deny that it makes consultations to be in vain 't is the consultation that causeth a man and necessitateth him to choose to do one thing rather than another So that unless a man say that cause to be in vain which necessitateth the effect he cannot infer the superfluousness of consultation out of the necessity of the election proceeding from it But it seemes he reasons thus If I must needs do this rather than that then I shall do this rather than that though I consult not at all which is a false proposition a falfe consequence and no better than this If I shall live till to morrow I shall live till to morrow though I run my self through with a sword to day If there be a necessity that an action shall be done or that any effect shall be brought to pass it does not therefore follow that there is nothing necessarily required as a means to bring it to pass And therefore when it is determined that one thing shall be chosen before another 't is determined also for what cause it shall be chosen which cause for the most part is deliberation or consultation And therefore consultation is not in vain and indeed the less in vain by how much the election is more necessitated The same answer is to be given to the third supposed inconveniency Namely that admonitions are in vain for admonitions are parts of consultations The Admonitor being a Counsailer for the time to him that is admonished The fourth pretended inconveniency is that praise and dispraise reward and punishment will be in vain To which I answer that for praise and dispraise they depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised or dispraised For what is it els to praise but to say a thing is good Good I say for me or for some body els or for the State and Commonwealth And what is it to say an action is good but to say it is as I would wish or as another would have it or according to the will of the State that is to say according to Law Does J. D. think that no action can please me or him or the Commonwealth that should proceed from necessity Things may be therefore necessary and yet prayseworthy as also necessary and yet dispraised and neither of both in vain because praise and dispraise and likewise reward and punishment do by example make and conform the will to good or evill It was a very great praise in my opinion that Velleius Paterculus gives Cato where he sayes he was good by nature Et quia aliter esse non potuit The fift and sixt inconvenience that Councells Arts Arms Books Instruments Study Medicines and the like would be superfluous the same answer serves that to the former That is to say that this consequence if the effect shall necessarily come to pass then it shall come to pass without its cause is a false one And those things named Councells Arts Arms c. are the causes of those effects J. D. NOthing is more familiar with T. H. than to decline an argument But I will put it into form for him The first inconvenience is thus pressed Those Lawes are unjust and Tyrannicall which do prescribe things absolutely impossible in themselves to be done and punish men for not doing of them But supposing T. H. his opinion of the necessity of all things to be true all Lawes do prescribe absolute impossibilities to be done and punish men for not doing of them The former proposition is so clear that it cannot be denied Just Lawes are the Ordinances of right reason but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not the Ordinances of right reason Just Lawes are instituted for the publick good but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not instituted for the publick good Just Laws do shew unto a man what is to be done and what is to be shunned But those Lawes which prescribe impossibilities do not direct a man what he is to do and what he is to shun The Minor is as evident for if his opinion be true all actions all transgressions are determined antecedently inevitably to be done by a naturall and necessary flux of extrinsecall causes Yea even the will of man and the reason it self is thus determined And therefore whatsoever Laws do prescribe any thing to be done which is not done or to be left undone which is done do prescribe absolute impossibilities and punish men for not doing of impossibilities In all his answer there is not one word to this argument but only to the conclusion He saith that not the necessity but the will to break the Law makes the action unjust I ask what makes the will to break the Law is it not his necessity What getts he by this A perverse will causeth injustice and necessity causeth a perverse will He saith the Law regardeth the will but not the precedent causes of action To what proposition to what tearm is this answer he neither denies nor distinguisheth First the question here is not what makes actions to be injust but what makes Lawes to be unjust So his answer is impertinent It is likewise untrue for First that will which the Law regards is not such a will as T. H. imagineth It is a free will not a determined necessitated will a rationall will not a brutish will Secondly the Law doth look upon precedent causes as well as the voluntariness of the action If a child before he be seven years old or have the use of reason in some childish quarrell do willingly stab another whereof we have seen experience yet the Law looks not upon it as an act of murther because there wanted a power to deliberate and consequently true liberty Man-slaughter may be as voluntary as murther and commonly more voluntary because being done in hot blood there is the less reluctation yet the Law considers that the former is done out of some sudden passion without serious deliberation and the other out of prepensed malice and desire of revenge and therefore condemnes murther as more wilfull and more punishable than man-slaughter He saith that no Law can possibly be unjust And I say that this is to deny the conclusion which deserves no reply But to give him satisfaction I will follow him in this also If he intended no more but that unjust Lawes are not Genuine Lawes nor bind to active obedience because they are not the ordinations of right reason nor instituted for the common good nor prescribe that which ought to be done he said truly but nothing at all to his purpose But if he intend as he doth that there are no Lawes de facto which are the ordinances of reason erring instituted for the common hurt and prescribing that which ought not to be done he is much mistaken Pharaohs Law to drown the Male Children of the Israelites Exod. 1.22 Nebuchadnezzars Law that whosoever did not fall down and worship the golden image which he
without himself he wills freely not necessarily Whatsoever cause acts or works necessarily doth act or work all that it can do or all that is in its power But it is evident that God doth not all things without himself which he can do or which he hath power to do He could have raised up children unto Abraham of the very stones which were upon the banks of Jordan Luk. 3.8 but he did not He could have sent twelve Legions of Angells to the succour of Christ but he did not Matth. 26.53 God can make T. H. live the years of Methuselah but it is not necessary that he shall do so nor probable that he will do so The productive power of God is infinite but the whole created world is finite And therefore God might still produce more if it pleased him But this it is when men go on in a confused way and will admit no distinctions If T. H. had considered the difference between a necessary being and a necessary cause or between those actions of God which are imminent within himself and the transient works of God which are extrinsecall without himself he would never have proposed such an evident error for a manifest truth Qui pauca considerat facile pronuntiat Numb 19. J. D. THirdly they distinguish between liberty from compulsion and liberty from necessitation The Will say they is free from compulsion but not free from necessitation And this they fortifie with two reasons First because it is granted by all Divines that hypotheticall necessity or necessity upon a supposition may consist with liberty Secondly because God and the good Angells do good necessarily and yet are more free than we To the first reason I confess that necessity upon a supposition may sometimes consist with true liberty as when it signifies onely an infallible certitude of the understanding in that which it knowes to be or that it shall be But if the supposition be not in the Agents power nor depend upon any thing that is in his power If there be an exteriour antecedent cause which doth necessitate the effect to call this free is to be mad with reason To the second reason I confess that God and the good Angells are more free than we are that is intensively in the degree of freedom but not extensively in the latitude of the object according to a liberty of exercise but not of specification A liberty of exercise that is to doe or not to do may consist well with a necessity of specification or a determination to the doing of good But a liberty of exercise and a necessity of exercise A liberty of specification and a necessity of specification are not compatible nor can consist together He that is antecedently necessitated to do evill is not free to do good So this instance is nothing at all to the purpose T. H. BUt the distinction of free into free from compulsion and free from necessitation I acknowledge for to be free from compulsion is to do a thing so as terrour be not the cause of his will to do it for a man is then onely said to be compelled when fear makes him willing to it as when a man willingly throwes his goods into the Sea to save himself or submitts to his enemy for fear of being killed Thus all men that do any thing from love or revenge or lust are free from compulsion and yet their actions may be as necessary as those which are done upon compulsion for sometimes other passions work as forcibly as fear But free from necessitation I say nothing can be And 't is that which he undertook to disproove This distinction he sayes useth to be fortified by two reasons but they are not mine The first he sayes is That it is granted by all Divines that an hypotheticall necessity or necessity upon supposition may stand with liberty That you may understand this I will give you an example of hypotheticall necessity If I shall live I shall eat this is an hypotheticall necessity Indeed it is a necessary proposition that is to say it is necessary that that proposition should be true whensoever uttered but t is not the necessity of the thing nor is it therefore necessary that the man shall live or that the man shall eat I do not use to fortifie my distinctions with such reasons Let him confute them as he will it contents me But I would have your Lordship take notice hereby how an easy and plain thing but withall false may be with the grave usage of such tearmes as hypotheticall necessity and necessity upon supposition and such like tearmes of Schoolemen obscur'd and made to seem profound learning The second reason that may confirm the distinction of free from compulsion and free from necessitation he sayes is that God and good Angells do good necessarily and yet are more free than we The reason though I had no need of yet I think it so far forth good as it is true that God and good Angells do good necessarily and yet are free but because I find not in the Articles of our faith nor in the Decrees of our Church set down in what manner I am to conceive God and good Angells to work by necessity or in what sense they work freely I suspend my sentence in that point and am content that there may be a freedom from compulsion and yet no freedom from necessitation as hath been prooved in that that a man may be necessitated to some actions without threats and without fear of danger But how he can avoid the consisting together of freedom and necessity supposing God and good Angells are freer than men and yet do good necessarily that we must now examin I confess saith he that God and good Angells are more free than we that is intensively in degree of freedom not extensively in the latitude of the object according to a liberty of exercise not of specification Again we have here two distinctions that are no distinctions but made to seem so by tearmes invented by I know not whom to cover ignorance and blind the understanding of the Reader For it cannot be conceived that there is any liberty greater than for a man to do what he will and to forbear what he will One heat may be more intensive than another but not one liberty than another He that can do what he will hath all liberty possibly and he that cannot has none at all Also liberty as he sayes the Schooles call it of exercise which is as I have said before a liberty to do or not to do cannot be without a liberty which they call of specification that is to say a liberty to do or not to do this or that in particular for how can a man conceive that he has liberty to do any thing that hath not liberty to do this or that or somewhat in particular If a man be forbidden in Lent to eat this and that and every other particular kind of flesh
Either in respect of its nature or in respect of its exercise or in respect of its object First for the nature of the act That which the will wills is necessarily voluntary because the will cannot be compelled And in this sense it is out of controversy that the will is a necessary cause of voluntary actions Secondly for the exercise of its acts that is not necessary The will may either will or suspend its act Thirdly for the object that is not necessary but free the will is not extrinsecally determined to its objects As for example The Cardinalls meet in the conclave to chose a Pope whom they chose he is necessarily Pope But it is not necessary that they shall chose this or that day Before they were assembled they might defer their assembling when they are assembled they may suspend their election for a day or a week Lastly for the person whom they will choose it is freely in their own power otherwise if the election were not free it were void and no election at all So that which takes its beginning from the will is necessarily voluntary but it is not necessary that the will shall will this or that in particular as it was necessary that the person freely elected should be Pope but it was not necessary either that the election should be at this time or that this man should be elected And therefore voluntary acts in particular have not necessary causes that is they are not necessitated Numb 31. T. H. SEventhly I hold that to be a sufficient cause to which nothing is wanting that is needfull to the producing of the effect The same is also a necessary cause for if it be possible that a sufficient cause shall not bring forth the effect then there wanted somewhat which was needfull to the producing of it and so the cause was not sufficient But if it be impossible that a sufficient cause should not produce the effect then is a sufficient cause a necessary cause for that is said to produce an effect necessarily that cannot but produce it Hence it is manifest that whatsoever is produced is produced necessarily for whatsoever is produced hath had a sufficient cause to produce it or els it had not been And therefore also voluntary actions are necessitated J. D. THis section containes a third Argument to proove that all effects are necessary for clearing whereof it is needfull to consider how a cause may be said to be sufficient or insufficient First severall causes singly considered may be insufficient and the same taken conjointly be sufficient to produce an effect As two horses jointly are sufficient to draw a Coach which either of them singly is insufficient to do Now to make the effect that is the drawing of the Coach necessary it is not onely required that the two horses be sufficient to draw it but also that their conjunction be necessary and their habitude such as they may draw it If the owner of one of these horses will not suffer him to draw If the Smith have shod the other in the quick and lamed him If the horse have cast a shoe or be a resty jade and will not draw but when he list then the effect is not necessarily produced but contingently more or less as the concurrence of the causes is more or less contingent Secondly a cause may be said to be sufficient either because it produceth that effect which is intended as in the generation of a man or els because it is sufficient to produce that which is produced as in the generation of a Monster The former is properly called a sufficient cause the later a weak and insufficient cause Now if the debility of the cause be not necessary but contingent then the effect is not necessary but contingent It is a rule in Logick that the conclusion alwayes followes the weaker part If the premises be but probable the conclusion cannot be demonstrative It holds as well in causes as in propositions No effect can exceed the vertue of its cause If the ability or debility of the causes be contingent the effect cannot be necessary Thirdly that which concernes this question of Liberty from necessity most neerely is That a cause is said to be sufficient in respect of the ability of it to act not in respect of its will to act The concurrence of the will is needfull to the production of a free effect But the cause may be sufficient though the will do not concur As God is sufficient to produce a thousand worlds but it doth not follow from thence either that he hath produced them or that he will produce them The blood of Christ is a sufficient ransome for all mankind but it doth not follow therefore that all mankind shall be actually saved by vertue of his Blood A man may be a sufficient Tutour though he will not teach every Scholler and a sufficient Physitian though he will not administer to every patient Forasmuch therefore as the concurrence of the will is needfull to the production of every free effect and yet the cause may be sufficient in sensu diviso although the will do not concur It followes evidently that the cause may be sufficient and yet something which is needfull to the production of the effect may be wanting and that every sufficient cause is not a necessary cause Lastly if any man be disposed to wrangle against so clear light and say that though the free Agent be sufficient in sensu diviso yet he is not sufficient in sensu composito to produce the effect without the concurrence of the will he saith true but first he bewrayes the weakness and the fallacy of the former argument which is a meer trifling between sufficiency in a divided sense and sufficiency in a compounded sense And seeing the concurrence of the will is not predetermined there is no antecedent necessity before it do concur and when it hath concurred the necessity is but hypotheticall which may consist with liberty Numb 32. T. H. LAstly I hold that ordinary definition of a free Agent namely that a free Agent is that which when all things are present which are needfull to produce the effect can nevertheless not produce it Implies a contradiction and is non-sense being as much as to say the cause may be sufficient that is necessary and yet the effect not follow J. D. THis last point is but a Corollary or an Inference from the former doctrine that every sufficient cause produceth its effect necessarily which pillar being taken away the superstructure must needs fall to the ground having nothing left to support it Lastly I hold saith he what he is able to proove is something So much reason so much trust but what he holds concernes himself not others But what holds he I hold saith he that the ordinary definition of a free Agent implies a contradiction and is non-sense That which he calls the ordinary definition of liberty is the very definition
interposition of the earth to be the cause of the Eclipse of the Moon Or the most certain occurrent in the nature of things And now that I have answered T. H. his Arguments drawn from the private conceptions of men concerning the sense of words I desire him seriously without prejudice to examine himself and those natural notions which he findes in himself not of words but of things these are from nature those are by imposition whether he doth not finde by experience that he doth many things which he might have left undone if he would and omits many things which he might have done if he would whether he doth not somethings out of meer animosity and will without either regard to the direction of right reason or serious respect of what is honest or profitable onely to shew that he will have a dominion over his own actions as we see ordinarily in Children and wise men finde at some times in themselves by experience And I apprehend this very defence of necessity against liberty to be partly of that kinde Whether he is not angry with those who draw him from his study or cross him in his desires if they be necessitated to do it why should he be angry with them any more than he is angry with a sharp winter or a rainy day that keeps him at home against his antecedent will whether he doth not sometime blame himself and say O what a fool was I to do thus and thus or wish to himself O that I had been wise or O that I had not done such an act If he have no dominion over his actions if he be irresistibly necessitated to all things what he doth he might as well wish O that I had not breathed or blame himself for growing old O what a fool was I to grow old Numb 34. T. H. FOr the seventh point that all events have necessary causes it is there proved in that they have sufficient causes Further Let us in this place also suppose any event never so casuall as for example the throwing Ambs-ace upon a paire of Dice and see if it must not have been necessary before it was thrown for seeing it was thrown it had a beginning and consequently a sufficient cause to produce it consisting partly in the Dice partly in the outward things as the posture of the parties hand the measure of force applied by the caster The posture of the parts of the Table and the like In summe there was nothing wanting that was necessarily requisite to the producing of that particular cast and consequently that cast was necessarily thrown For if it had not been thrown there had wanted somewhat requisite to the throwing of it and so the cause had not been sufficient In the like manner it may be proved that every other accident how contingent soever it seeme or how voluntary soever it be is produced necessarily which is that J. D. disputes against The same also may be proved in this manner Let the case be put for example of the weather T is necessary that to morrow it shall rain or not rain If therefore it be not necessary it shall rain it is necessary it shall not rain Otherwise it is not necessary that the proposition It shall rain or it shall not rain should be true I know there are some that say it may necessarily be true that one of the two shall come to pass but not singly that it shall rain or it shall not rain Which is as much as to say One of them is necessary yet neither of them is necessary And therefore to seeme to avoid that absurdity they make a distinction that neither of them is true determinatè but indeterminatè Which distinction either signifies no more than this One of them is true but we know not which and so the necessity remains though we know it not Or if the meaning of the distinction be not that it has no meaning And they might as well have said One of them is true Tytyrice but neither of them Tupatulice J. D. HIs former proof that all sufficient causes are necessary causes is answered before Numb 31. And his two instances of casting Ambs-ace raining to morrow are altogether impertinent to the question now agitated between us for two reasons First our present controversie is concerning free actions which proceed from the liberty of mans will both his instances are of contingent actions which proceed from the indetermination or contingent concurrence of natural causes First that there are free actions which proceed meerly from election without any outward necessitation is a truth so evident as that there is a Sun in the Heavens and he that doubteth of it may as well doubt whether there be a shell without the Nut or a stone within the Olive A man proportions his time each day and allots so much to his Devotions so much to his Study so much to his Diet so much to his Recreations so much to necessary or civil visits so much to his rest he who will seek for I know not what causes of all this without himself except that good God who hath given him a reasonable Soul may as well seek for a cause of the Egyptian Pyramides among the Crocodiles of Nilus Secondly for mixt actions which proceed from the concurrence of free and natural Agents though they be not free yet they are not necessary as to keep my former instance a man walking through a street of a Citie to do his occasions a Tile falls from an House and breaks his head the breaking of his head was not necessary for he did freely choose to go that way without any necessitation neither was it free for he did not deliberate of that accident therefore it was contingent and by undoubted consequence there are contingent actions in the World which are not free Most certainly by the concurrence of free causes as God the good and bad Angels and men with natural Agents sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident many events happen which otherwise had never hapned many effects are produced which otherwise had never been produced And admitting such things to be contingent not necessary all their consequent effects not onely immediate but mediate must likewise be contingent that is to say such as do not proceed from a continued connexion and succession of necessary causes which is directly contrary to T. H. his opinion Thirdly for the actions of bruit beasts though they be not free though they have not the use of reason to restrain their appetites from that which is sensitively good by the consideration of what is rationaly good or what is honest and though their fancies be determined by nature to some kindes of work yet to think that every individual action of theirs and each animal motion of theirs even to the least murmure or gesture is bound by the chain of unalterable necessity to the extrinsecal causes or objects I see no ground for it Christ saith one
as for a man to consult and ponder with himself whether he should draw in his Breath or whether he should increase in stature Secondly to resolve implies a mans dominion over his own actions and his actuall determination of himself but he who holds an absolute necessity of all things hath quitted this dominion over himself and which is worse hath quitted it to the second extrinsecal causes in which he makes all his actions to be determined one may as well call again Yesterday as resolve or newly determine that which is determined to his hand already I have perused this treatise weighed T. H. his answers considered his reasons and conclude that he hath missed and misled the question that the answers are evasions that his Arguments are parologisms that the opinion of absolute and universall necessity is but a result of some groundless and ill chosen principles and that the defect is not in himself but that his cause will admit no better defence and therefore by his favour I am resolved to adhere to my first opinion perhaps another man reading this discourse with other eyes judgeth it to be pertinent and well founded How comes this to pass the treatise is the same the exteriour causes are the same yet the resolution is contrary Do the second causes play fast and loose do they necessitate me to condemn and necessitate him to maintain what is it then the difference must be in our selves either in our intellectuals because the one sees clearer then the other or in our affections which betray our understandings and produce an implicite adhaerence in the one more than in the other Howsoever it be the difference is in our selves The outward causes alone do not chain me to the one resolution nor him to the other resolution But T. H. may say that our severall and respective deliberations and affections are in part the causes of our contrary resolutions and do concur with the outward causes to make up one totall and adaequate cause to the necessary production of this effect If it be so he hath spun a fair thred to make all this stir for such a necessity as no man ever denied or doubted of when all the causes have actually determined themselves then the effect is in being for though there be a priority in nature between the cause and the effect yet they are together in time And the old rule is whatsoever is when it is is necessarily so as it is This is no absolute necessity but onely upon supposition that a man hath determined his own liberty When we question whether all occurrences be necessary we do not question whether they be necessary when they are nor whether they be necessary in sensu composito after we have resolved and finally determined what to do but whether they were necessary before they were determined by our selves by or in the praecedent causes before our selves or in the exteriour causes without ourselves It is not inconsistent with true liberty to determine it self but it is inconsistent with true liberty to be determined by another without it self T. H. saith further that upon your Lordships desire and mine he was contented to begin with this discourse of liberty and necessity that is to change his former resolution If the chain of necessity be no stronger but that it may be snapped so easily in sunder if his will was no otherwise determined from without himself but onely by the signification of your Lordships desire and my modest intreaty then we may safely conclude that humane affairs are not alwaies governed by absolute necessity that a man is Lord of his own actions if not in chief yet in mean subordinate to the Lord Paramount of Heaven and Earth and that all things are not so absolutely determined in the outward and precedent causes but that fair intreaties and morall perswasions may work upon a good nature so far as to prevent that which otherwise had been and to produce that which otherwise had not been He that can reconcile this with an Antecedent Necessity of all things and a Physicall or naturall determination of all causes shall be great Apollo to me Whereas T. H. saith that he had never uttered his opinion of this question I suppose he intends in writing my conversation with him hath not been frequent yet I remember well that when this question was agitated between us two in your Lordships Chamber by your command he did then declare himself in words both for the absolute necessity of all events and for the ground of this necessity the Flux or concatenation of the second causes Numb 2. T. H. ANd first I assure your Lordship I find in it no new Argument neither from Scripture nor from reason that I have not often heard before which is as much as to say that I am not surprised J. D. THough I be so unhappy that I can present no novelty to T. H. yet I have this comfort that if he be not surprised then in reason I may expect a more mature answer from him and where he failes I may ascribe it to the weakness of his cause not to want of preparation But in this case I like Epictetus his Counsell well that the Sheep should not brag how much they have eaten or what an excellent pasture they do go in but shew it in their Lamb and VVool. Apposite answers and down right Arguments advantage a cause To tell what we have heard or seen is to no purpose when a respondent leaves many things untouched as if they were too hot for his Fingers and declines the weight of other things and alters the true state of the question it is a shrewd sign either that he hath not weighed all things maturely or else that he maintains a desperate cause Numb 3. T. H. THe Praeface is an handsome one but it appears even in that that he hath mistaken the question for whereas he saies thus If I be free to write this discourse I have obteined the cause I deny that to be true for 't is not enough to his freedom of writing that he had not written it unless he would himself if he will obtein the cause he must prove that before he writ it it was not necessary he should write it afterward It may be he thinks it all one to say I was free to write it and it was not necessary I should write it But I think otherwise for he is free to do a thing that may do it if he have the will to do it and may forbear if he have the will to forbear And yet if there be a necessity that he shall have the will to do it the action is necessarily to follow And if there be a necessity that he shall have the will to forbear the forbearing also will be necessary The question therefore is not whether a man be a free agent that is to say whether he can write or forbear speak or be silent according to his
will but whether the will to write and the will to forbear come upon him according to his will or according to any thing else in his own power I acknowledge this liberty that I can do if I will but to say I can will if I will I take it to be an absurd speech Wherefore I cannot grant him the cause upon this Preface J. D. TAcitus speaks of a close kind of adversaries which evermore begin with a mans praise The Crisis or the Catastrophe of their discourse is when they come to their but As he is a good natured man but he hath a naughty quality or he is a wise man but he hath committed one of the greatest follies So here the Praeface is an handsome one but it appears even in this that he hath mistaken the question This is to give an Inch that one may take away an Ell without suspicion to praise the handsomness of the Porch that he may gain credit to the vilifying of the House Whether of us hath mistaken the question I refer to the judicious Reader Thus much I will maintain that that is no true necessity which he calls necessity nor that liberty which he calls liberty nor that the question which he makes the question First for liberty that which he calls liberty is no true liberty For the clearing whereof it behooveth us to know the difference between these three Necessity Spontaneity and Liberty Necessity and Spontaneity may sometimes meet together so may spontaneity and liberty but reall necessity and true liberty can never meet together somethings are necessary and not voluntary or spontaneous somethings are both necessary and voluntary somethings are voluntary and not free somethings are both voluntary free But those things which are truly necessary can never be free and those things which are truly free can never be necessary Necessity consists in an Antecedent determination to one Spontaneity consists in a conformity of the Appetite either intellectual or sensitive to the object True liberty consists in the elective power of the rational will That which is determined without my concurrence may nevertheless agree well enough with my fancy or desires and obtein my subsequent consent But that which is determined without my concurrence or consent cannot be the object of mine election I may like that which is inevitably imposed upon me by another but if it be inevitably imposed upon me by extrinsecall causes it is both folly for me to deliberate and impossible for me to choose whether I shall undergo it or not Reason is the root the fountain the originall of true liberty which judgeth and representeth to the will whether this or that be convenient whether this or that be more convenient Judge then what a pretty kind of liberty it is which is maintained by T. H. such a liberty as is in little Children before they have the use of reason before they can consult or deliberate of any thing Is not this a Childish liberty and such a liberty as is in brute Beasts as Bees and Spiders which do not learn their faculties as we do our trades by experience and consideration This is a brutish liberty such a liberty as a Bird hath to flie when her wings are clipped or to use his own comparison such a liberty as a lame man who hath lost the use of his lims hath to walk Is not this a ridiculous liberty Lastly which is worse then all these such a liberty as a River hath to descend down the Channell what will he ascribe liberty to inanimate Creatures also which have neither reason nor spontaneity nor so much as sensitive appetite Such is T. H. his liberty His necessity is just such another a necessity upon supposition arising from the concourse of all the causes including the last dictate of the understanding in reasonable creatures The adaequate cause and the effect are together in time and when all the concurrent causes are determined the effect is determined also and is become so necessary that it is actually in being But there is a great difference between determining and being determined if all the collaterall causes concurring to the production of an effect were antecedently determined what they must of necessity produce and when they must produce it then there is no doubt but the effect is necessary But if these causes did operate freely or contingently if they might have suspended or denied their concurrence or have concurred after another manner then the effect was not truly and Antecedently necessary but either free or contingent This will be yet clearer by considering his own instance of casting Ambs-Ace though it partake more of contingency then of freedom Supposing the positure of the parties hand who did throw the Dice supposing the figure of the Table and of the Dice themselves supposing the measure of force applied and supposing all other things which did concur to the production of that cast to be the very same they were there is no doubt but in this case the cast is necessary But still this is but a necessity of supposition for if all these concurrent causes or some of them were contingent or free then the cast was not absolutely necessary To begin with the Caster He might have denied his concurrence and not have cast at all He might have suspended his concurrence and not have cast so soon He might have doubled or diminished his force in casting if it had pleased him He might have thrown the dice into the other table In all these cases what becomes of his ambs-ace The like uncertainties offer themselves for the maker of the tables and for the maker of the dice and for the keeper of the tables and for the kind of wood and I know not how many other circumstances In such a mass of contingencies it is impossible that the effect should be antecedently necessary T. H. appeales to every mans experience I am contented Let every one reflect upon himself and he shall find no convincing much less constreining reason to necessitate him to any one of these particular acts more than another but onely his own will or arbitrary determination So T. H. his necessity is no absolute no antecedent extrinsecall necessity but meerly a necessity upon supposition Thirdly that which T. H. makes the question is not the question The question is not saith he Whether a man may write if he will and forbear if he will but whether the will to write or the will to forbear come upon him according to his will or according to any thing els in his own power Here is a distinction without a difference If his will do not come upon him according to his will then he is not a free nor yet so much as a voluntary agent which is T. H. his liberty Certainly all the freedom of the agent is from the freedom of the will If the will have no power over it self the agent is no more free than a staff in a mans
right object respectively God and good Angels have a power to do or not to do this or that good bad Angels have a power to do or not to do this or that evill so both joyntly considered have power respectively to do good or evill And yet according to the words of my discourse God and good and bad Angels being singly considered have no power to do good or evill that is indifferently as man hath Numb 5. J. D. THus the coast being cleared the next thing to be done is to draw out our forces against the enemy And because they are divided into two Squadrons the one of Christians the other of Heathen Philosophers it will be best to dispose ours also into two Bodies the former drawn from Scripture the latter from Reason T. H. THe next thing he doth after the clearing of the coast is the dividing of his forces as he calls them into two Squadrons one of places of Scripture the other of reasons which Allegory he useth I suppose because he adresseth the discourse to your Lordship who is a Military Man All that I have to say touching this is that I observe a great part of those his forces do look and march another way and some of them do fight among themselves J. D. IF T. H. could divide my forces and commit them together among themselves it were his onely way to conquer them But he will find that those imaginary contradictions which he thinks he hath espied in my discourse are but fancies And my supposed impertinencies will prove his own reall mistakings Numb 6. J. D. Proofs of liberty out of Scripture FIrst whosoever have power of election have true liberty for the proper act of liberty is election A Spontaneity may consist with determination to one as we see in Children Fools mad Men bruit Beasts whose fancies are determined to those things which they act spontaneously as the Bees makes Hony the Spiders Webs But none of these have a liberty of election which is an act of judgement and understanding and cannot possibly consist with a determination to one He that is determined by something before himself or without himself cannot be said to choose or elect unless it be as the Junior of the Mess chooseth in Cambridge whether he will have the least Paul or nothing And scarcely so much But men have liberty of election This is plain Numb 30.14 If a Wife make a vow it s left to her Husbands choice either to establish it or to make it void And Josh 24.15 Choose you this day whom ye will serve c. But I and my house will serve the Lord. He makes his own choice and leaves them to the liberty of of their election And 2 Sam. 24.12 I offer thee three things choose thee which of them I shall do If one of these three things was necessarily determined and the other two impossible how was it left to him to choose what should be done Therefore we have true liberty T. H. ANd the first place of Scripture taken from Numb 30.14 is one of them that look another way The words are If a Wife make a vow it is left to her Husbands choice either to establish it or make it void for it poooves no more but that the Husband is a free or voluntary Agent but not that his choice therein is not necessitated or not determined to what he shall choose by praecedent necessary causes J. D. argument 1 MY first Argument from Scripture is thus formed Whosoever have a liberty or power of election are not determined to one by praecedent necessary causes But Men have liberty of election The assumtion or minor proposition is prooved by three places of Scripture Numb 30.14 Josh 24.15 2 Sam. 24 12. I need not insist upon these because T. H. acknowledgeth that it is clearly prooved that there is election in Man But he denieth the major Proposition because saith he man is necessitated or determined to what he shall choose by praecedent necessary causes I take away this answer three wayes First by reason election is evermore either of things possible or at least of things conceived to be possible That is efficacious election when a man hopeth or thinketh of obteining the object Whatsoever the will chooseth it chooseth under the notion of good either honest or delightfull or profitable but there can be no reall goodness apprehended in that which is known to be impossible It is true there may be some wandring perdulous wishes of known impossibilities as a man also hath committed an offence may wish he had not committed it But to choose effiaciously and impossibly is as impossible as an impossibility it self No man can think to obtein that which he knows impossible to be obteined But he who knows that all things are antecedently determined by necessary causes knows that it is impossible for any thing to be otherwise then it is Therefore to ascribe unto him a power of election to choose this or that indifferently is to make the same thing to be determined to one and to be not determined to one which are contradictories Again whosoever hath an elective power or a liberty to choose hath also a liberty or power to refuse Isa 7.10 Before the Child shall know to refuse the evill and choose the good He who chooseth this rather then that refuseth that rather then this As Moses choosing to suffer affliction with the people of God did thereby refuse the pleasures of sin Heb. 11.24 But no man hath any power to refuse that which is necessarily praedetermined to be unless it be as the Fox refused the Grapes which were beyond his reach When one thing of two or three is absolutely determined the other are made thereby simply impossible Secondly I proove it by instances and by that universal notion which the world hath of election what is the difference between an elective and hereditary Kingdom but that in an elective Kingdom they have power or liberty to choose this or that Man indifferently But in an haereditary Kingdom they have no such power nor liberty Where the Law makes a certain Heir there is a necessitation to one where the Law doth not name a certain Heir there is no necessitation to one and there they have power or liberty to choose An haereditary Prince may be as gratefull and acceptable to his subjects and as willingly received by them according to that liberty which is opposed to compulsion or violence as he who is chosen yet he is not therefore an elective Prince In Germany all the Nobility and Commons may assent to the choise of the Emperour or be well pleased with it when it is concluded yet none of them elect or choose the Emperour but onely those six Princes who have a consultative deliberative and determinative power in his Election And if their votes or suffrages be equally divided three to three then the King of Bohemia hath the casting voice So likewise in Corporations
or Common-wealths sometimes the people sometimes the Common Councell have power to name so many persons for such an office and the Supreme Magistrate or Senate or lesser Councell respectively to choose one of those And all this is done with that caution and secrecy by billetts or other means that no man knowes which way any man gave his vote or with whom to be offended If it were necessarily and inevitably predetermined that this individuall person and no other shall and must be chosen what needed all this circuit and caution to do that which is not possible to be done otherwise which one may do as well as a thousand and for doing of which no rationall man can be offended if the Electors were necessarily predetermined to elect this man and no other And though T. H. was pleased to passe by my University instance yet I may not untill I see what he is able to say unto it The Junior of the Mess in Cambridge divides the meat into foure parts The Senior chooseth first then the second and third in their order The Junior is determined to one and hath no choise left unless it be to choose whether he will take that part which the rest have refused or none at all It may be this part is more agreable to his mind than any of the others would have been but for all that he cannot be said to choose it because he is determined to this one Even such a liberty of election is that which is established by T. H. Or rather much worse in two respects The Junior hath yet a liberty of contradiction left to choose whether he will take that part or not take any part but he who is precisely predetermined to the choise of this object hath no liberty to refuse it Secondly the Junior by dividing carefully may preserve to himself an equall share but he who is wholly determined by extrinsecall causes is left altogether to the mercy and disposition of another Thirdly I proove it by the texts alledged Numb 30.13 If a wife make a vow it is left to her husbands choise either to establish it or make it void But if it be predetermined that he shall establish it it is not in his power to make it void If it be predetermined that he shall make it void it is not in his power to establish it And howsoever it be determined yet being determined it is not in his power indifferently either to establish it or to make it void at his pleasure So Joshua 24.15 Choose you this day whom ye will serve But I and my house will serve the Lord. It is too late to choose that this day which was determined otherwise yesterday whom ye will serve whether the gods whom your fathers served or the gods of the Amorites Where there is an election of this or that these gods or those gods there must needs be either an indifferency to both objects or at least a possibility of either I and my house will serve the Lord. If he were extrinsecally predetermined he should not say I will serve but I must serve And 2 Sam. 24.12 I offer thee three things choose thee which of them I shall do How doth God offer three things to Davids choise if he had predetermined him to one of the three by a concourse of necessary extrinsecall causes If a soveraign Prince should descend so far as to offer a delinquent his choice whether he would be fined or imprisoned or banished and had under hand signed the sentence of his banishment what were it els but plain drollery or mockery This is the argument which in T. H. his opinion looks another way If it do it is as the Parthians used to fight flying His reason followes next to be considered Numb 7. T. H. FOr if there come into the husbands mind greater good by establishing than abrogating such a vow the establishing will follow necessarily And if the evill that will follow thereon in the husbands opinion outweigh the good the contrary must needs follow And yet in this following of ones hopes and feares consisteth the nature of election So that a man may both choose this and cannot but choose this And consequently choosing and necessity are joyned together J. D. THere is nothing said with more shew of reason in this cause by the patrons of necessity and adversaries of true liberty than this That the will doth perpetually and infallibly follow the last dictate of the understanding or the last judgment of right reason And in this and this onely I confess T. H. hath good seconds Yet the common and approved opinion is contrary And justly For First this very act of the understanding is an effect of the will and a testimony of its power and liberty It is the will which affecting some particular good doth ingage and command the understanding to consult and deliberate what means are convenient for atteining that end And though the will it self be blind yet its object is good in generall which is the end of all human actions Therefore it belongs to the will as to the Generall of an Army to moove the other powers of the soul to their acts and among the rest the understanding also by applying it and reducing its power into act So as whatsoever obligation the understanding doth put upon the will is by the consent of the will and derived from the power of the will which was not necessitated to moove the understanding to consult So the will is the Lady and Mistris of human actions the understanding is her trusty counseller which gives no advise but when it is required by the will And if the first consultation or deliberation be not sufficient the will may moove a review and require the understanding to inform it self better and take advise of others from whence many times the judgment of the understanding doth receive alteration Secondly for the manner how the understanding doth determine the will it is not naturally but morally The will is mooved by the understanding not as by an efficient having a causall influence into the effect but only by proposing and representing the object And therefore as it were ridiculous to say that the object of the sight is the cause of seeing so it is to say that the proposing of the object by the understanding to the will is the cause of willing and therefore the understanding hath no place in that concourse of causes which according to T. H. do necessitate the will Thirdly the judgment of the understanding is not alwayes practicè practicum nor of such a nature in it self as to oblige and determine the will to one Sometimes the understanding proposeth two or three means equally available to the altering of one and the same end Sometimes it dictateth that this or that particular good is eligible or fit to be chosen but not that it is necessarily eligible or that it must be chosen It may judge this or that to
be a fit means but not the onely meanes to atteine the desired end In these cases no man can doubt but that the will may choose or not choose this or that indifferently Yea though the understanding shall judge one of these means to be more expedient than another yet for as much as in the less expedient there is found the reason of good the will in respect of that dominion which it hath over it self may accept that which the understanding judgeth to be less expedient and refuse that which it judgeth to be more expedient Fourthly sometimes the will doth not will the end so efficaciously but that it may be and often is deterred from the prosecution of it by the difficulty of the means and notwithstanding the judgment of the understanding the will may still suspend its own act Fiftly supposing but not granting that the will did necessarily follow the last dictate of the understanding yet this prooves no antecedent necessity but coexistent with the act no extrinsecall necessity the will and understanding being but two faculties of the same soul no absolute necessity but meerly upon supposition And therefore the same Authors who maintain that the judgment of the understanding doth necessarily determine the will do yet much more earnestly oppugne T. H. his absolute necessity of all occurrences Suppose the will shall apply the understanding to deliberate and not require a review Suppose the dictate of the understanding shall be absolute not this or that indifferently nor this rather than that comparatively but this positively not this freely but this necessarily And suppose the will do well efficaciously and do not suspend its own act Then here is a necessity indeed but neither absolute nor extrinsecall nor antecedent flowing from a concourse of causes without our selves but a necessity upon supposition which we do readily grant So far T. H. is wide from the truth whilest he mainteines either that the apprehension of a greater good doth necessitate the will or that this is an absolute necessity Lastly whereas he saith that the nature of election doth consist in following our hopes and feares I cannot but observe that there is not one word of Art in this whole Treatise which he useth in the right sense I hope it doth not proceed out of an affectation of singularity nor out of a contempt of former Writers nor out of a desire to take in sunder the whole frame of Learning and new mould it after his own mind It were to be wished that at least he would give us a new Dictionary that we might understand his sense But because this is but touched here sparingly and upon the by I will forbear it untill I meet with it again in its proper place And for the present it shall suffice to say that hopes and feares are common to brute beasts but election is a rationall act and is proper only to man who is Sanctius his animal mentisque capacius altae T. H. THE second place of Scripture is Josh 24.15 The third is 2 Sam. 24.12 whereby t is cleerely prooved that there is election in man but not prooved that such election was not necessitated by the hopes and feares and considerations of good and bad to follow which depend not on the will nor are subject to election And therefore one answer serves all such places if they were a thousand J. D. THis answer being the very same with the former word for word which hath already been sufficiently shaken in pieces doth require no new reply Numb 8. T. H. SUpposing it seemes I might answer as I have done that necessity and election might stand together and instance in the actions of Children fools and brute beasts whose fancies I might say are necessitated and determined to one before these his proofs out of Scripture he desires to prevent that instance and therefore sayes that the actions of children fools mad-men and beasts are indeed determined but that they proceed not from election nor from free but from spontaneous Agents As for example that the Bee when it maketh honey does it spontaneously And when the Spider makes his webb he does it spontaneously and not by election Though I never meant to ground any answer upon the experience of what Children foools mad-men and beasts do yet that your Lordship may understand what can be meant by spontaneous and how it differs from voluntary I will answer that distinction and shew that it fighteth against its fellow Arguments Your Lordship is therefore to consider that all voluntary actions where the thing that induceth the will is not fear are called also spontaneous and said to be done by a mans own accord As when a man giveth money voluntarily to another for merchandise or out of affection he is said to do it of his own accord which in Latin is Sponte and therefore the action is spontaneous Though to give ones money willingly to a thief to avoid killing or throw it into the Sea to avoid drowning where the motive is fear be not called spontaneous But every spontaneous action is not therfore voluntary for voluntary presupposes some precedent deliberation that is to say some consideration and meditation of what is likely to follow both upon the doing and abstaining from the action deliberated of whereas many actions are done of our own accord and be therefore spontaneous of which nevertheless as he thinks we never consulted nor deliberated of in our selves as when making no question nor any the least doubt in the world but that the thing we are about is good we eat or walk or in anger strike or revile which he thinks spontaneous but not voluntary nor elective actions And with such kind of actions he sayes necessitation may stand but not from such as are voluntary and proceed upon election and deliberation Now if I make it appear to you that even these actions which he sayes proceed from spontaneity and which he ascribes only to fools Children mad-men and beasts proceed from deliberation and election and that actions inconsiderate rash and spontaneous are ordinarily found in those that are by themselves and many more thought as wise or wiser than ordinary men are Then his Argument concludeth that necessity and election may stand together which is contrary to that which he intendeth by all the rest of his Arguments to proove And first your Lordships own experience furnishes you with proof enough that horses doggs and other brute beasts do demurre oftentimes upon the way they are to take The horse retiring from some strange figure he sees and comming on again to avoid the spur And what els does man that deliberateth but one while proceed toward action another while retire from it as the hope of greater good drawes him or the fear of greater evill drives him A Child may be so young as to do all which it does without all deliberation but that is but till it chance to be hurt by doing somewhat or till it be
this They who may do and might have done many things which they leave undone and who leave undone many things which they might do are not necessitated nor precisely and antecently determined to do what they do But we might do many things which we do not and we do many things which we might leave undone as appeares evidently by the texts alledged Therefore we are not antecedently and precisely determined nor necessitated to do all things which he do What is here of election in this Argument To what proposition to what tearm doth T. H. apply his answer He neither affirmes nor denieth nor distinguisheth of any thing contained in my argument Here I must be bold to call upon him for a more pertinent answer Numb 10. J. D. argument 3 THirdly if there be no true liberty but all things come to pass by inevitable necessity then what are all those interrogations and objurgations and reprehensions and expostulations which we find so frequently in holy Scriptures be it spoken with all due respect but feined and hypocriticall exaggerations Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded that thou shouldest not eat Gen. 3.11 And ver 13. he saith to Eve Why hast thou done this And to Cain Why art thou wroth and why is thy countenance cast down And why will ye dy O house of Israel Doth God command openly not to eat and yet secretly by himself or by the second causes necessitate him to eat Doth he reprehend him for doing that which he hath antecedently determined that he must doe Doth he propose things under impossible conditions Or were not this plain mockery and derision Doth a loving Master chide his servant because he doth not come at his call and yet knowes that the poor servant is chained and fettered so as he cannot moove by the Masters own order without the servants default or consent They who talk here of a twofold will of God secret and revealed and the one opposite to the other understand not what they say These two wills concerne severall persons The secret will of God is what he will do himself The revealed will of God is what he would have us to do It may be the secret will of God to take away the life of the Father yet it is Gods revealed will that his Son should wish his life and pray for his life Here is no contradiction where the Agents are distinct But for the same person to command one thing and yet to necessitate him that is commanded to do another thing To chide a man for doing that which he hath determined inevitably and irresistibly that he must do This were I am afraid to utter what they are not afraid to assert the highest dissimulation Gods chiding prooves mans liberty T. H. TO the third and fift arguments I shall make but one answer J. D. CErtainly distinct Arguments as the third and fift are the one drawn from the truth of God the other drawn from the Justice of God the one from his objurgations and reprehensions the other from his Judgments after life did require distinct answers But the plain truth is that neither here nor in his answer to the fift Argument nor in this whole Treatise is there one word of solution or satisfaction to this Argument or to any part of it All that looks like an answer is contained Numb 12. That which he does is made just by his doing Just I say in him not alwayes just in us by the example for a man that shall command a thing openly and plot secretly the hinderance of the same if he punish him whom he commanded so for not doing it is unjust I dare no insist upon it I hope his meaning is not so bad as the words intimate and as I apprehend That is to impute falshood to him that is Truth it self and to justifie feining and dissimulation in God as he doth tyranny by the infiniteness of his power and the absoluteness of his dominion And therefort by his leave I must once again tender him a new summons for a full and clear Answer to this Argument also He tells us that he was not surprised Whether he were or not is more than I know But this I see plainly that either he is not provided or that his cause admits no choise of answers The Jews dealt ingenuously when they met with a difficult knot which they could not untie to put it upon Elias Elias will answer it when he comes Numb 11. J. D. argument 4 FOurthly if either the decree of God or the foreledge of God or the influence of the Stars or the concatenation of causes or the physicall or morall efficacy of objects or the last dictate of the understanding do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty For he was subjected to the same decrees the same praescience the same constellations the same causes the same objects the same dictates of the understanding But quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulus odi The greatest opposers of our liberty are as earnest maintainers of the liberty of Adam Therefore none of these supposed impediments take away true liberty T. H. THe fourth Argument is to this effect If the decree of God or his foreknowledge or the influence of the Stars or the concatenation of causes or the physicall or morall efficacy of causes or the last dictate of the understanding or whatsoever it be do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty Quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulus odi That which I say necessitateth and determinateth every action that be may no longer doubt of my meaning is the sum of all those things which being now existent conduce and concurre to the production of that action hereafter whereof if any one thing now were wanting the effect could not be produced This concourse of causes whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes may well be called in respect they were all set and ordered by the eternall cause of all things God Almighty the decree of God But that the fore-knowledge of God should be a cause of any thing cannot be truly said seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge depends on the existence of the things known and not they on it The influence of the Stars is but a small part of the whole cause consisting of the concourse of all Agents Nor doth the concourse of all causes make one simple chain or concatenation but an innumerable number of chains joyned together not in all parts but in the first link God Almighty and consequently the whole cause of an event does not alwaies depend upon one single chain but on many together Naturall efficacy of objects does determine voluntary Agents and necessitates the will and consequently the action but for morall efficacy I understand not what he means by it The last dictate of the judgement concerning the good or bad that
same if he punish him he so commanded for not doing it is unjust So also his counsailes they be therefore not in vain because they be his whether we see the use of them or not When God afflicted Job he did object no sin to him but justified that afflicting him by telling him of his power Hast thou sayes God an arm like mine Where wast thou when I layd the foundations of the earth and the like So our Saviour concerning the man that was born blind said it was not for his sin nor his parents sin but that the power of God might be shewn in him Beasts are subject to death and torment yet they cannot sin It was Gods will it should be so Power irresistible justifieth all actions really and properly in whomsoever it be found Less power does not And because such power is in God only he must needs be just in all his actions And we that not comprehending his Counsailes call him to the Bar commit injustice in it I am not ignorant of the usuall reply to this answer by distinguishing between will and permission As that God Almighty does indeed permit sin sometimes And that he also foreknoweth that the sin he permitteth shall be committed but does not will it nor necessitate it I know also they distinguish the action from the sin of the action saying God Almighty does indeed cause the action whatsoever action it be but not the sinfulness or irregularity of it that is the discordance between the Action and the Law Such distinctions as these dazell my understanding I find no difference between the will to have a thing done and the permission to do it when he that permitteth it can hinder it and knowes it will be done unless he hinder it Nor find I any difference between an action that is against the Law and the sin of that action As for example between the killing of Uriah and the sin of David in killing Uriah Nor when one is cause both of the action and of the Law how another can be cause of the disagreement between them no more than how one man making a longer and shorter garment another can make the inequallity that is between them This I know God cannot sin because his doing a thing makes it just and consequenly no sin And because whatsoever can sin is subject to anothers Law which God is not And therefore t is blasphemy to say God can sin But to say that God can so order the world as a sin may be necessarily caused thereby in a man I do not see how it is any dishonour to him Howsoever if such or other distinctions can make it clear that St. Paul did not think Esaus or Pharaohs actions proceed from the will and purpose of God or that proceeding from his will could not therefore without injustice be blamed or punished I will as soon as I understand them turn unto J. D's opinion For I now hold nothing in all this question between us but what seemeth to me not obscurely but most expresly said in this place by Saint Paul And thus much in answer to his places of Scripture J. D. T. H. thinks to kill two birds with one stone and satisfies two Arguments with one answer whereas in truth he satisfieth neither First for my third reason Though all he say here were as true as an Oracle Though punishment were an act of dominion not of Justice in God yet this is no sufficient cause why God should deny his own Act or why he should chide or expostulate with men why they did that which he himself did necessitate them to do and whereof he was the actor more than they they being but as the stone but he the hand that threw it Notwithstanding any thing which is pleaded here this Stoicall opinion doth stick hypocrisy and dissimulation close to God who is the Truth it self And to my fift Argument which he chargeth and relateth amiss as by comparing mine with his may appear His chiefest answer is to oppose a difficult place of St. Paul Rom. 9.11 Hath he never heard that to propose a doubt is not to answer an Argument Nec bene respondet qui litem lite resolvit But I will not pay him in his own coin Wherefore to this place alledged by him I answer The case is not the same The question moved there is how God did keep his promise made to Abraham to be the God of him and of his seed if the Jewes who were the legitimate progeny of Abraham were deserted To which the Apostle answers ver 6. 7 8. That that promise was not made to the carnall seed of Abraham that is the Jewes but to his spirituall Sons which were the Heirs of his Faith that is to the beleeving Christians which answer he explicateth first by the Allegory of Isaack and Ishmael and after in the place cited of Esau and of Jacob. Yet neither doth he speak there so much of their persons as of their posterities And though some words may be accommodated to Gods praedestination which are there uttered yet it is not the scope of that text to treat of the reprobation of any man to hell-fire All the posterity of Esau were not eternally reprobated as holy Job and many others But this question which is now agitated between us is quite of another nature how a man can be a criminal who doth nothing but that which he is extrinsecally necessitated to do or how God in Justice can punish a man with aeternall torments for doing that which it was never in his power to leave undone That he who did impresite the motion in the heart of man should punish man who did onely receive the impression from him So his answer looks another way But because he grounds so much upon this text that if it can be cleared he is ready to change his opinion I will examin all those passages which may seem to favour his cause First these words ver 11. being not yet borne neither having done any good or evill upon which the whole weight of his argument doth depend have no reference at all to those words ver 13. Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated for those words were first uttered by the Prophet Malachy many ages after Jacob and Esau were dead Mal. 1.2 and intended of the posterity of Esau who were not redeemed from captivity as the Israelites were But they are referred to those other words ver 12. The elder shall serve the younger which indeed were spoken before Jacob or Esau were Born Gen. 5.23 And though those words of Malachy had been used of Jacob and Esau before they were Born yet it had advantaged his cause nothing for hatred in that text doth not signify any reprobation to the flames of hell much less the execution of that decree or the actuall imposition of punishment nor any act contrary to love God saw all that he made and it was very good Goodness it self cannot hate that
which is good But hatred there signifies Comparative hatred or a less degree of love or at the most a negation of love As Gen. 29.31 When the Lord saw that Leah was hated we may not conclude thence that Jacob hated his Wife The precedent verse doth fully expound the sense ver 30. Jacob loved Rachel more then Leah So Mat. 6.24 No man can serve two Masters for either he will hate the one and love the other So Luke 14.26 If any Man hate not his Father and Mother c. he cannot be my Disciple St. Mathew tells us the sense of it Math. 10.37 He that loveth Father or Mother more then me is not worthy of me Secondly those words ver 15. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy do prove no more but this that the preferring of Jacob before Esau and of the Christians before the Jews was not a debt from God either to the one or to the other but a work of mercy And what of this All men confess that Gods mercies do exceed mans deserts but Gods punishments do never exceed mans misdeeds As we see in the Parable of the Labourers Matth. 20. Friend I do thee no wrong did not I agree with thee for a penny Is it not lawfull for me to do with mine own as I will Is thy eye evill because I am good Acts of Mercy are free but acts of Justice are due That which follows ver 17. comes something nearer the cause The Scripture saith unto Pharoah for this same purpose I have raised thee up that is I have made thee a King or I have preserved thee that I might shew my power in thee But this particle that doth not alwaies signifie the main end of an action but sometimes onely a consequent of it As Matth. 2.15 He departed into Egypt that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet out of Egypt have I called my Son without doubt Josephs aim or end of his journey was not to fulfill prophesies but to save the life of the Child Yet because the fulfilling of the prophecy was a consequent of Josephs journy he saith That it might be fulfilled So here I have raised thee up that I might shew my power Again though it should be granted that this particle that did denote the intention of God to destroy Pharaoh in the Red Sea yet it was not the Antecedent intention of God which evermore respects the good and benefit of the creature but Gods consequent intention upon the praevision of Pharaohs obstinacy that since he would not glorifie God in obeying his word he should glorifie God undergoing his judgements Hitherto we find no aeternal punishments nor no temporal punishment without just deserts It follows ver 18. whom he will he hardneth Indeed hardness of heart is the greatest judgement that Gods lays upon a sinner in this use worse then all the Plagues of Egypt But how doth God harden the heart not by a naturall influence of any evill act or habit into the will nor by inducing the will with perswasive motives to obstinacy and rebellion for God tempteth no man but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and intised Jam. 1.13 Then God is said to harden the heart three wayes First negatively and not positively not by imparting wickedness but by not imparting grace as the Sun descending to the tropick of Capricorne it is said with us to be the cause of Winter that is not by imparting cold but by not imparting heat It is an act of mercy in God to give his grace freely but to detein it is no act of injustice So the Apostle opposeth hardning to shewing of mercy To harden is as much as not to shew mercy Secondly God is said to harden the heart occasionally and not causally by doing good which incorrigible sinners make an occasion of growing worse and worse and doing evill as a Master by often correcting of an untoward Scholar doth accidentally and occasionally harden his heart and render him more obdurate insomuch as he growes even to despise the Rod. Or as an indulgent parent by his patience and gentleness doth incourage an obstinate son to become more rebellious So whether we look upon Gods frequent judgments upon Pharaoh or Gods iterated favours in removing and withdrawing those judgments upon Pharaohs request both of them in their severall kinds were occasions of hardning Pharaohs heart the one making him more presumptuous the other more desperately rebellious So that which was good in it was Gods that which was evill was Pharaohs God gave the occasion but Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration This is cleerly confirmed Gen. 8.15 When Pharaoh saw that there was respite he hardned his heart And Gen. 9.34 When Pharaoh saw that the Rain and the Hail and the Thunders were ceased he sinned yet more and hardned his heart he and his servants So Psal 105.25 He turned their hearts so that they hated his people and dealt subtilly with them That is God blessed the Children of Israel whereupon the Egyptians did take occasion to hate them as is plain Exod. 1. ver 7 8 9 10. So God hardened Pharaohs heart and Pharaoh hardened his own heart God hardened it by not shewing mercy to Pharaoh as he did to Nebuchadnezzar who was as great a sinner as he or God hardned it occasionally but still Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration by determining his own will to evill and confirming himself in his obstinacy So are all presumptuous sinners Psal 95.8 Harden not your hearts as in the provocation as in the day of temptation in the wilderness Thirdly God is said to harden the heart permissively but not operatively nor effectively as he who only le ts loose a Greyhound out of the slip is said to hound him at the Hare Will you see plainly what St. Paul intends by hardning Read ver 22. What if God willing to shew his wrath and to make his power known that is by a consequent will which in order of nature followes the provision of sin indured with much long suffering the vessells of wrath fitted to destruction And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessells of mercy c. There is much difference between induring and impelling or inciting the vessells of wrath He saith of the vessells of mercy that God prepared them unto glory But of the vessells of wrath he saith only that they were fitted to destruction that is not by God but by themselves St. Paul saith that God doth endure the vessells of wrath with much long suffering T. H. saith that God wills and effects by the second causes all their actions good and bad that he necessitateth them and determineth them irresistibly to do those acts which he condemneth as evill and for which he punisheth them If doing willingly and enduring If much long suffering and necessitating imply not a contrariety one to another reddat
mihi minam Diogenes Let him that taught me Logick give me my money again But T. H. saith that this distinction between the operative and permissive Will of God And that other between the action and the irregularity do dazell his understanding Though he can find no difference between these two yet others do St. Paul himself did Act. 13.18 About the time of 40. yeares suffered he their manners in the Wilderness And Act. 14.16 Who intimes past suffered all Nations to walk in their own wayes T. H. would make suffering to be inciting their manners to be Gods manners their wayes to be Gods wayes And Act. 17.30 The times of this ignorance God winked at It was never heard that one was said to wink or connive at that which was his own act And 1 Cor. 10.13 God is faithfull who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able To tempt is the Devills act therefore he is called the Tempter God tempts no man to sin but he suffers them to be tempted And so suffers that he could hinder Sathan if he would But by T. H. his doctrine To tempt to sin and to suffer one to be tempted to sin when it is in his power to hinder it is all one And so he transforms God I write it with horrour into the Devill and makes tempting to be Gods own work and the Devill to be but his instrument And in that noted place Rom. 2.4 Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thy self wrath against the day of wrath and revealation of the righteous judgment of God Here are as many convincing Arguments in this one text against the opinion of T. H. almost as there are words Here we learn that God is rich in goodness and will not punish his creatures for that which is his own act Secondly that he suffers and forbeares sinners long and doth not snatch them away by sudden death as they deserve Thirdly that the reason of Gods forbearance is to bring men to repentance Fourthly that hardness of heart and impenitency is not casually from God but from our selves Fiftly that it is not the insufficient proposall of the means of their conversion on Gods part which is the cause of mens perdition but their own contempt and despising of these means Sixtly that punishment is not an act of absolute dominion but an act of righteous Judgment whereby God renders to every man according to his own deeds wrath to them and only to them who treasure up wrath unto themselves and eternall life to those who continue patiently in well-doing If they deserve such punishment who onely neglect the goodness and long suffering of God what do they who utterly deny it and make Gods doing and his suffering to be all one I do beseech T. H. to consider what a degree of wilfulness it is out of one obscure text wholly misunderstood to contradict the clear current of the whole Scripture Of the same mind with St. Paul was St. Peter 1 Pet. 3.22 The long suffering of God waited once in the dayes of Noah And 2 Pet. 3.15 Account that the long suffering of the Lord is salvation This is the name God gives himself Exod. 34.6 The Lord the Lord God mercifull and gracious long suffering c. Yet I do acknowledge that which T. H. saith to be commonly true That he who doth permit any thing to be done which it is in his power to hinder knowing that if he do not hinder it it will be done doth in some sort will it I say in some sort that is either by an antecedent will or by a consequent will either by an operative will or by a permissive will or he is willing to let it be done but not willing to do it Sometimes an antecedent engagement doth cause a man to suffer that to be done which otherwise he would not suffer So Darius suffered Daniel to be cast into the Lions den to make good his rash decree So Herod suffered John Baptist to be beheaded to make good his rash oath How much more may the immutable rule of justice in God and his fidelity in keeping his word draw from him the punishment of obstinate sinners though antecedently he willeth their conversion He loveth all his Creatures well but his own Justice better Again sometimes a man suffereth that to be done which he doth not will directly in it self but indirectly for some other end or for the producing of some great good As a man willeth that a putrid member be cut off from his body to save the life of the whole Or as a Judge being desirous to save a malefactors life and having power to repreive him doth yet condemn him for example sake that by the death of one he may save the lives of many Marvell not then if God suffer some creatures to take such courses as tend to their own ruine so long as their sufferings do make for the greater manifestation of his glory and for the greater benefit of his faithfull servants This is a most certain truth that God would not suffer evill to be in the world unless he knew how to draw good out of evill Yet this ought not to be so understood as if we made any priority or posteriority of time in the acts of God but onely of nature Nor do we make the antecedent and consequent will to be contrary one to another because the one respects man pure and uncorrupted the other respects him as he is lapsed The objects are the same but considered after a diverse manner Nor yet do we make these wills to be distinct in God for they are the same with the divine essence which is one But the distinction is in order to the objects or things willed Nor lastly do we make this permission to be a naked or a meer permission God causeth all good permitteth all evill disposeth all things both good and evill T. H. demands how God should be the cause of the action and yet not be the cause of the irregularity of the action I answer because he concurres to the doing of evill by a generall but not by a speciall influence As the Earth gives nourishment to all kinds of plants as well to Hemlock as to Wheat but the reason why the one yields food to our sustenance the other poison to our destruction is not from the generall nourishment of the earth but from the speciall quality of the root Even so the generall power to act is from God In him we live and move and have our being This is good But the specification and determination of this generall power to the doing of any evill is from our selves and proceeds from the free will of man This is bad And to speak properly the free will of man is not the efficient cause of sin as the root
of the Hemlock is of poison sin having no fruentity or being in it as poison hath But rather the deficient cause Now no defect can flow from him who is the highest perfection Wherefore T. H. is mightily mistaken to make the particular and determinate act of killing Uriah to be from God The generall power to act is from God but the specification of this generall and good power to murther or to any particular evill is not from God but from the free will of man So T. H. may see clearly if he will how one may be the cause of the Law and likewise of the action in some sort that is by generall influence and yet another cause concurring by speciall influence and determining this generall and good power may make it self the true cause of the anomy or the irregularity And therefore he may keep his longer and shorter garments for some other occasion Certainly they will not fit this subject unless he could make generall and speciall influence to be all one But T. H. presseth yet further that the case is the same and the objection used by the Jews ver 19. Why doth he yet find fault who hath resisted his will is the very same with my argument And St. Pauls answer ver 20. O man who art thou that repliest against God shall the thing formed say to him that formed it why hast thou made me thus Hath not the Potter power over his clay c is the very same with his answer in this place drawn from the irresistible power and absolute dominion of God which justifieth all his actions And that the Apostle in his answer doth not deny that it was Gods will nor that Gods decree was before Esaus sin To which I reply First that the case is not at all the same but quite different as may appear by these particulars first those words before they had done either good or evill are not cannot be referred to those other words Esau have I hated Secondly If they could yet it is less than nothing because before Esau had actually sinned his future sins were known to God Thirdly by the Potters clay here is not to be understood the pure mass but the corrupted mass of mankind Fourthly the hating here mentioned is onely a comparative hatred that is a less degree of love Fiftly the hardening which St. Paul speaks of is not a positive but a negative obduration or a not imparting of grace Sixtly St. Paul speaketh not of any positive reprobation to eternall punishment much less doth he speak of the actuall inflicting of punishment without sin which is the question between us and wherein T. H. differs from all that I remember to have read who do all acknowledge that punishment is never actually inflicted but for sin If the question be put why God doth good to one more than to another or why God imparteth more grace to one than to another as it is there the answer is just and fit because it is his pleasure and it is sawciness in a creature in this case to reply May not God do what he will with his own Matth. 20.15 No man doubteth but God imparteth grace beyond mans desert But if the case be put why God doth punish one more than another or why he throws one into hell-fire and not another which is the present case agitated between us To say with T. H. that it is because God is Omnipotent or because his power is irresistible or meerly because it is his pleasure is not only not warranted but is plainly condemned by St. Paul in this place So many differences there are between those two cases It is not therefore against God that I reply but against T. H. I do not call my Creator to the Bar but my fellow creature I ask no account of Gods counsails but of mans presumptions It is the mode of these times to father their own fancies upon God and when they cannot justifie them by reason to plead his Omnipotence or to cry O altitudo that the wayes of God are unsearchable If they may justifie their drowsy dreams because Gods power dominion is absolute much more may we reject such phantasticall devises which are inconsistent with the truth and goodness Justice of God and make him to be a Tyrant who is the Father of Mercies and the God of all consolation The unsearchableness of Gods wayes should be a bridle to restrain presumption and not a sanctuary for spirits of error Secondly this objection conteined ver 19. to which the Apostle answers ver 20. is not made in the person of Esau or Pharaoh as T. H. supposeth but of the unbelieving Jews who thought much at that grace and favour which God was pleased to vouchsafe unto the Gentiles to acknowledge them for his people which honour they would have appropriated to the posterity of Abraham And the Apostles answer is not only drawn from the Soveraign Dominion of God to impart his grace to whom he pleaseth as hath been shewed already but also from the obstinacy and proper fault of the Jews as appeareth ver 22. What if God willing that is by a consequent will to shew his wrath and to make his power known endured with much long suffering the vessells of wrath fitted to destruction They acted God endured They were tolerated by God but fitted to destruction by themselves for their much wrong doing here is Gods much long suffering And more plainly ver 31. Israel hath not atteined to the Law of righteousness wherefore because they sought it not by faith but as it were by the works of the Law This reason is set down yet more emphatically in the next Chapter ver 3. They that is the Israelites being ignorant of Gods righteousness that is by faith in Christ and going about to establish their own righteousness that is by the works of the Law have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God And yet most expresly Chap. 11. v. 20. Because of unbelief they were broken off but thou standest by faith Neither was there any precedent binding decree of God to necessitate them to unbelief and consequently to punishment It was in their own power by their concurrence with Gods grace to prevent these judgments and to recover their former estate ver 23. If they that is the unbelieving Jews abide not still in unbelief they shall be grafted in The Crown and the Sword are immovable to use St. Anselmes comparison but it is we that move and change places Sometimes the Jews were under the Crown and the Gentiles under the Sword sometimes the Jews under the Sword and the Gentiles under the Crown Thirdly though I confess that human Pacts are not the measure of Gods Justice but his justice is his own immutable will whereby he is ready to give every man that which is his own as rewards to the good punishments to the bad so nevertheless God may oblige himself freely to his creature He made the
just by reason of his absolute dominion and irresistible power As fire doth assimilate other things to it self and convert them into the nature of fire This were to make the eternall Law a Lesbian rule Sin is defined to be that which is done or said or thought contrary to the eternall Law But by this doctrine nothing is done nor said nor thought contrary to the will of God St. Anselm said most truly then the will of man is good and just and right when he wills that which God would have him to will but according to this doctrine every man alwayes wills that which God would have him to will If this be true we need not pray Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven T. H. hath devised a new kind of heaven upon earth The worst is it is an heaven without Justice Justice is a constant and perpetuall act of the will to give every one his own But to inflict punishment for those things which the Judge himself did determine and necessitate to be done is not to give every one his own right punitive Justice is a relation of equallity and proportion between the demerit and the punishment But supposing this opinion of absolute and universall necessity there is no demerit in the world we use to say that right springs from Law and fact as in this Syllogism Every thief ought to be punished there 's the Law But such an one is a thief there 's the fact therefore he ought to be punished there 's the right But this opinion of T. H. grounds the right to be punished neither upon Law nor upon Fact but upon the irresistible power of God Yea it overturneth as much as in it lies all Law First the eternall Law which is the ordination of divine Wisdom by which all Creatures are directed to that end which is convenient for them That is not to necessitate them to eternall flames Then the Law participated which is the ordination of right reason instituted for the common good to shew unto man what he ought to do and what he ought not to do To what purpose is it to shew the right way to him who is drawn and haled a contrary way by Adamantine bonds of inevitable necessity Lastly howsoever T. H. cries out that God cannot sin yet in truth he makes him to be the principall and most proper cause of all sin For he makes him to be the cause not onely of the Law and of the action but even of the irregularity it self and the difference between the action and the Law wherein the very essence of sin doth consist He makes God to determin Davids will and necessitate him to kill Uriah In causes physically and essentially subordinate the cause of the cause is evermore the cause of the effect These are those deadly fruits which spring from the poisonous root of the absolute necessity of all things which T. H. seeing and that neither the sins of Esau nor Pharaoh nor any wicked person do proceed from the operative but from the permissive will of God And that punishment is an act of justice not of dominion onely I hope that according to his promise he will change his opinion Numb 13. J. D. Proofs of Liberty drawn from reason argument 1 THe first argument is Herculeum or Baculinum drawn from that pleasant passage between Zeno and his man The servant had committed some pettilarceny and the master was cudgelling him well for it The servant thinks to creep under his masters blind-side and pleades for himself That the necessity of destiny did compell him to steal The master answers the same necessity of destiny compells me to beat thee He that denies liberty is fitter to be refuted with rodds than with arguments untill he confess that it is free for him that beates him either to continue striking or to give over that is to have true liberty T. H. OF the Arguments from reason the first is that which he saith is drawn from Zenos beating of his man which is therefore called Argumentum baculinum that is to say a wooden Argument The story is this Zeno held that all actions were necessary His man therefore being for some fault beaten excused himself upon the necessity of it To avoid this excuse his master pleaded likewise the necessity of beating him So that not he that mainteined but he that derided the necessity of things was beaten contrary to that he would infer And the argument was rather withdrawn than drawn from the story J. D. WHether the argument be withdrawn from the story or the answer withdrawn from the argument let the Reader judge T. H. mistakes the scope of the reason the strength whereof doth not lie neither in the authority of Zeno a rigid Stoick which is not worth a button in this cause Nor in the servants being an adversary to Stoicall necessity for it appeares not out of the story that the servant did deride necessity but rather that he pleaded it in good earnest for his own justification Now in the success of the fray we were told even now that no power doth justifie an action but onely that which is irresistible Such was not Zenos And therefore it advantageth neither of their causes neither that of Zeno nor this of T. H. What if the servant had taken the staff out of his masters hand and beaten him soundly would not the same argument have served the man as well as it did the master that the necessity of destiny did compell him to strike again Had not Zeno smarted justly for his Paradox And might not the spectators well have taken up the Judges Apothegm concerning the dispute between Corax and his Schollar An ill egg of an ill bird But the strength of this argument lies partly in the ignorance of Zeno that great Champion of necessity and the beggarliness of his cause which admitted no defence but with a cudgell No man saith the servant ought to be beaten for doing that which he is compelled inevitably to do but I am compelled inevitably to steal The major is so evident that it cannot be denied If a strong man shall take a weak mans hand perforce and do violence with it to a third person he whose hand is forced is innocent and he only culpable who compelled him The minor was Zenos own doctrine what answer made the great patron of destiny to his servant very learnedly he denied the conclusion and cudgelled his servant telling him in effect that though there was no reason why he should be beaten yet there was a necessity why he must be beaten And partly in the evident absurdity of such an opinion which deserves not to be confuted with reasons but with rods There are four things said the Philosoher which ought not to be called into question First such things whereof it is wickedness to doubt as whether the soul be immortall whether there be a God such an one should not be confuted with reasons
benefit others by his example The truth is the punishing of delinquents by Law respecteth both the evill act past and the good to come The ground of it is the evill act past the scope or end of it is the good to come The end without the ground cannot justifie the act A bad intention may make a good action bad but a good intention cannot make a bad action good It is not lawfull to do evill that good may come of it nor to punish an innocent person for the admonition of others that is to fall into a certain crime for fear of an uncertain Again though there were no other end of penalties inflicted neither probatory nor castigatory nor exemplary but only vindicatory to satisfie the Law out of a zeal of Justice by giving to every one his own yet the action is just and warrantable Killing as it is considered in it self without all undue circumstances was never prohibited to the lawfull Magistrate who is the Vicegerent or Lieutenant of God from whom he derives his power of life and death T. H. hath one plea more As a drowning man catcheth at every Bulrush so he layes hold on every pretence to save a desperate cause But first it is worth our observation to see how oft he changeth shapes in this one particular First he told us that it was the irresistible power of God that justifies all his actions though he command one thing openly and plot another thing secretly though he be the cause not only of the action but also of the irregularity though he both give man power to act and determine this power to evill as well as good though he punish the Creatures for doing that which he himself did necessitate them to do But being pressed with reason that this is tyrannical first to necessitate a man to do his will and then to punish him for doing of it he leaves this pretence in the plain field and flies to a second That therefore a man is justly punished for that which he was necessitated to do because the act was voluntary on his part This hath more shew of reason than the former if he did make the will of man to be in his own disposition but maintaining that the will is irresistibly determined to will whatsoever it doth will the injustice and absurdity is the same First to necessitate a man to will and then to punish him for willing The dog onely bites the stone which is thrown at him with a strange hand but they make the first cause to punish the instrument for that which is his own proper act Wherefore not being satisfied with this he casts it off and flies to his third shift Men are not punished saith he therefore because their theft proceeded from election that is because it was willingly done for to Elect and Will saith he are both one Is not this to blow hot and cold with the same breath but because it was noxious and contrary to mens preservation Thus far he saith true that every creature by the instinct of nature seeks to preserve it self cast water into a dusty place and it contracts it self into little globes that is to preserve it self And those who are noxious in the eye of the Law are justly punished by them to whom the execution of the Law is committed but the Law accounts no persons noxious but those who are noxious by their own fault It punisheth not a thorn for pricking because it is the nature of the thorn and it can do no otherwise nor a child before it have the use of reason If one should take mine hand perforce and give another a box on the ear with it my hand is noxious but the Law punisheth the other who is faulty And therefore he hath reason to propose the question how it is just to kill one man to amend another if he who killed did nothing but what he was necessitated to do He might as well demand how it is lawfull to murther a company of innocent Infants to make a bath of their lukewarm blood for curing the Leprosy It had been a more rational way first to have demonstrated that it is so and then to have questioned why it is so His assertion it self is but a dream and the reason which he gives of it why it is so is a dream of a dream The sum of it is this That where there is no Law there no killing or any thing els can be unjust that before the constitution of Common-wealths every man had power to kill another if he conceived him to be hurtfull to him that at the constitution of Commonwealths particular men lay down this right in part and in part reserve it to themselves as in case of theft or murther That the right which the Commonwealth hath to put a malefactor to death is not created by the Law but remaineth from the first right of Nature which every man hath to preserve himself that the killing of men in this case is as the killing of beasts in order to our own preservavation This may well be called stringing of Paradoxes But first there never was any such time when mankind was without Governors and Lawes and Societies Paternall Government was in the world from the beginning and the Law of Nature There might be sometimes a root of such Barbarous Theevish Brigants in some rocks or desarts or odd corners of the world but it was an abuse and a degeneration from the nature of man who is a politicall creature This savage opinion reflects too much upon the honour of mankind Secondly there never was a time when it was lawfull ordinarily for private men to kill one another for their own preservation If God would have had men live like wild beasts as Lions Bears or Tygers he would have armed them with hornes or tusks or talons or pricks but of all creatures man is born most naked without any weapon to defend himself because God had provided a better means of security for him that is the Magistrate Thirdly that right which private men have to preserve themselves though it be with the killing of another when they are set upon to be murdered or robbed is not a remainder or a reserve of some greater power which they have resigned but a privilege which God hath given them in case of extreme danger and invincible necessity that when they cannot possibly have recourse to the ordinary remedy that is the Magistrate every man becomes a Magistrate to himself Fourthly nothing can give that which it never had The people whilest they were a dispersed rabble which in some odd cases might happen to be never had juftly the power of life and death and therefore they could not give it by their election All that they do is to prepare the matter but it is God Almighty that infuseth the soul of power Fiftly and lastly I am sorry to hear a man of reason and parts to compare the murthering of men with
Matth. 7.7 St. Paul tells the Corinthians 2 Cor. 1.11 that he was helped by their prayers that 's not all that the gift was bestowed upon him by their means So prayer is a means And St. James saith cap. 5.16 The effectuall fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much If it be effectuall then it is a cause To shew this efficacy of prayer our Saviour useth the comparison of a Father towards his Child of a Neighbour towards his Neighbour yea of an unjust Judge to shame those who think that God hath not more compassion than a wicked man This was signified by Jacobs wrestling and prevailing with God Prayer is like the Tradesmans tools wherewithall he gets his living for himself and his family But saith he Gods will is unchangeable What then He might as well use this against study Physick and all second causes as against Prayer He shewes even in this how little they attribute to the endeavours of men There is a great difference between these two mutare voluntatem to change the will which God never doth in whom there is not the least shadow of turning by change His will to love and hate was the same from eternity which it now is and ever shall be His love and hatred are immovable but we are removed Non tellus cymbam tellurem cymba reliquit And velle mutationem to will a change which God often doth To change the will argues a change in the Agent but to will a change only argues a change in the object It is no inconstancy in a man to love or to hate as the object is changed Praesta mihi omnia eadem idem sum Prayer works not upon God but us It renders not him more propitious in himself but us more capable of mercy He saith this That God doth not bless us except we pray is a motive to prayer Why talks he of motives who acknowledgeth no liberty nor admitts any cause but absolutely necessary He saith Prayer is the gift of God no less than the blessing which we pray for and conteined in the same decree with the blessing It is true the spirit of prayer is the gift of God will he conclude from thence that the good imployment of one talent or of one gift of God may not procure another Our Saviour teacheth us otherwise Come thou good and faithfull servant thou hast been faithfull in little I will make thee ruler over much Too much light is an enemy to the light and too much Law is an enemy to Justice I could wish we wrangled less about Gods Decrees untill we understood them better But saith he Thanksgiving is no cause of the blessing past and prayer is but a thanksgiving He might even as well tell me that when a beggar craves an almes and when he gives thanks for it it is all one Every thanksgiving is a kind of prayer but every prayer and namely Petition is not a thanks-giving In the last place he urgeth that in our prayers we are bound to submit our wills to Gods Will who ever made any doubt of this we must submit to the Preceptive will of God or his Commandments we must submit to the effective Will of God when he declares his good pleasure by the event or otherwise But we deny and deny again either that God wills things ad extra without himself necessarily or that it is his pleasure that all second causes should act necessarily at all times which is the question and that which he allegeth to the contrary comes not neer it Numb 16. J. D. argument 4 FOurthly the order beauty and perfection of the world doth require that in the Universe should be Agents of all sorts some necessary somefree some contingent He that shall make either all things necessary guided by destiny or all things free governed by election or all things contingent happening by chance doth overthrow the beauty and the perfection of the world T. H. THE fourth Argument from reason is this The Order Beauty and Perfection of the world requireth that in the Vniverse should be Agents of all sorts some necessary some free some contingent He that shall make all things necessary or all things free or all things contingent doth overthrow the beauty and perfection of the world In which Argument I observe first a contradiction For seeing he that maketh any thing in that he maketh it he maketh it to be necessary it followeth that he that maketh all things maketh all things necessary to be As if a workman make a garment the garment must necessarily be So if God make every thing every thing must necessarily be Perhaps the beauty of the world requireth though we know it not that some Agents should work without deliberation which he calls necessary Agents And some Agents with deliberation and those both he and I call free Agents And that some Agents should work and we not know how And them effects we both call contingent But this hinders not but that he that electeth may have his election necessarily determined to one by former causes And that which is contingent and imputed to Fortune be nevertheless necessary and depend on precedent necessary causes For by contingent men do not mean that which hath no cause but which hath not for cause any thing which we perceive As for example when a Travailer meets with a shower the journey had a cause and the rain had a cause sufficient enough to produce it but because the journey caused not the rain nor the rain the journey we say they were contingent one to another And thus you see though there be three sorts of events Necessary Contingent and Free yet they may be all necessary without the destruction of the beauty or perfection of the Univers J. D. THE first thing he observes in mine Argument is contradiction as he calls it but in truth it is but a deception of the sight As one candle sometimes seems to be two or a rod in the water shewes to be two rods Quicquid recipitur recipitur ad modum recipient is But what is this contradiction Because I say he who maketh all things doth not make them necessary What a contradiction and but one proposition That were strange I say God hath not made all Agents necessary he saith God hath made all Agents necessary Here is a contradiction indeed but it is between him and me not between me and my self But yet though it be not a formall contradiction yet perhaps it may imply a contradiction in adjecto Wherefore to clear the matter and dispell the mist which he hath raised It is true that every thing when it is made it is necessary that it be made so as it is that is by a necessity of infallibility or supposition supposing that it be so made but this is not that absolute antecedent necessity whereof the question is between him and me As to use his own instance Before the Garment be made the Tailor is
free to make it either of the Italian Spanish or French fashion indifferently But after it is made it is necessary that it be of that fashion whereof he hath made it that is by a necessity of supposition But this doth neither hinder the cause from being a free cause nor the effect from being a free effect but the one did produce freely and the other was freely produced So the contradiction is vanished In the second part of his answer he grants that there are some free Agents and some contingent Agents and that perhaps the beauty of the world doth require it but like a shrewd Cow which after she hath given her milk casts it down with her foot in the conclusion he tells us that nevertheless they are all necessary This part of his answer is a meer Logomachy as a great part of the controversies in the world are or a contention about words What is the meaning of necessary and free and contingent actions I have shewed before what free and necessary do properly signifie but he misrecites it He saith I make all Agents which want deliberation to be necessary but I acknowledge that many of them are contingent Neither do I approove his definition of contingents though he say I concur with him that they are such agents as work we know not how For according to this description many necessary actions should be contingent and many contingent actions should be necessary The Loadstone draweth Iron the Jet chaff we know not how and yet the effect is necessary and so it is in all Sympathies and Antipathies or occult qualities Again a man walking in the streets a Tile falls down from an house and breaks his head We know all the causes we know how this came to pass The man walked that way the pin failed the Tile fell just when he was under it And yet this is a contingent effect The man might not have walked that way and then the Tile had not fallen upon him Neither yet do I understand here in this place by contingents such events as happen besides the scope or intention of the Agents as when a man digging to make a grave finds a Treasure though the word be sometimes so taken But by contingents I understand all things which may be done and may not be done may happen or may not happen by reason of the in determination or accidentall concurrence of the causes And those same things which are absolutely Incontingent and yet Hypothetically necessary As supposing the Passenger did walk just that way just at that time and that the pin did fail just then and the Tile fall it was necessary that it should fall upon the Passengers head The same defence will keep out his shower of rain But we shall meet with his shower of rain again Numb 34. Whither I refer the further explication of this point Numb 17. J. D. argument 5 FIftly take away liberty and you take away the very nature of evill and the formall reason of sin If the hand of the Painter were the law of painting or the hand of the Writer the law of writing whatsoever the one did write or the other paint must infallibly be good Seeing therefore that the first cause is the rule and Law of goodness if it do necessitate the will or the person to evill either by it self immediatly or mediatly by necessary flux of second causes it will no longer be evill The essence of sin consists in this that one commit that which he might a void If there be no liberty to produce sin there is no such thing as sin in the world Therefore it appeares both from Scripture and reason that there is true Liberty T. H. TO the fift Argument from reason which is that if liberty be taken away the nature and formall reason of sin is taken away I answer by denying the consequence The nature of sin consisteth in this that the action done proceed from our will and be against the Law A Judge in judging whether it be sin or not which is done against the Law looks at no higher cause of the action then the will of the doer Now when I say the action was necessary I do not say it was done against the will of the doer but with his will and so necessarily because mans will that is every act of the will and purpose of man had a sufficient and therefore a necessary cause and consequently every voluntary action was necessitated An action therefore may be voluntary and a sin and nevertheless be necessary And because God may afflict by right derived from his Omnipotency though sin were not And the example of punishment on voluntary sinners is the cause that produceth Justice and maketh sin less frequent For God to punish such sinners as I have shewed before is no injustice And thus you have my answer to his objections both out of Scripture and reason J. D. SCis tu simulare cupressum quid hoc It was shrewd counsail which Alcibiades gave to Themistocles when he was busy about his accounts to the State that he should rather study how to make no accounts So it seemes T. H. thinks it a more compendious way to baulk an argument then to satisfie it And if he can produce a Rowland against an Oliver if he can urge a reason against a reason he thinks he hath quitted himself fairely But it will not serve his turn And that he may not complain of misunderstanding it as those who have a politick deafness to hear nothing but what liketh them I will first reduce mine argument into form and then weigh what he saith in answer or rather in opposition to it That opinion which takes away the formall reason of sin and by consequence sin it self is not to be approoved this is cleer because both Reason and Religion Nature and Scripture do proove and the whole world confesseth that there is sin But this opinion of the necessity of all things by reason of a conflux of second causes ordered and determined by the first cause doth take away the very formall reason of sin This is prooved thus That which makes sin it self to be good and just and lawfull takes away the formall cause and distroyes the essence of sin for if sin be good and just and lawfull it is no more evill it is no sin no anomy But this opinion of the necessity of all things makes sin to be very good and just and lawfull for nothing can flow essentially by way of Physicall determination from the first cause which is the Law and Rule of Goodness and Justice but that which is good and just and lawfull but this opinion makes sin to proceed essentially by way of Physicall determination from the first cause as appeares in T. H. his whole discourse Neither is it materiall at all whether it proceed immediatly from the first cause or mediately so as it be by a necessary flux of second and determinate causes which
and the Divine relinquish all their tearmes of Art and proper idiotismes because they do not rellish with T. H. his palate But he will say they are obscure expressions What marvell is it when the things themselves are more obscure Let him put them into as plain English as he can and they shall be never a whit the better understood by those who want all grounds of learning Nothing is clearer than Mathematicall demonstration yet let one who is altogether ignorant in Mathematicks hear it and he will hold it to be as T. H. tearmes these distinctions plain Fustian or Jargon Every Art or Profession hath its proper mysteries and expressions which are well known to the Sons of Art not so to strangers Let him consult with Military men with Physitians with Navigators and he shall find this true by experience Let him go on shipboard and the Mariners will not leave their Sterbord and Larbord because they please not him or because he accounts it Gibrish No no it is not the Schoole-Divines but Innovators and seditious Oratours who are the true causes causes of the present troubles of Europe T. H. hath forgotten what he said in his book De Cive cap. 12. That it is a seditious opinion to teach that the knowledge of good and evill belongs to private persons And cap. 17. that in questions of Faith the Civill Magistrates ought to consult with the Ecclesiasticall Doctors to whom Gods blessing is derived by imposition of hands so as not to be received in necessary truths to whom our Saviour hath promised infallibility These are the very men whom he traduceth here There he ascribes infallibility to them here he accuseth them of gross superstitious ignorance There he attributes too much to them here he attributes too little Both there and here he takes too much upon him The Spirits of the Prophets are subject to the Prophets 1 Cor. 14.32 Numb 20. J. D. NOw to the distinction it self I say first that the proper act of liberty is election and election is opposed not only to coaction but also to coarctation or determination to one Necessitation or determination to one may consist with spontaneity but not with election or liberty as hath been shewed The very Stoicks did acknowledge a spontaneity So our adversaries are not yet gone out of the confines of the Stoicks Secondly to rip up the bottom of this business This I take to be the clear resolution of the Schooles There is a double act of the will the one more remote called Imperatus that is in truth the act of some inferiour faculty subject to the command of the will as to open or shut ones eyes without doubt these actions may be compelled The other act is neerer called actus elicitus an act drawn out of the will as to will to choose to elect this may be stopped or hindered by the intervening impediment of the understanding as a stone lying on a table is kept from its naturall motion otherwise the will should have a kind of Omnipotence But the will cannot be compelled to an act repugnant to its inclination as when a stone is thrown upwards into the air for that is both to incline and not to incline to the same object at the same time which implies a contradiction Therefore to say the will is necessitated is to say the will is compelled so far as the will is capable of compulsion If a strong man holding the hand of a weaker should therewith kill a third person haec quidem vis est this violence the weaker did not willingly perpetrate the fact because he was compelled But now suppose this strong man had the will of the weaker in his power as well as the hand and should not onely incline but determine it secretly and insensibly to commit this act is not the case the same whether one ravish Lucretia by force as Tarquine or by amatory potions and Magicall Incantations not only allure her but necessitake her to satisfy his lust and incline her effectually and draw her inevitably and irresistibly to follow him spontaneously Lucretia in both these conditions is to be pittied but the latter person is more guilty and deserves greater punishment who endevours also so much as in him lies to make Lucretia irresistibly partake of his crime I dare not apply it but thus only Take heed how we defend those secret and invincible necessitations to evill though spontaneous and free from coaction These are their fastnesses T. H. IN the next place he bringeth two arguments against distinguishing between being free from compulsion and free from necessitation The first is that election is opposite not onely to coaction or compulsion but also to necessitation or determination to one This is it he was to proove from the beginning and therefore bringeth no new argument to proove it And to those brought formerly I have already answered And in this place I deny again that election is opposite to either for when a man is compelled for example to subject himself to an enemy or to dy he hath still election left in him and a deliberation to bethink which of these two he can better endure And he that is led to prison by force hath election and may deliberate whether he will be hailed and trained on the ground or make use of his feet Likewise when there is no compulsion but the strength of temptation to do an evill action being greater than the motives to abstain necessarily determine him to the doing of it yet he deliberates whiles sometimes the motives to do sometimes the motives to forbear are working on him and consequently he electeth which he will But commonly when we see and know the strength that moves us we acknowledge Necessity but when we see not or mark not the force that moves us we then think there is none and that it is not Causes but liberty that produceth the action Hence it is that they think he does not chose this that of necessity choseth it but they might as well say fire does not burn because it burnes of necessity The second argument is not so much an argument as a distinction to shew in what sense it may be said that voluntary actions are necessitated and in what sense not And therefore he alledgeth as from the authority of the Schooles and that which rippeth up the bottome of the question that there is a double act of the will The one he sayes is actus Imperatus an act done at the command of the will by some inferiour faculty of the soul as to open or shut ones eyes and this act may be compelled The other he sayes is actus elicitus an act allured or an act drawn forth by allurement out of the will as to will to choose to elect This he sayes cannot be compelled Wherein letting pass that Metaphoricall speech of attributing command and subjection to the faculties of the Soul as if they made a Common-wealth or Family among
omitted but onely to satisfie his exceptions The first is that it is not materiall though the power of outward objects do proceed from our own faults if such faults of our proceed not from causes in our own power Well but what if they do proceed from causes that are in our own power as in truth they do then his answer is a meere subterfuge If our faults proceed from causes that are not and were not in our own power then they are not our faults at all It is not a fault in us not to do those things which never were in our power to do But they are the faults of these causes from whence they do proceed Next he confesseth that it is in our power by good endeavours to alter those vitious habits which we had contracted and to get the contrary habit True saith he but then the contrary habit doth necessitate the one way as well as the former habit did the other way By which very consideration it appeares that that which he calls a necessity is no more but a proclivity If it were a true necessity it could not be avoided nor altered by our endeavours The truth is Acquired habits do help and assist the faculty but they do not necessitate the faculty He who hath gotten to himself an habit of temperance may yet upon occasion commit an intemperate act And so on the contrary Acts are not opposed to habits but other habits He addes that we are not mooved to prayer or any other action but by outward objects as pious company godly Preachers or something equivalent Wherein are two other mistakes first to make godly Preachers and pious company to be outward objects which are outward Agents Secondly to affirm that the will is not moved but by outward objects The will is mooved by it self by the understanding by the sensitive passions by Angells good and bad by men and most effectually by acts or habits infused by God whereby the will is excited extraordinarily indeed but efficaciously and determinately This is more than equivalent with outward objects Another branch of mine answer was that a resolved and prepared mind is able to resist both the appetibility of objects and the unruliness of passions As I shewed by examples He answers that I prove Ulysses was not necessitated to weep nor the Philosopher to strike but I do not prove that they were not necessitated to forbear He saith true I am not now proving but answering Yet my answer doth sufficiently prove that which I intend That the rationall will hath power both to sleight the most appetible objects and to controll the most unruly passions When he hath given a clear solution to those proofs which I have produced then it will be time for him to cry for more work Lastly whereas I say that outward objects may be dangerous but cannot be destructive to true liberty He catcheth at it and objects that liberty is in no danger but to be lost but I say it cannot be lost therefore he infers that it is in no danger at all I answer First that liberty is in more danger to be abused than to be lost Many more men do abuse their wits than lose them Secondly liberty is in danger likewise to be weakened or diminished as when it is clogged by vitious habits contracted by our selves and yet it is not totally lost Thirdly though liberty cannot be totally lost out of the world yet it may be totally lost to this or that particular man as to the exercise of it Reason is the root of liberty and though nothing be more naturall to a man than reason yet many by excess of study or by continuall gurmandizing or by some extravagant passion which they have cherished in themselves or by doting too much upon some affected object do become very sotts and deprive themselves of the use of reason and consequently of Liberty And when the benefit of liberty is not thus universally lost yet it may be lost respectively to this or that particular occasion As he who makes choise of a bad wife hath lost his former liberty to chose a good one Numb 23. J. D. FOurthly the naturall Philosopher doth teach that the will doth necessarily follow the last dictate of the understanding It is true indeed the will should follow the direction of the understanding but I am not satisfied that it doth evermore follow it Sometimes this saying hath place Video meliora proboque Deteriora sequor As that great Roman said of two Sailers that the one produced the better reasons but the other must have the office So reason often lies dejected at the feet of affection Things neerer to the senses moove more powerfully Do what a man can he shall sorrow more for the death of his child than for the sin of his soul Yet appreciatively in the estimation of judgment he accounts the offence of God a greater evill than any temporall loss Next I do not believe that a man is bound to weigh the expedience or inexpedience of every ordinary triviall action to the least grain in the ballance of his understanding or to run up into his Watch-Tower with his perspective to take notice of every Jack-daw that flies by for fear of some hidden danger This seemes to me to be a prostitution of reason to petite observations as concerning every rag that a man weares each drop of drink each morsell of bread that he eates each pace that he walks Thus many stepps must he go not one more nor one less under pain of mortall sin What is this but a Rack and a Gibbet to the Conscience But God leaves many things indifferent though man be so curious he will not A good Architect will be sure to provide sufficient materialls for his building but what particular number of stones or trees he troubles not his head And suppose he should weigh each action thus yet he doth not so still there is liberty Thirdly I conceive it is possible in this mist and weakness of human apprehension for two actions to be so equally circumstantiated that no discernible difference can appear between them upon discussion As suppose a Chirurgion should give two plaisters to his Patient and bid him apply either of them to his wound what can induce his reason more to the one than to the other but that he may refer it to chance whether he will use But leaving these probable speculations which I submit to better judgments I answer the Philosopher briefly thus Admitting that the will did necessarily follow the last dictate of the understanding as certainly in many things it doth Yet First this is no extrinsecall determination from without and a mans own resolution is not destructive to his own liberty but depends upon it So the person is still free Secondly this determination is not antecedent but joyned with the action The understanding and the will are not different Agents but distinct faculties of the same soul Here is
from the speciall influence of any outward determining causes And so it is onely a necessity upon supposition Concerning Medaeas choise the strength of the argument doth not lye either in the fact of Medaea which is but a fiction or in the authority of the Poet who writes things rather to be admired than believed but in the experience of all men who find it to be true in themselves That sometimes reason doth shew unto a man the exorbitancy of his passion that what he desires is but a pleasant good that what he loseth by such a choise is an honest good That that which is honest is to be preferred before that which is pleasant yet the will pursues that which is pleasant and neglects that which is honest St. Paul saith as much in earnest as is feined of Medaea That he approoved not that which he did and that he did that which he hated Rom. 7.15 The Roman Story is mistaken There was no bribe in the case but affection Whereas I urge that those things which are neerer to the senses do moove more powerfully he layes hold on it and without answering to that for which I produced it infers That the sense of present good is more immediate to the action than the foresight of evill consequents Which is true but it is not absolutely true by any antecedent necessity Let a man do what he may do and what he ought to do and sensitive objects will lose that power which they have by his own fault and neglect Antecedent or indeliberate concupiscence doth sometimes but rarely surprise a man and render the action not free But consequent and deliberated concupiscence which proceeds from the rationall will doth render the action more free not less free and introduceth onely a necessity upon supposition Lastly he saith that a mans mourning more for the loss of his Child than for his sin makes nothing to the last dictate of the understanding Yes very much Reason dictates that a sin committed is a greater evill than the loss of a child and ought more to be lamented for yet we see daily how affection prevailes against the dictate of reason That which he inferrs from hence that sorrow for sin is not voluntary and by consequence that repentance proceedeth from causes is true as to the latter part of it but not in his sense The causes from whence repentance doth proceed are Gods grace preventing and mans will concurring God prevents freely man concurs freely Those inferiour Agents which sometimes do concur as subordinate to the grace of God do not cannot determine the will naturally And therefore the former part of his inference that sorrow for sin is not voluntary is untrue and altogether groundless That is much more truly and much more properly said to be voluntary which proceeds from judgment and from the rationall will than that which proceeds from passion and from the sensitive will One of the main grounds of all T. H. his errours in this question is that he acknowledgeth no efficacy but that which is naturall Hence is this wild consequence Repentance hath causes and therefore it is not voluntary Free effects have free causes necessary effects necessary causes voluntary effects have sometimes free sometimes necessary causes Numb 24. J. D. FIftly and lastly the Divine labours to find out a way how liberty may consist with the prescience and decrees of God But of this I had not very long since occasion to write a full discourse in answer to a Treatise against the prescience of things contingent I shall for the present only repeat these two things First we ought not to desert a certain truth because we are not able to comprehend the certain manner God should be but a poor God if we were able perfectly to comprehend all his Actions and Attributes Secondly in my poor judgment which I ever do ever shall submit to better the readiest way to reconcile Contingence and Liberty with the decrees and prescience of God and most remote from the altercations of these times is to subject future cōtingents to the aspects of God according to that presentiallity which they have in eternity Not that things future which are not yet existent coexistent with God but because the infinite knowledge of God incircling all times in the point of eternity doth attain to their future Being from whence proceeds their objective and intelligible Being The main impediment which keeps men from subscribing to this way is because they conceive eternity to be an everlasting succession and not one indivisible point But if they consider that whatsoever is in God is God That there are no accidents in him for that which is infinitely perfect cannot be further perfected That as God is not wise but Wisedom it self not just but Justice it self so he is not eternall but Eternity it self They must needs conclude that therefore this eternity is indivisible because God is indivisible and therefore not successive but altogether an infinite point comprehending all times within it self T. H. THE last part of this discourse conteineth his opinion about reconciling Liberty with the Prescience and Decrees of God otherwise than some Divines have done against whom he had formerly written a Treatise out of which he only repeateth two things One is that we ought not to desert a certain truth for not being able to comprehend the certain manner of it And I say the same as for example that he ought not to desert this certain truth That there are certain and necessary causes which make every man to will what he willeth though he do not yet conceive in what manner the will of man is caused And yet I think the manner of it is not very hard to conceive seeing that we see daily that praise dispraise reward punishment good and evill sequells of mens actions retained in memory do frame and make us to the election of whatsoever it be that we elect And that the memory of such things proceeds from the senses And sense from the operation of the objects of sense which are externall to us and governed onely by God Almighty And by consequence all actions even of free and voluntary Agents are necessary The other thing he repeateth is that the best way to reconcile Contingency and Liberty with the prescience and decrees of God is to subject future contingents to the aspect of God The same is also my opinion but contrary to what he hath all this while laboured to prove For hitherto he held liberty and necessity that is to say liberty and the decrees of God irreconcilable unless the aspect of God which word appeareth now the first time in this discourse signifie somewhat els besides Gods will and decree which I cannot understand But he adds that we must subject them according to that presentiality which they have in eternity which he sayes cannot be done by them that conceive eternity to be an everlasting succession but onely by them that conceive
of these Sparrows doth not fall to the ground without your Heavenly Father that is without an influence of power from him or exempted frō his disposition he doth not say which your heavenly Father casteth not down Lastly for the natural actions of inanimate Creatures wherein there is not the least concurrence of any free or voluntary Agents the questiō is yet more doubtfull for many things are called cōtingent in respect of us because we know not the cause of them which really in themselves are not contingent but necessary Also many things are contingent in respect of one single cause either actually hindred or in possibility to be hindred which are necessary in respect of the joynt concurrence of all collateral causes But whether there be a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning so as they must all have concurred as they have done in the same degree of power have been deficient as they have beē in all events whatsoever would require a further examination if it were pertinent to this question of liberty but it is not It is sufficient to my purpose to have shewed that all elective actions are free from absolute necessity And moreover that the concurrence of voluntary and free Agents with natural causes both upon purpose and accidentally hath helped them to produce many effects which otherwise they had not produced and hindred them from producing many effects which otherwise they had produced And that if this inintervention of voluntary and free Agents had been more frequent than it hath been as without doubt it might have been many natural events had been otherwise than they are And therefore he might have spared his instances of casting Ambs-ace and raining to morrow And first for his casting Ambs-ace If it be thrown by a fair Gamester with indifferent Dice it is a mixt action the casting of the Dice is free but the casting of Ambs-ace is contingent a man may deliberate whether he will cast the Dice or not but it were folly to deliberate whether he will cast Ambs-ace or not because it is not in his power unless he be a cheater that can cogge the Dice or the Dice be false Dice then the contingency or the degree of contingency ceaseth accordingly as the Caster hath more or less cunning or as the figure or making of the Dice doth incline them to Ambs-ace more than to another cast or necessitate them to this cast and no other Howsoever so far as the cast is free or contingent so far it is not necessary And where necessity begins there liberty and contingency do cease to be Likewise his other instance of raining or not raining to morrow is not of a free elective act nor alwayes of a contingent act In some Countries as they have their nati venti their certain winds at set seasons so they have their certain and set rains The Aethiopian rains are supposed to be the cause of the certain inundation of Nilus In some eastern Countries they have rain onely twice a year and those constant which the Scriptures call the former and the later rain In such places not onely the causes do act determinately and necessarily but also the determination or necessity of the event is foreknown to the inhabitants In our Climate the natural causes coelestial and sublunary do not produce rain so necessarily at set times neither can we say so certainly and infallibly it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow Neverthelesse it may so happen that the causes are so disposed and determined even in our climate that this proposition it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow may be necessary in it self and the Prognosticks or tokens may be such in the sky in our own bodies in the creatures animate and inanimate as weather-glasses c. that it may become probably true to us that it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow But ordinarily it is a contingent proposition to us whether it be contingent also in it self that is whether the concurrence of the causes were absolutely necessary whether the vapours or matter of the rain may not yet be dispersed or otherwise consumed or driven beyond our coast is a speculation which no way concerns this question So we see one reason why his two instances are altogether impertinent because they are of actions which are not free nor elective nor such as proceed from the liberty of mans will Secondly our dispute is about absolute necessity his proofs extend onely to Hypothetical necessity Our question is whether the concurrence and determination of the causes were necessary before they did concur or were determined He proves that the effect is necessary after the causes have concurred and are determined The freest actions of God or man are necessary by such a necessity of supposition And the most contingent events that are as I have shewed plainly Numb 3. where his instance of Ambs-ace is more fully answered So his proof looks another way from his proposition His proposition is that the casting of Ambs-ace was necessary before it was thrown His proof is that it was necessary when it was thrown examine all his causes over and over and they will not afford him one grain of antecedent necessity The first cause is in the Dice True if they be false Dice there may be something in it but then his contingency is destroyed If they be square Dice they have no more inclination to Ambs-ace than to Cinque and Quater or any other cast His second cause is the posture of the parties hand But what necessity was there that he should put his hand into such a posture None at all The third cause is the measure of the force applied by the caster Now for the credit of his cause let him but name I will not say a convincing reason nor so much as a probable reason but even any pretence of reason how the Caster was necessitated from without himself to apply just so much force and neither more or lesse If he cannot his cause is desperate and he may hold his peace for ever his last cause is the posture of the Table But tell us in good earnest what necessity there was why the Caster must throw into that Table rather than the other or that the Dice must fall just upon that part of the Table before the cast was thrown He that makes these to be necessary causes I do not wonder if he make all effects necessary effects If any one of these causes be contingent it is sufficient to render the cast contingent and now that they are all so contingent yet he will needs have the effect to be necessary And so it is when the cast is thrown but not before the cast was thrown which he undertook to prove who can blame him for being so angry with the School-men and their distinctions of necessity into absolute and hypothetical seeing they touch
to support it If it be an Agent saith he it can work what of this A posse ad esse non valet argumentum from can work to will work is a weak inference And from will work to doth work upon absolute necessity is another gross inconsequence He proceeds thus If it work there is nothing wanting of what is requisite to produce the action True there wants nothing to produce that which is produced but there may want much to produce that which was intended One horse may pull his heart out and yet not draw the Coach whither it should be if he want the help or concurrence of his fellowes And consequently saith he the cause of the action is sufficient Yes sufficient to do what it doth though perhaps with much prejudice to it self but not alwayes sufficient to do what it should do or what it would do As he that begets a Monster should beget a man and would beget a man if he could The last link of his argument follows And if sufficient then also necessary stay there by his leave there is no necessary connexion between sufficiency and efficiency otherwise God himself should not be All-sufficient Thus his Argument is vanished But I will deal more favourably with him and grant him all that which he labours so much in vain to prove That every effect in the world hath sufficient causes Yea more that supposing the determination of the free and contingent causes every effect in the world is necessary But all this will not advantage his cause the black of a bean for still it amounts but to an hypotheticall necessity and differs as much from that absolute necessity which he maintains as a Gentleman who travailes for his pleasure differs from a banished man or a free Subject from a slave Numb 36. T. H. AND thus you see how the inconveniences which he objecteth must follow upon the holding of necessity are avoided and the necessity it self demonstratively prooved To which I could add if I thought it good Logick the inconveniency of denying necessity as that it distroyes both the Decrees and Prescience of God Almighty for whatsoever God hath purposed to bring to pass by man as an instrument or foreseeth shall come to passe A man if he have Liberty such as he affirmeth from necessitation might frustrate and make not to come to pass And God should either not foreknow it and not Decree it or he should foreknow such things shall be as shall never be and decree that which shall never come to pass J. D. THus he hath laboured in vain to satisfie my reasons and to proove his own assertion But for demonstration there is nothing like it among his Arguments Now he saith he could add other Arguments if he thought it good Logick There is no impediment in Logick why a man may not press his Adversary with those absurdities which flow from his opinion Argumentum ducens ad impossibile or ad absurdum is a good form of reasoning But there is another reason of his forbearance though he be loth to express it Haeret lateri laethalis arundo The Arguments drawn from the attributes of God do stick so close in the sides of his cause that he hath no mind to treate of that subject By the way take notice of his own confession that he could add other reasons if he thought it good Logick If it were predetermined in the outward causes that he must make this very defence and no other how could it be in his power to add or substract any thing Just as if a blind-man should say in earnest I could see if I had mine eyes Truth often breaks out whilest men seek to smother it But let us view his Argument If a man have liberty from necessitation he may frustrate the Decrees of God and make his prescience false First for the Decrees of God This is his Decree that man should be a free Agent If he did consider God as a most simple Act without priority or posteriority of time or any composition He would not conceive of his Decrees as of the Lawes of the Medes and Persians long since enacted and passed before we were born but as coexistent with our selves and with the acts which we do by vertue of those Decrees Decrees and Attributes are but notions to help the weakness of our understanding to conceive of God The Decrees of God are God himself and therefore justly said to be before the foundation of the world was laid And yet coexistent with our selves because of the Infinite and Eternall being of God The summe is this The Decree of God or God himself Eternally constitutes or ordaines all effects which come to to pass in time according to the distinct natures or capacities of his creatures An Eternall Ordination is neither past nor to come but alwaies present So free actions do proceed as well from the Eternall Decree of God as necessary and from that order which he hath set in the world As the Decree of God is Eternall so is his Knowledge And therefore to speak truly and properly there is neither fore-knowledge nor after-knowledge in him The Knowledge of God comprehends all times in a point by reason of the eminence vertue of its infinite perfection And yet I confess that this is called fore-knowledge in respect of us But this fore-knowledge doth produce no absolute necessity Things are not therefore because they are fore-known but therfore they are fore-known because they shall come to pass If any thing should come to pass otherwise than it doth yet Gods knowledge could not be irritated by it for then he did not know that it should come to pass as now it doth Because every knowledge of vision necessarily presupposeth its object God did know that Judas should betray Christ but Judas was not necessitated to be a traitor by Gods knowledge If Judas had not betrayed Christ then God had not fore-known that Judas should betray him The case is this A watch-man standing on the steeples-top as it is the use in Germany gives notice to them below who see no such things that company are coming and how many His prediction is most certain for he sees them What a vain collection were it for one below to say what if they do not come then a certaine prediction may fail It may be urged that there is a difference between these two cases In this case the coming is present to the Watch-man but that which God fore-knowes is future God knowes what shall be The Watch-man onely knowes what is I answer that this makes no difference at all in the case by reason of that disparity which is between Gods knowledge and ours As that coming is present to the Watchman which is future to them who are below So all those things which are future to us are present to God because his Infinite and Eternall knowledge doth reach to the future being of all Agents and events Thus much is
plainly acknowledged by T. H. Numb 11. That fore-knowledge is knowledge and knowledge depends on the existence of the things known and not they on it To conclude the prescience of God doth not make things more necessary than the production of the things themselves But if the Agents were free Agents the production of the things doth not make the events to be absolutely necessary but onely upon supposition that the causes were so determined Gods prescience prooveth a necessity of infallibility but not of antecedent extrinsecall determination to one If any event should not come to pass God did never foreknow that it would come to pass For every knowledge necessarily presupposeth its object Numb 37. T. H. THis is all thath hath come into my mind touching this question since I last considered it And I humbly beseech your Lordship to communicate it onely to J. D. And so praying God to prosper your Lordship in all your designes I take leave and am my most Noble and obliging Lord Your most humble servant T. H. J. D. HE is very carefull to have this discourse kept secret as appeares in this Section and in the 14. and 15. Sections If his answer had been kept private I had saved the labour of a Reply But hearing that it was communicated I thought my self obliged to vindicate both the truth and my self I do not blame him to be cautious for in truth this assertion is of desperate consequence and destructive to piety policy and morality If he had desired to have kept it secret the way had been to have kept it secret himself It will not suffice to say as Numb 14. that Truth is Truth This the common plea of all men Neither is it sufficient for him to say as Numb 15. That it was desired by me long before that he had discovered his opinion by word of mouth And my desire was to let some of my noble friends see the weakness of his grounds and the pernicious consequences of that opinion But if he think that this ventilation of the question between us two may do hurt truly I hope not The edge of his discourse is so abated that it cannot easily hurt any rationall man who is not too much possessed with prejudice Numb 38. T. H. POstscript Arguments seldom work on men of wit and learning when they have once ingaged themselves in a contrary opinion If any thing do it it is the shewing of them the causes of their errours which is this Pious men attribute to God Almighty for honour sake whatsoever they see is honourable in the world as seeing hearing willing knowing Justice Wisedom c. But deny him such poor things as eyes ears brains and other organs without which we wormes neither have nor can conceive such faculties to be and so far they do well But when they dispute of Gods actions Philosophically then they consider them again as if he had such faculties and in that manner as we have them this is not well and thence it is they fall into so many difficulties We ought not to dispute of Gods Nature he is no fit subject of our Philosophy True Religion consisteth in obedience to Christ's Lieutenants and in giving God such honour both in attributes and actions as they in their severall Lieutenancies shall ordain J. D. THough Sophisticall captions do seldom work on men of wit and learning because by constant use they have their senses exercised to discern both good and evill Heb. 5.14 Yet solide and substantiall reasons work sooner upon them than upon weaker judgments The more exact the balance is the sooner it discovers the reall weight that is put into it Especially if the proofs be proposed without passion or opposition Let Sophisters and seditious Oratours apply themselves to the many headed multitude because they despaire of success with men of wit and learning Those whose gold is true are not afraid to have it tryed by the touch Since the former way hath not succeeded T. H. hath another to shew as the causes of our errours which he hopes will proove more succesfull When he sees he can do no good by sight he seeks to circumvent us under colour of curtesy Fistula dulce canit volucrem dum decipit auceps As they who behold themselves in a glass take the right hand for the left and the left for the right T. H. knowes the comparison so we take our own errours to be truths and other mens truths to be errours If we be in an errour in this it is such an errour as we sucked from nature it self such an errour as is confirmed in us by reason and experience such an errour as God himself in his sacred Word hath revealed such an errour as the Fathers and Doctors of the Church of all ages have delivered Such an errour wherein we have the concurrence of all the best Philosophers both Natural and Moral such an errour as bringeth to God the glory of Justice and Wisedom Goodness and Truth such an errour as renders men more devout more pious more industrious more humble more penitent for their sins Would he have us resign up all these advantages to dance blindfold after his pipe No he persuades us too much to our loss But let us see what is the imaginary cause of an imaginary errour Forsooth because we attribute to God whatsoever is honourable in the world as seeing hearing willing knowing Justice Wisedom but deny him such poor things as eyes ears brains and so far he saith we do well He hath reason for since we are not able to conceive of God as he is the readiest way we have is by remooving all that imperfection from God which is in the creatures So we call him Infinite Immortall Independent Or by attribubuting to him all those perfections which are in the creatures after a most eminent manner so we call him Best Greatest most Wise most Just most Holy But saith he When they dispute of Gods actions Philosophically then they consider them again as if he had such faculties and in the manner as we have them And is this the cause of our errour That were strange indeed for they who dispute Philosophically of God do neither ascribe faculties to to him in that manner that we have them Nor yet do they attribute any proper faculties at all to God Gods Understanding and his Will is his very Essence which for the eminency of its infinite perfection doth perform all those things alone in a most transcendent manner which reasonable creatures do perform imperfectly by distinct faculties Thus to dispute of God with modesty and reverence and to clear the Deity from the imputation of tyranny in justice and dissimulation which none do throw upon God with more presumption than those who are the Patrons of absolute necessity is both comely and Christian It is not the desire to discover the originall of a supposed errour which drawes them ordinarily into these exclamations against those who dispute of the Deity For some of themselves dare anatomise God and publish his Eternall Decrees with as much confidence as if they had been all their lives of his cabinet councell But it is for fear lest those pernicious consequences which flow from that doctrine essentially and reflect in so high a degree upon the supreme goodness should be laid open to the view of the world Just as the Turks do first establish a false religion of their own devising and then forbid all men upon pain of death to dispute upon religion Or as the Priests of Molech the Abhomination of the Ammonites did make a noise with their timbrells all the while the poor Infants were passing through the fire in Tophet to keep their pitifull cries from the eares of their Parents So they make a noise with their declamations against those who dare dispute of the nature of God that is who dare set forth his Justice and his goodness and his truth and his Philanthropy onely to deaf the ears and dim the eyes of the Christian world least they should hear the lamentable ejulations and howlings or see that ruefull spectacle of millions of souls tormented for evermore in the flames of the true Tophet that is Hell onely for that which according to T. H. his doctrine was never in their power to shun but which they were ordered and inevitably necessitated to do Onely to express the omnipotence and dominion and to satisfie the pleasure of him who is in truth the Father of all mercies and the God of all consolation This is life eternall saith our Saviour to know the onely true God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent Joh. 17.3 Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to visite the fatherless and widowes in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world saith St. James Jam. 1.27 Fear God and keep his Commandements for this is the whole duty of man saith Salomon Eccles 12.13 But T. H. hath found out a more compendious way to heaven True Religion saith he consisteth in obedience to Christs Lieutenants and giving God such honour both in attributes and actions as they in their severall Lieutenances shall ordain That is to say be of the Religion of every Christian Country where you come To make the Civill Magistrate to be Christs Lieutenant upon earth for matters of Religion And to make him to be Supreme Judge in all controversies whom all must obey is a doctrine so strange and such an uncouth phrase to Christian eares that I should have missed his meaning but that I consulted with his Book De Cive c. 15. Sect. 16. and c. 17. Sect. 28. What if the Magistrate shall be no Christian himself What if he shall command contrary to the Law of God or Nature Must we obey him rather than God Act. 14.19 Is the Civill Magistrate become now the onely ground and pillar of Truth I demand then why T. H. is of a different mind from his soveraign and from the Lawes of the Land concerning the attributes of God and his Decrees This is a new Paradox and concerns not this question of liberty and necessity Wherefore I forbear to prosecute it further and so conclude my reply with the words of the Christian Poet Caesaris jussum est ore Galieni Princeps quod colit ut colemus omnes Aeternum colemus Principem dierum Factorem Dominumque Galieni FINIS