truth of God the goodnesse of God the justice of God and the power of God In the next place I demanded how shall a man praise God who believeth him to be a greater Tyrant than ever was in the World creating millions to burn eternally without their own fault to expresse his power He answereth That the word Tyrant was sometimes taken in a good sense A pretty answer and to good purpose when all the world sees that it is taken here in the worst sense And when he hath fumbled thus a while after the old manner all his answer is a recrimination How can the Bishop praise God for his goodnesse who thinks he hath created millions of millions to burn eternally when he could have kept them so easily from cōmitting any fault I do not believe that God created millions nor so much as one single person to burn eternally which is as true as his other slander in this place That I withdraw the will of man from Gods dominion Both the one and the other are far from me His principles may lead him upon such precipices mine do not God created not man to burn but to serve him here and to be glorified by him and with him hereafter That many men do misse this end is not Gods fault who gave them sufficient strength to have conquered and would have given them a larger supply of grace if they had sought it but mans God was not bound to reverse his own decrees or change the order of the government of the World which he himself had justly instituted to hold up a man from sinning against his will when he could by his Almighty power draw good out of evil and a greater degree of glory out of the fall of man Concerning the number of those who are reprobated for their sins I have nothing to say but that secret things belong unto the Lord our God and things revealed to us and to our children My next demands were How shall a man hear the Word of God with that reverence and devotion and faith that is requisite who believeth that God causeth his Gospel to be preached to the much greater part of Christians without any intention that they should be saved Secondly How shall a man prepare himself for the receiving of the Sacrament with care and conscience who apprehendeth that eating and drinking unworthily is not the cause of damnation but because God will damne a man therefore he necessitateth him to eat and drink unworthily To which two demands he giveth one answer That faith is the gift of God if they have faith they shall both hear the Word and receive the Sacraments worthily and if they have no faith they shall neither hear the Word nor receive the Sacraments worthily There needeth no more to be said to evidence to all the World that he doth utterly destroy and quite take away all care all solicitude all devotion and preparation of our selves for holy duties If God give us faith we can want nothing If God do not give us faith we can have nothing We use to say truly That God doth not deny his grace to them who do their endeavours The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force and how much more shall your father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him St. Paul maketh hearing to be the way to obtain faith How shall they believe on him of whom they have not heard And exhorteth Christians to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling Devout prayers and hearing and reading and participating did use to be the way to get faith and to increase faith As in our naturall life so in our spirituall life we must earn our bread in the sweat of our brows Such desperate opinions as these which are invented onely to colour idlenesse and quench devotion are the pillows of Satan We believe none are excluded from the benefit of Christs passion but onely they who exclude themselves Absolute exclusion is opposed to exclusion upon supposition which usefull and necessary destinction if he do not or will not understand we have no reason to phancy it one jot the worse for his supercilious censures My next demand was How shall a man make a free vow to God who believes himself to be able to perform nothing but as he is extrinsecally necessitated To this he answers That the necessity of vowing before he vowed hindred not the freedom of his vow This it self is absurd enough but whether it be his misapprehension or his cunning to avoid the force of an argument he comes far short both of the force and of the hope of this reason which was this If a man be not left in any thing to his own disposition and have no power over his own future actions but is antecedently determined to what he must doe and must not doe and yet knoweth not what he is extrinsecally determined to do and not to do then it is not onely folly but impiety for him to vow that which he knoweth not whether it be in his power to perform or not But upon his grounds every man is antecedently determined to every thing he shall do and yet knoweth not how he is determined Universall necessity and free vows cannot possibly consist together My last demand was how shall a man condemne or accuse himself for his sinnes who thinketh himself to be like a watch wound up by God His answer is Though a man think himself necessitated to what he shall do yet if he do not think himself necessitated and wound up to impenitence there will follow no impediment to repentance My argument looketh at the time past his answer regardeth the time to come both ways he is miserably entangled First for the time past If a man was wound up as a watch by God to all the individuall actions which he hath done then he ought not to accuse or condemn any man for what he hath done for according to his grounds neither he nor they did any thing but what was the secret and irresistible will of God that they should do And when the secret will of God is made known by the event we ought all to submit unto it Much lesse can any man accuse or condemn himself without hypocrisie for doing that which if his life had lain a thousand times upon it he could not have helped nor done otherwise than he did The very same reason holdeth for the time to come There is the same necessity in respect of Gods decree the same inevitability on our parts for the future that is for the time past The same submission is due to to the secret will of God when it shall be declared by the event How ill he hath been able to reconcile his principles with the truth and goodnesse and justice and power of God and with those Christian duties which we owe unto God as vows repentance and
CASTIGATIONS OF Mr. HOBBES HIS LAST ANIMADVERSIONS IN The case concerning LIBERTY and Universal NECESSITY Wherein all his Excepâ—…ions about that Controversie are fully satisfied By Iohn Bramhall D. D. and Bishop of Derry Prov. 12. 19. The lip of truth shall be established for ever but a lying tongue is but for a moment London Printed by E. T. for I. Crook 1657. An Answer to Mr. Hobs his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and first to his Epistle to the Reader CHristian Reader thou hast here the testimony of Mr. Hobs that the questions concerning Necessity Freedom and Chance are clearly discussed between him and me in that little volume which he hath lately published If they be it were strange whilest we agree not much better about the terms of the controversie than the builders of Babel did understand one anothers language A necessity upon supposition which admits a possibility of the contrary is mistaken for an absolute and true necessity A freedom from compulsion is confounded with a freedom from necessitation meer spontaneity usurpeth the place of true liberty no chance is acknowledged but what is made chance by our ignorance or nescience because we know not the right causes of it I desire to retein the proper terms of the Schools Mr. Hobs flies to the common conceptions of the vulgar a way seldom troden but by false Prophets and seditious Oratours He preferreth their terms as more intelligible I esteem them much more obscure and confused In such intricate questions vulgar brains are as uncapable of the things as of the terms But thus it behoved him to prevaricate that he might not seem to swim against an universal stream nor directly to oppose the generall current of the Christian World There was an odde phantastick person in our times one Thomas Leaver who would needs publish a Logick in our mothers tongue You need not doubt but that the publick good was pretended And because the received terms of art seemed to him too abstruce he translated them into English stiling a Subject an Inholder an Accident an Inbeer A Proposition a Shewsay an affirmative Proposition a Yeasav a negative proposition a Naysay the subject of the Proposition the Foreset the predicate the Backset the conversion the turning of the Foreset into the Backset and the Backset into the Foreset Let M. Hobs himself be judge whether the common Logical notions or this new gibrish were lesse intelligible Haec à se non multum abludit imago But Reader dost thou desire to see the question discussed clearly to thy satisfastion observe but Mr. Hobs his practicks and compare them with his principles and there needs no more He teacheth that all causes and all events are absolutely necessary yet if any man crosse him he frets and fumes and talkes his pleasure jussit quod splendida bilis Doth any man in his right wits use to be angry with causes that act necessarily He might as well be angry with the Sun because it doth not rise an hour sooner or with the Moon because it is not alwayes full for his pleasure he commands his servant to do thus to as much purpose if he be necessitated to do otherwise as Canutus commanded the waves of the Sea to flow no higher He punisheth him if he transgresse his commands with as much justice if he have no dominion over his own actions as Xeâ—…xes commanded so many stripes to be given to the Hâ—…llespont for breaking down his Bridge He exhorts him and reprehends him He might as well exhort the fire to burne or reprehend it for burning of his cloaths He is as timerous in a thunder or a storme as cautelous and deliberative in doubtful cases as if he believed that all things in the World were contingent and nothing necessary Sometimes he chideth himself how ill advised was I to do thus or so O that I had thought better upon it or had done otherwise Yet all this while he believeth that it was absolutely necessary for him to do what he did and impossible for him to have done otherwise Thus his own practise doth sufficiently confute his tenets He will tell us that he is timerous and solicitous because he knows not how the causes will determine To what purpose Whether their determination be known or unknown he cannot alter it with his endeavours He will tell us that deliberation must concur to the production of the effect Let it be so but if it do concur necessarily Why is he so solicitous and so much perplexed Let him sleep or wake take care or take no care the necessary causes must do their work Yet from our collision some light hath proceeded towards the elucidation of this question and much more might have arisen if Mr. Hobbes had been pleased to retain the ancient Schoole terms for want of which his discourse is still ambiguous and confused As here he tells thee That we both maintain that men are free to do as they will and to forbear as they will My charity leads me to take him in the best sense onely of free acts and then with dependence upon the first cause That man who knows not his idiotismes would think the cause was yeilded in these words whereas in truth they signifie nothing His meaning is He is as free to do and forbear as he is free to call back yesterday He may call until his heart ake but it will never come He saith A man is free to do if he will but he is not free to will if he will If he be not free to will then he is not free to do Without the concurrence of all necessary causes it is impossible that the effect should be produced But the concurrence of the will is necessary to the production of all free or voluntary acts And if the will be necessitated to nil as it may be then the act is impossible And then he saith no more in effect but this A man is free to do if he will that which is impossible for him to do By his doctrine all the powers and faculties of a man are as much necessitated and determinated to one by the natural influence of extrinsecal causes as the will And therefore upon his own grounds a man is as free to will as to do The points wherein he saith we disagree are set down loosely in like manner What our Tenets are the Reader shall know more truely and distinctly by comparing our writings together then by this false dimme light which he holds out unto him He is pleased if not ironically yet certainly more for his own glory than out of any respect to me to name me a learned Schoole-Divine An honour which I vouchsafe not to my self My life hath been too practical to attend so much to those speculative Studies It may be the Schoole-men have started many superfluous questions and some of dangerous conse quence But yet I say the weightier Ecclesiastical controversies will never be understood and
Church he gives sufficient grace to prevent hardnesse of heart if they will If man have lost his primogenious power if he will not make use of those supplies of grace which Gods mercy doth afford him that is his own fault But still here is no physical determination to evil here is no antecedent extrinsecal determination of any man to hardnesse of heart here is nothing but that which doth consist with true liberty Lastly he saith We make God onely to permit evil and to will good actions conditionally and consequently if man will them So we ascribe nothing at all to God in the causation of any action good or bad He erreth throughout God is the total cause of all natures and all essences In evil actions God is cause of the power to act of the order in acting of the occasion and of the disposition thereof to good In good actions freely done he is the author original of liberty he enableth by general influence he concurreth by speciall assistance and cooperation to the performance of them and he disposeth of them to good He doth not will that meerly upon condition which himself hath prescribed nor consequently which he himself hath antecedently ordained and instituted Now having cleared all his exceptions it remaineth next to examine how he reconcileth the first and the third sort of Texts The will of God saith he sometimes signifieth the word of God or the commandments of God that is his revealed will or the signs or significations of his will Sometimes it signifieth an internal act of God that is his counsel and decree By his revealed will God would have all men to be saved but by his internal will he would not By his revealed will he would have gathered Ierusalem not by his inward will So when God saith What could I have done more to my vineyard that is to be understood outwardly in respect of his revealed will What directions what laws what threatnings could have been used more And when he saith It came not into my mind the sense is to command it This I take to be the scope and summe of what he saith Thus far he is right that he distinguisheth between the signifying will of God and his good pleasure for which he is beholding to the Schooles And that he makes the revealed will of God to be the rule of all our actions And that many things happen against the revealed will of God but nothing against his good pleasure But herein he erreth grossely that he maketh the revealed will of God and his internal will to be contrary one to another as if God did say one thing and mean another or command one thing and necessitate men to do another which is the grossest dissimilation in the World Odi illos seu claustrâ—… erebi quicunque loquuâ—…nr Ore aliud tacitoque aliud sub pectore condunt He saith It is not Christian to think if God had a purpose to save all men that any could be damned because it were a sign of want of power to â—…ffect what he would It is true if God had an absolute purpose to work all mens salvation irresistibly against their wills or without themselves But God hath no such absolute will to save all men He loves his creatures wel but his own justice better And he that made men without themselves will not save them without themselves He co-operates with all his creatures according to their distinct natures which he hath given them with necessary Agents necessarily with free Agents freely God hath given men liberty to assent to saving truth They abuse it He hath proposed a condition under which they may be saved They reject it So he willeth their salvation by an antecedent will and their damnation by a consequent will which two wills in God or within the Divine Essence are no way distinct for they are the same with the Divine Essence But they are distinguished onely in order to the things willed of God Neither is there the least contradiction between them The one shews us what God would have us to do The other is what God himself will do The one looks upon man as he was created by God or as he should have been or might have been without his own fault The other looks upon man as he is with all circumstances The one regards onely the order of the causes and means designed by God for our salvation The other regards also the application or misapplication of these meanes by our selves In answering to these words Say not thou it is through the Lord I fell away Say not thou he hath caused me to erre He distinguisheth between say not and think not as if it were unlawful to say so but not unlawful to think so Curse not thy King saith Solomon no not in thy thought much lesse thy God Thought is free from man but not from God It is not honourable saith he to say so No more is it to think so It is not lawful saith he to say that any action can be done which God hath purposed shall not be done that is in his language which shall not actually come to passe in due time Our Saviour was of another mind Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my father and he shall presently give me more than twelve Legions of Angels He knew some things can be done which never will be done Next he proceedeth to touch those inconveniencies which flow from the opinion of universal necessity but very gently and sparingly Arts and armes and bookes and consultations and medicines c. are not superfluous though all events be necessary because the means are equally necessitated with the event Suppose it were so so much the worse This must needs utterly destroy all care and solicitude of free Agents He is a madman that will vexe and trouble himself and take care and consult about things that are either absolutely necessary or absolutely impossible as about the rising of the Sun or about the draining of the sea with a sieve Yet such are all events and all the means to effect them in his opinion either as absolutely necessary as the rising of the Sun or as absolutely impossible as the draining of the Ocean with a sieve What need he take care for a Medicine or a Physician who knows that if he must recover and if a Medicine or a Physician be a necessary means for his recovery the causes will infallibly provide him one and it may be a better Medicine or a better Physician than he should have used If a man may recover or not recover both means and care to use means do well But if a man must recover or not recover that is if the end and the means be both predetermined the meanes may be necessary but all care and sollicitude is altogether vain and superfluous But he telleth the Reader that this absurdity followeth as much from my opinion as from his For as I
intuition with God And therefore as my present beholding of a man casting himself down headlong from some precipice whilest â—…e is in the act of casting himself down is not â—…he cause of his precipitation nor doth any way neccessitate him to precipitate himself yet upon supposition that I do see him precipitate himself it is necessarily that is infalâ—…ibly true that he doth precipitate himself but not necessarily true by any antecedent and extrinsecall determination of him to do that act nor so necessarily true as to exclude his freedom or liberty in the act Even so Gods knowledge of future contingents being a present intuition or beholding of them by reason of his infinite intellect doth not at all determine free Agents nor necessitate contingent events but onely infers an infallibility that is as we use to call it an hypotheticall necessity or a necessity upon supposition which doth consist with true liberty Much of this is confessed by Mr. Hobbes himself That the foreknowledge of God should be the cause of any thing cannot be truely said seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge dependeth on the existence of thing known and not they on it I desire to know whether God do his own works ad extra as the creation and destruction of the World freely or necessarily aâ—… whether he was necessitated to create the World precisely a such at time in such a manner Certainly God foreknoweth his own works as much as he foreknoweth the determinate acts of free Agents Yet his foreknowledge of his own works ad extra doth not necessitate himself If he say that God himself determineth his own acts ad extra so I say doth the free Agent also with this difference That God is infinite and independent upon any other but the free Agent is finite and dependent upon God both for his being and for his acting Then if Gods freedom in his own works ad extra doth not take away his prescience neither doth the liberty of free Agents take it away To his second inconvenience That it is impossible that that which is for known by God should not come to passe or come to passe otherwise than it is foreknown I answer That Gods foreknowledge is not such an act as T. H. imagineth that is an act that is expired or an act that is done and past but it is alwayes in doing an eternall act a present act a present intuition and consequently doth no more make the Agent unfree or the contrary event impossible untill it be actually produced than my knowing that such a man stabbed himself upon such a day made it then unpossible for him to have forborn stabbing of himself or my seeing a man eat in present made it unpossible for him before he did eat to have forborn eating God is the totall cause of all natures and essences but he is not the totall cause of all their acts and operations Neither did he create his Creatures to be idle but that they should each of them exercise such acts as are agreeable to their respective natures necessary Agents necessary Acts free Agents free Acts. And untill the free Agent have determined it self that is untill the last moment before production the contrary Act is not made unpossible and then only upon supposition He that precipated himself untill the very moment that he did precipitate himself might have withheld himself And if he had withheld himself then I had not seen him precipitate himself but withhold himself His frequent invectives against unsignificant words are but like the complaints of that old Belldam Harpaste in Seneca who still cried out against the darknesse of the room and desired to be brought into another chamber little believing that her own blindnesse was the true cause of it What Suares saith As I know neither what nor where so neither doth it concern either me or the cause His last assault against liberty in his fountains of Arguments is this Certainly to will is impossible without thinking on what a man willeth but it is in no mans election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on A man might well conjecture by this very reason that his fountain was very near drying up This Argument is levied rather against the memory or against the understanding than against the will and may serve as well against freedom to do as against freedom to will which is contrary to his principles It is as impossible to do without thinking on what a man doth as it is to will without thinking on what he willeth but it is in no mans election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on Therefore a man is not free to chuse what he will do I know not what this word to think signifies with him but I know what other Authours make it to signifie to use reason to understand to know and they define a thought to be the understanding actually imployed or busied about some object Hath not he spun us a fair thred He undertaketh to shew a defect in the will and he alleadeth a defect in the understanding Is a man therefore not free to go to his dinner because perhaps he thinks not on it just at dinner time Let the free Agent be free to will or nill and to chuse which part he will without necessitation or determination to one when he doth think on it and we shall not want true liberty An Answer to the Animadversions upon the Epistle to my Lord of Newcastle IT was no passion but a sad truth To call the opinion of fatall destiny blasphemous which maketh God to be directly the authour of sin which is a degree worse then Athisme and desperate which taketh away all care and solicitude and thrusts men headlong without fear or wit upon rocks and precipices and destructive which turneth all government divine and humane off from their hinges the practicall consequences whereof do utterly ruine all societies Neither am I guilty that I know of yet so much as of one uncivill word either against Mr. Hobbes his person or his parts He is over unequall and indulgent to himself who dare assume the boldnesse to introduce such insolent and paradoxicall opinions into the World and will not allow other men the liberty to wellcome them as they deserve I wish he himself in his Animadversions and his parasiticall publisher of his former treatise had observed the same temper and moderation particularly towards the lights of the Shools whom he slighteth and vilifieth every where as a company of pedantick dunses who understood not themselves yet held the World in awe under contribution by their â—…stian jargon untill a third Cato dropped down from Heaven to stand up for the vindication of Christian liberty from Scholastick tyranny and Stoicall necessity from naturall and morall liberty But this is certain if these poor despised Schoolmen were necessitated by antecedent and extrinsecall causes to speak such gibrish and non-sense and the Christian World to
supposition And if the fire were a free Agent it were suffiâ—…ient to destroy the liberty thereof as to that act He saith That it seemeth I understand not what these words free and contingent mean because I put causes among those things that operate freely What doth the man mean Are not free Agents causes If they be not how do they act I understand these words free and contingent as they ought to be understood and as the World hath understood them for two thousand years As for his new nick-naming of free and contingent Agents I heed it not He hath shewed That this liberty whereof we treat is common to bruit beasts and inanimate creatures with man as well as he could shew it or can shew it or ever wil be able to shew it that is just as much as he hath shewed that the sea burneth If it were not for this confounding of terms and a company of trifling homonymies he would have nothing to say or do When a man saith he doth any thing freely many other concurrent Agents work necessarily As the man moveth the sword freely the sword woundeth necessarily A free Agent may have concurrent Agents but his instance in a sword is very impertinent which is but an instrument yea a passive instrument and though it have an aptitude in it self from the sharpnesse and weight thereof yet the determination of the action and the efficacy or causation ought to be ascribed to the principall Agent The sword did not wound but the man wounded with the sword Admit the sword may be said in some sense to concur actively to the cutting certainly it concurs onely passively to the motion But he would make us believe that the man is no more active than his sword and hath no more power to suspend or deny his concurrence then the sword because a man doth not move himself or at least not move himself originally I have heard of some who held an opinion that the soul of man was but like the winding up of a watch and when the string was run out the man dyed and there the soule determined But I had not thought before this that any man had made the body also to be like a Clock or a Jack or a Puppet in a play to have the originall of its motion from without itself so as to make a man in his animal motion to be as meer a passive instrument as the sword in his hand If by originally he do understand independently so as to suppose that a man hath his locomotive faculty from himself and not from God we all affirm That the originall of a mans locomotive faculty is from God in whom we live and move and have our being But if he understand originally not in relation to the faculty but to the act of moving as he must mean unlesse he mean nonsence then we affirm that a man doth move himself originally and desire not to tast of his paradoxicall knowledge of motion It is folly to dispute with such men and not rather to leave them to their own phantasticall Chimera's who deny all principles and rules of art whom an adversary cannot drive into greater absurdities than they do willingly plunge themselves into Thus they do on purpose put out the lights and leave men to fence in the dark and then it is all one whether a man have skill at his weapon or not That he would have contingency to depend upon our knowledge or rather our ignorance and not upon the accidentall concurrence of causes That he confoundeth free causes which have power to suspend or deny their concurrence with contingent causes which admit onely a possibility to concur or not concur rather out of impotence than power That he maketh free causes which are principall causes to be guided by inferiour and instrumentall causes as if a man should say That a man is guided by the sword in his hand and not the sword by the man deserves no other answer but contempt or pity that a man should so poyson his intellectuals and entangle himself in his own errours Such another mistake is his argument to prove that contingent causes could not have concurred otherwise then they did I know noâ—… whether more pedanticall or ridiculous For I conceive not saith he how when this runneth this way and that another they can be said to concur that is run together Wheresoever there are divided parties as in a Court or a Camp or a Corporation he who concurreth with one party doth thereby desert the other Concerning his instance of the necessity of casting ambs ace If he can shew that the caster was antecedently necessitated to cast so that he could not possibly have denied his concurrence and to cast so soon so that he could not possibly have suspended his concurrence and to cast just with so much force so that he could not possibly have used more force or lesse force and to cast into that table and that very individuall place it may be whilest he winked or looked another way I say if he can shew that all these contingent accidents were absolutely predetermined and that it was not at all in the Casters power to have done otherwise than he did then he hath brought contingency under the jurisdiction of fate But if he faile in any one of these as all men see that he must faile in all of these then I may have leave to tell him that his casting of ambs ace hath lost him his game But now Reader I desire thee to observe his answer and to see him plainly yield the cause Though the subject ambs ace be mean and contemptible yet it yieldeth thee light enough to see what notorious triflers these are Thus he saith The suspending of the casters concurrence or altering of his force and the lâ—…ke accidents serve not to take away the necessity of ambs ace otherwise then by making a necessity of deux ace or some other cast that shall be thrown This is ingenuously answered I ask no more of him He confesseth That the caster might have suspended his concurrence or have altered his force or the accidents might have fallen out otherwise than they did And that if these alterations had happened as they might have happened then there had been as great a necessity of deux ace or some other cast as there was of ambs ace where he saith That the alteration of the accidents serveth not to take away the necessity of ambs ace otherwise than by making a necessity of deux ace or some other cast he confesseth That by making a necessity of deux ace or some other cast they might serve to take away the necessity of ambs ace What is now become of his antecedent determination of all things to one from eternity and of the absolute impossibility that any Event should come to passe otherwise than it doth If this be all his necessity it is no more than a necessity upon supposition where the
when God hath created him a free man a noble creature to make himself like a wooden toppe Deserveth not he to be moved as the toppe is with a whip until he confesse his errour and acknowledge his own liberty If this wooden toppe should chance to hit T. H. on the shinnes I desire to know whom he would accuse The toppe That were as mad a part as it is in the dog to run after the stone and bite it never looking at the man who did throw it What then should he accuse the boyes that whipped the toppe No that were equally ludibrious seeing the boyes are as much necessitated and to use his own phrase as much lasht to what they do by the causes as the toppe is by the boyes So he may sit down patiently and at last think upon his liberty which he had abandoned and if the causes will give him leave get a plantin leafe to heale his broken shinne Such an unruly thing as this toppe which he fancieth is he himself sometimes dictating errours sometimes writing paradoxes sometimes justling out Metaphysicks sometimes wounding the Mathematicks And in a word troubling the World and disordering all things Logick Philosophy Theology with his extravagant conceits And yet he is offended that men will go about to keep possession of their ancient Principles against his upstart innovations and is ready to implead them with that quarrelsome Roman because they would not receive his weapon fairly with their whole bodies It were a much more Christian contemplation to elevate his thoughts from this wooden toppe to the organical body of a man wherein he may find God an hundred times from the external form or figure of the one which affords it onely an aptitude to move and turn to the internall and substantiall form of the other which is the subordinate beginning of animal motion from the turning of his toppe which is so swift that it prevents the discovery of the sharpest eye-sight and seemeth to stand stock still to the eternity of God where motion and rest do meet together or all motion is swallowed up into rest Lastly from these boyes who hold the toppe up by their continued lashings to the infinite power of an Almighty God who is both the procreating and conserving cause of all our life being and motion and to magnifie him for his wonderful workes wherein he hath manifested to the World his own power and wisdom An answer to his Animadversions upon Num. 4. THese Animadversions will produce no great trouble either to me or the Reader I did demonstrate in this Section the difference between liberty of exercise or contradiction and liberty of specification or contrariety He onely takes notice of it and calls it Jargon and so without one word more shaketh hands and withdraweth himself I said it was a rule in art that homonymous words or words of a double or doubtful signification ought first to be distinguished that Disputants may understand one another rightly and not beat the aire to no purpose I shewed out of the Scriptures that the word liberty or freedom was such an ambiguous word and shewed further what this liberty is whereof we dispute A liberty from necessitation or determination to one by extrinsecal causes He confesseth that this is the question adding That he understandeth not how such a liberty can be Then what remained but to go to our proofes Yet here he raiseth a storm of words upon the by and foameth out his own disgrace He denieth that there is any such rule of Art I am sure saith he not in the art of reason which men call Logick And all Logicians are sure of the contrary who give not onely one but many such rules in treating of simple terms of complex terms of fallacies They teach that an ambiguous term before it be distinguished signifieth nothing That it cannot be placed in any predicament That it cannot be defined nor divided And they give this general Rule Distinctio vocis ambiguae prima sit in omni rerum consideratione Either this man never read one word of Logick in his life or it is most strange how pride hath defaced all Logicall notions out of his mind He telleth us that the signification of an ambiguous word may be rendered perspicuous by a definition But Logicians teach us better that it cannot be defined before it be distinguished How should a man define he knoweth not what Suppose I should aske him the definition of a degree Can he or any man define a degree before they know what degree is to be defined whether a degree in the Heavens or a degree in the Schooles or a degree of Consanguinity or a degree of Comparison He may as well define a crabbe before he know whether it be a crab-fish or a crabbe-fruit The difinition and the thing defined are the same thing But ambiguous words have several significations which cannot be of the same thing His definition of liberty is this Liberty is the absence of external impediments to motion Before I have done I shall make him out of love with his definitions Liberty is an absence If liberty be an absence then liberty is nothing for an absence is nothing in the nature of things but a meer privation An absence of impediments Impediments may take away the liberty of execution not the liberty of election There may be true liberty where there are impediments and there may be no impediments yet without liberty An absence of outward impediments And why of outward impediments may not inward impediments withhold a man from acting freely as well as outward May not a fit of sicknesse keep a man at home as well as a shower of rain A man may be free and act freely notwithstanding impediments Many impediments are vincible A man may go out of his house though there be a great logge laid at his door Lastly an absence of impediments to motions Election is the most proper intrinsecall act of liberty which may be without locall motion I durst not stile my poor description by the name of a definition Yet it set down the right nature of liberty and shewed what was the difference between us His definition hath nothing to do with liberty and cometh not near our question by twenty furlongs Our controversie is Whether the will be antecedently determined by extrinsecall causes we have nothing to do with impediments of motion But to let him see the vanity of his definitions I will demonstrate out of them That the most necessary Agents are free Agents and the most free Agents necessary Agents that the will is free and necessity is liberty First when a stone falleth from a steeple to the ground or when a fire burneth there is an absence of all externall impediments to motion yet by his own confession these are not free nor so much as voluntary but naturall necessary actions The stone falleth necessarily not freely The fire burneth necessarily not freely So his
not practically practical because it takes not effect by reason of the dissent of the will But whensoever the will shall give its free assent to the practical judgement of the understanding and the sentence of reason is approved by the acceptation of the will then the judgement of the understanding becomes practically practical Then the election is made which Philosophers do therefore call a consultative appetition Not that the will can elect contrary to the judgement of reason but that the will may suspend its consent and require a new deliberation and a new judgement and give consent to the later So we have this seeming piece of non-sense judicium intellectus practice practicum not onely translated but explained in English consonantly to the most received opinions of Classical Authours If he have any thing to say against it let him bring arguments not reproaches And remember how Memnon gave a railing souldier a good blow with his Lance saying I hired thee to fight and not to raile The absurdity which he imputeth to me in natural Philosophy That it is ridiculous to say that the object of the sight is the cause of seeing which maketh him sorry that he had the ill fortune to be ingaged with me in a dispute of this kind is altogether impertinent and groundlesse The cause of seeing is either the cause of the exercise of seeing or the cause of the specification of the act of seeing The object is the cause of the specification why we see this or that and not the cause of the exercise He that should affirm that the object doth not concurre in the causation of sight especially going upon those grounds that I do that the manner of vision is not by sending out beames from the eye to the object but by receiving the species from the object to the eye was in an errour indeed For in sending out the species there is action and in the reception of them passion But he that should affirm that the object is the cause of the exercise of sight or that it is that which maketh that which is facultate espectabile to be actu aspectabile or that it is that which judgeth of the colour or light or to come home to the scope of the place that the object doth necessitate or determine the faculty of sight or the sensitive soul to the exercise of seeing were in a greater errour Among many answers which I gave to that objection that the dictate of the understanding doth determine the will this was one That supposing it did determine it yet it was not naturally but morally not as an efficient by physical influence into the will but by proposing and representing the object which is not my single opinion but the received judgement of the best Schoole-men And in this sense and this sense onely I said truely that the understanding doth no more by proposing the object determine and necessitate the will to will than the object of sight doth determine and necessitate the sensitive soul to the actual exercise of seeing whereas all men know that the sensitive Agent notwithstanding any efficacy that is in the object may shut his eyes or turn his face another way So that which I said was both true and pertinent to the question But his exception is altogether impertinent and if it be understood according to the proper sense and scope of the place untrue And this is the onely Philosophical notion which hitherto I have found in his Animadversions Castigations of his Animadversions Num. 8. WHosoever desireth to be secure from T. H. his arguments may hold himself close to the question where he will find no great cause of fear All his contention is about terms Whatsoever there was in this Section which came home to the principal question is omitted and nothing minded but the meaning or signification of voluntary and spontaneous acts c. which were well enough understood before by all Scholars until he arose up like another Davus in the Comedy to trouble all things So he acts his part like those fond Musicians who spent so much time in tuning of their Instruments that there was none left to spare for their musick Which are free which are voluntary or spontaneous and which are necessary Agents I have set down at large whither to prevent further trouble I refer the Reader And am ready to make it good by the joynt testimonies of an hundred Classick Authours that this hath been the common and current language of Scholars for many Ages If he could produce but one Authour Stoick or Christian before himself who in the ventilation of this question did ever define liberty as he doth it were some satisfaction Zeno one of the fairest flowers in the Stoicks Garland used to boast that he sometimes wanted opinions but never wanted arguments He is not so lucky never wanting opinions ever wanting proofes Hitherto we have found no demonstrations either from the cause or from the effect few topical arguments or authorities that are pertinent to the question except it be of country men and common people with one comparison But to come to the Animadversions themselves He chargeth me or rather the Schoole-men for bringing in this strange word Spontaneous meerely to shift off the difficulty of maintaining our Tenet of free-will If spontaneous and voluntary be the same thing as we affirm and use them both indifferently I would gladly know how the one can be a subterfuge more than the other or why we may not use a word that is equipollent to his own word But to cure him of his suspition I answer That the same thing and the same terme of spontaneous both in Greek and Latine in the same sense that we take it as it is distinguished from free and just as we define it was used by Philosophers a thousand years before either I or any Schoole-men were borne as we find in Aristotle That is spontaneous or voluntary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whose beginning is in it self with knowledge of the end or knowing every thing wherein the action doth consist And the same Authour in the very next Chapter makes the very same difference between that which is voluntary and that which is free or eligible that we do His second exception is against these words Spontaneity consists in a conformity of the appetite either intellectual or sensitive to the object which words saith he do signifie that spontaneity is a conformity or likeness of the appetite to the object which to him soundeth as if I had said that the appetite is like the object which is as proper as if I had said that the hunger is like the meat And then he concludes triumphantly If this be his meaning as it is the meaning of the words he is a very fine Philosopher All his Philosophy consists in words If there had been an impropriety in the phrase as there is none this exception had been below an Athenian
Sophister I had allmost said saving the rigorous acception of the word as it was used afterwards an Athenian Sycophant Conformity signifies not onely such a likenesse of feature as he imagineth but also a convenience accommodation and agreeablenesse So the savoury meat which Rebeckah made for her husband was conform to his appetite So Daniel and his fellows conformed their appetites to their pulse and water Thus Tully saith Ego me comformo ad ejus voluntatem I conform my self to his will Where there is an agreeablenesse there is a conformity as to conform ones self to another mans humour or to his councel or to his commands He resolveth to have no more to do with spontaneity I thought that it had not been himself but the causes that resolved him without his own will But whether it be himself or the causes I think if he hold his resolution and include liberty therein for company it will not be much amisse for him Here he readeth us a profound Lecture what the common people on whose arbitration dependeth the signification of words in common use among the Latines and Greeks did call all actions and motions whereof they did perceive no cause spontaneous and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And in the conclusion of his Lecture according to his custom he forgeteth not himself The Bishop understanding nothing of this might if it pleased him have called it Iargon What pitty is it that he hath not his Gnatho about him to ease him of this trouble of stroaking his own head Here is a Lecture able to make all the Blacksmiths and Watchmakers in a City gape and wonder to see their workmanship so highly advanced Thus he vapoureth still when he lights upon the blind side of an equivocall word For my part I not onely might have called it but do still call it meer Iargon and no better To passe by peccadillo's First he telleth us How the common people did call all actions spontaneous and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. How doth he know what the common people called them The books which we have are the books of Scholars not of the common people Secondly he saith That the signification of all words dependeth upon the arbitration of the common people Surely he meaneth onely at Athens where it is observed That wise men did speak and fools did judge But neither at Athens nor at any other place were the common people either the perfecters or arbitrators of language who neither speak regularly nor properly much lesse in words that are borrowed from learned languages Thirdly he supposeth that these words liberty necessity and spontaneity are words in common use which in truth are terms of art There is as much difference between that liberty and necessity which ordinary people speak and the liberty and necessity intended in this question whereof we are agreed as there is between the pointing out of a man with ones finger and a logicall demonstration or between an habit in a Tailers shop and an habit in Logick or Ethicks Fourthly He confoundeth spontaneity and chance comprehending them both under the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I confesse that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Poets and Oratours is a word of very ambiguous signification sometimes signifieing a necessary sometimes a voluntary or spontaneous sometimes a casuall sometimes an artificiall Agent or Event Such equivocall words are his delight But as they are terms of art all these words are exactly distinguished and defined and limitted to their proper and certain signification That which is voluntary or spontaneous is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as we see plainly in Aristotle That which is freely elected is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that which is by chance is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he may see in the places cited in the margent where all these words are exactly distinguished and defined Fifthly He saith the Latines and Greeks did call all actions and motions whereof they did perceive no cause 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which according to Aristotle and other Philosophers doth signifie things done by chance And in his reason whereof they did perceive no cause He is mistaken on hoth sides For first the causes of many things are apparent which yet are said to be done by chance as when a tile falleth down accidentally from an house breaketh a mans head And on the other side many things whereof the causes were not known as the ebbing and flowing of the sea were not said to be done by chance I shall not need for the present to make any further inquiry into his extravagant interpretations of words which he maketh gratis upon his own head and authority and which no man admitteth but himself Rectum est Index sui obliqui Sixthly he saith Not every appetite but the last is esteemed the will when men do judge of the regularity or irregularity of one anothers actions I do acknowledge that de non apparentibus non existentibus eadem est ratio If it do not appear outwardly to be his will man cannot judge of it as his will But if it did appear to be his will first or last though he change it over and over it was his will and is judged by God to have been his will and may be justly judged so by man so far as it did appear to have been his will by his words and actions If he mean his last will and testament that indeed taketh place and not the former yet the former will was truly his will untill it was revoked But of this and of his deliberation I shall have cause to speak more hereafter I come now to his contradictions His first contradiction is this All voluntary acts are deliberate Some voluntary acts are not deliberate The former part of his contradiction is proved out of these words Voluntary presupposes some precedent deliberation that is to to say some consideration and meditation of what is likely to follow both upon the doing and abstaining from the action deliberated of The second part is proved as plainly When a man hath time to deliberate but deliberates not because never any thing appeared that could make him doubt of the consequence the action follows his opinions of the goodnesse or harm of it These actions I call voluntary c. because these actions that follow immediately the last appetitite are voluntary And here where there is one onely apppetite that one is the last To this he answereth Voluntary presupposes deliberation when the judgement whether the action be voluntary or not is not in the Actor but in the Iudge who regardeth not the will of the Actor when there is nothing to be accused in the action of deliberate malice yet knoweth that though there be but one appetite the same is truely will for the time and the action if it follow a voluntary action To which term doth he answer Of what term doth he distinguish Some
to chuse well But that Solomon was necessitated by God to ask wisdom and not to ask long life or riches or the life of his enemy is clearly against the text First God said to Solomon Ask what I shall give thee If God had predetermined precisely what Solomon must ask and what he must have and what he must not ask and what he must not have it was not onely a superfluous but a ludicrous thing to bid him ask what gift he would have from God Then followeth Solomons deliberation to enable him to chuse what was most fit for him If God had predetermined what he would give and what Solomon must ask how ridiculous had it been for him to deliberate of what God had done Thirdly it is said The speech pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing There is no doubt but all the works of God do please him God saw all that he made and it was very good But what had Solomon done to please God if God did necessitate Solomon irresistibly to do what he did Then follow the words alleadged by me Because thou hast asked this thing and hast not asked for thy self long life c. which words if this opinion of universall necessity were true can bear no other sence but this Because thou hast done this which was inevitably imposed upon thee to do and hast not done that which was alltogether impossible for thee to have done As if a master should first bind his servant head and foot head and heels together and chain him fast to a post and then tell him Because thou hast staid here and didst not run away He urgeth That Solomon knew nothing to the contrary but that it was in his power to have done otherwise If Solomon the wisest of men did not know it there is little probability that T. H. should know it But he must know that it is not Solomon who speaketh these words but God I hope he will not suspect God Allmighty either of ignorance or of nescience Lastly we see what a corollary God gave Solomon for asking well about that which he did ask riches and honour No man deserveth either reward or punishment for doing that which it was not in his power to leave undone I urged these words of St. Peter After it was sold was it not in thine own power to shew that power which a man hath over his own actions He answereth That the word power signifieth no more than right not a reall naturall but a civill power made by a Covenant or a right to do with his own what he pleased I answer the word power doth not cannot signifie any such right to do with his own as he pleased in this place For that which St. Peter complaineth of was Annanias his unjust and sacrilegious detention of part of that which he had devoted to God when it was in his power to have offered the whole that is to have performed his vow If sacriledge be right then this was right If that which he had purloined sacrilegously were his own then this was his own If Ananias had been necessitated by external causes to hold back that part of the price it had been no more sacriledge than if Theeves had robbed him of it before he could offer it The reason is thus made evident If it was in the power of Ananias to have done that which he did not do and to have offered that according to his vow which he did detain contrary to his vow then all actions and events are not necessitated and it is in mens power to do otherwise than they do But St Peter saith it was in Ananias his power to have offered that which he did not offer c. Castigations upon the Animadversions Num. 10. MY reason against universal necessity in this Section was this To necessitate all men to all the individual actions which they do inevitably And to expostulate with them and chide them and reprehend them for doing of those very things which they were necessitated to do is a counterfeited hypocritical exaggaration But according to T. H. his doctrine God doth necessitate all men inevitably to do all the individual actions which they do and yet expostulates with them and chides them and reprehends them for doing of those very things which he did necessitate them inevitably to do This assumption which onely can be questioned is proved by the expostulations and objurations and reprehensions themselves contained in holy Scripture Therefore according to his opinâ—…on God himself is guilty of counterfeited hypocritical exaggarations It were more ingenuous to confesse that this is not to be answered than to bustle and keep a coile and twist new errours with old and taxe others ignorantly of ignorance and say nothing to the purpose His first answer is generally That I would have men believe that because he holds necessity therefore he denyes liberty A dangerous accusation to accuse him of a matter of truth But he saith He holds as much that there is true liberty as I do or more Yea such a liberty as children and fooles and madmen and brute beasts and rivers have A liberty that consists in negation or nothing He saith indeed that he holds a liberty from outward impediments But it is not true for external causes are external impediments And if he say truly all other causes are hindered from all other actions than what they do by external causes But true liberty from necessitation and dtermination to one he doth not acknowledge and without acknowledging that he doth acknowledge nothing I wonder to which of my Propositions or to what term in them this answer is accommodated His second answer is particular to the expostulations themselves That these words spoken by God to Adam Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded that thou shouldest not eat do convince Adam that notwithstanding that God had placed him in the Garden a means to keep him perpetually from dying in case he should accomodate his will to obedience of Gods Commandment concerning the tree of knowledge of good and evil Yet Adam was not so much master of his own will as to do it What ridiculous or rather deplorable stuffe is this How should it be expected that Adam should be master of his own will if God did necessitate his will without his will and determine him inevitably to what he did If his doctrine were true this doth not convince Adam but God Almighty who did first necessitate his will and then chide him for that which was Gods own act Can any man be so blind as not to see the absurdity of this doctrine That God did place in the Garden a means to keep man perpetually from dying and yet did deprive him of it inevitably without his own fault And this is all that he answereth to the other places as that to Eve Why hast thou done this And to Cain Why art thou wroth And Why will
fully answered whither I refer the Reader He chargeth me to say that the case agitated between us is Whether Gods irresistible power or mans sin be the cause why he punisheth one man more than another whereas the case agitated between us is Whether a man can now chuse what shall be his will anon There are several cases or questions between us First the general or main question which is already stated by consent Whether the wil of man be free from extrinsecal determination to one antecedently and not as it is here proposed by him fondly and ambiguously Whether a man can now chuse what shall be his will anon For first a man is not certain that he shall live so long to be able to chuse his will And althought he were certain to live so long yet succeeding time may make such a change of affairs that he may have just reason to chuse otherwise Quemquam posse putas more 's narrare futuros Dic mihi si fias tu leo qualis eris But besides the maine general question there are likewise many particular subordinate questions as this in this Section whether this opinion of universal necessity do not make all punishment to be unjust because if a man be necessitated antecedently and unavoidably to do what he doth he is punished without his own fault and consequently unjustly To escape this argument he is driven to seek shelter under the omnipotence of God Power irresistble justifieth all actions really and properly in whomsoever it be found And when God afflicted Iob he did object no sin to him That which he doth is justified by his doing it So the present dispute was Whether mans sin or Gods omnipotence were the just ground of punishment This was all I said and more than I said But he can set down nothing without either mistaking it or confounding it Gods Power is not the rule of his Justice but his will not because his will maketh that to be just which otherwise was unjust but because he can will nothing but that which is just But he addeth not one grain of weight more in these Animadversions about this subject to what he had formerly said all which hath been fully and clearly satisfied in my former defence to which he hath replyed nothing That which I said of the Jews that it was in their own power by their concurrence with Gods grace to prevent those judgements and to recover their former estate is so true and so plainly affirmed by St. Paul that no man but himself durst have cavilled against it But he who knows no liberty but from outward impediments no general power of motion without a necessitation to kill Uriah no grace but that which is irresistible who hath never heard of the concurrence of grace and free will in the conversion of a sinner it is no marvel if he think that God will save men without themselves as well as he made them without themselves I said God may oblige himself freely to his creature Who ever doubted of it before him What doth he think of Gods promise to Abraham I will be the God of thee and of thy seed after thee Or of the legal Covenant Do this and thou shalt live Or of the Evangelical Covenant He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved But he saith He that can oblige can also release when he will and be that can release himself when he will is not obliged Is not this comfortable doctrine and suitable to the truth and majesty of Almighty God in whom there is no variablenesse nor shadow of turning Nothing is impossible to Gods absolute power But according to his ordinate power which is disposed by his will he cannot change his own decrees not go from his promise If Gods decrees were changeable what would become of his universal necessity But he shooteth at random not much regarding so it fit his present humour whether it make for his cause or against it But now I am to expect an heavy charge Hitherto he hath been but in jest That I am driven to words ill becoming me to speak of God Almighty for I make him unable to do that which hath been within the ordinary power of men to do How is this I said God cannot destroy the righteous with the wicked which neverthelesse is a thing done ordinarily by armies The great mountain hath brough forth a little mouse Might not I say that God cannot sin though mean men can do it Why might not I say that God cannot do unrighteous things or God cannot be unrighteous which is the same thing in effect as well as the Scripture saith God cannot lie God cannot repent God cannot deny himself And God is not unrighteous to forget your works As if he should say If God could break his promise God could be unrighteous but he cannot be unrighteous Yea the Lord doth submit himself as it were to a trial upon this point The Lord hath a controversie with his people and he will plead with Israel And he doth challenge them upon this very point Hear now O house of Israel is not my way equal are not your wayes unequal And in the same Chapter he protesteth As I live sâ—…h the Lord ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel the fathers have eaten sowre grapes and the childrens teeth are set on edge But the soul that sinneth shall die And Abraham saith the same that I say thought he deny it by way of intrrogation indeed but with much more vehemency Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked c That be far from thee to do after this manner to slay the righteous with the wicked and that the righteous should be as the wicked that be far from thee Shall not the Iudge of all the Earth do right Neither can he except because it is not said Canst thou but Wilt thou for we speak of the ordinate power of God which is ordered by his will That which he saith of an army weigheth lesse than nothing For first that destruction which an army maketh is not like that destruction whereof Abraham speaketh which fell upon Sodom and Gomorrah which the Apostle calleth the vengeance of eternal fire The destruction made by an army may be a punishment to some a chastisement or a blessing to others Jeremy the Prophet was involved with the rest of the Jews in the same Babylonian Captivity but the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was an expresse punishment for sin Thirdly an army acteth by way of publick Justice regarding the justice of the cause not of particular persons for it is not possible in the height of war to do justice according to the particular merits of single persons But after this necessity is over and particular Justice can take place then no man ought to suffer but according to his guilt Then it is no more lawful to destroy the
shew such another grant for the Lions to devour men When God said Whoso sheddeth mans blood by man shall his blood be shed for in the Image of God made he man Was it intended onely that his blood should be preserved for the Lions or do not their teeth deface Gods Image as much as mans weapons But the Lion had liberty to eat man long before He is mistaken the creatures did beare a more awful respect to the Image of God in man before his fall But mans rebellion to God was punished with their rebellion of the creatures to him He saith it was impossible for most men to have Gods license to use the creatures for their sustenance Why so as if all the world were not then comprised in the family of Noah Or as if the Commandments and dispensations of God were not then delivered from father to son by tradition as they were long after by writing He asketh how I would have been offended if he should have spoken of man as Pliny doth Then whom there is no living creature more wretched or more proud Not half so much as now Pliny taxeth onely the faults of men he vilifieth not their humane nature Most wretched What is that but an argument of the immortality of the soul God would never have created the most noble of his creatures for the most wretched being Or more proud that is then some men Corruptio optimi pessima The best things being corrupted turn the worst But he acknowledgeth two advantages which man hath above other creatures his tongue and his hand Is it possible that any man who believeth that he hath an immortal soul or that reason and understanding are any thing but empty names should so far forget himself and his thankfulnesse to God as to prefer his tongue and his hands before an immortal soul and reason Then we may well change the definition of a man which those old dunses the Philosophers left us Man is a reasonable creature into this new one Man is a prating thing with two hands How much more was the humane nature beholden to Tully an Heathen who said That man differed from other creatures in reason and speech Or to Ovid who stileth man Sanctius his animal mentâ—…sque capacius altae If he have no better luck in defending his Leviathan he will have no great cause to boast of his making men examples And now it seemeth he hath played his masterprise For in the rest of his Animadversions in this Section we find a low ebbe of matter Concerning consultations he saith nothing but this That my writing was caused physically antecedently extrinsecally by his answer In good time By which I see right well that he understandeth not what a physical cause is Did he think his answer was so Mathematical to compel or necessitate me to write No I confesse I determined my self And his answer was but a slender occasion which would have had little weight with me but for a wiser mans advice to prevent his over-weening opinion of his own abilities And then followeth his old dish of twice sodden colewortes about free and necessary and contingent and free to do if he will which we have had often enough already His distinction between seen and unseen necessity deserveth more consideration The meaning is that seen necessity doth take away consultation but unseen necessity doth not take away consultation or humane indeavours Unseen necessity is of two sorts either it is altogether unseen and unknown either what it is or that it is Such a necessity doth not take away consultation or humane endeavours Suppose an office were privately disposed yet he who knoweth nothing of the disposition of it may be as solicitous and industrious to obtain it as though it were not disposed at all But the necessity which he laboureth to introduce is no such unseen unknown necessity For though he know not what the causes have determined particularly or what the necessity is yet he believeth that he knoweth in general that the causes are determined from eternity and that there is an absolute necessity The second sort of unseen necessity is that which is unseen in particular what it is but it is not unknown in general that it is And this kind of unseen necessity doth take away all consultation and endeavours and the use of means as much as if it were seen in particular As supposing that the Cardinals have elected a Pope in private but the declaration of the person who is elected is kept secret Here is a necessity the Papacy is full and this necessity is unseen in particular whilest no man knoweth who it is Yet for as much as it is known that it is it taketh away all indeavours and consultations as much as if the Pope were publickly enthroned Or suppose a Jury have given in a privy veredict no man knoweth what it is until the next Court-day yet it is known generally that the Jurers are agreed and the veredict is given in Here is an unseen necessity Yet he who should use any further consultations or make further applications in the case were a fool So though the particular determination of the causes be not known to us what it is yet if we know that the causes are particularly determined from eternity we know that no consultation or endeavour of ours can alter them But it may be further objected that though they cannot alter them yet they may help to accomplish them It was necessary that all who sailed with St. Paul should be saved from shipwrack Yet St. Paul told them that except the shipmen did abide in the ship they could not be saved So though the event be necessarily determined yet consultation or the like means may be necessary to the determination of it I answer the question is not whether the means be necessary to the end for that is agreed upon by all parties But the question is to whom the ordering of the means which are necessary to the production of the event doth properly belong whether to the first cause or to the free Agent If it belong to the free Agent under God as we say it doth then it concerneth him to use consultations and all good endeavours as requisite means to obtain the desired end But if the disposition of the means belong soly and wholly to God as he saith it doth and if God have ordered all means as well as ends and events particularly and precisely then it were not onely a thanklesse and superfluous office to consult what were the fittest means to obtain an end when God hath determined what must be the onely means and no other but also a saucinesse and a kind of tempting of God for a man to intrude himself into the execution of God Almighties decrees whereas he ought rather to cast away all care and all thought on his part and resign himself up wholly to the disposition of the second causes which act nothing but by
there be true liberty in the world we know well whereunto to impute all these disorders but if there be no true liberty in the world free from antecedent necessitation then they all fall directly upon God Almighty and his Providence The last question is concerning his definition of contingent That they are such Agents as work we know not how Against which I gave him two exceptions in my defence One was this Many Agents work we know not how as the Loadstone draweth iron the Jet chaff and yet they are known and acknowledged to be necessary and not contingent Agents Secondly many Agents do work we know how as a stone falling down from an house upon a mans head and yet we do not account it a necessary but a contingent event by reason of the accidental concurrence of the causes I have given him other instances in other parts of this Treatise And if need be he may have twenty more And yet though his definition was shewed formerly to halt down-right on both sides yet he good man is patient and never taketh the least notice of it But onely denyeth the consequence and over-looketh the proofes His objection about the indetermination of the causes That indetermination doth nothing because it maketh the event equal to happen and not to happen is but a flash without any one grain of solidity For by indetermination in that place is clearly understood not to be predetermined to one by extrinsecal causes but to be left free to its own intrinsecal determination this way or that way indifferently So the first words By reason of the indetermination have referrence to free Agents and free Events And the other words Or accidentall concurrence of the causes have referrence to casuall Events And both together referendo sigul◅ singulis do include all contingents as the word is commonly and largely taken by old Philosophers Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 17. REader I do not wonder now and then to see T. H. sink under the weight of an absurdity in this cause A back of steel were not able to bear all those unsupportable consequences which flow from this opinion of fatall destiny But why he should delight to multiplle needlesse absurdities I do not know Allmost every Section produceth some new monster In this seventeenth Section I demonstrated clearly that this opinion of universal necessity doth take away the nature of sinne That which he saith in answer thereunto is that which followeth First it is true he who taketh away the liberty of doing according to the will taketh away the nature of sinne but he that denieth the liberty to will doth not so This answer hath been sufficiently taken away already both in the defence and in these Castigations Inevitable and unresistible necessity doth as much acquit the will from sin as the action Again whereas I urged That whatsoever proceedeth essentially by way of physicall determination from the first cause is good and just and lawfull he opposeth That I might as well have concluded that what soever man hath been made by God is a good and just man So I might What should hinder me to conclude that every man and every creature created by God is good qua talis as it is created by God but being but a creature it is not immutably good as God himself is If he be not of the same opinion he must seek for companions among those old Hereticks the Manichees or Marcionites So he cometh to his main answer Sin is not a thing really made Those things which at first were actions were not then sins though actions of the same nature with those which were afterwards sins Nor was then the will to any thing a sin though it were a will to the same thing which in willing now we should sin Actions became then sins first when the Commandemens came c. There can no action be made sin but by the law Therefore this opinion though it derive actions essentially from God it derives not sins essentially from him but relatively and by the Cōmandement The first thing I observe in him is a contradiction to himself Now he maketh the anomy or the irregularity and repugnance to the law to be the sinne before he conceiveth the action it self to be the sin Doth not the Bishop think God to be the cause of all actions And are not sins of commission actions Is murther no action And doth not God himself say there is no evil in the City which I have not done And was not murther one of those evills c. I am of opinion that the distinction of causes into efficient and deficient is Bohu and signifieth nothing This might have been pardoned to him But his second slip is worse That the World was I know not how long without sin I did demonstrate That upon his grounds all sins are essentially from God and consequently are lawfull and just He answereth That the actions were from God but the actions were not sins at the first untill there was a law What is this to the purpose It is not materiall when sin did enter into the World early or late so as when it did enter it were essentially from God which it must needs be upon his grounds that both the murther and the law against murther are from God And as it doth not help his cause at all so it is most false What actions were there in the World before the sinne of the Angell He charged the Angels with folly And if God spared not the Angels that sinned but cast them down to hell and the Angels which kept not their first estate What were those first actions that were before the sinne of Adam By one man sinne entred into the World and death by sinne Thirdly he erreth most grossely in supposing that the World at first was lawlesse The World was never without the eternall law that is the rule of justice in God himself and that which giveth force to all other laws as the Divine Wisdom saith By me Kings raign and Princes decree justice And sinne is defined to be that which is acted said or thought against the eternall law But to let this passe for the present because it is transcendentally a law How was the World ever without the law of nature which is most properly a law the law that cannot lie not mortal from mortal man not dead or written in the paper without life but incorruptible written in the heart of man by the finger of God himself Let him learn sounder doctrine from St. Paul For when the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law these having not the law are a law unto themselves which shew the work of the law written in their hearts their consciences also bearing witnesse and their thoughts the mean while accusing or excusing one another I passe by those Commandements of God which were delivered by tradition from hand to
aut faciendum quod cognoscit the understanding extended to injoy or do that which it knoweth it must needs be that the more reason the lesse passion the lesse reluctance and consequently the more liberty He saith When we mark not the force that moves us we think that it is not causes but liberty that produceth the action I rendred him thus The ignornnce of the true causes and their power is the reason that we ascribe the effect to liberty Where lieth the fault that which he calleth force and strength I call power and for that which moves us I say causes as he himself doth exexpresse himself in the same place Where I say the will causeth he saith the man chuseth As if there were any difference between these two the eye seeth and the man seeth This and a confounding of voluntas with volitio the faculty of willing with the act of willing and a young suckling contradiction which he hath found out That the will hath power to refuse what he willeth that is before it have willed it not after is the substance of this Animadversion which deserve no other answer but that a man should change his risibility into actual laughter I produced two reasons to prove that true liberty is a freedom not only from compulsion but from necessity The former drawn from the nature of election or the act of the will which is allwayes inter plura the later which I called a new Argument because it had not formerly been touched in this Treatise taken from the nature of the faculty of the will or of the soul as it willeth which is not capable of any other compulsion but necessitation And if it be physically necessitated it is thereby acquitted from all guilt and the fault transferred upon those causes that did necessitate it This argument indeed began with a distinction but proceeded to a demonstration which was reduced by me into form in my defence to which he hath given no shew of satisfaction either in his first answer or in these Animadversions except it be a concedo omnia or a granting of the conclusion The same ground which doth warrant the names of Tyrant Praemunire Sunday Monday Tuesday that is Use Quem penes arbitrium est vis norma loquendi doth likewise justifie these generally received terms of the Elicite and Imperate Acts of the will there being scarcely one Authour who hath written upon this subject in Latine that doth not use them and approve them In the councel of Dort which he himself mentioneth he may find this truth positively maintained that voluntas elicit actum suum Where he may likewise find what morall perswasives or motives are if he have a desire to learn Allthough he be convicted that it followeth from his principles That God is the cause of all sin in the world yet he is loath to say so much for that is an unseemly phrase to say that God is the cause of sin because it soundeth so like a saying that God sinneth yea it is even as like it as one egge is like another or rather it is not like it for it is the very same Nullum simile est idem He that is the determining cause of sin in others sinneth himself It is as well against the eternall law that is the rule of justice which is in God himself to make another to sin as to sin Yet though he will not avow such an unseemly phrase That God is the cause of sin Yet he doth indeavour to prove it by four texts of holy Scripture which are alltogether impertiuent to his purpose The first is that of the Prophet Amos Shall there be evill in a City and the Lord hath not done it But that is clearly understood of the evill of punishment not of the evill of sin To the three other places That the Lord said unto Shimei curse David and that the Lord put a lying spirit into the mouth of Ahabs Prophets And that of Rehoboams not hearkning to the people the Reader may find a satisfactory answer formerly But because he seemeth to ground much upon those words which are added to the last place for the cause was from the Lord conceiving some singular virtue to lie in them and an ovation at least to be due unto himself I will not say least the Bishop exclaim against me applauding himself like the flie upon the Cart-wheel See what a dust I do raise I will take the liberty to tell him further That there is nothing of any cause of sin in the text but of a cause of Jeroboams advancement as he might have perceived plainly by the words immediately following The cause was from the Lord that he might perform his saying which the Lord spake by Ahijah the Shilonite unto Ieroboam the son of Nebat Which saying was this I will rent the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and will give ten tribes to thee So he hath produced an evil effect of punishment for an evil effect of sin and a cause of advancement for a cause of sin and a permitting or ordering or disposing of sin for a necessitating or determining to sin Yet he produceth six witnesses to prove that liberty is not opposed to necessity but to compulsion Luther Zanchy Bucer Calvin Moulin and the Synod of Dort First Reader I desire thee to judge of the partiality of this man who rejecteth all humane authority in this cause as he hath reason for it were an easie thing to overwhelme and smother him and his cause with testimonies of Councels Fathers Doctours of all Ages and Communions and all sorts of Classick Authours and yet to seek for protection under the authority of a few Neoterick Writers A double weight and a double measure are an abomination Aut haec illis sunt habenda aut illa cum his amittenda sunt Harum duarum conditionum nunc utram malis vide If he will reap the benefit of humane authority he must undergoe the inconvenience also Why may he use the testimony of Calvine against me in this cause and I may not make use of the testimonies of all the Ancients Greek and Latine against him whom Calvine himself confesseth to have been for liberty against necessiry Semper apud Latinos liberi arbitrii nomen extitit Graecos vero non puduit multo arrogantius usurpare vocabulum siquidem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dixerunt acsi potest as suiipsius penes hominem fuisset But I am able to give him that advantage in this cause Secondly a man may see by his citing of these testimonies that he hath taken them up upon trust without ever perusing them in the Authours themselves I demand therefore whether he will be tried by his own witnesses in this case in difference between him and me that is concerning universal necessity in natural civil and external actions by reason of a necessary connextion of second causes and a natural determination of
in his thighes Yet he tells us boldly That no man can understand that the understanding maketh any alteration of weight or lightnesse in the object or that reason layes objects upon the understanding What poor trifling is this in a thing so plain and obvious to every mans capacity There can be no desire of that which is not known in some sort Nothing can be willed but that which is apprehended to be good either by reason or sense and that according to the degree of apprehension Place a man in a darke roome and all the rarest objects in the World besides him he seeth them not he distinguisheth them not he willeth them not But bring in a light and he seeth them and distinguisheth them and willeth them according to their distinct worths That which light is to visible objects making those things to be actually seen which were onely potentially visible that is the understanding to all intelligible objects without which they are neither known nor willed Wherefore men define the understanding to be A faculty of the reasonable soul understanding knowing and judging all intelligible things The understanding then doth not alter the weight of objects no more than the light doth change the colours which without the help of the light did lie hid in the darke But the light makes the colours to be actually seene So doth the understanding make the latent value of intelligible objects to be apprehended and consequently maketh them to be desired and willed according to their distinct degrees of goodnesse This judgement which no man ever denyed to intelligible creatures is the weighing of objects or attributing their just weight to them and the trying of them as it were by the Balance and by the Touchstone This is not the laying of objects upon the understanding The understanding is not the patient but the judge but this is the representing of the goodnesse or badnesse of objects to the will or to the free Agent willing which relatively to the will giveth them all their weight and efficacy There may be difference between these two Propositions Repentance is not voluntary and by consequence proceedeth from causes And Repentance proceedeth from causes and by consequence is not voluntary if his consequence were well intelligible as it is not All acts both voluntary and involuntary doe proceed from causes He chargeth me to have chopt in these words And therefore The truth is his words were and by consequence which I expressed thus and therefore Therefore and by consequence are the very same thing neither more nor lesse Is not this a doughty exception But the other is his greater errour That Repentance is not voluntary No Schooleman ever said that the faculty of the will was voluntary but that the Agent was a voluntary Agent and the act a voluntary act Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 24. HE accuseth me of charging him witly Blasphemy and Atheisme If he be wronged in that kind it is he who wrongeth himself by his suspicion Sprâ—…ta exolescunt si irascare agnita videntur I accused him not either of Blasphemy or Atheisme in the Concrete One may say a mans opinions are Blasphemous and Atheisticall in the Abstract without charging the person with formall Atheisme or blasphemy The reason is evident because it may be that through prejudice he doth not see the consequences which other men whose eyes are not blinded with that mist do see and if he did see them would abhor them as well as they For this reason he who chargeth one with speaking or writing implicite contradictions or things inconsistent one with another doth not presently accuse him of lying although one part of a contradiction must needs be false because it may be the force of the consequence is not evident to him A man may know a truth certainly and yet not know the formal reason or the manner of it so certainly I know that I see and I judge probably how I see yet the manner how I see whether by sending out beams or by receiving in the species is not so evident as â—…he thing it self that I do see They who do not agree about the manner of vision do all agree about the truth of vision Every man knoweth certainly that he can cast a stone up into the air but the manner how the stone is moved after it is seperated from the hand whether it be by some force or form or quality impressed into the stone by the caster or by the air if it be by the air whether it be by the pulsion of the air following or by the cession of the former air is obscure enough and not one of a thousand who knoweth the certainty of the thing knoweth the manner how it cometh to passe If this be true in natural actions how much more in the actions of God who is an infinite being and not comprehensible by the finite wit of man The water can rise no higher than the fountains head A looking-glasse can represent the body because there is some proportion between bodies but it cannot represent the soul because there is no proportion between that which is material and that which is immaterial This is the reason why we can in some sort apprehend what shall be after the end of the World because the soul is eternal that way but if we do but think of what was before the beginning of the World we are as it were presently swallowed up into an Abysse because the soul is not eternal that way So I know that there is true liberty from necessity both by Divine Revelation and by reason and by experience I know likewise that God knoweth all events from eternity the difficulty is not about the thing but about the manner how God doth certainly know things free or contingent which are to come in respect of us seeing they are neither determined in the event it self nor in the causes thereof The not knowing of the manner which may be incomprehensible to us doth not at all diminish the certain truth of the thing Yet even for the manner sundry wayes are proposed to satisfie the curiosities rather than the consciences of men Of which this is one way which I mentioned It were a great madnesse to reject a certain truth because there may be some remote difficulty about the manner and yet a greater madnesse for avoiding a needlesse scruple to destroy all the attributes of God which is by consequence to deny God himself His proof of necessity drawn from Gods eternall knowledge of all events hath been sufficiently discussed and satisfied over and over I pleaded that my doctrine of liberty is an ancient truth generally received His opinion of universall necessity an upstart Paradox and all who own it may be written in a ring So I am an old possessor he is but a new pretender He answereth That he is in possession of a truth derived to him from the light of reason And it is
an unhandsome thing for a man to derive his opinion concerning truth by succession from his Ancestor I answer That just possession is either by law or by prescription I have all laws Divine and Humane Ecclesiastical and Civil and a prescription of two thousand years or at least ever since Christianity came into the World for liberty His opinion of universal Destiny by reason of a necessary connexion of the second causes was never the general nor the common nor the current opinion of the World and hath been in a manner wholly buried for sixteen hundred years and now is first conjured out of its grave by him to disturb the World If this be just possession an High-way robber may plead possession so soon as ever he hath stripped an honest Traveller It is not onely no unhandsome thing but it is a most comely and commendable thing for a man to derive his religion by the universal approbation of the Christian World from the purest Primitive Times throughout all ages and never to deviate further from the steps of his Ancestors than they had first degenerated from their predecessors And where he telleth us That the first Christians did not derive Christianity from their Ancestours It is very true but very impertinent For they had not their religion from their own invention or presumption as he hath his opinions but by Divine Revelation confirmed with miracles When he is able to produce as authentick proof for his Paradoxes as they did for their religion he saith something That which he calleth my scâ—…rrilous argumentation he that drinks well sleeps well c. is none of mine but a common example used in Logick to shew the weaknesse of such forms of arguings as his is when the dependance is not necessary and essentiall but contingent and accidental as it is in his argument here All actions are from God by a general power but not determinately The like contingent connexion there is between action and sense sense and memory memory and election This is enough to shew the weaknesse of his argument But he hath one main fault more he hath put more in the conclusion than there was in the premisses He saith If by liberty I had understood onely liberty of action and not liberty of will it had been an easie matter to reconcile it with prescience and the decrees of God I answer first That liberty of action without liberty of will is but a mock liberty and a new nothing like an empty bottle given to a child to satisfie his thirst Where there is no liberty to will there is no liberty to act as hath been formerly demonstrated Secondly The liberty to will is as reconciliable with the prescience and decrees of God as the liberty to act Gods decrees do extend at least as much to acting as to willing Thirdly This liberty of acting without a liberty of willing is irreconciliable with all the other attributes of God his truth his justice his goodnesse and his power and setting the decrees of God in opposition one with another How should a man have a liberty to act and have no liberty to will when he cannot act freely except he will freely because willing is a necessary cause or means of acting That which followeth about Gods aspect and intuition is meerly a contention about words and such words as are received and approved by all Authours Gods intuition is not of the same nature with ours we poor Creatures do stand in need of organs but God who is a pure simple infinite essence cannot be made perfecter by organs or accidents Whatsoever he seeth or knoweth he seeth or knoweth by his essence The lesse T. H. understood the terms of Aspect and Intuition the more apt he was to blonder them He pleadeth If liberty cannot stand with necessity it cannot stand with the decrees of God of which decrees necessity is a consequent And he citeth some body without name who said The will of God is the necessity of all things I deny his consequence Liberty is consistent with Gods decrees though it be not consistent with universal necessity The reason is plain because liberty is a consequent of Gods decrees as well as necessity He who said that the will of God was the necessity of all things was St. Austine I wish he would stand to his judgement or to his sense of those words The meaning of those words is not that God doth will that all things should be necessary But that whatsoever God doth will that must necessarily be If he will have all things necessary then all things must be necessary If he will have all things free then all things must be free If he will have some things necessary and somethings free then some things must be necessary and some things free When God formed man of the dust of the earth he might have formed him either a child or a man but whether he should be formed the one or the other it was not in the condition of the Creature but in the pleasure of the Creator whose will is the necessity of things What doth this concern the liberty of man Nothing It concerned him more to have understood St. Austines distinction between Gods will and his prescience in the same place What God willeth shall necessarily be that is according to an absolute antecedent necessity What God foreknows shall truely be that is onely by a necessity of infallability I might produce the whole world against him in this cause But because he renounced Rumaine authorities I have been sparing to alledge one testimony against him But to free Saint Austin from all suspition of concurring in such a desperate cause I will onely cite one place of an hundred Neither is that necessity to be feared which the Stoicks fearing were careful to distinguish the causes of things so that some they substracted from necessity some they subjected to necessity And in those which they would not have to be under necessity they placed our wills least they should not be free if they were subjected to necessity For if that be to be called our necessity which is not in our power but effecteth what it can all though we will not such as is the necessity of death it is manifest that our wills whereby we live well or ill are not under such a necessity c. Here he may find the two sorts of necessity which we have had so much contention about the one in our power which is not opposed to liberty the other not in our power that is an antecedent extrinsecal necessity which destroyeth liberty but he saith that it is manifest that our wills are not subject to such an antecedent necessity Here he may see that his friends the Stoicks the great Patrons of necessity were not for universall necessity as he is nor did countenance necessity to the prejudice of the liberty of the will Onely to permit and to permit liberty do not
how uningenuously did he charge me in the last Section to have confessed That nothing can move it self And in this Section accuse me of contradiction for saying That when a stone descendeth the beginning of its motion is intrinsecal Now to justifie himself he saith that from this which I did say That finite things cannot be produced by themselves he can conclude that the act of willing is not produced by the faculty of willing If he could do as much as he saith yet it was not ingenuously done to feign that I had confessed all that which he thinketh he can prove that I contradicted my self when I contradicted his conclusions But let us see how he goeth about to prove it He that hath the faculty of willing hath the faculty of willing something in particular In good time This looketh not like a demonstration But let that passe And at the same time he hath the faculty of nilling the same How two faculties the one of willing the other of nilling Hola He hath but one faculty and that is a faculty of willing or nilling something in particular not of willing and nilling He proceedeth If therefore the faculty of willing be the cause he willeth any thing whatsoever for the same reason the faculty of nilling will be the cause at the same time of nilling it And so he shall will and nill the same thing at the same time which is absurd I deny his consequence It doth not follow that because the Agent hath power to will or nill indifferently therefore he hath power to will and nill contradictorily He may chuse indifferently whether he will write or not but he cannot chuse both to write and not to write at the same time contradictorily It doth not follow that because the Agent hath power to will or nill indifferently before he do actually either will or nill therefore when he doth will actually he hath power to nill at the same time Hath he forgotten that old foolish rule Whatsoever is when it is is necessarily so as it is How often must I tell him that in the place of an absolute antecedent necessity he seeketh to obtrude upon us hypothetical necessity He proceedeth It seems the Bishop had forgotten that matter and power are indifferent to contrary formes and contrary acts No I had not forgotten it but he had fogotten it To say that the matter is indifferent to contrary formes and yet necessitated antecedently to one form or that power is indifferent to contrary acts and yet necessitated antecedently to one act is a ratling contradiction He saith That it is somewhat besides the matter that determineth to a certain form and something besides the power that produceth a certain act I acknowledge it and it is the onely piece of sense that is in this Section I made this objection to my self in my defence and answered it in these words Yet I do not deny that there are other beginnings of humane actions which do concur with the will some outward as the first cause by general influence which is evermore requisite Angels or men by perswading evil spirits by tempting the object or end by its appetibility some inward as the understanding by directing so passions and acquired habits But I deny that any of these do necessitate or can necessitate the will of man by determining it physically to one except God alone who doth it rarely in extraordinary cases And where there is no antecedent determination to one there is no absolute necessity but true liberty Where he maketh The beginning of motion in a stone thrown upwards and a stone descending downwards to be both in the stone it is but a poor trifling homonymy as the most part of his Treatise is The beginning of motion in a stone ascending is in the stone subjectively but not effectively because that motion proceedeth not from the form of the stone But in the descent of the stone the beginning of motion is both subjectively and effectively in the stone And what he telleth us of a former motion in the ambient body aire or water to make the stone descend is needlesse and frustraneous Let him but withdraw the pin that holdeth the slate upon the house against its natural inclination and he shall see presently there needeth no motion in the ambient body to make the stone drop down He adviseth me to consider with what grace I can say that necessary causes do not alwayes produce their effects except those effects be also necessarily produced Rather let him consider with what grace he can mis-recite that which I say by leaving out the word necessary I said necessary causes do not alwayes produce necessary effects and I can say that with better grace than he can deny it When necessary Agents and free Agents are conjoynt in the production of the same effect the effect is not antecedently necessary I gave him an instance Protagoras writ a book against the gods De dis utrum sint utrum non sint nihil habeo dicere The Senate ordered his book to be burned for it Although the fire be a necessary Agent yet because the Senators were free Agents the burning of his book was not antecedently necessary Where I say that the will is not a necessary cause of what it willeth in particular actionâ—… He inferreth That there are no universal actions and if it be not a necessary cause of particular actions it is the necessary cause of no actions And again he would be glad to have me set down what voluntary actions not particular those are which are necessitated It is scarcely possible for a man to expresse himself more clearly than I did but clearly or unclearly all is one to him who is disposed to cavil I did not oppose particular acts to universal acts but to a collection of all voluntary acts in general qua tales as they are voluntary It is necessary That all acts generally which proceed from the will should be voluntary and so the will is a necessary cause of voluntary acts that is of the voluntarinesse of them But the will is not a necessary cause of the particular acts themselves As upon supposition that a man be willing to write it is necessary that his writing be voluntary because he willeth it But put the case without any supposition and it is not necessary that he should write or that he should will to write because it was in his own power whether he would write or not So the voluntarinesse of all acts in general proceeding from the will is necessary but the acts themselves were not necessary before the free Agent had determined himself and then but upon supposition His excepting against these common expressions The will willeth or the will may either will or suspend its acts is but seeking of a knot in a bullrush It is all one whether one say the will willeth or the man willeth or the will may will or suspend its
act or the man may will or suspend his acts Scaliger saith that volo velle is a proper speech I will will and received by the common consent of all nations If he had any thing of moment to insert into his Animadversions he would not make use of such Leptologies Canting is not chargable upon him who useth common and known terms of art but upon him who deviseth new terms as Canters do which die with their inventers He asketh How can he that willeth at the same time suspend his will Rather why doth he insert into his demand at the same time It is enough to liberty if he that willeth could have suspended his will All this answer of mine to his second argument was illustrated by the instance of the election of a Pope to which he opposeth nothing but It may be and it doth not follow and I would be glad to know by what arguments he can prove that the election was not necessitated I have done it sufficiently all over in this Treatise I am now answering to what he produceth not proving If he have any thing to demand let him go to the Cardinals and inquire of them whether they be such fools to keep such a deal of needlesse stir if they were atecedently necessitated to chuse one certain man Pope and no other Castigations of the Animadversion Num. 31. and Num. 32. I Joyne these two Sections together because they concern one and the same thing namely Whether every sufficient cause do necessarily effect whatsoever it is sufficient for Or which is the same in effect Whether a free Agent when all things are present which are needful to produce an effect can neverthelesse not produce it Which question may be understood two wayes either inclusively or exclusively either including and comprehending the will of the Agent under the notion of sufficiency and among things requisite to the producing of the effect so as the cause is not reputed to be sufficient except it have both ability and will to produce the effect and so as both requisite power and requisite will do concur and then there is no question but the effect will infallibly follow Posita causa ponitur effectus or else it may be understood exclusively not comprehending the will under the notion of sufficiency or not reckoning it among the necessary requisites to the production of the effect so as the Agent is supposed to have power and ability to produce the effect but no will And then it is as infallibly true on the other side that the effect cannot be produced Thus far this question is a meer Logomachy or contention about words without any reall difference And T. H. doth but abuse his Readers to keep a jangling and a stir about nothing But in truth the water stopeth not here If he should speak to the purpose he should leave these shallows If the will of the free Agent be included under the notion of sufficiency and comprehended among those things which are requisite to the production of the effect so as both sufficient ability and sufficient wil are required to the making a sufficient cause Then it cometh to be considered in the second place whether the will in things external be under God in the power and disposition of the free Agent himself which is the common opinion of all men who understand themselves And then the production of the effect is onely necessary hypothetically or upon supposition that the free Agent is willing Or else Whether the will of the free Agent be not in his own power and disposition but determined antecedently by extrinsecal causes which is the paradoxical opinion of T. H. and then the production of the the effect is absolutely and antecedently necessary So still the question is where it was and all his bustling about sufficiency and efficiency and deficiency is but labour in vain If he would have spoken any thing at all to the purpose he should have attempted to prove that every sufficient cause excluding the will that is every cause which hath sufficient power and ability doth necessaryly produce whatsoever it is able to produce though the Agent be unwilling to produce it or that the will of the Agent is not in his own power and disposition We expect proofs not words But this he could not do for he himself in this very Treatise hath several times distinguished between liberty and power telling us that a sick man hath liberty to go but wanteth power And that a man who is bound hath power to go but wanteth liberty If he that is bound hath power to go then he hath sufficient power to go for unsufficient power cannot produce the effect And so by his own confession an Agent may have sufficient power and yet cannot necessarily nor yet possibly produce the effect I urged That God is sufficient to produce many Worlds but he doth not produce them therefore a sufficient cause dorh not necessarily produce all those effects which it is sufficient to produce He answereth That the meaning is that God is sufficient to produce them if he will Doth he not see that it followeth inevitably from hence That there may be a sufficient cause without will Doth he not see likewise from hence plainly that for those things which are within the power of man he is sufficient also to produce them if he will So still he would obtrude a necessity of supposition If a man will for an absolute necessity That which is but necessary conditionally If a man will is not necessary absolutely And he confesseth that without this supposition If he will a man is not sufficient to produce any voluntary action I added other instances as this That the passion of Christ is a sufficient ransom for all mankind and so is acknowledged by all Christians yet all mankind shall not be saved by virtue of his passion therefore there may be a sufficient cause without production of the effect This is the language of holy Scripture Which of you intending to build a Tower sitteth not down first and counteth the cost whether he have sufficient to finish it That is as our Saviour expoundeth himself in the next verse whether he be able to finish it So St. Paul saith Who is sufficient for these things that is Who is able for these things When God saith What could I have done more for my vineyard that I have not done God had given them sufficient means and could have given them more if they had been more capable but because they were wanting to themselves these sufficient means were not efficacious I looked for grapes saith God How could God look for grapes if he had not given them sufficient means to bring forth grapes yet these sufficient means were not efficacious These things being premised do answer whatsoever he saith as this The Bishop thinks two Horses may be sufficient to draw a Coach though they will not draw c. I say they
may be sufficient in point of power and ability though they will not draw Many men have sufficient power to do what they will not do And if the production of the effect do depend upon their wills or upon their contingent and uncertain endeavours or if their sufficiency be but conditional as he maketh it if they be not lame or resty then the production of the effect is free or contingent and cannot be antecedently necessary For otherwise all these conditions and suppositions are vain Where he chargeth me to say That the cause of a Monster is unsufficient to produce a Monster he doth me wrong and himself more I never said any such thing I hope I may have leave to speak to him in his own words I must take it for an untruth untill he cite the place where I have said so I have said and I do say That the cause of a Monster was unsufficient to produce a man which nature and the free Agent intended but it was sufficient to produce a Monster otherwise a Monster had not been produced When an Agent doth not produce what he and nature intend but produceth a Monster instead of a Man it is proof enough of his insufficiency to produce what he should and would have produced if he could Where he addeth That that which is sufficient to produce a Monster is not therefore to be called an insufficient cause to produce a Man no more than that which is sufficient to produce a man is to be called an insufficient cause to produce a Monster is even as good sense as if a man should say He who hath skill sufficient to hit the white is insufficient to misse the white He pretendeth that sensus divisus and compositus is nonsense though they be Logical terms of art And what I say of the power of the will to forbear willing or the dominion of the will over its own acts or the power of the will in Actu primo he saith are as wild words as ever were spoken within the walls of Bedlam though they be as sad truths as the founders of Bedlam themselves could have uttered And the Authours who used them the greatest wits of the World and so many that ten Bedlams could not hold them But it may be he would have the Scene changed and have the wisest sort of men thrust into Bedlam that he might vent his Paradoxes more freely So Festus accused Saint Paul of madnesse Paul Paul much learning hath made thee mad In the definition of a free Agent Which when all things needful to the production of the effect are present can neverthelesse not produce it They understood all things needful in point of ability not will He telleth us gravely That Act and Power differ in nothing but in this That the former signifieth the time present the later the time to come As if he should tell us That the cause and the effect differ nothing but that the effect signifieth the time present and the cause the time to come Lastly he saith That except I shew him the place where he shuffled out effects producible and thrust into their place effects produced he will take it for an untruth To content him I shall do it readily without searching far for it My words were these The question is whether effects producible be free from necessity He shuffles out effects producible and thrusts in their places effects produced Now that he doth this I prove out of his own words in the Section preceding Hence it is manifest That whatsoever is produced is produced necessarily For whatsoever is preduced hath had a sufficient cause to produce it or else it had non been Let the Reader judge if he have not here shuffled effects producible out of the question and thrust into their places effects produced The question is whether effects producible be necessarily produced He concludeth in the place of the contradictory That effects actually produced are necessary Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 33. HE saith That to define what Spontaneity Deliberation Will Propension Appetite a free Agent and Liberty is and to prove that they are well defined there can be no other proof offered but every mans own experience and memory what he meaneth by such words I do readily believe all this to be true in order to his own opinions That there neither is nor can be any proof of them but imagination But his reason was shot at random For definitions being the beginning of all demonstration cannot themselves be domonstrated that is proved to another man Doth he take all his particular imaginations to be so many definitions or demonstrations He hath one conception of Spontaneity of Deliberation of a free Agent of Liberty I have another My conception doth not prove my opinion to be true nor his conception prove his opinion to be true but our conceptions being contrary it proveth either his or mine or both to be false Truth is a conformity or congruity of the conceptions of the mind with the things themselves which are without the mind and of the exteriour speech as the signe with the things and conceptions as the things signified So there is a threefold truth The first is objective in the things themselves The second is conformative in the conceptions of the mind The third is signative or significative in speech or writing It is a good proceeding to prove the truth of the inward conceptions of the mind from their conformity with the things themselves but it is vain and ridiculous to prove the truth of things from their agreement with the conceptions of my mind or his mind The Clocks may differ but the course of the Sun is certain A mans words may not agree with his thoughts nor his thoughts agree with the things themselves But I commend his prudence in this and in this onely That he hath chosen out a way of proof that cannot be confuted without his own consent because no man knoweth another mans inward conceptions but himself And the better to secure himself he maketh his English Reader judge of Latine words and his ignorant Readers judge of words of art These are the fittest Judges for his purpose But what if the terms be obscure He answereth If the words be unusaal the way must be to make the definition of their signification by mutual consent What mutual consent The signification of these words was setled by universall consent and custome And must they be unsetled again to satisfie the homour of every odd Paradoxical person who could find no way to get himself reputation but by blondring all things He telleth us that the School-men use not to argue by rule but as Fencers use to handle weapons by quicknesse of the hand and eye The poor School-men cannot rest quietly in their graves for him but he is still persecuting their ashes because they durst presume to soare a pitch above his capacity The Scool-men were the most exact observers of rules in
can So though a necessary connexion of all natural causes were supposed yet it inferreth not a necessary connexion of all voluntary causes Secondly I deny his assumption that there is a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning for proof whereof he produceth nothing nor is able to produce any thing All he saith he alledgeth out of me That it deserveth further examination And from thence according to his wild roving imaginations he draweth consequences from the staff to the corner that have not the least grain of salt or weight in them As these Hitherto he knows not whether it be true or no. And consequently all his arguments hitherto have been of no effect nor hath he shewed any thing to prove that elective actions are not necessitated Thus his pen runneth over without time or reason He that would learn to build Castles in the air had best be his Apprentise The truth is I was not willing to go out of mine own profession and therefore desired to hold my self to the question of liberty without medling with contingency But yet with the same reservation that the Romans had in their Military Discipline nec sequi nec fugere not to seek other questions nor yet to thuâ—… them if they were put upon me And now we are come to his two famous instances of casting ambs ace and raining or not raining to morrow I said that I had already answered what he produceth to prove all sufficient causes to be necessary causes Now saith he It seemeth that distrusting his former answer he answereth again O memory he did not urge them in that place neither did I answer them at all in that place But though he had urged them and I answered them there yet he repeating them or enforcing them here would he not have me to answer him It is true that in another Section upon the by he hath been gravelled about his ambs ace and therefore he treadeth tenderly still upon that foot He saith I bring no other argument to prove the cast thrown not to be necessarily thrown but this that the caster did not deliberate By his leave it is not truly said I shewed undeniably that the necessity upon which he buildeth is onely hypothetical I enumerated all the causes which were or could be recited to make the necessity As the dice the positure of the casters hand the measure of the force the positure of the table c. And shewed clearly that there was not the least grain of antecedent necessity in any of them which he is not able to answer and therefore he doth well to be silent But if I had urged nothing else This alone had been sufficient to prove the caster a free Agent from his own principles A free Agent saith he is he that hath not done deliberating He who never began to deliberate hath not done deliberating There can be no necessity imaginable why the caster should throw these dice rather than those other or cast into this table rather than that or use so much force and no more but the casters will or meer chance The caster never deliberated nor so much as thought of any one of these things And therefore it is undeniably apparent that there was no necessity of casting ambs ace but onely upon supposition which is far enough from antecedent necessity But he pleadeth further That from our ignorance of the particular causes that concurring make the necessity I infer that there was no such necessity at all which is that indeed which hath deceived me and all other men in this question Whose fault was it then first to make this an instance and then to plead ignorance Before he was bold to reckon up all the causes of the antecedent necessity of this cast and now when he is convinced that it is but a necessity upon suppositon he is fain to plead ignorance He who will not suffer the Loadstone to enjoy its attractive virtue without finding a reason for it in a fiddle-string as Scoggin sought for the Hare under the leades as well where she was not as where she was is glad to plead ignorance about the necessary causes of ambs ace Whereas my reasons did evince not onely that the causes are unknown but that there are no such causes antecedently necessitating that cast Thus If any causes did necessitate ambs ace antecedently it was either the caster but he thought not of it or the dice but they are square no more inclinable to one cast than another or the positure of the table but the caster might have thrown into the other table or the positure of the hand but that was by chance or the measure of the force but that might have been either more or lesse or all of these together But to an effect antecedently necessary all the causes must be antecedently determined where not so much as one of them is antecedently determined there is no pretence of antecedent necessity Or it is some other cause that he can name but he pleadeth ignorance Yet I confesse the deceit lieth here but it is on the other side in the ignorant mistaking of an hypothetical necessity for absolute antecedent necessity And here according to the advice of the Poet Nec deus inter sit nisi dignus vindice nodus Inciderit He calleth in the fore knowledge of God to his aid as he doth alwayes when he findeth himself at a losse but to no purpose He himself hath told us That it cannot be truly said that the foreknowledge of God should be a cause of any thing seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge dependeth on the existence of the thing known God seeth not future contingents in an antecedent certainty which they have in their causes but in the events themselves to which Gods infinite knowledge doth extend it self In order of time one thing is before another one thing is after another and accordingly God knoweth them in themselves to be one before another But his knowledge is no beginning no expiring act Nothing is past nothing is to come but all things present to his knowledge even those things which are future with the manner of their futurition His casting ambs ace hath been unfortunate to him he will speed no better with his shower of rain In the enterance to my answer and as it were the stating of the cause I shewed that rain was more contingent in our Climate than in many other parts of the World where it is almost as necessary as the seasons of the year I do not find so much weight in his discourse as to occasionme to alter one word for which I could have produced authours enough if I had thought it needful but I alledged onely the Scriptures mentioning the former and the later rain And even this is objected to me as a defect or piece of ignorance I thought saith he he had known it by experience of some Travellers but I see he onely
cause by which it was immediately produced The same may be said of the cause of this cause and backward eternally From whence it will follow that all the connexion of the causes of any effect from the beginning of the World are altogether existent in one and the same instant It is well that I meet with a beginning of the World for I was afraid of those words and so backwards eternaly If his Mathematical engins be such as these he will never prove so terrible an enemy as Archimedes He proveth that all immediate causes and their particular distinct effects successively were together in time at the very instant of their causation successively since the beginning of the World But he lets the question alone as bad Archers do the But Whether the first cause did determine the second to every individual act which it doth necessarily and without any supposition and the second the third and so downward to the last Of this he saith not a word Where there is no need of proof he swelleth with arguments where the question is he is silent I will shew him the palpable absurdity of his argument in an instance When Mr. Hobs made his Leviathan his Leviathan and he were necessarily coexistent in the same instant of time So likewise when his father did beget him his father and he were necessarily coexistent in the same instant of time The like may be said of his grandfather and his great grandfather and so upwards to the beginning of the World Therefore Adams begetting of Seth had a necessary connexion with his writing of his Leviathan so as to necessitate him antecedently and inevitably to write it and stuff it with Paradoxes Or thus A man kindles a fire to warm himself The fire and he are necessarily coexistent and there is necessary connexion between them Another man steals part of the fire and burns an house with it the fire and the conflagration are together and have a necessary connexion therefore the kindling of the fire had a necessary connexion with the burning of the house to render it inevitable See with what doughty arguments they use to catch Dotterels From hence he concludeth That consequently all the time from the beginning of the World or from eternity to this day is but one instant Better and better Why doth he not infer likewise that the sea burneth His premises will sustain the one as well as the other Why will he lose his cause for want of confidence If God who is an infinite Essence be free from all variablenesse and succession of time Must he who is but a turning shadow upon the old Exchange of this World challenge the same priviledge Because eternity is a nunc stans must successive parts of time make one instant or nunc stans But he addeth That by this time I know it is not so He hath been spinning a fair threed and now like a curst Cow casts down his meale with his foot First to endeavour to prove that it is so and then confesse that it is not so Neither can he say that he proceedeth upon my grounds whilest his own grounds are so much higher than mine I make but an hypothetical necessity which implieth onely an accidental connexion He maketh an absolute antecedent necessity which implieth a necessary connexion of the whole conjoinct series of causes and effects Castigations upon the Animadversions Num. 36. I Cited his sense that he could adde other arguments if he thought it good Logick He complaineth that I mis-recite his words which are I could adde if I thought it good Logick the inconvenience of denying necessity as that it destroyes both the Decrees and Prescience of God Almighty And are not these reasons drawn from the Decrees and Prescience of God Arguments or are they not his prime arguments How glad would this man be to find any little pretence of exception He distinguisheth between absurdities and inconveniences Absurdities he saith are impossibilities and it is a good forme of reasoning to argue from absurdities but not from inconveniences If all absurdities be impossibilities then there are no absurdities in rerum natura for there can be no impossibilities This it is to take the sense of words not from Artists in their own Arts but from his own imaginations By this reason there never was an absurd speech or absurd action in the World otherwise absurdities are not impossibilities But he hath confuted himself sufficiently in this Treatise One absurdity may be greater than another and one inconvenience may be greater than another but absurd and inconvenient is the same thing That is absurd which is incongruous unreasonable not fit to be heard Truth it self may accidentally be said in some sense to be inconvenient to some persons at some times But neither absurdities nor inconveniences in themselves do flow from truth Now let us see what are those incoveniences which he mentioneth here To destroy the decrees and prescience of God Almighty There can be no greater absurdities imagined than these things which he calleth inconveniencies He himself hath at the least ten several times drawn arguments in this Treatise from the prescience of God Where was his Logick then or his memory now And in this very place where he condemneth it as no good form of reasoning to argue from inconveniences yet he himself doth practice it and argues from inconveniences But he hath worn this subject so threed-bare without adding either new matter or new ornament that I will not weary the Reader with a needlesse repetition but refer him to my defence which I dare well trust with his Animadversions Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 37. IT is vain to talke any longer of keeping this controversie secret Neither do I regard whether it was made publick by his fault or his friends or who it was that hanged out the Ivie-bush before it to beg custom and procure utterance for his first fardel of Paradoxes He thinketh it is great confidence in me to say that the edge of his discourse was so abated that it could not easily hurt any rational man who was not over much possessed with prejudice But I have much more reason to wonder at his transcendent confidence The people of China did use to brag that they onely had two eyes The Europaeans one eye and all the rest of the World no eyes But he maketh himself to be a very Argus all eye better sighted than either Eagle or Serpent and all the rest of the Europaean World to be as blind as Moles or Beetles like so many changlings or enchanted persons that had lost their senses For my part I am more confident since I see his Animadversions than before And why should I not be confident in this cause Grant me but that there is a God that he is just and true and good and powerfull that there is an Heaven and an hell and a day of judgement that is rewards and punishments That good and evil
uningenuous adversary he is In my first discourse of Liberty I had these words we ought not to desert a certain truth because we are not able to comprehend the certain manner To which he answereth And I say the same In my defence I repeate the same words adding these Such a truth is that which I maintain That the will of man in ordinary actions is free from extrinsecal determination A truth demonstrable by reason received and believed by all the World And therefore though I be not able to comprehend or expresse exactly the certain manner how it consists with Gods eternal prescience and decrees which exceed my weake capacity yet I ought to adhere to that truth which is manifest So first he quarrelleth now with that truth which formerly he yeilded Secondly that which I spake upon supposition though I be not able he setteth down positively in his collection which is beyond his capacity Thirdly he leaveth out the word exactly A man may comprehend truly that which he doth not comprehend exactly Fourthly he omitteth fraudulently these words the certain manner A truth may be certain and demonstrable and yet the manner of it not demonstrable or a man may know several wayes of reconciling two truths together And yet fluctuate in his judgement to which of them certainly and expressely he ought to adhere It is certain that by the force of a mans arme a stone is thrown upwards And yet the certain manner how to reconcile this with another truth That whatsoever acteth upon another body acteth by a touching is not so easily found out The incarnation of Christ is certain yet the certain manner passeth both my capacity and his Lastly I do not say as he suggesteth that that truth which is demonstrable by reason passeth my capacity but the certain and exact manner how to reconcile this truth with another truth Yet there are sundry wayes of reconciling of them And I have shewed him one in the same Section which he is not able to refute See how his discourse hangs together like ropes of sand The prescience and decrees of God passe the capacity of mortal man therefore the liberty of the will is not demonstrable by reason From the hard words and non-sense of the Schooles he passeth to my little Logick and no Philosophy It skilleth not much what he saith unlesse he were a greater clerke He hath passed over a great part of my defence untouched But I have not omitted one sentence thoroughout his Animadversions wherein I could find any one grain of reason And among the rest have satisfied his silly censures or ignorant exceptions in their proper places and the splinters of those broken reedes stick in his own fingers Before he concludes he draweth up a summary of what he and I have maintained very confusedly most imperfectly and in part falsely Methinks it resembleth that unskilfull Painter who durst not leave his pictures to the free judgement of the beholders unless he writ over their heads This is a dog and this is a beare we had such a summary or draught of the Controversie in his Fountains of Arguments before his Animadversions as a Proeme And now we have such another breveate in the conclusion by way of Epilogue after his Animadversions He is very diffident of his cause who standeth in need of such Proemes and Epilogues and dare not trust the indifferent Reader to chuse his own diet unlesse he do first choppe it and chew it for him and then thrust it down his throat The last word may be efficacious with an ignorant multitude who are like a ship at Hulle every wave puts it into a new positure But more accurate palates do naucitate and loath such thrice sodden coleworts I leave the Reader to compare plea with plea and proofe with proofe And let truth overcome Thus he concludeth with a short Apology least the Reader should think that he hath not used me with that respect which he ought or might have done without disadvantage to his cause His onely reason is because divens in their bookes and sermons without answering any of his arguments have exclaimed against him and reviled him for some things delivered by him in his book De Cive What doth this concern me No more than the man in the Moon Yes he saith whereof the Bishop of Derry is one Most falsely I never preached against him nor write against his book De Cive but privately to himself and then with more respect than either he or it deserved But his meaning was not by this Apology to make me any reparation but to deterre others from medling with him least he should make examples of them as he boasteth that he hath done of me Beware Reader he beareth hay on his hornâ—… If he have gained any thing by his disrespect much good may it do him I do not envy him Let the Reader judge And if he have any sparke of ingenuity left in him let himself judge whether he hath made an example of me or of himself Or if he like it better let him thrust his head into a bush and suppose that no body seeth his errours because he is not willing to take notice of them himself The catching OF LEVIATHAN OR THE GREAT WHALE Demonstrating out of Mr. Hobs his own Works That no man who is throughly an Hobbist can be a good Christian or a good Common-wealths man or reconcile himself to himself Because his Principles are not only destructive to all Religion but to all Societies extinguishing the Relation between Prince and Subject Parent and Child Master and Servant Husband and Wife and abound with palpable contradictions By Iohn Bramhall D. D. and Bishop of Derry Prov. 12. 19. The lip of truth shall be established for ever but a lying tongue is but for a moment London Printed by E. T. for Iohn Crook at the sign of the Ship in Pauls Church-yard 1658. TO THE Christian Reader CHristian Reader this short Treatise was not intended or sent to the Presse as a compleat Refutation of all Mr. Hobs his errours in Theology and Policy but onely as an Appendix to my Castigations of his Animadversions to let him see the vanity of his petulant scoffes and empty brags and how open he doth lye to the lash whensoever any one will vouchsafe to take him in hand to purpose But some of my good friends have prevailed with me to alter my design and to make this smal Treatise independent upon the other He who clasheth ordinarily with all the Churches in the World about the common principles of Religion He who swerveth so often so affectedly from the approved rules and healthful constitutions of all orderly Common-wealths He who doth not onely disturb but destroy all humane society and all relations between man and man He who cannot preserve unity with himself but ever and anon is inferring and tripping up his own heels by his contradictions needeth no just confutation or single or other Adversary than God and
shunned 1 Pet. 2. 14. No proper punishment but for sin Lam. 3. 39. 2 Sam. 12. 13. 14. 2 Cor. 4. 17. Matth. 25. 46. Ioh 37. 23. Lam. 3. 33. Psal. 107. 17. Gen. 9. 3. Prov. 12. 10. Why God did not make man impeccable Jude v. 6. Matth. 25. 41 46. Mar. 9. 44 45. Jud. v. 6 7. Punishments of the damned are eternall Gods prescience proveth infalliblity not necessity Resolution proveth election and liberty In the answer to the stating of the question What is necessary Chance is from accidentall concurrence not from ignorance Eccles. 4. 10. Prov. 22. 28. Jer. 18. 15. Ex Plutarchi Polit. ad Trajan Encheiridion c. 16. Math. 7. 6. Exact definitions not frequent What liberty is What is spontaneity What is necessity De interpret l. 1. c. ultimo Necessity of being and acting distinguished Tull. Necessity upon supposition what it is Mark 10. 27. Man is not a passive instrument as the sword in his hand Act. 17. 28. The instance in ambs ace hath lost T. H. his game T. H. his will is no more than the bias of a bowle See stateing of the question answer to Num. 1. St. Austiâ—… more to be credited than T. H De lib. Arbit l. 3. c. 3. To give liberty to two and limite to one is a contradiction According to T. H. his principles all perswasions are vvin We can blame no man justly A lame comparison T. H. maketh himself no better than a wooden toppe T. H his deep skill in Logick His silly definitions Medition liâ—…tle worth without making use of other mens experience Terms of art are unungrateful to rude persons 1 Top. c. 2. ss 2. Ans. to the stat quest fount of Argum. cast Num. 1 3. def Num. 3. Freedom to do if one will without freedom to will a vain distinction Num. 30. 14. Josh. 24. 15. 2 Sam. 24. 12. Deut. 30. 19. Bulla Caroli 4. Exercit. 307. And maketh T. H. a degree worse than the Stâ—…cks Aust. de civit deâ—… l. 5. c. 10. Apud Gellium Iudicium practicé practicum explained Plut. How the object is and how it is not the cause of seeing Num. 3. Spontaneity Ethic. l. 3. c. 2. Num. 3. Conformity signifieth agreeableness as well as likeness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what they are Eth. l. 3. c. 1 2. l. 3. c. 3 4. Phys. l. 2. c. 6. A true will may be changed Num. 8. Num. 25. Voluntarinesse doth not desend on the judgment of other Num. 33. Num. 8. Num. 8. Num. 26. 1 King 3. 11. Election of more than one Verse 5. Ver. 6 7 8 9. Ver. 10. Ver. 11. Ver. 13. Acts 5. 4. Was it not in thy power Explained Out of hatred to true liberty T. H. makes God hypocritical Gods secret and revealed will not contrary And why Fount of Arg. in fine Occulte virtue or influence Job 38 31. It is blasphemy to say that God is the cause of sinne Or to say that sin is efficaciously decreed by God 〈◊〉 no â—…d perâ—…ssion The difference between general and special influence 1 King 21. 9. Fountains of Argâ—…ments Iam. 4. 13 14. Num. 12. Rom. 11. 23. God may oblige himself Jam. 1. 17. God cannot do any unrighteous thing Tit. 1. 2. Num. 〈◊〉 19. 2 Tim. 2. 13. Hebr. 6. 10. Mich. 6. 2. Ezek. 18. 25. Gen. 18. 23 25. Iud. 7. Plut. Num. 10. It is just to afflict innocent persons for their own good Lib. de cive tit Imp. c. 6. n. 18. â—…n is properly irregularity God no cause of irregularity Laws may be unjust Impossibilities made bâ—… our selves may be justly imposed not impossibilities in them selves Acts 5. 29. 1 Pet. 2. 13 Proper punishment is ever vindictive in part Lam. 3. 39. Job 31. 11. Ezra 9. 13. Heb. 10. 28. Deut. 25. 2. 1 Pet. 2 4. Yet further of unjust laws L. 1. 14. Exod. 1. 17. Dan. 3. 18. Heb. 11. 23. 1 King 21. 2 King 6. 32. Dan. 6. 8. Mich. 6. 16. 2 K. 17 19. Isay 10. 1. The authority of the Scripture not dependent on the printer Ammon in lib. de Interpret Mr. R. H. T. H. a fit Catechist for disloial and unnatural persons Num 12. Mankind never without laws De cive c. i. Num 12. Never lawful for private men ordinarily to kill one another Numbers 35. Fount of Arg. Gen. 9. 6. Gen. 4. 10. 1 Sam. 19. 5. 2 King 24. 4. Prov. 28. Deut. 10. 11. Exod. 21. 14. Gen. 9. 6. Joh. 8. 44. T. H. Attorny General for the brute beasts Gen. 1. 28. Gen. 2. 19. Psal. 8. 6. Gen. 9. 3. Prov. 26. 5. Seen and unseen necessity Act. 27. 22. V. 30. If all things be absolutely necessary admonitions are all vaine A litter of absurdities What is morally good Isa. 5. 20. Exod. 1. 21 Rewards of bruits and men differ Rom. 1. 21. What it is to honour God Jam 2. 19. What are devils in his judgement God doth not hinder privately what he commands openly His opinion destroyeth the truth of God And his goodnesse Isa. 28. 21. Wisd. 1. 13. Ezek. 33. 11. Fount of Arg. And his justice And omnipotence making the cause of sinne Amos 3. 6. A right Hobbist cannot praise God Deut. 29. 29. Nor hear the Word or receive the Sacrament worthily Matth. 11. 12. Mat. 7. 11. Rom. 10. 14. Nor vowas he ought Nor repent of his misdeeds What repentance is 2 Cor. 7. 11. Joel 2. 12. Mans concurrence with Gods grace Act. 7. 51. Prov. 1. 24. Mark 1. 15. Rom. 11. 20. Rom. 2. 5. Rev. 3. 20. 1 Cor. 3. 9. 1 Cor. 15. 10. Confidence in praier and the efficacy of it Jam. 1. 6. 1 Tim. 2. 8. Mark 11. 24. Jam. 5. 15. Phil. 1. 19. Isay 38. 5. 1 King 8. 37. 2 Chron. 7. 12. Luk. 17. 13. 18. 2 Cor. 1. 11. T. H. Still mistaketh necessity upon supposition There is more in contingency than ignorance Def. Num. 3. stat of quest cast Num. 1. 3. c. Sin in the world before the civil law Job 4. 18. 2 Pet. 2. 4. Jude 6. Rom. 5. 12. Prov. 8. 15. Rom. 2. 14. 1â—… 15. To command impossibilities is unjust Yet further against his silly distinction free to do if he will not free to will Of monsters What is said to be in deo and what extra deum Exod. 3. 14. To will do in God the same thing He willeth not all he could will Luâ—… 3. 8. T. H. make the will to be compelled Arist. Eth. lib. 3. c. 1. 1 Sam. 28. 23. Est. 1. 8. 2 Cor. 12. 11. Motus primó primi and antipathies To search too boldly into the nature of God is a fault But the greater fault is negligence Rom. 1. 20. Exer c. 12. d. 2. T. H. his liberty omnipotence in shew in deed nothing He dare not refer himself to his own witnesses Terms of Art 1 Cor. 14. 19. A contradiction c. 17. d. 28. Matth. 15. 14. Election and compulsion inconsistent There are mixt actions Eth. l. 3.