another yet for as much as in the less expedient there is found the reason of good the will in respect of that dominion which it hath over it self may accept that which the understanding judgeth to be less expedient and refuse that which it judgeth to be more expedient Fourthly sometimes the will doth not will the end so efficaciously but that it may be and often is deterred from the prosecution of it by the difficulty of the means and notwithstanding the judgment of the understanding the will may still suspend its own act Fiftly supposing but not granting that the will did necessarily follow the last dictate of the understanding yet this prooves no antecedent necessity but coexistent with the act no extrinsecall necessity the will and understanding being but two faculties of the same soul no absolute necessity but meerly upon supposition And therefore the same Authors who maintain that the judgment of the understanding doth necessarily determine the will do yet much more earnestly oppugne T. H. his absolute necessity of all occurrences Suppose the will shall apply the understanding to deliberate and not require a review Suppose the dictate of the understanding shall be absolute not this or that indifferently nor this rather than that comparatively but this positively not this freely but this necessarily And suppose the will do well efficaciously and do not suspend its own act Then here is a necessity indeed but neither absolute nor extrinsecall nor antecedent flowing from a concourse of causes without our selves but a necessity upon supposition which we do readily grant So far T. H. is wide from the truth whilest he mainteines either that the apprehension of a greater good doth necessitate the will or that this is an absolute necessity Lastly whereas he saith that the nature of election doth consist in following our hopes and feares I cannot but observe that there is not one word of Art in this whole Treatise which he useth in the right sense I hope it doth not proceed out of an affectation of singularity nor out of a contempt of former Writers nor out of a desire to take in sunder the whole frame of Learning and new mould it after his own mind It were to be wished that at least he would give us a new Dictionary that we might understand his sense But because this is but touched here sparingly and upon the by I will forbear it untill I meet with it again in its proper place And for the present it shall suffice to say that hopes and feares are common to brute beasts but election is a rationall act and is proper only to man who is Sanctius his animal mentisque capacius altae T. H. THE second place of Scripture is Josh 24.15 The third is 2 Sam. 24.12 whereby t is cleerely prooved that there is election in man but not prooved that such election was not necessitated by the hopes and feares and considerations of good and bad to follow which depend not on the will nor are subject to election And therefore one answer serves all such places if they were a thousand J. D. THis answer being the very same with the former word for word which hath already been sufficiently shaken in pieces doth require no new reply Numb 8. T. H. SUpposing it seemes I might answer as I have done that necessity and election might stand together and instance in the actions of Children fools and brute beasts whose fancies I might say are necessitated and determined to one before these his proofs out of Scripture he desires to prevent that instance and therefore sayes that the actions of children fools mad-men and beasts are indeed determined but that they proceed not from election nor from free but from spontaneous Agents As for example that the Bee when it maketh honey does it spontaneously And when the Spider makes his webb he does it spontaneously and not by election Though I never meant to ground any answer upon the experience of what Children foools mad-men and beasts do yet that your Lordship may understand what can be meant by spontaneous and how it differs from voluntary I will answer that distinction and shew that it fighteth against its fellow Arguments Your Lordship is therefore to consider that all voluntary actions where the thing that induceth the will is not fear are called also spontaneous and said to be done by a mans own accord As when a man giveth money voluntarily to another for merchandise or out of affection he is said to do it of his own accord which in Latin is Sponte and therefore the action is spontaneous Though to give ones money willingly to a thief to avoid killing or throw it into the Sea to avoid drowning where the motive is fear be not called spontaneous But every spontaneous action is not therfore voluntary for voluntary presupposes some precedent deliberation that is to say some consideration and meditation of what is likely to follow both upon the doing and abstaining from the action deliberated of whereas many actions are done of our own accord and be therefore spontaneous of which nevertheless as he thinks we never consulted nor deliberated of in our selves as when making no question nor any the least doubt in the world but that the thing we are about is good we eat or walk or in anger strike or revile which he thinks spontaneous but not voluntary nor elective actions And with such kind of actions he sayes necessitation may stand but not from such as are voluntary and proceed upon election and deliberation Now if I make it appear to you that even these actions which he sayes proceed from spontaneity and which he ascribes only to fools Children mad-men and beasts proceed from deliberation and election and that actions inconsiderate rash and spontaneous are ordinarily found in those that are by themselves and many more thought as wise or wiser than ordinary men are Then his Argument concludeth that necessity and election may stand together which is contrary to that which he intendeth by all the rest of his Arguments to proove And first your Lordships own experience furnishes you with proof enough that horses doggs and other brute beasts do demurre oftentimes upon the way they are to take The horse retiring from some strange figure he sees and comming on again to avoid the spur And what els does man that deliberateth but one while proceed toward action another while retire from it as the hope of greater good drawes him or the fear of greater evill drives him A Child may be so young as to do all which it does without all deliberation but that is but till it chance to be hurt by doing somewhat or till it be
of age to understand the rod for the actions wherein he hath once a check shall be deliberated on the second time Fools and madmen manifestly deliberate no less then the wisest men though they make not so good a choise the images of things being by diseases altered For Bees and Spiders if be had so little to do as to be a spectator of their actions he would have confessed not onely Election but also Art Prudence and Policy in them very neer equall to that of mankind Of Bees Aristotle sayes their life is civill He is deceived if he think any spontaneous action after once being checked in it differs from an action voluntary and elective for even the setting of a mans foot in the posture of walking and the action of ordinary eating was once deliberated how and when it should be done And though it afterward become easy and habitual so as to be done without fore-thought yet that does not hinder but that the act is voluntary and proceeds from election So also are the rashest actions of cholerick persons voluntary and upon deliberation for who is there but very young Children that has not considered when and how far he ought or safely may strike or revile seeing then he agrees with me that such actions are necessitated and the fancy of those that do them is determined to the actions they do it follows out of his own doctrin that the liberty of election does not take away the necessity of electing this or that individuall thing And thus one of his Arguments fights against another J. D. WE have partly seen before how T. H. hath coined a new kind of liberty a new kind of necessity a new kind of election and now in this section a new kind of spontaneity and a new kind of voluntary actions Although he say that here is nothing new to him yet I begin to suspect that either here are many things new to him or otherwise his election is not the result of a serious mature deliberation The first thing that I offer is how often he mistakes my meaning in this one section first I make voluntary and spontaneous actions to be one and the same he saith I distinguish them so as spontaneous actions may be necessary but voluntary actions cannot Secondly I distinguish between free acts and voluntary acts The former are alwaies deliberate the latter may be indeliberate all free acts are voluntary but all voluntary acts are not free but he saith I confound them and make them the same Thirdly he saith I ascribe spontaneity onely to Fools Children Mad-Men and Beasts But I acknowledge spontaneity hath place in rationall men both as it is comprehended in liberty and as it is distinguished from liberty Yet I have no reason to be offended at it for he deals no otherwise with me then he doth with himself Here he tells us that voluntary praesupposeth deliberation But Numb 25. he tells us contrary that whatsoever followeth the last appetite is voluntary and where there is but one appetite that is the last And that no action of a man can be said to be without deliberation though never so suddain So Numb 33. he tells us that by spontaneity is meant inconsiderate proceeding or else nothing is meant by it yet here he tells us that all voluntary actions which proceed not from fear are spontaneous whereof many are deliberate as that wherein he instanceth himself to give mony for merchandise Thirdly when I said that Children before they have the use of reason act spontaneously as when they suck the Breast but do not act freely because they have not judgement to deliberate or elect Here T. H. undertakes to proove that they do deliberate and elect And yet presently after confesseth again that a Child may be so young as to do what it doth without all deliberation Besides these mistakes and contradictions he hath other errours also in this section As this that no actions proceeding from fear are spontaneous He who throws his goods into the Sea to avoid drowning doth it not onely spontaneously but even freely He that wills the end wills the means conducing to that end It is true that if the action be considered nakedly without all circumstances no man willingly or spontaneously casts his goods into the Sea But if we take the action as in this particular case invested with all the circumstances and in order to the end that is the saving of his own life it is not onely voluntary and spontaneous but elective and chosen by him as the most probable means for his own preservation As there is an Antecedent and a subsequent will so there is an Antecedent and a subsequent spontaneity His Grammaticall argument grounded upon the derivation of spontaneous from sponte weighs nothing we have learned in the rudiments of Logick that conjugates are sometimes in name onely and not indeed He who casts his goods in the Sea may do it of his own accord in order to the end Secondly he erres in this also that nothing is opposed to spontaneity but onely fear Invincible and Antecedent ignorance doth destroy the nature of spontaneity or voluntariness by removing that knowledge which should and would have prohibited the action As a man thinking to shoot a wild Beast in a Bush shoots his friend which if he had known he would not have shot This man did not kill his friend of his own accord For the clearer understanding of these things and to know what spontaneity is let us consult a while with the Schools about the distinct order of voluntary or involuntary actions Some acts proceed wholy from an extrinsecall cause as the throwing of a stone upwards a rape or the drawing of a Christian by plain force to the Idols Temple these are called violent acts Secondly some proceed from an intrinsecall cause but without any manner of knowledge of the end as the falling of a stone downwards these are called naturall acts Thirdly some proceed from an internall principle with an imperfect knowledge of the end where there is an appetite to the object but no deliberation nor election as the acts of Fools Children Beasts and the inconsiderate acts of men of judgement These are called voluntary or spontaneous acts Fourthly some proceed from an intrinsecal cause with a more perfect knowledge of the end which are elected upon deliberation These are called free acts So then the formall reason of liberty is election The necessary requisite to election is deliberation Deliberation implieth the actuall use of reason But deliberation and election cannot possibly subsist with an extrinsecall praedetermination to one How should a man deliberate or choose which way to go who knows that all wayes are shut against him and made impossible to him but onely one This is the genuine sense of these words voluntary and spontaneous in this question Though they were taken twenty other wayes vulgarly or metaphorically as we say spontaneous ulcers where there is no
which is good But hatred there signifies Comparative hatred or a less degree of love or at the most a negation of love As Gen. 29.31 When the Lord saw that Leah was hated we may not conclude thence that Jacob hated his Wife The precedent verse doth fully expound the sense ver 30. Jacob loved Rachel more then Leah So Mat. 6.24 No man can serve two Masters for either he will hate the one and love the other So Luke 14.26 If any Man hate not his Father and Mother c. he cannot be my Disciple St. Mathew tells us the sense of it Math. 10.37 He that loveth Father or Mother more then me is not worthy of me Secondly those words ver 15. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy do prove no more but this that the preferring of Jacob before Esau and of the Christians before the Jews was not a debt from God either to the one or to the other but a work of mercy And what of this All men confess that Gods mercies do exceed mans deserts but Gods punishments do never exceed mans misdeeds As we see in the Parable of the Labourers Matth. 20. Friend I do thee no wrong did not I agree with thee for a penny Is it not lawfull for me to do with mine own as I will Is thy eye evill because I am good Acts of Mercy are free but acts of Justice are due That which follows ver 17. comes something nearer the cause The Scripture saith unto Pharoah for this same purpose I have raised thee up that is I have made thee a King or I have preserved thee that I might shew my power in thee But this particle that doth not alwaies signifie the main end of an action but sometimes onely a consequent of it As Matth. 2.15 He departed into Egypt that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet out of Egypt have I called my Son without doubt Josephs aim or end of his journey was not to fulfill prophesies but to save the life of the Child Yet because the fulfilling of the prophecy was a consequent of Josephs journy he saith That it might be fulfilled So here I have raised thee up that I might shew my power Again though it should be granted that this particle that did denote the intention of God to destroy Pharaoh in the Red Sea yet it was not the Antecedent intention of God which evermore respects the good and benefit of the creature but Gods consequent intention upon the praevision of Pharaohs obstinacy that since he would not glorifie God in obeying his word he should glorifie God undergoing his judgements Hitherto we find no aeternal punishments nor no temporal punishment without just deserts It follows ver 18. whom he will he hardneth Indeed hardness of heart is the greatest judgement that Gods lays upon a sinner in this use worse then all the Plagues of Egypt But how doth God harden the heart not by a naturall influence of any evill act or habit into the will nor by inducing the will with perswasive motives to obstinacy and rebellion for God tempteth no man but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and intised Jam. 1.13 Then God is said to harden the heart three wayes First negatively and not positively not by imparting wickedness but by not imparting grace as the Sun descending to the tropick of Capricorne it is said with us to be the cause of Winter that is not by imparting cold but by not imparting heat It is an act of mercy in God to give his grace freely but to detein it is no act of injustice So the Apostle opposeth hardning to shewing of mercy To harden is as much as not to shew mercy Secondly God is said to harden the heart occasionally and not causally by doing good which incorrigible sinners make an occasion of growing worse and worse and doing evill as a Master by often correcting of an untoward Scholar doth accidentally and occasionally harden his heart and render him more obdurate insomuch as he growes even to despise the Rod. Or as an indulgent parent by his patience and gentleness doth incourage an obstinate son to become more rebellious So whether we look upon Gods frequent judgments upon Pharaoh or Gods iterated favours in removing and withdrawing those judgments upon Pharaohs request both of them in their severall kinds were occasions of hardning Pharaohs heart the one making him more presumptuous the other more desperately rebellious So that which was good in it was Gods that which was evill was Pharaohs God gave the occasion but Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration This is cleerly confirmed Gen. 8.15 When Pharaoh saw that there was respite he hardned his heart And Gen. 9.34 When Pharaoh saw that the Rain and the Hail and the Thunders were ceased he sinned yet more and hardned his heart he and his servants So Psal 105.25 He turned their hearts so that they hated his people and dealt subtilly with them That is God blessed the Children of Israel whereupon the Egyptians did take occasion to hate them as is plain Exod. 1. ver 7 8 9 10. So God hardened Pharaohs heart and Pharaoh hardened his own heart God hardened it by not shewing mercy to Pharaoh as he did to Nebuchadnezzar who was as great a sinner as he or God hardned it occasionally but still Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration by determining his own will to evill and confirming himself in his obstinacy So are all presumptuous sinners Psal 95.8 Harden not your hearts as in the provocation as in the day of temptation in the wilderness Thirdly God is said to harden the heart permissively but not operatively nor effectively as he who only le ts loose a Greyhound out of the slip is said to hound him at the Hare Will you see plainly what St. Paul intends by hardning Read ver 22. What if God willing to shew his wrath and to make his power known that is by a consequent will which in order of nature followes the provision of sin indured with much long suffering the vessells of wrath fitted to destruction And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessells of mercy c. There is much difference between induring and impelling or inciting the vessells of wrath He saith of the vessells of mercy that God prepared them unto glory But of the vessells of wrath he saith only that they were fitted to destruction that is not by God but by themselves St. Paul saith that God doth endure the vessells of wrath with much long suffering T. H. saith that God wills and effects by the second causes all their actions good and bad that he necessitateth them and determineth them irresistibly to do those acts which he condemneth as evill and for which he punisheth them If doing willingly and enduring If much long suffering and necessitating imply not a contrariety one to another reddat
mihi minam Diogenes Let him that taught me Logick give me my money again But T. H. saith that this distinction between the operative and permissive Will of God And that other between the action and the irregularity do dazell his understanding Though he can find no difference between these two yet others do St. Paul himself did Act. 13.18 About the time of 40. yeares suffered he their manners in the Wilderness And Act. 14.16 Who intimes past suffered all Nations to walk in their own wayes T. H. would make suffering to be inciting their manners to be Gods manners their wayes to be Gods wayes And Act. 17.30 The times of this ignorance God winked at It was never heard that one was said to wink or connive at that which was his own act And 1 Cor. 10.13 God is faithfull who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able To tempt is the Devills act therefore he is called the Tempter God tempts no man to sin but he suffers them to be tempted And so suffers that he could hinder Sathan if he would But by T. H. his doctrine To tempt to sin and to suffer one to be tempted to sin when it is in his power to hinder it is all one And so he transforms God I write it with horrour into the Devill and makes tempting to be Gods own work and the Devill to be but his instrument And in that noted place Rom. 2.4 Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thy self wrath against the day of wrath and revealation of the righteous judgment of God Here are as many convincing Arguments in this one text against the opinion of T. H. almost as there are words Here we learn that God is rich in goodness and will not punish his creatures for that which is his own act Secondly that he suffers and forbeares sinners long and doth not snatch them away by sudden death as they deserve Thirdly that the reason of Gods forbearance is to bring men to repentance Fourthly that hardness of heart and impenitency is not casually from God but from our selves Fiftly that it is not the insufficient proposall of the means of their conversion on Gods part which is the cause of mens perdition but their own contempt and despising of these means Sixtly that punishment is not an act of absolute dominion but an act of righteous Judgment whereby God renders to every man according to his own deeds wrath to them and only to them who treasure up wrath unto themselves and eternall life to those who continue patiently in well-doing If they deserve such punishment who onely neglect the goodness and long suffering of God what do they who utterly deny it and make Gods doing and his suffering to be all one I do beseech T. H. to consider what a degree of wilfulness it is out of one obscure text wholly misunderstood to contradict the clear current of the whole Scripture Of the same mind with St. Paul was St. Peter 1 Pet. 3.22 The long suffering of God waited once in the dayes of Noah And 2 Pet. 3.15 Account that the long suffering of the Lord is salvation This is the name God gives himself Exod. 34.6 The Lord the Lord God mercifull and gracious long suffering c. Yet I do acknowledge that which T. H. saith to be commonly true That he who doth permit any thing to be done which it is in his power to hinder knowing that if he do not hinder it it will be done doth in some sort will it I say in some sort that is either by an antecedent will or by a consequent will either by an operative will or by a permissive will or he is willing to let it be done but not willing to do it Sometimes an antecedent engagement doth cause a man to suffer that to be done which otherwise he would not suffer So Darius suffered Daniel to be cast into the Lions den to make good his rash decree So Herod suffered John Baptist to be beheaded to make good his rash oath How much more may the immutable rule of justice in God and his fidelity in keeping his word draw from him the punishment of obstinate sinners though antecedently he willeth their conversion He loveth all his Creatures well but his own Justice better Again sometimes a man suffereth that to be done which he doth not will directly in it self but indirectly for some other end or for the producing of some great good As a man willeth that a putrid member be cut off from his body to save the life of the whole Or as a Judge being desirous to save a malefactors life and having power to repreive him doth yet condemn him for example sake that by the death of one he may save the lives of many Marvell not then if God suffer some creatures to take such courses as tend to their own ruine so long as their sufferings do make for the greater manifestation of his glory and for the greater benefit of his faithfull servants This is a most certain truth that God would not suffer evill to be in the world unless he knew how to draw good out of evill Yet this ought not to be so understood as if we made any priority or posteriority of time in the acts of God but onely of nature Nor do we make the antecedent and consequent will to be contrary one to another because the one respects man pure and uncorrupted the other respects him as he is lapsed The objects are the same but considered after a diverse manner Nor yet do we make these wills to be distinct in God for they are the same with the divine essence which is one But the distinction is in order to the objects or things willed Nor lastly do we make this permission to be a naked or a meer permission God causeth all good permitteth all evill disposeth all things both good and evill T. H. demands how God should be the cause of the action and yet not be the cause of the irregularity of the action I answer because he concurres to the doing of evill by a generall but not by a speciall influence As the Earth gives nourishment to all kinds of plants as well to Hemlock as to Wheat but the reason why the one yields food to our sustenance the other poison to our destruction is not from the generall nourishment of the earth but from the speciall quality of the root Even so the generall power to act is from God In him we live and move and have our being This is good But the specification and determination of this generall power to the doing of any evill is from our selves and proceeds from the free will of man This is bad And to speak properly the free will of man is not the efficient cause of sin as the root
of the Hemlock is of poison sin having no fruentity or being in it as poison hath But rather the deficient cause Now no defect can flow from him who is the highest perfection Wherefore T. H. is mightily mistaken to make the particular and determinate act of killing Uriah to be from God The generall power to act is from God but the specification of this generall and good power to murther or to any particular evill is not from God but from the free will of man So T. H. may see clearly if he will how one may be the cause of the Law and likewise of the action in some sort that is by generall influence and yet another cause concurring by speciall influence and determining this generall and good power may make it self the true cause of the anomy or the irregularity And therefore he may keep his longer and shorter garments for some other occasion Certainly they will not fit this subject unless he could make generall and speciall influence to be all one But T. H. presseth yet further that the case is the same and the objection used by the Jews ver 19. Why doth he yet find fault who hath resisted his will is the very same with my argument And St. Pauls answer ver 20. O man who art thou that repliest against God shall the thing formed say to him that formed it why hast thou made me thus Hath not the Potter power over his clay c is the very same with his answer in this place drawn from the irresistible power and absolute dominion of God which justifieth all his actions And that the Apostle in his answer doth not deny that it was Gods will nor that Gods decree was before Esaus sin To which I reply First that the case is not at all the same but quite different as may appear by these particulars first those words before they had done either good or evill are not cannot be referred to those other words Esau have I hated Secondly If they could yet it is less than nothing because before Esau had actually sinned his future sins were known to God Thirdly by the Potters clay here is not to be understood the pure mass but the corrupted mass of mankind Fourthly the hating here mentioned is onely a comparative hatred that is a less degree of love Fiftly the hardening which St. Paul speaks of is not a positive but a negative obduration or a not imparting of grace Sixtly St. Paul speaketh not of any positive reprobation to eternall punishment much less doth he speak of the actuall inflicting of punishment without sin which is the question between us and wherein T. H. differs from all that I remember to have read who do all acknowledge that punishment is never actually inflicted but for sin If the question be put why God doth good to one more than to another or why God imparteth more grace to one than to another as it is there the answer is just and fit because it is his pleasure and it is sawciness in a creature in this case to reply May not God do what he will with his own Matth. 20.15 No man doubteth but God imparteth grace beyond mans desert But if the case be put why God doth punish one more than another or why he throws one into hell-fire and not another which is the present case agitated between us To say with T. H. that it is because God is Omnipotent or because his power is irresistible or meerly because it is his pleasure is not only not warranted but is plainly condemned by St. Paul in this place So many differences there are between those two cases It is not therefore against God that I reply but against T. H. I do not call my Creator to the Bar but my fellow creature I ask no account of Gods counsails but of mans presumptions It is the mode of these times to father their own fancies upon God and when they cannot justifie them by reason to plead his Omnipotence or to cry O altitudo that the wayes of God are unsearchable If they may justifie their drowsy dreams because Gods power dominion is absolute much more may we reject such phantasticall devises which are inconsistent with the truth and goodness Justice of God and make him to be a Tyrant who is the Father of Mercies and the God of all consolation The unsearchableness of Gods wayes should be a bridle to restrain presumption and not a sanctuary for spirits of error Secondly this objection conteined ver 19. to which the Apostle answers ver 20. is not made in the person of Esau or Pharaoh as T. H. supposeth but of the unbelieving Jews who thought much at that grace and favour which God was pleased to vouchsafe unto the Gentiles to acknowledge them for his people which honour they would have appropriated to the posterity of Abraham And the Apostles answer is not only drawn from the Soveraign Dominion of God to impart his grace to whom he pleaseth as hath been shewed already but also from the obstinacy and proper fault of the Jews as appeareth ver 22. What if God willing that is by a consequent will to shew his wrath and to make his power known endured with much long suffering the vessells of wrath fitted to destruction They acted God endured They were tolerated by God but fitted to destruction by themselves for their much wrong doing here is Gods much long suffering And more plainly ver 31. Israel hath not atteined to the Law of righteousness wherefore because they sought it not by faith but as it were by the works of the Law This reason is set down yet more emphatically in the next Chapter ver 3. They that is the Israelites being ignorant of Gods righteousness that is by faith in Christ and going about to establish their own righteousness that is by the works of the Law have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God And yet most expresly Chap. 11. v. 20. Because of unbelief they were broken off but thou standest by faith Neither was there any precedent binding decree of God to necessitate them to unbelief and consequently to punishment It was in their own power by their concurrence with Gods grace to prevent these judgments and to recover their former estate ver 23. If they that is the unbelieving Jews abide not still in unbelief they shall be grafted in The Crown and the Sword are immovable to use St. Anselmes comparison but it is we that move and change places Sometimes the Jews were under the Crown and the Gentiles under the Sword sometimes the Jews under the Sword and the Gentiles under the Crown Thirdly though I confess that human Pacts are not the measure of Gods Justice but his justice is his own immutable will whereby he is ready to give every man that which is his own as rewards to the good punishments to the bad so nevertheless God may oblige himself freely to his creature He made the
benefit others by his example The truth is the punishing of delinquents by Law respecteth both the evill act past and the good to come The ground of it is the evill act past the scope or end of it is the good to come The end without the ground cannot justifie the act A bad intention may make a good action bad but a good intention cannot make a bad action good It is not lawfull to do evill that good may come of it nor to punish an innocent person for the admonition of others that is to fall into a certain crime for fear of an uncertain Again though there were no other end of penalties inflicted neither probatory nor castigatory nor exemplary but only vindicatory to satisfie the Law out of a zeal of Justice by giving to every one his own yet the action is just and warrantable Killing as it is considered in it self without all undue circumstances was never prohibited to the lawfull Magistrate who is the Vicegerent or Lieutenant of God from whom he derives his power of life and death T. H. hath one plea more As a drowning man catcheth at every Bulrush so he layes hold on every pretence to save a desperate cause But first it is worth our observation to see how oft he changeth shapes in this one particular First he told us that it was the irresistible power of God that justifies all his actions though he command one thing openly and plot another thing secretly though he be the cause not only of the action but also of the irregularity though he both give man power to act and determine this power to evill as well as good though he punish the Creatures for doing that which he himself did necessitate them to do But being pressed with reason that this is tyrannical first to necessitate a man to do his will and then to punish him for doing of it he leaves this pretence in the plain field and flies to a second That therefore a man is justly punished for that which he was necessitated to do because the act was voluntary on his part This hath more shew of reason than the former if he did make the will of man to be in his own disposition but maintaining that the will is irresistibly determined to will whatsoever it doth will the injustice and absurdity is the same First to necessitate a man to will and then to punish him for willing The dog onely bites the stone which is thrown at him with a strange hand but they make the first cause to punish the instrument for that which is his own proper act Wherefore not being satisfied with this he casts it off and flies to his third shift Men are not punished saith he therefore because their theft proceeded from election that is because it was willingly done for to Elect and Will saith he are both one Is not this to blow hot and cold with the same breath but because it was noxious and contrary to mens preservation Thus far he saith true that every creature by the instinct of nature seeks to preserve it self cast water into a dusty place and it contracts it self into little globes that is to preserve it self And those who are noxious in the eye of the Law are justly punished by them to whom the execution of the Law is committed but the Law accounts no persons noxious but those who are noxious by their own fault It punisheth not a thorn for pricking because it is the nature of the thorn and it can do no otherwise nor a child before it have the use of reason If one should take mine hand perforce and give another a box on the ear with it my hand is noxious but the Law punisheth the other who is faulty And therefore he hath reason to propose the question how it is just to kill one man to amend another if he who killed did nothing but what he was necessitated to do He might as well demand how it is lawfull to murther a company of innocent Infants to make a bath of their lukewarm blood for curing the Leprosy It had been a more rational way first to have demonstrated that it is so and then to have questioned why it is so His assertion it self is but a dream and the reason which he gives of it why it is so is a dream of a dream The sum of it is this That where there is no Law there no killing or any thing els can be unjust that before the constitution of Common-wealths every man had power to kill another if he conceived him to be hurtfull to him that at the constitution of Commonwealths particular men lay down this right in part and in part reserve it to themselves as in case of theft or murther That the right which the Commonwealth hath to put a malefactor to death is not created by the Law but remaineth from the first right of Nature which every man hath to preserve himself that the killing of men in this case is as the killing of beasts in order to our own preservavation This may well be called stringing of Paradoxes But first there never was any such time when mankind was without Governors and Lawes and Societies Paternall Government was in the world from the beginning and the Law of Nature There might be sometimes a root of such Barbarous Theevish Brigants in some rocks or desarts or odd corners of the world but it was an abuse and a degeneration from the nature of man who is a politicall creature This savage opinion reflects too much upon the honour of mankind Secondly there never was a time when it was lawfull ordinarily for private men to kill one another for their own preservation If God would have had men live like wild beasts as Lions Bears or Tygers he would have armed them with hornes or tusks or talons or pricks but of all creatures man is born most naked without any weapon to defend himself because God had provided a better means of security for him that is the Magistrate Thirdly that right which private men have to preserve themselves though it be with the killing of another when they are set upon to be murdered or robbed is not a remainder or a reserve of some greater power which they have resigned but a privilege which God hath given them in case of extreme danger and invincible necessity that when they cannot possibly have recourse to the ordinary remedy that is the Magistrate every man becomes a Magistrate to himself Fourthly nothing can give that which it never had The people whilest they were a dispersed rabble which in some odd cases might happen to be never had juftly the power of life and death and therefore they could not give it by their election All that they do is to prepare the matter but it is God Almighty that infuseth the soul of power Fiftly and lastly I am sorry to hear a man of reason and parts to compare the murthering of men with
in vain but if all things be necessary then it is to no more purpose to admonish men of understanding than fools children or mad-men That they do admonish the one and not the other is confessedly true and no reason under heaven can be given for it but this that the former have the use of reason and true liberty with a dominion over their own actions which children fools and mad-men have not Concerning praise and dispraise he inlargeth himself The scope of his discourse is that things necessary may be praise-worthy There is no doubt of it but withall their praise reflects upon the free agent as the praise of a statue reflects upon the workman who made it To praise a thing saith he is to say it is good True but this goodness is not a Metaphysicall goodness so the worst of things and whatsoever hath a being is good Nor a natural goodness The praise of it passeth wholy to the Author of Nature God saw all that he had made and it was very good But a morall goodness or a goodness of actions rather than of things The morall goodness of an action is the conformity of it with right reason The morall evill of an action is the deformity of it and the alienation of it from right reason It is morall praise and dispraise which we speak of here To praise any thing morally is to say it is morally good that is conformable to right reason The morall dispraise of a thing is to say it is morally bad or disagreeing from the rule of right reason So morall praise is from the good use of liberty morall dispraise from the bad use of liberty but if all things be necessary than morall liberty is quite taken away and with it all true praise and dispraise Whereas T. H. adds that to say a thing is good is to say it is as I would wish or as another would wish or as the State would have it or according to the Law of the Land he mistakes infinitely He and another and the State may all wish that which is not really good but only in appearance We do often wish what is profitable or delightfull without regarding so much as we ought what is honest And though the will of the State where we live or the Law of the Land do deserve great consideration yet it is no infallible rule of morall goodness And therefore to his question whether nothing that proceeds from necessity can please me I answer yes The burning of the fire pleaeth me when I am cold And I say it is good fire or a creature created by God for my use and for my good Yet I do not mean to attribute any morall goodness to the fire nor give any morall praise to it as if it were in the power of the fire it self either to communicate its heat or to suspend it but I praise first the Creator of the fire and then him who provided it As for the praise which Velleius Paterculus gives Cato that he was good by nature Et quia aliter esse non potuit it hath more of the Oratour than either of the Theologian or Philosopher in it Man in the State of innocency did fall and become evill what privilege hath Cato more than he No by his leave Narratur dij Catonis saepe mero caluisse virtus but the true meaning is that he was naturally of a good temper not so prone to some kinds of vices as others were This is to praise a thing not an action naturally not morally Socrates was not of so good a naturall temper yet prooved as good a man the more his praise by how much the difficulty was the more to conform his disorderly appetite to right reason Concerning reward and punishment he saith not a word but onely that they frame and confound the will to good which hath been sufficiently answered They do so indeed but if his opinion were true they could not do so But because my aim is not only to answer T. H. but also to satisfie my self Though it be not urged by him yet I do acknowledge that I find some improper and analogicall rewards and punishments used to brute beasts as the hunter rewards his dog the master of the Coy-duck whipps her when she returns without company And if it be true which he affirmeth a little before that I have confessed that the actions of brute beasts are all necessitated and determined to that one thing which they shall do the difficulty is increased But first my saying is misalleged I said that some kinds of actions which are most excellent in brute beasts and make the greatest shew of reason as the Bees working their Honey and the Spiders weaving their Webbs are yet done without any consultation or deliberation by a meer instinct of nature and by a determination of their fancies to these only kinds of workes But I did never say I could not say that all their individuall actions are necessary and antecedently determined in their causes as what dayes the Bees shall flie abroad and what dayes and houres each Bee shall keep in the Hive how often they shall fetch in Thyme on a day and from whence These actions and the like though they be not free because brute beasts want reason to deliberate yet they are contingent and therefore not necessary Secondly I do acknowledge that as the fancies of some brute creatures are determined by nature to some rare exquisite works So in others where it finds a naturall propension Art which is the Imitator of Nature may frame form them according to the will of the Artist to some particular actions and ends as we see in Setting-doggs and Coy-ducks and Parrots and the principall means whereby they effect this is by their backs or by their bellies by the rod or by the morsell which have indeed a shadow or resemblance of rewards and punishments But we take the word here properly not as it is used by vulgar people but as it is used by Divines and Philosophers for that recompense which is due to honest and dishonest actions Where there is no morall liberty there is neither honesty nor dishonesty neither true reward nor punishment Thirdly when brute creatures do learn any such qualities it is not out of judgment or deliberation or discourse by inferring or concluding one thing from another which they are not capable of Neither are they able to conceive a reason of what they do but meerly out of memory or out of a sensitive fear or hope They remember that when they did after one manner they were beaten and when they did after another manner they were cherished and accordingly they apply themselves But if their individuall actions were absolutely necessary fear or hope could not alter them Most certainly if there be any desert in it or any praises due unto it it is to them who did instruct them Lastly concerning Arts Arms Books Instruments Study Physick and
Matth. 7.7 St. Paul tells the Corinthians 2 Cor. 1.11 that he was helped by their prayers that 's not all that the gift was bestowed upon him by their means So prayer is a means And St. James saith cap. 5.16 The effectuall fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much If it be effectuall then it is a cause To shew this efficacy of prayer our Saviour useth the comparison of a Father towards his Child of a Neighbour towards his Neighbour yea of an unjust Judge to shame those who think that God hath not more compassion than a wicked man This was signified by Jacobs wrestling and prevailing with God Prayer is like the Tradesmans tools wherewithall he gets his living for himself and his family But saith he Gods will is unchangeable What then He might as well use this against study Physick and all second causes as against Prayer He shewes even in this how little they attribute to the endeavours of men There is a great difference between these two mutare voluntatem to change the will which God never doth in whom there is not the least shadow of turning by change His will to love and hate was the same from eternity which it now is and ever shall be His love and hatred are immovable but we are removed Non tellus cymbam tellurem cymba reliquit And velle mutationem to will a change which God often doth To change the will argues a change in the Agent but to will a change only argues a change in the object It is no inconstancy in a man to love or to hate as the object is changed Praesta mihi omnia eadem idem sum Prayer works not upon God but us It renders not him more propitious in himself but us more capable of mercy He saith this That God doth not bless us except we pray is a motive to prayer Why talks he of motives who acknowledgeth no liberty nor admitts any cause but absolutely necessary He saith Prayer is the gift of God no less than the blessing which we pray for and conteined in the same decree with the blessing It is true the spirit of prayer is the gift of God will he conclude from thence that the good imployment of one talent or of one gift of God may not procure another Our Saviour teacheth us otherwise Come thou good and faithfull servant thou hast been faithfull in little I will make thee ruler over much Too much light is an enemy to the light and too much Law is an enemy to Justice I could wish we wrangled less about Gods Decrees untill we understood them better But saith he Thanksgiving is no cause of the blessing past and prayer is but a thanksgiving He might even as well tell me that when a beggar craves an almes and when he gives thanks for it it is all one Every thanksgiving is a kind of prayer but every prayer and namely Petition is not a thanks-giving In the last place he urgeth that in our prayers we are bound to submit our wills to Gods Will who ever made any 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 good pleasure by the event or otherwise But we deny and deny again either that God wills things ad extra without himself 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 allegeth to the contrary comes not neer it Numb 16. J. D. argument 4 FOurthly the order beauty and perfection of the world doth require that in the Universe should be Agents of all sorts some necessary somefree some contingent He that shall make either all things necessary guided by destiny or all things free governed by election or all things contingent happening by chance doth overthrow the beauty and the perfection of the world T. H. THE fourth Argument from reason is this The Order Beauty and Perfection of the world requireth that in the Vniverse should be Agents of all sorts some necessary some free some contingent He that shall make all things necessary or all things free or all things contingent doth overthrow the beauty and perfection of the world In which Argument I observe first a contradiction For seeing he that maketh any thing in that he maketh it he maketh it to be necessary it followeth that he that maketh all things maketh all things necessary to be As if a workman make a garment the garment must necessarily be So if God make every thing every thing must necessarily be Perhaps the beauty of the world requireth though we know it not that some Agents should work without deliberation which he calls necessary Agents And some Agents with deliberation and those both he and I call free Agents And that some Agents should work and we not know how And them effects we both call contingent But this hinders not but that he that electeth may have his election necessarily determined to one by former causes And that which is contingent and imputed to Fortune be nevertheless necessary and depend on precedent necessary causes For by contingent men do not mean that which hath no cause but which hath not for cause any thing which we perceive As for example when a Travailer meets with a shower the journey had a cause and the rain had a cause sufficient enough to produce it but because the journey caused not the rain nor the rain the journey we say they were contingent one to another And thus you see though there be three sorts of events Necessary Contingent and Free yet they may be all necessary without the destruction of the beauty or perfection of the Univers J. D. THE first thing he observes in mine Argument is contradiction as he calls it but in truth it is but a deception of the sight As one candle sometimes seems to be two or a rod in the water shewes to be two rods Quicquid recipitur recipitur ad modum recipient is But what is this contradiction Because I say he who maketh all things doth not make them necessary What a contradiction and but one proposition That were strange I say God hath not made all Agents necessary he saith God hath made all Agents necessary Here is a contradiction indeed but it is between him and me not between me and my self But yet though it be not a formall contradiction yet perhaps it may imply a contradiction in adjecto Wherefore to clear the matter and dispell the mist which he hath raised It is true that every thing when it is made it is necessary that it be made so as it is that is by a necessity of infallibility or supposition supposing that it be so made but this is not that absolute antecedent necessity whereof the question is between him and me As to use his own instance Before the Garment be made the Tailor is
without himself he wills freely not necessarily Whatsoever cause acts or works necessarily doth act or work all that it can do or all that is in its power But it is evident that God doth not all things without himself which he can do or which he hath power to do He could have raised up children unto Abraham of the very stones which were upon the banks of Jordan Luk. 3.8 but he did not He could have sent twelve Legions of Angells to the succour of Christ but he did not Matth. 26.53 God can make T. H. live the years of Methuselah but it is not necessary that he shall do so nor probable that he will do so The productive power of God is infinite but the whole created world is finite And therefore God might still produce more if it pleased him But this it is when men go on in a confused way and will admit no distinctions If T. H. had considered the difference between a necessary being and a necessary cause or between those actions of God which are imminent within himself and the transient works of God which are extrinsecall without himself he would never have proposed such an evident error for a manifest truth Qui pauca considerat facile pronuntiat Numb 19. J. D. THirdly they distinguish between liberty from compulsion and liberty from necessitation The Will say they is free from compulsion but not free from necessitation And this they fortifie with two reasons First because it is granted by all Divines that hypotheticall necessity or necessity upon a supposition may consist with liberty Secondly because God and the good Angells do good necessarily and yet are more free than we To the first reason I confess that necessity upon a supposition may sometimes consist with true liberty as when it signifies onely an infallible certitude of the understanding in that which it knowes to be or that it shall be But if the supposition be not in the Agents power nor depend upon any thing that is in his power If there be an exteriour antecedent cause which doth necessitate the effect to call this free is to be mad with reason To the second reason I confess that God and the good Angells are more free than we are that is intensively in the degree of freedom but not extensively in the latitude of the object according to a liberty of exercise but not of specification A liberty of exercise that is to doe or not to do may consist well with a necessity of specification or a determination to the doing of good But a liberty of exercise and a necessity of exercise A liberty of specification and a necessity of specification are not compatible nor can consist together He that is antecedently necessitated to do evill is not free to do good So this instance is nothing at all to the purpose T. H. BUt the distinction of free into free from compulsion and free from necessitation I acknowledge for to be free from compulsion is to do a thing so as terrour be not the cause of his will to do it for a man is then onely said to be compelled when fear makes him willing to it as when a man willingly throwes his goods into the Sea to save himself or submitts to his enemy for fear of being killed Thus all men that do any thing from love or revenge or lust are free from compulsion and yet their actions may be as necessary as those which are done upon compulsion for sometimes other passions work as forcibly as fear But free from necessitation I say nothing can be And 't is that which he undertook to disproove This distinction he sayes useth to be fortified by two reasons but they are not mine The first he sayes is That it is granted by all Divines that an hypotheticall necessity or necessity upon supposition may stand with liberty That you may understand this I will give you an example of hypotheticall necessity If I shall live I shall eat this is an hypotheticall necessity Indeed it is a necessary proposition that is to say it is necessary that that proposition should be true whensoever uttered but t is not the necessity of the thing nor is it therefore necessary that the man shall live or that the man shall eat I do not use to fortifie my distinctions with such reasons Let him confute them as he will it contents me But I would have your Lordship take notice hereby how an easy and plain thing but withall false may be with the grave usage of such tearmes as hypotheticall necessity and necessity upon supposition and such like tearmes of Schoolemen obscur'd and made to seem profound learning The second reason that may confirm the distinction of free from compulsion and free from necessitation he sayes is that God and good Angells do good necessarily and yet are more free than we The reason though I had no need of yet I think it so far forth good as it is true that God and good Angells do good necessarily and yet are free but because I find not in the Articles of our faith nor in the Decrees of our Church set down in what manner I am to conceive God and good Angells to work by necessity or in what sense they work freely I suspend my sentence in that point and am content that there may be a freedom from compulsion and yet no freedom from necessitation as hath been prooved in that that a man may be necessitated to some actions without threats and without fear of danger But how he can avoid the consisting together of freedom and necessity supposing God and good Angells are freer than men and yet do good necessarily that we must now examin I confess saith he that God and good Angells are more free than we that is intensively in degree of freedom not extensively in the latitude of the object according to a liberty of exercise not of specification Again we have here two distinctions that are no distinctions but made to seem so by tearmes invented by I know not whom to cover ignorance and blind the understanding of the Reader For it cannot be conceived that there is any liberty greater than for a man to do what he will and to forbear what he will One heat may be more intensive than another but not one liberty than another He that can do what he will hath all liberty possibly and he that cannot has none at all Also liberty as he sayes the Schooles call it of exercise which is as I have said before a liberty to do or not to do cannot be without a liberty which they call of specification that is to say a liberty to do or not to do this or that in particular for how can a man conceive that he has liberty to do any thing that hath not liberty to do this or that or somewhat in particular If a man be forbidden in Lent to eat this and that and every other particular kind of flesh
the Starrs Plus etenim fati valet hora benigni Quam si nos Veneris commendet epistola Marti I stand not much upon them who cannot see the fishes swimming besides them in the rivers yet believe they see those which are in heaven Who promise great treasures to others and beg a groat for themselves The Starrs at the most do but incline they cannot necessitate Secondly the Physitian subjects liberty to the complexion and temperature of the body But yet this comes not home to a necessity Socrates and many others by assiduous care have corrected the pernicious propensions which flowed from their temperatures T. H. IN the rest of his discourse he reckoneth up the opinions of certain professions of men touching the causes wherein the necessity of things which they maintain consisteth And first he saith the Astrologer deriveth his necessity from the Starrs Secondly that the Physician attributeth it to the temper of the body For my part I am not of their opinion because neither the Starrs alone nor the temperature of the Patient alone is able to produce any effect without the concurrence of all other agents For there is hardly any one action how casuall soever it seem to the causing whereof concur not whatsoever is in rerum natura Which because it is a great Paradox and depends on many antecedent speculations I do not press in this place J. D. TOwards the later end of my discourse I answered some specious pretences against liberty The two first were of the Astrologer and the Physician The one subjecting liberty to the motions and influences of the heavenly bodies The other to the complexions of men The sum of my answer was that the Starrs and complexions do incline but not at all necessitate the will To which all judicious Astronomers and Physicians do assent And T. H. himself doth not dissent from it So as to this part there needs no reply But whereas he mentions a great paradox of his own that there is hardly any one action to the causing of which concurres not whatsoever is in rerum natura I can but smile to see with what ambition our great undertakers do affect to be accounted the first founders of strange opinions as if the devising of an ill grounded Paradox were as great an honour as the invention of the needle or the discovery of the new world And to this Paradox in Particular I meddle not with naturall actions because the subject of my discourse is morall liberty But if he intend not only the kinds of things but every individuall creature and not onely in naturall but voluntary actions I desire to know how Prester John or the great Mogol or the King of China or any one of so many millions of their subjects do concur to my writing of this reply If they do not among his other speculations concerning this matter I hope he will give us some restrictions It were hard to make all the Negroes accessary to all the murthers that are committed in Europe Numb 22. J. D. THirdly the morall Philosopher tells us how we are haled hither and thither with outward objects To this I answer First that the power which outward objects have over us is for the most part by our own default because of those vitious habits which we have contracted Therefore though the actions seem to have a kind of violence in them yet they were free and voluntary in their first originalls As a paralitick man to use Aristotles comparison shedding the liquor deserves to be punished for though his act be unwilling yet his intemperance was willing whereby he contracted this infirmity Secondly I answer that concupiscence and custome and bad company and outward objects do indeed make a proclivity but not a necessity By Prayers Tears Meditations Vowes Watchings Fastings Humi-cubations a man may get a contrary habit and gain the victory not onely over outward objects but also over his own corruptions and become the King of the little world of himself Si metuis si prava cupis si duceris irâ Servitii patiere jugum tolerabis iniquas Interius leges Tunc omnia jure tenebis Cum poteris rex esse tui Thirdly a resolved mind which weighs all things judiciously and provides for all occurrences is not so easily surprised with outward objects Onely Ulysses wept not at the meeting with his wife and son I would beat thee said the Philosopher but that I am angry One spake lowest when he was most mooved Another poured out the water when he was thirsty Another made a Covenant with his eyes Neither opportunity nor entisement could prevail with Joseph Nor the Musick nor the fire with the three Children It is not the strength of the wind but the lightness of the chaff which causeth it to be blown away Outward objects do not impose a morall much less a Physicall necessity they may be dangerous but cannot be destructive to true liberty T. H. THirdly he disputeth against the opinion of them that say externall objects presented to men of such and such temperatures do make their actions necessary And sayes the power that such objects have over us proceed from our own fault But that is nothing to the purpose if such fault of ours proceedeth from causes not in our own power And therefore that opinion may hold true for all this answer Further he saith Prayer Fasting c. may alter our habits 'T is true but when they do so they are causes of the contrary habit and make it necessary As the former habit had been necessary if Prayer Fasting c. had not been Besides we are not mooved nor disposed to prayer or any other action but by outward objects as pious company godly preachers or something equivalent Thirdly he saith a resolved mind is not easily surprised As the mind of Ulysses who when others wept he alone wept not And of the Philosopher that abstained from striking because he found himself angry And of him that poured out the water when he was thirsty And the like Such things I confess have or may have been done and do prove onely that it was not necessary for Ulysses then to weep nor for the Philosopher to strike nor for that other man to drink but it does not prove that it was not necessary for Ulysses then to abstaine as he did from weeping nor the Philosopher to abstain as he did from striking Nor the other man to forbear drinking And yet that was the thing he ought to have proved Lastly he confesseth that the disposition of objects may be dangerous to liberty but cannot be destructive To which I answer 't is impossible For liberty is never in any other danger than to be lost And if it cannot be lost which he confesseth I may infer it can be in no danger at all J. D. THe third pretense was out of morall Philophy misunderstood that outward objects do necessitate the will I shall not need to repeat what he hath
comes to have such a power But the chiefest difficulty which offers it self in this Section is whether Eternity be an indivisible point as I maintain it or an everlasting succession as he would have it According to his constant use he gives no answer to what was urged by me but pleads against it from his own incapacity I never could conceive saith he how eternity should be an indivisible point I believe that neither we nor any man els can comprehend it so cleerly as we do these inferiour things The neerer that any thing comes to the essence of God the more remote it is from our apprehension But shall we therefore make potentialities and successive duration and former and later or a part without a part as they say to be in God Because we are not able to understand cleerly the divine perfection we must not therefore attribute any imperfection to him He saith moreover that he understands as little how it can be true which I say that God is not just but Justice it self not eternall but Eternity it self It seemes howsoever he be versed in this question that he hath not troubled his head overmuch with reading School-Divines or Metaphysicians if he make faculties or qualities to be in God really distinct-from his essence God is a most simple or pure act which can admit no composition of substance and accidents Doth he think that the most perfect Essence of God cannot act sufficiently without faculties and qualities The infinite perfection of the Divine essence excludes all passive or receptive powers and cannot be perfected more than it is by any accidents The attributes of God are not divers vertues or qualities in him as they are in the creatures but really one and the same with the Divine Essence and among themselves They are attributed to God to supply the defect of our capacity who are not able to understand that which is to be known of God under one name or one act of the understanding Furthermore he saith that he understands not how I conclude from hence that Eternity is an indivisible point and not a succession I will help him The Divine Substance is indivisible But Eternity is the Divine Substance The major is evident because God is actus simplicissimus a most simple act wherein there is no manner of composition neither of matter and forme nor of subject and accidents nor of parts c. and by consequence no divisibility The minor hath been cleerly demonstrated in mine answer to his last doubt and is confessed by all men that whatsoever is in God is God Lastly he saith He conceives not how it can be said that an infinite point wherein is no succession can comprehend all time which is successive I answer that it doth not comprehend it formally as time is successive but eminently and virtually as Eternity is infinite To day all Eternity is coexistent with this day To morrow all Eternity will be coexistent with to morrow and so in like manner with all the parts of time being it self without parts He saith He finds not these phrases in the Scripture No but he may find the thing in the Scripture that God is infinite in all his attributes and not capable of any imperfection And so to shew his antipathy against the School-men that he hath no liberty or power to contain himself when he meets with any of of their phrases or tenets he falls into another paroxisme or fit of inveighing against them And so concludes his answer with a plaudite to himself because he had defeated both my squadrons of arguments and reserves of distinctions Dicite Io Paean Io bis dicite Paean But because his eye-sight was weak and their backs were towards him he quite mistook the matter Those whom he see rowted and running away were his own scattered forces Numb 25. T. H. My opinion about Liberty and Necessity FIrst I conceive that when it cometh into a mans mind to do or not to do some certain action if he have no time to deliberate the doing or abstaining necessarily followeth the present thought he had of the good or evill consequence thereof to himself As for example in suddain anger the action shall follow the thought of of revenge in suddain fear the thought of escape Also 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 followes his opinion of the goodness or harm of it These actions I call voluntary He if I understand him aright calls them Spontaneous I call them voluntary because those actions that follow immediatly the last appetite are voluntary And here where there is one onely appetite that one is the last Besides I see 't is reasonable to punish a rash action which could not be justly done by man unless the same were voluntary For no action of a man can be said to be without deliberation though never so suddain because 't is supposed he had time to deliberate all the precedent time of his life whether he should do that kind of action or not And hence it is that he that killeth in a suddain passion of anger shall nevertheless be justly put to death because all the time wherein he was able to consider whether to kill were good or evill shall be held for one continuall deliberation and consequently the killing shall be judged to proceed from election J. D. THis part of T. H. his discourse hangs together like a sick mans dreames Even now he tells us that a man may have time to deliberate yet not deliberate By and by he saith that no action of a man though never so suddain can be said to be without deliberation He tells us Numb 33. that the scope of this section is to shew what is spontaneous Howbeit he sheweth onely what is voluntary so making voluntary and spontaneous to be all one whereas before he had told us that every spontaneous action is not voluntary because indeliberate Nor every voluntary action spontaneous if it proceed from fear Now he tells us that those actions which follow the last appetite are voluntary and where there is one onely appetite that is the last But before he told us that voluntary praesupposeth some praecedent deliberation and Meditation of what is likely to follow both upon the doing and abstaining from the action He defines Liberty Numb 29. to be the absence of all extrinsecall impediments to action And yet in his whole discourse he laboureth to make good that whatsoever is not done is therefore not done because the Agent was necessitated by extrinsecall causes not to do it Are not extrinsecall causes which determine him not to do it extrinsecall impediments to action So no man shall be free to do any thing but that which he doth actually He defines a free Agent to be him who hath not made an end of deliberating Numb 28. And yet defines liberty to be an absence of
outward impediments There may be outward impediments even whilest he is deliberating As a man deliberates whether he shall play at Tennis and at the same time the door of the Tennis-court is fast locked against him And after a man hath ceased to deliberate there may be no outward impediments as when a man resolves not to play at Tennis because he finds himself ill disposed or because he will not hazard his mony So the same person at the same time should be free and not free not free and free And as he is not firme to his own grounds so he confounds all things the mind and the will the estimative faculty and the understanding imagination with deliberation the end with the means humane will with the sensitive appetite rationall hope or fear with irrationall passions inclinations with intentions A beginning of Being with a beginning of working Sufficiency with efficiency So as the greatest difficulty is to find out what he aimes at So as I had once resolved not to answer this part of his discourse yet upon better advise I will take a brief survey of it also and shew how far I assent unto or dissent from that which I conceive to be his meaning And first concerning suddain passions as Anger or the like That which he saith that the action doth necessarily follow the thought is thus far true that those actions which are altogether undeliberated and do proceed from suddain and violent passions or motus primo primis which surprise a man and give him no time to advise with reason are not properly and actualally in themselves free but rather necessary actions as when a man runs away from a Cat or a Custard out of a secret antipathy Secondly as for those actions wherein actuall deliberation seemes not necessary because never any thing appeared that could make a man doubt of the consequence I do confess that actions done by vertue of a precedent deliberation without any actuall deliberation in the present when the act is done may notwithstanding be truly both voluntary and free acts yea in some cases and in some sense more free than if they were actually deliberated of in present As one who hath acquired by former deliberation and experience an habit to play upon the Virginall needs not deliberate what man or what Jack he much touch nor what finger of his hand he must move to play such a lesson Yea if his mind should be fixed or intent to every motion of his hand or every touch of a string it would hinder his play and render the action more troublesome to him Wherefore I believe that not onely his playing in generall but every motion of his hand though it be not presently deliberated of is a free act by reason of his precedent deliberation So then saving improprieties of speech as calling that voluntary which is free and limiting the will to the last appetite and other mistakes as that no act can be said to be without deliberation we agree also for the greater part in this second observation Thirdly whereas he saith that some suddain acts proceeding from violent passions which surprise a man are justly punished I grant they are so sometimes but not for his reason because they have been formerly actually deliberated of but because they were virtually deliberated of or because it is our faults that they were not actually deliberated of whether it was a fault of pure negation that is of not doing our duty onely or a fault of bad disposition also by reason of some vitious habit which we had contracted by our former actions To do a necessary act is never a fault nor justly punishable when the necessity is inevitably imposed upon us by extrinsecall causes As if a child before he had the use of reason shall kill a man in his passion yet because he wanted malice to incite him to it and reason to restrain him from it he shall not dy for it in the strict rules of particular Justice unless there be some mixture of publick Justice in the case But if the necessity be contracted by our selves and by our own faults it is justly punishable As he who by his wanton thoughts in the day-time doth procure his own nocturnall pollution A man cannot deliberate in his sleep yet it is accounted a sinfull act and consequently a free act that is not actually free in its self but virtually free in its causes and though it be not expresly willed and chosen yet it is tacitely and implicitely willed and chosen when that is willed and chosen from whence it was necessarily produced By the Leviticall Law if a man digged a pit and left it uncovered so that his neighbours Oxe or his Asse did fall into it he was bound to make reparation not because he did chose to leave it uncovered on purpose that such a mischance might happen but because he did freely omit that which he ought to have done from whence this dammage proceeded to his neighbour Lastly there is great difference between the first motions which sometimes are not in our power and subsequent acts of killing or stealing or the like which alwaies are in our power if we have the use of reason or els it is our own fault that they are not in our power Yet to such hasty acts done in hot blood the Law is not so severe as to those which are done upon long deliberation and prepensed malice unless as I said there be some mixture of publick Justice in it He that steales an horse deliberately may be more punishable by the Law than he that kills the owner by Chance-medley Yet the death of the owner was more noxious to use his phrase and more dammageable to the family than the stealth of the horse So far was T. H. mistaken in that also that the right to kill men doth proceed meerly from their being noxious Numb 14. Numb 26. T. H. SEcondly I conceive when a man deliberates whether he shall do a thing or not do a thing that he does nothing els but consider whether it be better for himself to do it or not to do it And to consider an action is to imagine the consequences of it both good and evill from whence is to be inferred that deliberation is nothing but alternate imagination of the good and evill sequells of an action or which is the same thing alternate hope and fear or alternate appetite to do or quit the action of which he deliberateth J. D. IF I did not know what deliberation was I should be little believed in my knowledge by this description Sometimes he makes it to be a consideration or an act of the understanding sometimes an imagination or an act of the fancy sometimes he makes it to be an alternation of passions hope and fear Sometimes he makes it concerne the end sometimes to concerne the means So he makes it I know not what The truth is this in brief Deliberation is an inquiry made
which is given by the much greater part of Philosophers Schoolmen And doth he think that all these spake non-sense or had no more judgment than to contradict themselves in a definition He might much better suspect himself than censure so many Let us see the definition it self A free Agent is that which when all things are present that are needfull to produce the effect can nevertheless not produce it I acknowledge the old definition of Liberty with little variation But I cannot see this non-sense nor discover this contradiction For in these words all things needfull or all things requisite the actuall determination of the will is not included But by all things needfull or requisite All necessary power either operative or elective all necessarie instruments and adjuments extrinsecall and intrinsecall and all conditions are intended As he that hath pen and ink and paper a table a desk and leisure the art of writing and the free use of his hand hath all things requisite to write if he will and yet he may forbear if he will Or as he that hath men and mony and armes and munition and shipps and a just cause hath all things requisite for war yet he may make peace if he will Or as the King proclaimed in the Gospell Matth. 22.4 I have prepared my dinner my oxen and my fatlings are killed all things are ready come unto the marriage According to T. H. his doctrine the guests might have told him that he said not truly for their own wills were not ready And indeed if the will were as he conceives it is necessitated extrinsecally to every act of willing if it had no power to forbear willing what it doth will nor to will what it doth not will then if the will were wanting something requisite to the producing of the effect was wanting But now when Science and conscience reason and Religion our own and other mens experience doth teach us that the will hath a dominion over its own acts to will or nill without extrinsecall necessitation If the power to will be present in actu primo determinable by our selves then there is no necessary power wanting in this respect to the producing of the effect Secondly these words to act or not to act to work or not to work to produce or not to produce have reference to the effect not as a thing which is already done or doing but as a thing to be done They imply not the actuall production but the producibility of the effect But when once the will hath actually concurred with all other causes and conditions and circumstances then the effect is no more possible or producible but it is in being and actually produced Thus he takes away the subject of the question The question is whether effects producible be free from necessity He shuffles out effects producible and thrusts in their places effects produced or which are in the act of production Wherefore I conclude that it is neither non-sense nor contradiction to say that a free Agent when all things requisite to produce the effect are present may nevertheless not produce it Numb 33. T. H. FOr my first five points where it is explicated First what Spontaneity is Secondly what Deliberation is Thirdly what Will Propension and Appetite is Fourthly what a free Agent is Fiftly what Liberty is There can be no other proof offered but every mans own experience by reflecting on himself and remembring what he useth to have in his mind that is what he himself meaneth when he saith an action is spontaneous A man deliberates such is his will That Agent or that action is free Now he that so reflecteth on himself cannot but be satisfied but that deliberation is the considering of the good evill sequells of the action to come That by Spontaneity is meant inconsiderate proceeding for els nothing is meant by it That will is the last act of our Deliberation That a free Agent is he that can do if he will and forbear if he will And that Liberty is the absence of exteruall impediments But to those that out of custome speak not what they conceive but what they hear and are not able or will not take the pains to consider what they think when they hear such words no argument can be sufficient because experience and matter of fact is not verified by other mens Arguments but by every mans own sense and memory For example how can it be prooved that to love a thing and to think it good are all one to a man that does not mark his own meaning by those words Or how can it be prooued that Eternity is not nunc Stans to a man that sayes these words by custome and never considers how he can conceive the thing it self in his mind Also the sixt point that a man cannot imagine any thing to begin without a cause can no other way be made known but by trying how he can imagine it But if he try he shall find as much reason if there be no cause of the thing to conceive it should begin at one time as another that is he hath equall reason to think it should begin at all times which is impossible And therefore he must think there was some speciall cause why it began then rather than sooner or later or els that it began never but was Eternall J. D. NOw at length he comes to his main proofs He that hath so confidently censured the whole current of School-men and Philosophers of non-sense had need to produce strong evidence for himself So he calls his reasons Numb 36. demonstrative proofs All demonstrations are either from the cause or the effect not from private notions and conceptions which we have in our minds That which he calls a demonstration deserves not the name of an intimation He argues thus That which a man conceives in his mind by these words Spontaneity Deliberation c. that they are This is his proposition which I deny The true natures of things are not to be judged by the private ideas or conceptions of men but by their causes and formall reasons Ask an ordinary person what upwards signifies and whether our Antipodes have their heads upwards or downwards And he will not stick to tell you that if his head be upwards theirs must needs be downwards And this is because he knowes not the formall reason thereof That the Heavens incircle the earth and what is towards heaven is upwards This same erronious notion of vpwards and downwards before the true reason was fully discovered abused more than ordinary capacities as appeares by their arguments of pendâ—…li homines and pendulae arbores Again what do men conceive ordinary by this word empty as when they say an empty vessell or by this word Body as when they say there is no body in that roome they intend not to exclude the aire either out of the vessell or out of the roome Yet reason tells us that the vessell is
of these Sparrows doth not fall to the ground without your Heavenly Father that is without an influence of power from him or exempted frō his disposition he doth not say which your heavenly Father casteth not down Lastly for the natural actions of inanimate Creatures wherein there is not the least concurrence of any free or voluntary Agents the questiō is yet more doubtfull for many things are called cōtingent in respect of us because we know not the cause of them which really in themselves are not contingent but necessary Also many things are contingent in respect of one single cause either actually hindred or in possibility to be hindred which are necessary in respect of the joynt concurrence of all collateral causes But whether there be a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning so as they must all have concurred as they have done in the same degree of power have been deficient as they have beē in all events whatsoever would require a further examination if it were pertinent to this question of liberty but it is not It is sufficient to my purpose to have shewed that all elective actions are free from absolute necessity And moreover that the concurrence of voluntary and free Agents with natural causes both upon purpose and accidentally hath helped them to produce many effects which otherwise they had not produced and hindred them from producing many effects which otherwise they had produced And that if this inintervention of voluntary and free Agents had been more frequent than it hath been as without doubt it might have been many natural events had been otherwise than they are And therefore he might have spared his instances of casting Ambs-ace and raining to morrow And first for his casting Ambs-ace If it be thrown by a fair Gamester with indifferent Dice it is a mixt action the casting of the Dice is free but the casting of Ambs-ace is contingent a man may deliberate whether he will cast the Dice or not but it were folly to deliberate whether he will cast Ambs-ace or not because it is not in his power unless he be a cheater that can cogge the Dice or the Dice be false Dice then the contingency or the degree of contingency ceaseth accordingly as the Caster hath more or less cunning or as the figure or making of the Dice doth incline them to Ambs-ace more than to another cast or necessitate them to this cast and no other Howsoever so far as the cast is free or contingent so far it is not necessary And where necessity begins there liberty and contingency do cease to be Likewise his other instance of raining or not raining to morrow is not of a free elective act nor alwayes of a contingent act In some Countries as they have their nati venti their certain winds at set seasons so they have their certain and set rains The Aethiopian rains are supposed to be the cause of the certain inundation of Nilus In some eastern Countries they have rain onely twice a year and those constant which the Scriptures call the former and the later rain In such places not onely the causes do act determinately and necessarily but also the determination or necessity of the event is foreknown to the inhabitants In our Climate the natural causes coelestial and sublunary do not produce rain so necessarily at set times neither can we say so certainly and infallibly it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow Neverthelesse it may so happen that the causes are so disposed and determined even in our climate that this proposition it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow may be necessary in it self and the Prognosticks or tokens may be such in the sky in our own bodies in the creatures animate and inanimate as weather-glasses c. that it may become probably true to us that it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow But ordinarily it is a contingent proposition to us whether it be contingent also in it self that is whether the concurrence of the causes were absolutely necessary whether the vapours or matter of the rain may not yet be dispersed or otherwise consumed or driven beyond our coast is a speculation which no way concerns this question So we see one reason why his two instances are altogether impertinent because they are of actions which are not free nor elective nor such as proceed from the liberty of mans will Secondly our dispute is about absolute necessity his proofs extend onely to Hypothetical necessity Our question is whether the concurrence and determination of the causes were necessary before they did concur or were determined He proves that the effect is necessary after the causes have concurred and are determined The freest actions of God or man are necessary by such a necessity of supposition And the most contingent events that are as I have shewed plainly Numb 3. where his instance of Ambs-ace is more fully answered So his proof looks another way from his proposition His proposition is that the casting of Ambs-ace was necessary before it was thrown His proof is that it was necessary when it was thrown examine all his causes over and over and they will not afford him one grain of antecedent necessity The first cause is in the Dice True if they be false Dice there may be something in it but then his contingency is destroyed If they be square Dice they have no more inclination to Ambs-ace than to Cinque and Quater or any other cast His second cause is the posture of the parties hand But what necessity was there that he should put his hand into such a posture None at all The third cause is the measure of the force applied by the caster Now for the credit of his cause let him but name I will not say a convincing reason nor so much as a probable reason but even any pretence of reason how the Caster was necessitated from without himself to apply just so much force and neither more or lesse If he cannot his cause is desperate and he may hold his peace for ever his last cause is the posture of the Table But tell us in good earnest what necessity there was why the Caster must throw into that Table rather than the other or that the Dice must fall just upon that part of the Table before the cast was thrown He that makes these to be necessary causes I do not wonder if he make all effects necessary effects If any one of these causes be contingent it is sufficient to render the cast contingent and now that they are all so contingent yet he will needs have the effect to be necessary And so it is when the cast is thrown but not before the cast was thrown which he undertook to prove who can blame him for being so angry with the School-men and their distinctions of necessity into absolute and hypothetical seeing they touch
his freehold so nearly But though his instance of raining to morrow be impertinent as being no free action yet because he triumphs so much in his argument I will not stick to go a little out of my way to meet a friend For I confess the validity of the reason had been the same if he had made it of a free action as thus Either I shall finish this reply to morrow or I shall not finish this reply to morrow is a necessary proposition But because he shall not complain of any disadvantage in the alteration of his terms I will for once adventure upon his shower of rain And first I readily admit his major that this proposition either it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow is necessarily true for of two contradictory propositions the one must of necessity be true because no third can be given But his minor that it could not be necessarily true except one of the Members were necessarily true is most false And so is his proof likewise That if neither the one nor the other of the Members be necessarily true it cannot be affirmed that either the one or the other is true A conjunct proposition may have both parts false and yet the proposition be true as if the Sun shine it is day is a true proposition at midnight And T. H. confesseth as much Numb 19. If I shall live I shall eat is a necessary proposition that is to say it is necessary that that proposition should be true whensoever uttered But it is not the necessity of the thing nor is it therefore necessary that the man shall live or that the man shall eat And so T. H. proceeds I do not use to fortifie my distinctions with such reasons But it seemeth he hath forgotten himself and is contented with such poor fortifications And though both parts of a disjunctive proposition cannot be false because if it be a right disjunction the Members are repugnant whereof one part is infallibly true yet vary put the proposition a little to abate the edge of the disjunctions and you shall finde that which T. H. saith to be true that it is not the necessity of the thing which makes the proposition to be true As for example vary it thus I know that either it will rain to morrow or that it will not rain to morrow is a true proposition But it is not true that I know it will rain to morrow neither is it true that I know it will not rain to morrow wherefore the certain truth of the proposition doth not prove that either of the Members is determinately true in present Truth is a conformity of the understanding to the thing known whereof speech is an interpreter If the understanding agree not with the thing it is an errour if the words agree not with the understanding it is a lie Now the thing known is known either in it self or in its causes If it be known in it self as it is then we expresse our apprehension of it in words of the present tence as the Sun is risen If it be known in its cause we expresse our selves in words of the future tense as to morrow will be an Eclipse of the Moon But if we neither know it in its self nor in its causes then there may be a foundation of truth but there is no such determinate truth of it that we can reduce it into a true proposition we cannot say it doth rain to morrow or it doth not rain to morrow That were not onely false but absurd we cannot positively say it will rain to morrow because we do not know it in its causes either how they are determined or that they are determined wherefore the certitude and evidence of the disjunctive proposition is neither founded upon that which will be actually to morrow for it is granted that we do not know that Nor yet upon the determination of the causes for then we would not say indifferently either it will rain or it will not rain but positively it will rain or positively it will not rain But it is grounded upon an undeniable principle that of two contradictory propositions the one must necessarily be true And therefore to say either this or that will infallibly be but it is not yet determined whether this or that shall be is no such senselesse assertion that it deserved a Tytyrice Tupatulice but an evident truth which no man that hath his eyes in his head can doubt of If all this will not satisfie him I will give one of his own kinde of proofs that is an instance That which necessitates all things according to T. H. is the decree of God or that order which is set to all things by the eternal cause Numb 11. Now God himself who made this necessitating decree was not subjected to it in the making thereof neither was there any former order to oblige the first cause necessarily to make such a decree therefore this decree being an act ad extra was freely made by God without any necessitation Yet nevertheless this disjunctive proposition is necessarily true Either God did make such a decree or he did not make such a decree Again though T. H. his opinion were true that all events are necessary and that the whole Christian world are deceived who believe that some events are free from necessity yet he will not deny but if it had been the good pleasure of God he might have made some causes free from necessity seeing that it neither argues any imperfection nor implies any contradiction Supposing therefore that God had made some second causes free from any such antecedent determination to one yet the former disjunction would be necessarily true Either this free undetermined cause will act after this manner or it will not act after this manner Wherefore the necessary truth of such a disjunctive proposition doth not prove that either of the members of the disjunction singly considered is determinately true in present but onely that the one of them will be determinately true to morrow T. H. THe last thing in which also consisteth the whole controversy Namely that there is no such thing as an Agent which when all things requisite to action are present can nevertheless forbeare to produce it or which is all one that there is no such thing as freedom from necessity is easily inferd from that which hath been before alledged For if it be an Agent it can work And if it work there is nothing wanting of what is requisite to produce the action and consequently the cause of the action is sufficients And if sufficient then also necessary as hath been proved before J. D. I Wonder that T. H. should confess that the whole weight of this controversy doth rest upon this proposition That there is no such thing as an Agent which when all things requisite to action are present can nevertheless forbear to act And yet bring nothing but such poor Bull-rushes