proceed from the indetermination or contingent concurrence of naturall 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 c 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 though 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 acâ—â—ons 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 medâ—ate must likewise be contingâ—â—â— 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 d 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 rationally good or what is hoâ—est and though their fancies be determined by nature to some kinds 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 of these Sparrows doth not fall to the gound without your Heavenly Father that is without an influence of power from him or exempted from 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 question is yet more doubtful for many things are called contingent in respect of us because we know not the cause of them which really and 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 e 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 and in the same degree of power and have been deficient as they have been 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 neâ—essity And more-over that the concurrence of voluntary aâ—d 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 intervention 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 and 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 stati 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 fore-known 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
is true that seeing the name of punnishment hath relation to the name of Crime there can be no punishment but for Crimes that might have been left undone but instead of punnishment if he had said affliction may not I say that God may afflict and not for sin doth he not afflict those Creatures that cannot sin and sometimes those that can sin and yet not for sin as Job and the Man in the Gospel that was born blind for the manifestation of his power which he hath over his Creature no less but more than hath the Potter over his Clay to make of it what he please But though God have power to afflict a man and not for sin without injustice shall we think God so cruel as to afflict a man and not for sin with extream and endlesse torment Is it not cruelty No more than to do the same for sin when he that so afflicteth might without trouble have kept him from sinning But what Infallible evidence hath the Bishop that a man shall be after this life Eternally in torments and never die Or how is it certain there is no second death when the Scripture saith there is Or where doth the Scripture say that a second death is an endless life Or do the Doctors onely say it then perhaps they do but say so and for reasons best known to themselves There is no injustice nor cruelty in him that giveth life to give withit sicknesse pain torments and death nor in him that giveth life twice to give the same miseries twice also And thus much in Answer to the Inconveniences that are pretended to follow the Doctrine of Necessity On the other side from this Position that a man is free to will it followeth that the Prescience of God is quite taken away For how can it be known before hand what man shall have a will to if that will of his proceed not from necessary causes but that he have in his power to will or not will So also those things which are called future contingents if they come not to passe with certainty that is to say from necessary causes can never be foreknown so that Gods fâ—reknowing shall sometimes be of things that shall not come to passe which is as much to say that his foreknowledge is none which is a great dishonour to the All-knowing Power Though this be all the Inconvenient Doctrine that followeth Freewill for as much as I can now remember yet the defending of this opinion hath drawn the Bishop and other Patrons of it into many inconvenient and absurd conclusions and made them make use of an infinite number of Insignificant words whereof one conclusion is in Suarez that God doth so concurre with the Will of Man that if Man will then God concurres which is to subject not the will of Man to God but the will of God to Man Other inconvenient conclusions I shall then mark out when I come to my observations upon the Bishops reply And thus farre concerning the inconveniences that follow both Opinions The Attribute of God which he draweth into argument is his Justice as that God cannot be Just in punishing any man for that which he was necessitated to do To which I have answered before as being one of the Inconveniences pretended to follow upon the Doctrine of Necessity On the Contrary from another of Gods Attributes which is his Fore-knowledge I shall evidently derive that all Actions whatsoever whether they proceed from the will or from fortune were necessary from eternity For whatsoever God Fore-knoweth shall come to passe cannot but come to passe that is it is Impossible it should not come to passe or otherwise come to passe then it was fore-known But whatsoever was Impossible should be otherwise was necessary for the definition of Necessary is that which cannot possibly be otherwise And whereas they that distinguish between Gods Praescience and his Decree say the Fore-knowledge maketh not the Necessity without the Decree it is little to the purpose It sufficeth me that whatsoever was fore-known by God was necessary but all things were Fore-known by God and therefore all things were necessary And as for the distinction of Fore-knowledge from Decree in God Almighty I comprehend it not They are Acts coeternall and therefore one And as for the Arguments drawn from naturall reason they are set down at large in the end of my discourse to which the Bishop maketh his reply which how well he hath answered shall appear in due time For the present the Actions which he thinketh proceed from liberty of will must either be necessitated or proceed from fortune without any other cause for certainly to Will is Impossible without thinking on what he willeth But it is in no mans Election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on And this I take to be enough to clear the understanding of the Reader that he may be the better able to Judge of the Following Disputation I find in those that write of this Argument especially in the Schoolmen and their Followers so many words strangers to our Language and such Confusion and Inanity in the ranging of them as that a mans mind in the reading of them distinguisheth nothing And as things were in the beginning before the Spirit of God was moved upon the Abiss Tohu and Bohu that is to say Confusion and Emptiness so are their discourses To the Right Honourable the Marquis of NEWCASTLE c. SIR IF I pretended to compose a compleat treatise upon this subject I should not refuse those large recruites of reasons and authorities which offer themselves to serve in this cause for God and man Religion and Policy Church and Common wealth a against the blasphemous desperate and destructive opinion of fatall destiny But as b mine aim in the first discourse was onely to presse home hose things in writing which had been agitated between us by word of mouth a course much to be preferred before verball conferences as being freer from passions and tergiversations less subject to mistakes and misrelations wherein paralogismes are more quickly detected impertinencies discovered and confusion avoided So my present intention is onely to vindicate that discourse and together with it c those lights of the Schooles who were never sleighted but where they were not understood How far I have performed it I leave to the judicious and unpartiall Reader resting for mine own part well contented with this that I have fatisfied my self Your Lordships most obliged to love and serve you I. D. Animadversions upon the Bishops Epistle to my Lord of Newcastle a AGainst the Blasphemous Desperate and Destructive Opinion of fatal Destiny This is but choler such as ordinarily happeneth unto them who contend against greater difficulties than they expected b My aim in the first discourse was onely to press home those things in writing which had been agitated between us by word of mouth a course much to be preferred before verball Conferences
not indeed He who casts his goods into the Sea may do it of his own accord in order to the end Secondly he erres in this also that nothing is opposed to spontaneity but onely fear Invincible and Antecedent ignorance doth destroy the nature of spontaneity or voluntariness by removing that knowledge which should and would have prohibited the action As a man thinking to shoot a wild Beast in a Bush shoots his friend which if he had known he would not have shot This man did not kill his friend of his own accord For the clearer understanding of these things and to know 4. what spontaneity is let us consult a while with the Schools about the distinct order of voluntary or involuntary actions Some acts proceed wholly from an extrinsecal cause as the throwing of a stone upwards a rape or the drawing of a Christian by plain force to the Idols Temple these are called violent acts Secondly some proceed from an intrinsecal cause but without any manner of knowledge of the end as the falling of a stone downwards these are called natural acts Thirdly some proceed from an internal principle with an imperfect knowledge of the end where there is an appetite to the object but no deliberation nor election as the acts of Fools Children Beasts and the inconsiderate act of men of judgement These are called voluntary or spontaneous acts Fourthly some proceed from an intrinsecal cause with a more perfect knowledge of the end which are elected upon deliberation These are called free acts So then the formal reason of liberty is election The necessary requisite to election is deliberation Deliberation implyeth the actual use of reason But deliberation and election cannot possibly subsist with an extrinsecal praedetermination to one How should a man deliberate or choose which way to go who knows that all wayes are shut against him and made impossible to him but onely one This is the genuine sense of these words Voluntary and Spontaneous in this Question Though they were taken twenty other waies vnlgarly or metaphorically as we say spontaneous ulcers where there is no appetite at all yet it were nothing to this controversie which is not about Words but about Things not what the words Voluntary or Free do or may signifie but whether all things be extrinsecally praedetermined to one These grounds being laid for clearing the true sense of the words the next thing to be examined is that contradiction which he hath espied in my discourse or how this Argument fights against his fellows If I saith T. H. make it appear that the spontaneous actions of Fools Children mad Men and Beasts do proceed from election and deliberation and that inconsiderate and indeliberate actions are found in the wisest men then this argument concludes that necessity and election may stand together which is contrary to his assertion If this could be made appear as easily as it is spoken it would concern himself much who when he should prove that rational men are not free from necessity goes about to prove that brute Beasts do deliberate and elect that is as much as to say are free from necessity But it concerns not me at all it is neither my assertion nor my opinion that necessity and election may not meet together in the same subject violent natural spontaneous and deliberate or elective acts may all meet together in the same subject But this I say that necessity and election cannot consist together in the same act He who is determined to one is not free to choose out of more then one To begin with his later supposition that wise men may do inconsiderate and indeliberate actions I do readily admit it But where did he learn to infer a general conclusion from particular premises as thus because wise men do some indeliberate acts therefore no act they do is free or elective Secondly for his former supposition That Fools Children mad Men and Beasts do deliberate and elect if he could make it good it is not I who contradict my self nor fight against mine own assertion but it is he who endeavours to prove that which I altogether deny He may well find a contradiction between him and me otherwise to what end is this dispute But he shall not be able to find a difference between me and my self But the truth is he is not able to proove any such thing and that brings me to my sixth Consideration That neither Horses nor Bees nor Spiders nor Children nor Fools nor Mad-men do deliberate or elect His 6. first instance is in the Horse or Dog but more especially the Horse He told me that I divided my argument into squadrons to apply my self to your Lordship being a Military man And I apprehend that for the same reason he gives his first instance of the Horse with a submission to your own experience So far well but otherwise very disadvantageously to his cause Men use to say of a dull fellow that he hath no more brains than a Horse And the Prophet David saith Be not like the Horse and Mule which have no understanding Psal. 32. 9. How do they deliberate without understanding And Psal. 49. 20. he saith the same of all brute Beasts Man being in honour had no understanding but became like unto the Beasts that perish The Horse dâ—â—urres upon his way Why not Outward objects or inward fancies may produce a stay in his course though he have no judgement either to deliberate or elect He retires from some strange figure which he sees and comes on again to avoid the spur So he may and yet be far enough from deliberation All this proceeds from the sensitive passion of fear which is a perturbation arising from the expectation of some imminent evil But he urgeth what else doth man that deliberateth Yes very much The Horse feareth some outward object but deliberation is a comparing of several means conducing to the same end Fear is commonly of one deliberation of more than one fear is of those things which are not in our power deliberation of those things which are in our power fear ariseth many times out of natural antipathies but in these disconveniences of nature deliberation hath no place at all In a word fear is an enemy to deliberation and betrayeth the succours of the Soul If the Horse did deliberate he should consult with reason whether it were more expedient for him to go that way or not He would represent to himself all the dangers both of going and staying and compare the one with the other and elect that which is less evil He should consider whether it were not better to endure a little hazard than ungratefully and dishonestly to fail in his duty towards his Master who did breed him and doth feed him This the Horse doth not Neither is it possible for him to do it Secondly for Children T. H. confesseth that they may be so young that they do not deliberate at all Afterwards as they
Free acts and Voluntary acts but he saith I confound them and make them the same In his Reply Number 2. he saith that for the clearing of the Question we are to know the difference between these three Necessity Spontaneity and Liberty and because I thought he knew that it could not be cleared without under standing what is Will I had reason to think that Spontaneity was his new word for Will And presently after some things are Necessary and not Voluntary or Spontaneous some things are both Necessary and Voluntary These words Voluntary and Spontaneous so put together would make any man beleeve Spontaneous weâ—e put as explicative of Voluntary for it is no wonder in the eloquence of the School men Therefore presently after these words Spontaneity consists in a conformity of the Appetite either intellectual or sensitive signifie that Spontaneity is a conformity or likeness of the appetite to the object which to me soundeth as if he had said that the Appetite is like the Object which is as proper as if he had said the Hunger is like the Meat If this be the Bishops meaning as it is the meaning of the Words he is a very fine Philosopher But hereafter I will venture no more to say his meaning is this or that especially were he useth terms of Art c Thirdly he saith I ascribe spontaneity onely to Fools Children mad Men and Beasts But I acknowledge Spontaneity hath place in rataonal men c. I resolve to have no more to do with Spontaneity But I desire the Reader to take notice that the common people on whose arbitration dependeth the signification of words in comâ—â—n use among the Latines and Greeks did call all actions and motions whereof they did perceive no cause Spantaneous and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I say not those actions which had no causes for all actions have their causes but those actions whose causes they did not perceive So that Spontaneous as a general name comprehended many actions and motions of inanimate creatures as the falling of heavy things downwards which they thought spantaneous and that if they were not hindred they would discend of their own accord It comprehended also all animal motion as beginning from the Will or Appetite because the causes of the Will and Appetite being not perceived they supposed as the Bishop doth that they were the causes of themselves So that that which in general is called Spontâ—neous being applyed to Men and Beasts in special is called Voluntary Yet the Will and Appetite though the very same thing use to be distinguished in certain occasions For in the publique conversation of Men where they are to judge of one anothers Will and of the regularity and irregularity of one anothers actions not every Appetite but the last is esteemed in the publique judgement for the Will Nor every action proceeding from Appetite but that onely to which there had preceded or ought to have preceded some deliberation And this I say is so when one man is to judge of anothers Will. For every man in himself knoweth that what he desireth or hath an appetite to the same he hath a will to though his will may be changed before he hath obteined his desire The Bishop understanding nothing of this might if it had pleased him have called it Jargon But he had rather pick out of it some contradictions of my self And therefore saith d Yet I have no reason to be offended at it meaning such contradictions for he dealeth no otherwise with me than he doth with himself It is a contradiction he saith that having said that voluntary presupposeth deliberation I say in another place that whatsoever followeth the last appetite is voluntary and where there is but one appetite that is the last Not observing that voluntary presuppâ—seth deliberation when the judgement whether the action be voluntary or not is not in the Actor but in the Judge who regardeth not the will of the Actor where there is nothing to be accused in the action of deliberate malice yet knoweth that though there be but one appetite the same is truly will for the time and the action if it follow a voluntary action This also he saith is a contradction that having said no action of a man can be said to be without deliberation though never so suddain I say afterward that by spontaneity is meant inconsiderate proceeding Again he observes not that the action of a man that is not a child in publique judgement how rash inconsiderate and suddain soever it be is to be taken for deliberation because it is supposed he ought to have considered and compared his intended action with the Law when nevertheless that suddain and indeliberate action was truly voluntary Another contradiction which he finds is this that having undertaken to proove that Children before they have the use of reason do deliberate and elect I say by and by after a Child may be so young as to do what he doth without all deliberation I yet see no contradiction here for a Child may be so young as that the appetite thereof is its first appetite but afterward and often before it come to have the use of reason may elect one thing and refuse another and consider the consequences of what it is about to do And why not as well as Beasts which never have the use of reason for they deliberate as men do For though men and beasts do differ in many things very much yet they differ not in the nature of their deliberation A man can reckon by words of general signification make propositions and syllogismes and compute in numbers magnitudes proportions and other things computable which being done by the advantage of language and words of general significations a beast that hath not language cannot do nor a man that hath language if he misplace the words that are his counters From hence to the end of this Number he discourseth again of Spontaneity and how it is in Children mad Men and Beasts which as I before resolved I will not meddle with let the Reader think and judge of it us he pleaseth J. D. SEcondly a they who might have done and may do many things which they leave undone And they who leave undone many things which they might do are neither compelled nor necessitated to do what they do but have true liberty But we might do many things which we do not and we do many things which we might leave undone as is plain 1 King 3. 11. Because thou hast asked this thing and hast not asked for thy self long life neither hast asked riches for thy self nor hast asked the life of thine enemies c. God gave Solomon his choice He might have asked riches but then he not had asked wisdom which he did ask He did ask wisdom but he might have asked riches which yet he did not ask And Acts 5. 4. After it was sold was it not in thine own power It was in his own power
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 physical 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 incredulous odi That which I say necessitateth and determineth every action that he 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 â—ere 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 eternal 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 fore-knowledge is knowledge and knowledge dependeth 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 alwayes depend upon one single chain but on many together Natural efficacy of objects does determine voluntary Agents and necessitates the Will and consequently the Action but for moral efficacy I understand not what he means by it The last dictate of the judgement concerning the good or bad that may follow on any action is not properly the whole cause but the last part of it And yet may be said to produce the effect necessarily in such manner as the last feather may be said to break an Horses back when there were so many laid on before as there wanted but that to do it Now for his Argument That if the concourse of all the causes necessitate the effect that then it follows Adam had no true liberty I deny the consequence for I make not only the effect but also the election of that particular effect to be necessary in as much as the Will it self and each propension of a man during his deliberation is as much necessitated and depends on a sufficient cause as any thing else whatsoever As for example it is no more necessary that fire should burn then that a man or other creature whose limbs be moved by fancy should have election that is liberty to do what he has a fancy to though it be not in his will or power to choose his fancy or choose his election or will This Doctrine because he saies he hates I doubt had better been suppressed as it should have been if both your Lordship and he had not pressed me to an answer J. D. a THis Argument was sent forth onely as an espie to make a more full discovery what were the true grounds of T. H. his supposed Necessity which errand being done and the foundation whereupon he bnilds being found out which is as I called it a concatenation of causes and as he calls it a concourse of necessary causes It would now be a superfluous and impertineut work in me to undertake the refutation of all those other opinions which he doth not undertake to defend And therefore I shall wave them at the present with these short animadversions b Concerning the eternal decree of God he confounds the decree it self with the execution of his decree And concerning the fore-knowledge of God he confounds that speculative knowledge which is called the knowbedge of vision which doth not produce the intellective objects no more then the sensitive vision doth produce the sensible objects with that other knowledge of God which is called the knowledge of approbation or a practical knowledge that is knowledge joyned with an act of the Will of which Divines do truly say that it is the cause of things as the knowledge of the Artist is the cause of his work God made all things by his word John 1. that is by his wisdom Concerning the influence of the Stars I wish he had expressed himself more clearly For as I do willingly grant that those Heavenly Bodies do act upon these sublunary things not onely by their motion and light but also by an occuit vertue which we call influence as we see by manifold experience in the Loadstone and Shell-fish c. So if he intend that by these influences they do naturally or physically determine the Will or have any direct dominion over humane Counsels either in whole or in part either more or less he is in an errour Concerning the concatenation of causes where as he makes not one chain but an innumerable number of chains I hope he speaks hyperbolically and doth not intend that they are actually infinite the difference is not material whether one or many so long as they are all joyned together both in the first link and likewise in the effect It serves to no end but to shew what a shaddow of liberty T. H. doth fancy or rather what a dream of a shaddow As if one chain were not sufficient to load poor man but he must be clogged with iunumerable chains This is just such another freedom as the Turkish Galli-slaves do enjoy But I admire that T. H. who is so versed in this Question should here confess that he understands not the difference between physical or natural and moral efficacy And much more that he should affirm that outward objects do determine voluntary agents by a natural efficacy No object no second Agent Angel or Devill can determine the Will of man naturally but God alone in respect of his supreme dominion over all things Then the Will is determined naturally when God Almighty besides his general influence where upon all second causes do depend as well for their being as for their acting doth moreover at some times when it pleases him in cases extraordinary concurre by a special influence and infuse something into the Will in the nature of an act or an habit whereby the Will is moved and excited and applyed to will or choose this or that Then the Will is determined morally when some object is proposed to it with perswasive reasons and arguments to induce it to will Where the determination is natural the liberty to suspend its act is taken away from the will but not so where the determination is moral In the former case the Will is determined extrinsecally in the later case intrinsecally The former produceth an absolute necessity the later onely a necessity of supposition
If the Will do not suspend but assent then the act is necessary but because the Will may suspend and not assent therefore it is not absolutely necessary In the former case the Will is moved necessarily and determinately In the later freely and indeterminately The former excitation is immediate the later is mediaté mediante intellectu and requires the help of the understanding In a word so great a difference there is between natural and moral efficacy as there is between his opinion and mine in this Question There remains onely the last dictate of the understanding which he maketh to be the last cause that concurreth to the determination of the Will and to the necessary production of the act as the last feather may be said to break an Horses back when there were somany laid on before that there wanted but that to do it I have shewed Numb 7. that the last dictate of the understanding is not alwaies absolute in it self nor conclusive to the Will and when it is conclusive yet it produceth no antecedent nor extrinsecal Necessity I shall only ad one thing more in present That by making the last judgement of right reason to be of no more weight then a single feather he wrongs the understanding as well as he doth the Will and endeavonrs to deprive the Will of its supreme power of application and to deprive the understanding of its supreme power of judicature and definition Neither corporeal agents and objects nor yet the sensitive appetite it self being an inferiour faculty and affixed to the Organ of the Body have any direct or immediate dominion or command over the rational Will It is without the sphear of their activity All the access which they have unto the Will is by the means of the understanding sometimes cleare and sometimes disturbed and of reason either right or mis-informed Without the help of the understanding all his second causes were not able of themselves to load the Horses back with so much weight as the least of all his feathers doth amount unto But we shall meet with his Horse load of feathers again Numb 23. These things being thus briefly touched he proceeds to his answer My argument was this If any of these â—rall these causes formerly recited do take away true liberty that is still intended from necessity then Adam before his fall had no true liberty But Adam before his fall had true liberty He mis-recites the argument and denies the consequence which is so clearly proved that no man living can doubt of it Because Adam was subjected to all the same causes as well as we the same decree the same prescience the same influences the same concourse of causes the same efficacy of objects the same dictates of reason But it is onely a mistake for it appears plainly by his following discourse that he intended to deny not the consequence but the assumption For he makes Adam to have had no liberty from necessity before his fall yea he proceeds so far as to affirm that all humane wills his and ours and each propension of our wills even during our deliberation are as much necessitated as any thing else whatsoever that we have no more power to forbear those actions which we do than the fire hath power not to burn Though I honour T. H. for his person and for his learning yet I must confess ingeniously I hate this Doctrine from my heart And I believe both I have reason so to do and al others who shall seriously ponder the horrid consequences which flow from it It destroyes liberty dishonours the nature of Man It makes the second causes outward objects to be the Rackets and Men to be but the Tennis-Balls of destiny It makes the first cause that is God Almighty to be the introducer of all evil and sin into the world as much as Man yea more than Man by as much as the motion of the Watch is more from the Artificer who did make it and wind it up than either from the spring or the wheels or the thred if God by his special influence into the second causes did necessitate them to operate as they did And if they being thus determined did necessitate Adam inevitably irresistably not by an accidental but by an essential subordination of causes to whatsoever he did Then one of these two absurdities must needs follow either that Adam did not sin and that there is no such thing as sin in the world because it proceeds naturally necssarily and essentially from God Or that God is more guilty of it and more the cause of evil than Man because Man is extrinsecally inevitably determined but so is not God And in causes essentially subordinate the cause of the cause is alwaies the cause of the effect What Tyrant did ever impose Lawes that were impossible for those to keep upon whom they were imposed and punish them for breaking those Laws which he himself had necessitated them to break which it was no more in their power not to break than it is in the power of the fire not to burn Excuse me if I hate this Doctrine with a perfect hatred which is so dishonourable both to God and Man which makes Men to blaspheme of necessity to steal of necessity to be hanged of necessity and to be damned of necessity And therefore I must say and say again Quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulous odi It were better to be an Atheist to believe no God or to be a Manichee to believe two Gods a God of good and a God of evil or with the Heathens to believe thirty thousand Gods than thus to charge the true God to be the proper cause and the true Author of all the sins and evills which are in the world Animadversions upon the Bishops Reply Number XI aTHis Argument was sent forth only as an espie to make a more full discovery what were the true grounds of T. H. his supposed Necessity The Argument which he sendeth forth as an Espie is this If either the decree of God or the Fore-knowledge of God or the Influence of the Stars or the Concatenation which he saies falsly I call a Concourse of causes or the Physical or Moral Efficacy of objects or the last Dictate of the Understanding do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty In answer whereunto I said that all the things now existent were necessary to the production of the effect to come that the Fore-knowledge of God causeth nothing though the Will do that the influence of the Stars is but a small part of that cause which maketh the Necessity and that this consequence If the concourse of all the causes necessitate the effect then Adam had no true liberty was false But in his words if these do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty the consequence is good but then I deny that Necessity takes away Liberty the reason
debt That cannot â—e for they have no sense of debt or duty And I think he will not say that they have received a command to obey him from authority It resteth therefore that the dominion of man consists in this that men are too hard for Lions and Bears because though a Lion or a Bear be stronger than a man yet the strength and art and specially the Leaguâ—ing and Societies of men are a greater power than the ungoverned strength of unruly Beasts In this it is that consisteth this dominion of man and for the same reason when a hungry Lion meeteth an unarmed man in a desert the Lion hath the dominion over the man if that of man over Lions or over Sheeep and Oxen may be called dominion which properly it cannot nor can it be said that Sheep and Oxen do otherwise obey us than they would do a Lion And if we have dominion over Sheep and Oxen we exercise it not as dominion but as hostility for we keep them onely to labour and to be kill'd and devoured by us so that Lions and Bears would be as good Maters to them as we are By this short passage of his concerning Dominion and Obedience I have no reason to expect a very shrewd answer from him to my Leviathan i The next branch of his Answer concerns Consultations which saith he are not superfluous though all things come to pass necessarily because they are the cause which doth necessitate the effect and the means to bring it to pass His Reply to this is that he hath shewed sufficiently that reason doth not determine the will Physically c. If not Physically how then As he hath told us in another place Morally But what it is to determine a thing Morally no man living understands I doubt not but be had therefore the Will to write this Reply because I had answered his Treatise concerning true Liberty My answer therefore was at least in part the cause of his writing yet that is the cause of the nimble local motion of his fingers Is not the cause of local motion Physical His Will therefore was Physically and Extrinsecally and Antecedently and not Morally caused by my writing k He adds further that as the end is necessary so are the means And when it is determined that one thing shall be chosen before another it is determined also for what cause it shall be so chosen All which is truth but not the whole truth c. Is it not enough that it is truth must I put all the truth I know into two or three lines No. I should have added that God doth adapt and fit the means to their respective ends free means to free ends contingent means to contingent ends necessary means to necessary ends It may be I would have done so but for shame Free Contingent and Necessary are not words that can be joined to Means or Ends but to Agents and Actions that is to say to things that moove or are moved A Free Agent being that whose motion or action is not hindered nor stopt And a Free Action that which is produced by a Free Agent A Contingent Agent is the same with an Agent simply But because men for the most part think those things are produced without cause whereof they do not see the cause they use to call both the Agent and the Action Contingent as attributing it to fortune And therefore when the causes are Necessary if they perceive not the necessity they call those necessary Agents and Actions in things that have Appetite Free and in things inanimate Contingent The rest of his Reply to this point is very little of it applied to my answer I note onely that where he sayes but if God have so ordered the World that a man cannot if he would neglect any means of good c. He would fraudulently insinuate that it is my opinion that a man is not Free to Do if he will and to Abstain if he will Whereas from the beginning I have often declared that it is none of my opinion and that my opinion is only this that he is not Free to Will or which is all one he is not Master of his future Will After much unorderly discourse he comes in with This is the doctrine that flows from this opinion of absolute Necessity which is impertinent seeing nothing flows from it more than may be drawn from the confession of an eternal Prescience l But he tells me in great sadness that my Argument is no better than this If I shall live till to morrow I shall live till to morrow though I run my self thorow with a sword to day which saith he is a false consequence and a false proposition Truly if by running through he understand killing it is a false or rather a foolish proposition He saith right Let us therefore see how it is not like to his He sayes If it be absolutely necessary that a man shall live till to morrow then it is vain and superfluous for him to consult whether he should dye to day or not And this he sayes is a true consequence I cannot perceive how it is a better consequence than the former for if it be absolutely necessary that a man should live till to morrow and in health which may also be supposed why should he not if he have the curiosity have his head cut off to try what pain it is But the consequence is false for if there be a necessity of his living it is necessary also that he shall not have so foolish a curiosity But he cannot yet distinguish between a seen and unseen necessity and that is the cause he beleeveth his consequence to be good m The next branch of my Argument concerns Admonitions c. Which he saies is this If all things be necessary then it is to no more purpose to admonish men of understanding than fools children or madmen but That they do admonish the one and not the other is confessedly true and no reason under heaven can be given for it but this that the former have the use of reason and true liberty with a dominion over their own actions which children fools and madmen have not The true reason why we admonish men and not children c. is because admonition is nothing else but telling a man the good and evil consequences of his actions They who have experience of good and evill can better perceive the reasonableness of such admonition than they that have not and such as have like passions to those of the Admonitor do more easily conceive that to be good or bad which the Admonitor sayeth is so than they who have great passions and such as are contrary to his The first which is want of experience maketh children and fools unapt and the second which is strength of passion maketh madmen unwilling to receive admonition for children are ignorant and mad men in an errour concerning what is good or evill for themselves This
acts and words to acknowledge it than he that thinketh otherwise Yet is this external acknowledgement the same thing which we call Worship So this opinion fortifieth piety in both kinds externally and internally and therefore is far from destroying it And for Repentance which is nothing but a glad returning into the right way after the grief of being out of the way though the cause that made him go astray were necessary yet there is no â—…ason why he should not grieve and again though the cause â—…hy he returned into the way were necessary there remaines still the causes of joy So that the necessity of the actions taketh away neither of those parts of repentance grief for the errour nor joy for the returning And for Prayer whereas he saith that the necessity of things destroyes prayer I deny it For though prayer be none of the causes that moove Gods Will his Will being unchangeable yet since we find in Gods Word he will not give his blessings but to those that ask them the motive to prayer is the same Prayer is the gift of God no less than the blessings And the prayer is decreed together in the same decree wherein the blessing is decreed T is manifest that thanksgiving is no cause of the blessing past And that which is past is sure and necessary Yet even amongst men thanks is in use as an acknowledgement of the benefit past though we should expect no new benefit for our gratitude And prayer to God Almighty is but thanksgiving for his blessings in general and though it precede the particular thing we ask yet it is not a cause or means of it but a signification that we expect nothing but from God in such manner as he not as we will And our Saviour by word of mouth bids us pray Thy will not our will be done and by example teaches us the same for he prayed thus Father if it be thy will let this cup pass c. The end of prayer as of thanksgiving is not to move but to honour God Almighty in acknowledging that what we ask can be effected by him onely J. D. I Hope T. H. will be perswaded in time that it is not the Covetousness or Ambition or Sensuallity or Sloth or Prejudice of his Readers which renders this doctrine of absolute necessity dangerous but that it is in its own nature destructive to true godliness a And though his answer consist more of oppositions than of solutions yet I will not willingly leave one grain of his matter unweighed b First he erres in making inward piety to consist meerly in the estimation of the judgement If this were so what hinders but that the Devils should have as much inward piety as the best Christians for they esteem Gods power to be infinite and tremble Though inward piety do suppose the act of the understanding yet it consisteth properly in the act of the will being that branch of Justice which gives to God the honour which is due unto him Is there no Love due to God no Faith no Hope Secondly he erres in making inward piety to ascribe no glory to God but onely the glory of his Power or Omnipotence What shall become of all other the divine Attributes and particularly of his Goodness of his Truth of his Justice of his Mercy which beget a more true and sincere honour in the heart than greatness it self Magnos facile laudamus bonos lubenter Thirdly this opinion of absolute necessity destroyes the truth of God making him to command one thing openly and to necessitate another privately to chide a man for doing that which he hath determined him to do to profess one thing and to intend another It destroyes the goodness of God making him to be an hater of mankind and to delight in the torments of his creatures whereas the very doggs licked the sores of Lazarus in pitty and commiseration of him It destroyes the Justice of God making him to punish the creatures for that which was his own act which they had no more powerto shun than the fire hath power not to burn It destroyes the very power of God making him to be the true Author of all the defects and evils which are in the world These are the fruits of Impotence not of Omnipotence He who is the effective cause of sin either in himself or in the Creature is not Almighty There needs no other Devil in the world to raise jealousies and suspitions between God and his creatures or to poyson mankind with an apprehension that God doth not love them but onely this opinion which was the office of the Serpent Gen. 3. 5. Fourthly for the outward worship of God e How shall a man praise God for his goodness who believes him to be a greater Tyrant than ever was in the world who creates millions to burn eternally without their fault to express his power How shall a man hear the word of God with that reverence and devotion and faith which is requisite who believeth that God causeth his Gospel to be preached to the much greater part of Christians not with any intention that they should be converted and saved but meerly to harden their hearts and to make them inexcusable How shall a man receive the blessed Sacrament with comfort and confidence as a Seal of Gods love in Christ who believeth that so many millions are positively excluded from all fruit and benefit of the passions of Christ before they had done either good or evil How shall he prepare himself with care and conscience who apprehendeth that Eating and Drinking unworthily is not the cause of damnation but because God would damn a man therefore he necessitates him to eat and drink unworthily How shall a man make a free vow to God without grosse ridiculous hypocrisie who thinks he is able to pâ—rform nothing but as he is extrinsecally necessitated Fiftly for Repentance how shall a man condemn and accuse himself for his sins who thinks himself to be like a Watch which is wound up by God and that he can go neither longer nor shorter faster nor slower truer nor falser than he is ordered by God If God sets him right he goes right If God set him wrong he goes wrong How can a man be said to return into the right way who never was in any other way but that which God himself had chalked out for him What is his purpose to amend who is destitute of all power but as if a man should purpose to fly without wings or a beggar who hath not a groat in his purse purpose to build Hospitals We use to say admit one absurdity and a thousand will follow To maintain this unreasonable opinion of absolute necessity he is necessitated but it is hypothetically he might change his opinion if he would to deal with all ancient Writers as the Goths did with the Romans who destroyed all their magnificent works that there might remain no monument of their greatness upon
the face of the earth Therefore he will not leave so much as one of their opinions nor one of their definitions nay not one of their â—earms of Art standing f Observe what a description he hath given us here of Repentance It is a glad returning into the right way after the grief of being out of the way It amazed me to find gladness to be the first word in the description of Repentance His repentance is not that repentance nor his piety that piety nor his prayer that kind of prayer which the Church of God in all Ages hath acknowledged Fasting and Sackcloth and Ashes and Tears and Humi-cubations used to be companions of Repentance Joy may be a consequent of it not a part of it g It is a returning but whose act is this returning Is it Gods alone or doth the penitent person concur also freely with the grace of God If it be Gods alone then it is his repentance not mans repentance what need the penitent person trouble himself about it God will take care of his own work The Scriptures teach us otherwise that God expects our concurrence Revel 3. 19. Be zealous and repent behold I stand at the dore and knock If any man hear my voice and open the dore I will come into him It is a glad returning into the right way Why dare any man call that a wrong way which God himself hath determined He that willeth and doth that which God would have him to will and to do is never out of his right way It followes in his description after the grief c. It is true a man may grieve for that which is necessarily imposed upon him but he cannot grieve for it as a fault of his own if it never was in his power to shun it Suppose a Writing-master shall hold his Scholars hand in his and write with it the Scholars part is only to hold still his hand whether the Master write well or ill the Scholar hath no ground either of joy or sorrow as for himself no man will interpret it to be his act but his Masters It is no fault to be out of the right way if a man had not liberty to have kept himself in the way And so from Repentance he skips quite over New obedience to come to Prayer which is the last Religious duty insisted upon by me here But according to his use without either answering or mentioning what I say Which would have shewed him plainly what kind of prayer I intend not contemplative prayer in general as it includes thanksgiving but that most proper kind of prayer which we call Petition which used to be thus defined to be an act of Religion by which we desire of God something which we have not and hope that we shall obtain it by him Quite contrary to this T. H. tells us h that prayer is not a cause nor a meanes of Gods blessing but onely a signification that we expest it from him If he had told us onely that prayer is not a meritorious cause of Gods blessings as the poor man by begging an almes doth not deserve it I should have gone along with him But to tell us that it is not so much as a means to procure Gods blessing and yet with the same breath that God will not give his blessings but to those who pray who shall reconcile him to himself The Scriptures teach us otherwise Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my Name he will give it you John 16. 23. Ask and it shall be given you seek and ye shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you 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 chap. 5. 16. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much If it be effectual 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 wherewithal 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 cymbareliquit 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 â—adâ—m 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 execpt we pray is a motive to prayer Why talks he of motives who acknowledgeth no liberty nor admits 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 decrree 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 faithful in little I will make the ruler over much Too much light is an enemy to the sight and too much Law is an enemy to Justice I could wish we wrangled less about Gods Decrees until 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 bouâ—d 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 Commandements 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
difference between my words and his in the sense and meaning for in the one there is honour ascrihed to God and humility in him that prayeth but in the other presumption in him that prayeth and a detraction from the honour of God When I say Prayer is not a cause nor a meanes I take cause and meanes in one and the same sense affirming that God is not moved by any thing that we do but has alwaies one and the same eternal purpose to do the same things that from eternity he hath foreknown shall be done and me thinks there can be no doubt made thereof But the Bishop alledgeth 2 Cor. 1. 11. That St Paul was helped by their prayers and that the gift was bestowed upon them by their means and James 5. 16. The effectual and fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much In which places the words meanes effectual availeth do not signifie any causation for no man nor creature living can work any effect upon God in whom there is nothing that hath not been in him eternally heretofore nor that shall not be in him eternally hereafter but do signifie the order in which God hath placed mens prayers and his own blessings And not much after the Bishop himself saith Prayer works not upon God but us Therefore it is no cause of Gods Will in giving us his blessings but is properly a signe not a procuration of his favour The next thing he replieth to is that I make prayer to be a kind of thanksgiving to which he replies He might even as wel tell me that when a Beggar craves an Alms and when he gives thanks for it it is all one Why so Does not a Beggar move a man by his prayer and sometime worketh in him a compassion not without pain and as the Scripture calls it a yerning of the Bowels which is not so in God when we pray to him Our prayer to God is a duty it is not so to man Therefore though our prayers to man be distinguished from our thanks it is not necessary it should be so in our prayers and thanks to God Almighty To the rest of his Reply in this Number 15. there needs no further Answer J. D. FOourthly the order beauty and perfection of the world doth require that in the Universe should be Agents of all sorts some necessary some free 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 Numb 16. Arg. 4. Beauty and Perfection of the World requireth that in the Universe should be Agents of all sorts some necessary some free some contingent He that shall make all things nenessary or all things free or all things contingent doth overthrow the beauty and pefection 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 those 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 mâ—dum recipientis 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 formal 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 a 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 b Neither do I approve his definition of contingents though he say I concurre with him that they are such Agents as work we know not how For
innocent person that good may come of it And if his opinion of absolute necessity of all things were true the destinies of men could not be altered either by examples or fear of punishment Animadversions upon the Reply Numb XVII WHereas he had in his first discourse made this consequence If you take away Liberty you take away the very nature of evil and the formal reason of sin I denied that consequence It is true he who taketh away the Liberty of doing according to the will taketh away the nature of sin but he that denieth the Liberty to Will does not so But he supposing I understood him not will needs reduce his argument into form in this manner a That opinion which takes away the formal reason of sin and by consequence Sin â—t self is not to be approved This is granted But the opinion of necessity doth this This I deny He proves it thus This opinion makes sin to proceed essentially by way of Physicall determination from the first cause But whatsoever proceedes essentially by way of Physical determination from the first cause is Good and Just and Lawfull Therefore this opinion of necessity maketh sin to be very Good Just and Lawfull He might as well have concluded whatsoever man hath been made by God is a good and just man He observeth not that sin is not a thing really made Those things which at first were actions were not thâ—n sins though actions of the same nature with those which were afterwards sins nor was then the will to any thing a sin though it were a will to the same thing which in willing now we should sin Actions became sins then first when the commandement came for as St. Paul saith Without the Law sin is dead and sin being but a transgression of the Law there can be no action made sin but by the Law Therefore this opinion though it derive actions essentially from God it derives not sins essentially from him but relatively and by the Commandement And consequently the opinion of necessity taketh not away the nature of sin but necessitateth that action which the Law hath made sin And whereas I said the nature of sin consisteth in this that it is an action proceeding from our will and against the Law he alloweth it for true and therefore he must allow also that the formal reason of sin lieth not in the Liberty or necessity of willing but in the will it self necessary or unnecessary in relation to the Law And whereas he limits this truth which he allowed to this that the Law be just and the will a Free rational Will it serves to no purpose for I have shown before that no Law can be unjust And it seemeth to me that a rationall Will if it be not meant of a Will after deliberation whether he that deliberateth reasoneth aright or not signifieth nothing A rational man is rightly said but a rational Will in other sense then I have mentioned is insignificant b But supposing as he doth that the Law injoynes things impossible in themselves to be done then it is an unjust and Tyrannical Law and the transgression of it no sin c. And supposing likewise as he doth that the Will is inevitably determined by special influence from the first cause then it is not mans Will but Gods Will. He mistakes me in this For I say not the Law injoyns things impossible in themselves for so I should say it injoyned contradictories But I say the Law sometimes the Law-makers not knowing the secret necessities of things to come injoynes things made impossible by secret and extrinsicall causes from all eternity From this hâ—s error he infers that the Laws must be unjust and Tyrannical and the transgression of them no sin But he who holds that Laws can be unjust and Tyrannical will easily find pretence enough under any Government in the World to deny obedience to the Laws unlesse they be such as he himself maketh or adviseth to be made He says also that I suppose the will is inevitably determined by special influence from the first cause It is true saving that senselesse word Influence which I never used But his consequence then it is not mans Will but Gods will is not true for it may be the Will both of the one and of the other and yet not by concurrence as in a league but by subjection of the will of man to the Will of God c That which he adds of a Judge is altogether impertinent as to his defence Neither is a Civil Judge the proper Judge nor the Law of the Land a proper Rule of sin A Judge is to judge of voluntary crimes He has no commission to look into the secret causes that make it voluntary An because the Bishop had said the Law cannot justly punish a crime that proceedeth from necessity it was no impertinent answer to say the Judge lookes at no higher cause then the Will of the Doer And even this as hâ— sayeth is enough to proove that the Will of the Doer did determine it self freely and that the Malefactor had liberty to have kept the Law if he would To which I answer that it proves indeed that the Malefactor had Liberty to have kept the Law if hâ— would but it proveth not that he had the Liberty to have a Will to keep the Law Nor doth it prove that the Will of the Doer dâ—d determine it self freely for nothing can prove non-sence But here you see what the Bishop pâ—â—sueth in this whole Reply namely to prove that a man hath Liberty to do if he will which I deny not and thinks when he hath done that he hath proved a man hath Liberty to Will which he calles the Wills determining of it self freely And whereas he adds a Judge ought to look at all essential causes It is answer enough to say he is bound to look at no more then hee thinks he can see d Nature never intends the generation of a Monster If all the causes concur sufficiently a perfect creature is produced but by reason of the insufficiency or debility or contingent aberration of some of the causes sometimes a Monster is produced He had no sooner said this but finding his error he retracteth it and confesseth that the causes of a Monster were sufficient for the production of that which was produced that is of a Monster otherwise a Monster had not been produced Which is all that I intended by sufficiency of the cause But whether every suffâ—â—â—â—nt cause be a necessary cause or not he meaneth to examine in Numb 31. In the meane time he saith onely that Liberty flows from the sufficiency and contingency from the debility of the cause and leaves out necessity as if it came from neither I must note also that where he says Nature never intends the generation of a Monster I understand not whether by nature he meane the Author of Nature in which meaning it derogates from God or nature it self as
the Universal work of God and then it is absurd for the universe as one aggregate of things natural hath no intention His Doctrine that followeth concerning the generation of Monsters is not worth consideration therefore I leave it wholy to the Judgement of the Reader e Then he betakes himself to his old help that God may punish by right of omnipotence though there were no sin The question is not now what God may do but what God will do according to that Covenant which he hath made with Man Fac hoc vives Do this and thou shalt live T is plaine to let passe that he puts Punishment where I put Affliction making a true sentence false that if a man do this he shall live and he may do this if he will In this the Bishop and I disagree not This therefore is not the question but whether the will to do this or not to do this be in a mans own Election Whereas he adds He that wills not the death of a sinner doth much lesse Will the death of an innocent creature He had forgot for a while that both good and evil men are by the Will of God all mortall but presently corrects himself and says he means by Death Eternal torments that is to say eternal life but in torments To which I have answered once before in this Book and spoken much more amply in another Book to which the Bishop hath inclination to make an answer as appeareth by his Epistle to the Reader That which followeth to the end of this number hath been urged and answered already divers times I therefore passe it over J. D. BUT the Patrons of necessity being driven out of the Numb 18. plain field with reason have certain retreats or distinctions which they flye unto for refuge First they distinguish between Stoical necessity and Christian necessity between which they make a threefold difference First say they the Stoicks did subject Jupiter to destiny but but we subject destiny to God I answer that the Stoical and Christian destiny are one and the same fatum quasi effatum Jovis Hear Seneca Destiny is the necessity of all things and actions depending upon the disposition of Jupiter c. I add that the Stoicks left a greater liberty to Jupiter over destiny than these Stoicall Christians do to God over his decrees either for the beginnings of things as Euripides or for the progress of them as Chrysippus or at least of the circumstances of time and place as all of them generally So Virgil Sed trahere moras ducere c. So Osyris in Apuleius promiseth him to prolong his life Ultra fato constituta tempora beyond the times set down by the destinies Next they say that the Stoicks did hold an eternall flux and necessary connexion of causes but they believe that God doth act praeter contra naturam besides and against nature I answer that it is not much material whether they attribute necessity to God or to the Starrs or to a connexion of causes so as they establish necessity The former reasons do not only condemn the ground or foundation of necessity but much more necessity it self upon what ground soever Either they must run into this absurdity that the effect is determined the cause remaining undetermined or els hold such a necessary connexion of causes as the Stoicks did Lastly they say the Stoicks did take away liberty and contingence but they admit it I answer what liberty or contingence was it they admit but a titular liberty and an empty shadow of contingence who do profess stifly that all actions and events which either are or shall be cannot but be nor can be otherwise after any other manner in any other Place Time Number Order Measure nor to any other end than they are and that in respect of God determining them to one what a poor ridiculous liberty or contingence is this Secondly they distinguish between the first cause and the second causes they say that in respect of the second causes many things are free but in respect of the first cause all things are necessary This answer may be taken away two wayes First so contraries shall be true together The same thing 1. at the same time shall be determined to one and not determined to one the same thing at the same time must necessarily be and yet may not be Perhaps they will say not in the same respect But that which strikes at the root of this question is this If all the causes were onely collateral this exception might have some colour but where all the causes being joined together and subordinate one to another do make but one totall cause if any one cause much more the first in the whole series or subordination of causes be necessary it determines the rest and without doubt makes the effect necessary Necessity or Liberty is not to be esteemed from one cause but from all the causes joyned together If one link in a chain be fast it fastens all the rest Secondly I would have them tell me whether the second 2. causes be predetermined by the first cause or not If it be determined then the effect is necessary even in respect of the second causes If the second cause be not determined how is the effect determined the second cause remaining undetermined Nothing can give that to another which it hath not it self But say they nevertheless the power or faculty remaineth free True but not in order to the act if it be once determined It is free in sensu diviso but not in sensu composito when a man holds a bird fast in his hand is she therefore free to flie where she will because she hath wrings Or a man imprisoned or fettered is he therefore free to walk where he will because he hath feet and a loco-motive faculty Judge without prejudice what a miserable subterfuge is this which many men confide so much in T. H Certain distinctions which he supposing may be brought to his arguments are by him removed HE saith a man may perhaps answer that the necessity of things held by him is not a Stoical necessity but a Christian necessity c. but this dâ—stinction I have not used nor indeed have ever heard bâ—fore Nor do I think any man could make Stoical and Christian two kinds of necessitiâ—s though they may be two kinds of doctrin Nor have I drawn my answer to his arguments from the authority of any Sect but from the nature of the things themselves But here I must take notice of certain words of his in this place as making against his own Tenet where all the causes saith he being jâ—yned together and subordinate one to another do make but one totall cause If any one cause much more the first in the whole series of subordination of causes be necessary it determines the rest and without doubt maketh the effect necessary For that which I call the necessary cause of
any effect is the joyning togethâ—r of all causes subordinate to the first into one totall cause If any oâ—â— of those saith he especially the first produce its effect necessarily thâ—n all the rest are determined and the effect also necessary Now it is manifest that the first cause is a necessary cause oâ— all thâ— effects that are next and immediat to it and therefore by hâ—â— own reason all effects are necessary Nor is that distinction of necessary in respect of the first cause and necessary in respect of second causes mine It does as he well notâ—th imply a contradiction J. D. BEcause T. H. disavowes these two distinctions I have joyned them together in one paragraph He likes not the distinction of necessity or destiny into Stoicall and Christian no more do I. We agree in the conclusion but our motives are diverse My reason is because I acknowledg no such necessity either as the one or as the other and because I conceive that those Christian writers who do justly detest the naked destiny of the Stoicks as fearing to fall into those gross absurdities and pernicious consequences which flow from thence do yet privily though perhaps unwittingly under another form of expression introduce it again at the backdoor after they had openly cast it out at the foredoor But T H. rusheth boldly without distinctions which he accounts but Jargon and without foresight upon the grossest destiny of all others that is that of the Stoicks He confesseth that they may be tâ—o kinds of doctrine May be Nay they are without all peradventure And he himself is the first who beares the name of a Christian that I have read that hath raised this sleeping Ghost out of its grave and set it out in its true colours But yet he likes not the names of Stoicall and Christian destiny I do not blame him though he would not willingly be accounted a Stoick To admit the thing and quarrel about the name is to make our selves ridiculous Why might not I first call that kind of destiny which is maintained by Christians Christian destiny and that other maintained by Stoicks Stoicall destiny But I am not the inventer of the tearm If he had been as carefull in reading other mens opinions as he is confident in setting down his own he might have found not only the thing but the name it self often used But if the name of fotâ—m Christi num do offend him Let him call it with Lipsius â—atum verum who divides destiny into four kinds 1. Mathematicall or Astrological destiny 2. Natural destiny 3. Stoical or violent destiny and 4. true destiny which he calls ordinarily nostrum our destiny that is of Christians and fatum pium that is godly destiny and defines it just as T. H. doth his destiny to be a series or order of causes depending upon the divine Counsel de const l 1. cap. 17. 18. 19. Though he be more cautelous than T. H. to decline those rocks which some others have made shipwrack upon Yet the Divines thought he came too neer them as appears by his Epistle to the Reader in a later Edition And by that note in the margent of his twentieth Chapter Whatsoever I dispute here I submit to the judgment of the wise and being admonished I will convert it One may convince me of error but not of obstinacy So fearfull was he to overshoot himself and yet he maintained both true liberty and true contingency T. H. saith he hath not sucked his answer from any Sect And I say so much the worse It is better to be the disciple of an old Sect than the ring-leader of a new Concerning the other destinction of liberty in respect of the first cause and liberty in respect of the second causes though he will not see that which it concerned him to answer like those old Lamiae which could put out their eyes when they list As namely that the faculty of willing when it is determined in order to the act which is all the freedom that he acknowledgeth is but like the freedom of a bird when she is first in a mans hand c. Yet he hath espied another thing wherein I contradict my self because I affirm that if any one cause in the whole series of causes much more the first cause be necessary it determineth the â—est But saith he it is manifest that the first cause is a necessary cause of all the effects that are next I am glad yet it is not I who contradict my self but it is some of his manifest truths which I contradict That the first cause is a necessary cause of all effects which I say is a manifest falshood Those things which God wills 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 Angels to the succour of Christ but he did not Matth. 26. 53. God can make T. H. live the yeers 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 immanent 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 Animadversions upon the Reply Numb XVIII THE Bishop supposing I had taken my opinion from the Authority of the Stoick Philosophers not from my own Meditation falleth into dispute against the Stoicks whereof I might if I pleas'd take no notice but passe over to Number 19. But that he may know I have considered their doctrine concerning Fate I think fit to say thus much that their error consisteth not in the opinion of Fate but in faigning of a false God When therefore they say Fatum est effatum Jovis They say no more but that Fate is the word of Jupiter If they had said it had been the Word of the true God I should not have perceived any thing in it to contradict because I hold as most Christians do that the whole world was made and is now Governed by the Word of God which bringeth a necessity of all things and actions to depend upon the divine disposition Nor do I see cause to find fault with that as he does which is said by
Against those that are Scholastical onely I do and may inveigh But against those that are Scholastical and Sapiential also I do not inveigh Likewise some Doctors of the Church as Suarez Johannes à Duns and their imitators to breed in men such opinions as the Church of Rome thought sutable to their interest did â—rite such things as neither other men nor themselves understood These I confesse I have a little sleighted Other Docters of the Church as Martin Luther Philip Melancthon John Calvin William Perkins and others that did write their sense clearly I never sleighted but alwayes very much reverenced and admired Wherein then lieth my presumption if it be because I am a private man let the Bishop also take heed he contradict not some of those whom the World worthily esteemes least he also for he is a private man be taxed of presumption h What then must the Logicians lay aside their first and second intentions their Abstracts and Concrets c. Must the Moral Philosopher quit his means and extreames his Principia congenita aquisita his liberty of contradiction and contrariety his necessity absolute and Hypothetical c. Must the Natural Philosopher give over his intentional species c. Because they do not relish with T. H. his Palate I confesse that among the Logicians Barbara Celarent Darii Ferio c. are termes of Art But if the Bishop thing that words of first and second intention that Abstract Concret that Subjects Predicates Moods Figures Method Synthetique Analytique Fallacies of Composition and Division be terms of Art I am not of his opinion For these are no more terms of Art in Logick then Lines Figures Squares Triangles c. in the Mathematicks Barbara Celarent and the rest that follow are terms of Art invented for the easier Apprehension of youngmen and are by youngmen understood But the terms of the School with which I have found fault have been invented to blind the understanding and cannot be understood by those that intend to learn Divinity And to his question whether the Moral Philosopher must quit his means and extreams I answer that though they are not terms of Art he ought to quite them when they cannot be understood and when they can to use them rightly And therefore though means and extreams be terms intelligible yet I would have them quit the placing of vertue in the one and of vice in the other But for his liberty of contradiction contrariety his necessity absolute Hypothetical if any moral Philosopher ever used them then away with them they serve for nothing but to seduce young Students In like manner let the natural Philosopher no more mention his intentional Species his understanding Agent and Patient his Receptive and Eductive power of the matter his qualities infusae or influxae Symbolae or Dissymbolae his Temperament ad pondus and ad justitiam He may keep his parts Homogeneous and Heterogeneous but his Sympathies and Antipathies his Antiperistasis and the like names of excuses rather then of causes I would have him â—â—ing away And for the Astrologer unlesse he means Astronomer I would have him throw away his whole trade but if he mean Astronomer then the terms of Apogaeum and Perigaeum Artique Antartique Aequator Zodiack Zenith Meridian Horizon Zones c. are no more terms of Art in Astronomy then a Saw or a Hatchet in the Art of a Carpenter He cites no terms of Art for Geometry I was afraid he would have put Lines or perhaps Equality or Inequality for terms of Art So that now I know not what be those terms he thinks I would cast away in Geometry And lastly for his Metaphysician I would have him quit both his terms and his Profession as being in truth as Plutarch saith in the beginning of the life of Alexander the Great not at all profitable to learning but made onely for an essay to the learner and the Divine to use no word in preaching but such as his Auditors nor in writing but such as a common Reader may understand And all this not for the pleasing of my Palate but for the promotion of truth i 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 Ecclesiastical Doctors to whom Gods blessing is derived by imposition of hands so as not to be deceived in necessary truths c. There he attributes too much to them here he attributeth too little both there and here he takes too much upon him The Spirits of the Prophets are subject to the Prophets He thinks he hath a great advantage against me from my own words in my Book de Cive which he would not have thought if he had understood them The knowledge of good and evill is Iudicature which in Latin is cognitio causarum not Scientia Every private man may do his best to attain a knowledge of what is good and evill in the action he is to do but to judge of what is good and evill in others belongs not to him but to those whom the Soveraign Power appointeth thereunto But the Bishop not understanding or forgetting that Cognoscere is to judg as Adam did of Gods commandement hath cited this place to little purpose And for the infallibility of the Ecclesiastical Doctors by me attributed to them it is not that they cannot be deceaved but that a subject cannot he deceived in obeying them when they are our lawfully constituted Doctors For the supreme Ecclesiastical Doctor is he that hath the supreme Power and in obeying him no subject can be deceived because thy are by God himself commanded to obey him And what the Ecclesiastical Doctors lawfully constituted do tell us to be necessary in point of Religion the same is told us by the Soveraign Power And therefore though we may be deceaved by them in the beleef of an opinion we can not be deceived by them in the duty of our Actions And this is all that I ascribe to the Ecclesiastical Doctors If they think it too much let them take upon them lesse Too little they cannot say it is who take it as it is for a Burthen And for them who seek it as a wordly preferment it is too much I take he says too much upon me Why so Because The Spirits of the Prophets are subject to the Prophets This is it that he finds fault with in me when he says I am a private man that is to say no Prophet that is to say no Bishop By which it is manifest that the Bishop subjectâ—th not his Spirit but to the Convocation of Bishops I admit that every man eught to subject his Spirit to the Prophets But a Prophet is he that speaketh unto us from God which I acknowledgement to do but him that hath
is in our own power True saith he but then the contrary habit doth necessitate the onâ— way as well as the former habit did the other way By which very consideration it appears 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 Again he mistakes for I said that Prayer Fasting c. when they alter our habits do necessarily cause the contrary habits which is not to say that the habit necessitates but is necessitated But this is Common with him to make me say that which out of readinâ— nâ—t out of Meditation he useth to say hiâ—â—â—â— Bâ—t how doth it apâ—â—ar that Prayer and Fasting c. make but a Proclivity in men to do what they do for if it â—ere but a Proclivity then what they do they do not Therefore they either necessitate the Will or the Will followeth nâ—t I contend for the truth of this onely that when the Wâ—ll followeth them they necessitate the will and when a â—râ—climity followeth they necessitate the proclimity But the Bishop thinâ—s I maintain that that also is produced necessiarily which is not produced at aâ— d He adds that we are not moved to Prayer or any other Action but by outward objects as pioâ—s company and Godly Preachers or something equivalent Wherein are two other mistakeâ— 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 Wâ—l is moved by it self c. The first mistake he urgeth that I call Preachers and company objects Is not the Preacher to the hearer the object of his hearing No perhaps he will say it is the voyce which is the object and that we hear not the Preacher but his voyce as before he said the object of sight was not the cause of sight I must therefore once more make him smile with a great Paradox which is this that in all thâ— senses he Object is the Agent And that it is when we hear a Preacher the Preacher that we hear and that his voyce is the same thing with the hearing and a fancy in the hearer though the motion oâ— the Lips and other organs of speâ—ch be his that speaketh But of this I have written more largely in a moâ—e proper place My second mistake in affirming that the Will is not moved but by outward objects is a mistake of his own For I said not the Will is not moved but we ate not moved for I alwayes avoid attributing motion to any thing but Body The Will is produced generated formed and created in suâ—h â—ort as accidents are effected in a corpâ—real subject but moved it cannot be because it goeth not â—rom place to place And whereas hâ— saith the Will is moved by it self if he had spoken properly as he ought to do and said the Will is made or created by it self he would presently have acknowledged that it was impossible So that it is not without cause men use improper Language when they mean to keep their errours from being detected And because nothing can move that is not it self moved it is untruly said that either the Will or any thing else is moved by it self by the understanding by the sensitive passions or by Acts or habits or that Acts or habits are infused by God for infusion is motion and nothing is moved but bodys e He answers that I prove Ulysses was not necessitated to weep nor the Philosopher to strik but I do not prove that they were not necessitated to forbear He saith true I am not now proving but answering By his favour though he be answering now he was proving then And what he answers now maketh nothing more toward a proof then was before For these words the rational Wil hath Power to sleight the most appetible objects and to controle the most unruly passions are no more being reduced into proper terms then this the appetite hath power to be without appetite towards most appetible objects and to Will contrary to the most unruly Will which is Jargon f He objects that Liberty is in no danger but to be lost but I say it cannot be lost therefore he inferrs that it is in no danger at all I answer First that Liberty is in more danger to be abused then lost c. Secondly Liberty is in danger likewise to be weakened by vicâ—ous habits Thirdly it may be totally lost It is true that a man hath more liberty one time then another and in one place then another which is a difference of liberty 〈◊〉 to the Body But as to the liberty of doing what we will in those things we are able to do it cannot be greater one time then another Consequently outward objects can 〈◊〉 wayes endanger liberty further then it destroyeth it And his answer that liberty is in more danger to be abused then lost is not to the question but a meer shift to be thought not silenced And whereas he says liberty is diminished by vitious habits it cannot be understood otherwise then that vicious habits make a man the lesse free to do vicious actions which I believe is not his meaning And lastly whereas he says that Liberty is lost when reason is lost and that they who by expresse of Study or by continuall gurmandising or by extravagant passion c. do become sots have consequently lost their liberty it requireth proof for for any thing that I can observe mad men and fools have the same liberty that other men have in those things that are in their power to do J. D. FOurthly the natural Philosopher doth teach that the will Num. 23. 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 mâ—liora 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 temporal loss Next I do not believe that a man is bound to weigh the expedience or inexpedience of every ordinary trivial 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 seems to me to be a prostitution of reason to petit observations as concerning every rag that a man wears each drop of drink each morsel of bread that he eates
Liberty of Wil consists with Gods eternal Prescience and Decrees yet he ought to adhere to that truth which is manifest But why should he adhere to it unlesse it be manifest to himself And if it be manifest to himself why does he deny that he is able to comprehend it And if he be not able to comprehend it how knows he that it is domonstrable Or why says he that so confidently which he does not know Me thinks that which I have said namely that that which God foreknows shall be hereafter cannot but be hereafter and at the same time that he foreknew it should be But that which cannot but be is necessary Therefore what God foreknows shall be necessarily and at the time foreknown This I say looketh somewhat liker to a demonstration than any thing that he hath hitherto brought to prove Free Wil. Another reason why I should be of his opinion is that he is in possession of an old truth derived to him by inheritance or succession from his Ancestors To which I answer first that I am in possession of a truth derived to me from the light of reason Secondly that whereas he knoweth not whether it be the truth that he possesseth or not because he confesseth he knows not how it can consist with Gods Prescience and Decrees I have sufficiently shewn that my opinion of necessity not onely agrees with but necessirily followeth from the eternal Prescience and Decrees of God Besides it is an unhansome thing for a man to derive his opinion concerning truth by succession from his Ancestors For our Ancestors the first Christians derived not therefore their truth from the Gentils because they were their Ancestors c To passe by all the other great imperfections which are to be found in this Sorite it is just like that old Sophistical piece he that drinks well sleeps well he that sleeps well thinks no hurt he that thinks no hurt lives well therefore he that drinks well lives well My argument was thus Election is alwayes from the Memory of good and evil sequels Memory is alway from the Sense and Sense alwayes from the Action of external bodys and all Action from God therefore all Actions even of Free and Voluntary Agents are from God and consequently necessary Let the Bishop compare now his scurrilous Argumentation with this of mine and tell me whether he that sleeps well doth all his life time think no hurt d In the very last passage of my discourse I proposed my own private opinion how it might be made appear that the eternal Prescience and Decrees of God are consistent with true liberty and contingency c. If he had meant by Liberty as other men do the Liberty of Action that is of things which are in his power to doe which he will it had been an easie matter to reconcile it with the Prescience and Decrees of God But meaning the Liberty of Wil it was impossible So likewise if by contingency he had meant simply comming to passe it had been reconcilable with the Decrees of God but meaning comming to passe without necessity it was impossible And therefore though it be true he says that he set it down in as plain terms as he could yet it was impossible to set it down in plain terms Nor â—ought he to charge me with misunderstanding him and wresting his words to a wrong sense For the truth is I did not understand them at all nor thought he understood them himself but was willing to give them the best imterpretation they would bear which he calls wresting them to a wrong sense And first I understood not what he meant by the Aspect of God For if he had meant his foreknowledge which word he had often used before what needed he in this one place onely to call it Aspect Or what need he here call it his View Or say that all things are open to the eyes of God not discursively but intuitively which is to expound Eyes in that Text Hebr. 4. 11. not figuratively but litteraâ—ly neverthâ—lâ—sse excluding external Species which the School-men say are the cause of seeing But it wat well done to exclude such insignificant speeches upon every occasion whatsoever And though I do not hold the foreknowledge of God to consist in Discourse yet I shall be never driven to say it is by Intuition as long as I know that even a man hath foreknowledge of all those things which he intendeth himself to do not by discourse but by knowing his own purpose saving that man hath a superiour power over him that can change his purpose which God hath not And whereas he says I confound this Aspect with the Wil and Decrees of Godâ— â—he 〈◊〉 wrongifully For how could I so confound it when I understood not what it meant e Secondly he chargeth me that hitherto I have maintained that Liberty and the Decrees of God are â—rreconcileable and the reason why I do so is because he maintained that Liberty and the absolute necessity of all things are â—rreconcileable If Liberty cannot stand with necessity it cannot stand with the Decrees of God of which Decrees necessity is a Consequent I needed not to say nor did say that Necessity and Gods Decrees are all one though if I had said it it had not been without Authority of learned men in whose writings are often found this sentence Voluntas Dei Necessitas rerum f But to cut his Argument short God hath Decreed all effects which come to passe in time yet not all after the same manner but according to the distinct natures capacities and conditions of his creatures which he doth not destroy by his Decree Some he acteth Hitherto true then he addeth with some he cooperateth by special influence and some he onely permitteth Yet this is no idle or bare permission This is false For nothing operateth by its own original power but God himself Man operateth not but by special power I say special power not special influence derived from God Nor is it by Gods permission onely as I have often already shown and as the Bishop here contradicting his former words confesseth for to permit onely and barely to permit signifie the same thing And that which he says that God concurs by way of general influence is Jargon For every concurrence is one singular and individual concurrence and nothing in the World is general but the signification of words and other signs g Thirdly he chargeth me that I allow all men to be of his opinion save onely those that conceive in their minds a Nunc stans or how eternity is an indivisible point rather then an everlasting succession But I have given no such allowance Surely if the reason wherefore my opinion is false proceed from this that I conceive not eternity to be Nunc stans but an everlasting succession I am allowed to hold my opinion till I can conceive eternity otherwise at least he allows men not till then to be of his
there be none In that which followeth he undertaketh to make his doctrine more expressly understood by considering the Act of the will three ways In respect of its nature in respect of its Exercise and in respect of its object For the nature of the Act be saith that That which the will wills is necessarily volunrary and that in this sense he grants it is out of controversy that the will is a necessary cause of voluntary Actions Instead of that which the will wills to make it sense read that which the man wills and then if the mans will be as he confesseth a necessary cause of voluntary Actions it is no lesse a necessary cause that they are Actions then that they are voluntary For the Exercise of the Act he saith that the will may either will or suspend its Act This is the old canting which hath already been sufficiently detected But to make it somewhat let us reade it thus the man that willeth may either will or suspend his will and thus it is intelligible but false for how can he that willeth at the same time suspend his will And for the object he says that it is not necessary but Free c. His reason is because he says it was not necessary for example in choosing a Pope to choose him this or that day or to chuse this or that man I would be glad to know by what Argument â—e can prove the Election not to have been necessitated For it is not enough for him to say I perceive no necessity in it nor to say they might have chosen another because he knows not whether they might or not nor to say if he had not been freely elected the Election had been void or none For though that be true it does not follow that the Election was not necessary for there is no repugnance to necessity either in Election or in Freedome And whereas he concludeth therefore voluntary Acts in particular are not necessitated I would have been glad he had set down what voluntary Acts there are not particular which by his restriction of voluntary Acts he grants to be necessitated T. H. SEventhly I hold that to be a sufficient cause to which nothing Num. 31. is wanting that is needful 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 needful 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 else it had not been And therefore also voluntary actions are necessitated J. D. THis section contains 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 several causes singly considered may be insufficient and the same taken conjointly be sufficient to produce an effect As a 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 b Secondly a cause may be said to be sufficient either because 2. it produceth that effect which is intended as in the generation of a man or else 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 follows 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 concerns this question of Liberty from necessity most neerly is That c a cause is said to be sufficient 3. in respect of the ability of it to act not in respect of its will to act The concurrence of the will is needful 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 Physician though he will not administer to every patient For as much therefore as the concurrence of the will is needful to the production of every free effect and yet the cause may be sufficient in sensu-divi'so although the will do not concur it followes evidently that the cause may be sufficient and yet something which is needful 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 hypothetical which may consist with liberty Animadversions upon the Answer to Numb XXXI IN this place he disputeth against my definition of a sufficient cause namely that cause to which nothing is wanting needfull to the producing of the effect I thought this definition could have been mistiked by no man that had English enough to
know that a sufficient cause and cause enough signifieth the same thing And no man wil say that that is cause enough to produce an effect to which any thing is wanting needful to the producing of it But the Bishop thinks if he set down what he understands by sufficient it would serve to confute my definition And therefore says a Two Horses joyntly 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 it be necessary they shall be joyned and that the owner of the Horses will let them draw and that the Smith hath not lamed them and they be not resty and list not to draw but when they list otherwise the effect is contingent It seems the Bishop thinks two Horses may be sufficient to draw a Coach though they will not draw or though they be lame or though they be never put to draw and I think they can never produce the effect of drawing without those needful circumstances of being strong obedient and having the Coach some way or other fastened to them He calls it a sufficient cause of drawing that they be Coach hoâ—ses though they be lame or wiâ—â— not draw But I say they are not sufficient absolutely but conditionally if they be not lame nor resty Lâ—t the read r judge whether my sufficient cause or his may properly be called cause enough b 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 else 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 latter a weak and insufficient cause In these few lines he hath said the cause of the generation of a Monster is sufficient to produce a Monster and that it is insufficient to produce a Monster How sooâ— may a man forget his words that doth nâ—t understand theâ—â— This term of insufficient cause which also the School calls Deficient that they may rime to efficient is not inteâ—â—eâ—ible but a word devised like Hocus Pocus to juggle a difficulty out of sight That which is sufficient to produce a Monster is not therefore to be called an insufficient cause to produce a mâ—n no more then that which is sufficient to produce a man is to be called an insufficient cause to produce a Monster c Thirdly a cause is said to be sufficient in respect of the ability of it to act not in respect of its will to act c. As God is sufficient to produce a thousand Worlds He understands little whâ—n â—en say God is sufficient to produce many worlds if he understand not the meaning to be that he is sufficient to prodâ—ce them if he will Without this sâ—pposition It he will a man is not sufficient to produce any voluntary action not so much as to walk though he be inhâ—alth and at Liberty The will is as much a sufficient cause without the strength to do as the strength without the Wil To that which he adds that my Definition is a meer trifling between a sufficiency in a divided sense and a sufficiency in a compounded sense I can make no answer because I understand no more what he means by sufficiency in a divided sense and sufficiency in a compounded sense then if he had said sufficiency in a divided non-sense and sufficiency in a compounded non-sense T. H. LAstly I hold that the ordinary definition of a free Agent namely Num. 32. that a free Agent is that which when all things are present which are needful 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 concerns 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 which is given by the much greater part of Philosophers and School-men And doth he think that all these spake non-sense or had no more judgment than to contradict themselves in a definition He might much better suspect himself than censure so many Let us see the definition iâ— self A free Agent is that which when all things are present that are needful to produce the effect can nevertheless not produce it I acknowledge the old definition of Liberty with little variation But I cannot see this non-sense nor discover this contradiction For a in these words all things needfull or all things requisite the actual determination of the will is not included But by all things needful or requisite all necessary power either operative or elective all necessary instruments and adjuments extrinsecall and intrinsecall and all conditions are intended As he that hath pen and ink and paper a table a desk and leisure the art of writing and the free use of his hand hath all things requisite to write if he will and yet he may forbear if he will Or as he that hath men and mony and arms and munition and ships and a just cause hath all things requisite for war yet he may make peace if he will Or as the King proclaimed in the Gospel Matth. 2â— 4. â— hâ—ve prepared my dinner my oxen and my fatlings are killed all things are ready come unto the marriage According to T. H his doctrine the guests might have told him that he said not truly for their own wills were not readâ— b And indeed if the will were as he conceives it is necessitated extrinsecally to every act of willing if it had no power to forbear willing what it doth will nor to will what it doth not will then if the will were wanting something requisite to the producing of the effect was wanting But now when Science and conscience reason and Religion our own and other mens experience doth teach us that the will hath a dominion over its own acts to will or nill without extrinsecal necessitation if the power to will be present in actâ— primo determinable by our selves then there is no necessary power wanting in this respect to the producing of the effect Secondly these words â—o act or not to act to wâ—rk or not to work to produce or nâ—t to produce have reference to the effect not as a thing which
is already done or doing but as a thing â—o be done They imply not the actual production but the producibility of the effect But when once the will hath actually concurred with all other causes and conditions and circumstances then the effect is no more possible or producible but it is in being and actually produced Thus he takes away the subject of the question The question is whether effects producible be free from necessity He shuffles out effects producible and thrusts in their places effects produced or which are in the act of production Wherefore I conclude that it is neither non sense nor contradiction to say that a free Agent when all things requisite to produce the effect are present may nevertheless not produce it Animadversions upon the Answer to Numb XXXII THe question is here whether these words a free Agent is that which when all things needfull to the production of the effect are present can nevertheless not produce it â—â—mply a contradiction as I say it does To make it appear no contradiction he saith a In these words all things needful or all things requisite the actual determination of the Will is not included as if the Will were not needful nor requisite to the producing of a voluntary Action For to the production of any Act whatsoever there is needful not onely those things which proceed from the Agent but also those that consist in the disposition of the patient And to use his own instance it is necessary to writing not onely that there be pâ—n ink paper c. but also a will to write He that hath the former hath all things requisite to write if he will but not all things necessary to writing And so in his other instances he that hath men and money c. without that which he putteth in for a requisite hath all things requisite to make War if he Will but not simply to make War And he in the Gospel that had prepared his Dinner had all things requisite for his guests if they came but not all things requisite to make them come And therefore all things requisite is a term ill defined by him b And indeed if the will were as he conceives it is necessitated extrinsecally to every act of willing if it had no power to forbear willing what it doth will nor to will what it does not will then if the will were wanting something requisite to the produceing of the effect were wanting But now when Science and Conscience Reason and Religion our own and other mens experience doth teach us that the Will hath a Dominion over its own Acts to Will or Nill without extrinsecal necessitation if the power to will be present in actu primo determinable by our selves then there is no necessary power wanting in this respect to the producing of the effect These words the will hath power to forbear willing what it doth will and these the Wil hath a Dominion over its own Acts and these the power to Will is present in actu primo determinable by our selves are as wild as ever were any spoken with in the Walls of Bedlam and if Science Conscience Reason and Religion teach us to speak thus they make us mad And that which followeth is false to Act or not to Act to work or not to work to produce or not to produce have reference to the effect not as a thing which is already done or doing but as a thing to be done For to act to work to produce are the same thing with to be doing It is not the act but the power that hath reference to the future for act and power differ in nothing but in this that the former signifieth the time present the latter the time to come And whereas he adds that I shuffle out effects producible and thrust into their places effects produced I must take it for an untruth till he cite the place wherein I have done so T. H. FOr my first five points where it is explicated First what Num. 33. Spontaneity is Secondly what Deliberation is Thirdly what Will Propension and Appetite is Fourthly what a free Agent is Fiftly what Liberty is There can be no other proof offered but every mans own experience by reflecting on himself and remembring what he useth to have in his mind that is what he himself meaneth when he saith an action is spontaneous A man deliberates such is his will That Agent or that action is free Now he that so reflecteth on himself cannot but be satisfied that deliberation is the considering of the good and evil sequells of the action to come That by Spontaneity is meant inconsiderate proceeding for else nothing is meant by it That will is the last act of our Deliberation That a free Agent is he that can do if he will and forbear if he will And that Liberty is the absence of externall impediments But to those that out of custome speak not what they conceive but what they hear and are not able or will not take the pains to consider what they think when they hear such words no argument can be sufficient because experience and matter of fact is not verified by other mens Arguments but by every mâ—ns own sense and memory For example how can it be prooved that to love a thing and to think it good are all one to a man that does not mark his own meaning by those words Or how can it be prooved that Eternity is not nunc Stans to a man that sayes these words by câ—stoâ—â—e and never considers how he can conceive the thing it self in his mind Also the sixt point that a man cannot imagine any thing to begin without a cause can no other way be made known but by trying how he can imagine it But if he try he shall find as much reason if there be no cause of the thing to conceive it should begin at one time as another that is he hath equall reason to think it should begin at all times which is impossible And therefore he must think there was some special cause why it began then rather than sooner or later or else that it began never but was Eternal J. D. NOw at length he comes to his main proofs He that hath so confidently censured the whole current of Schoolmen and Philosophers of non-sense had need to produce strong evidence for himself So he calls his reasons Numb 36. demonstrative proofs All demonstrations are either from the cause or the effect not fâ—om private notions and conceptions which we have in our minds That which he calls a demonstration deserves not the name of an intimation He argues thus That which a man conceives in his mind by these words Spontaneity Deliberation c. that they are This is his proposition which I deny a The true natures of things are not to be judged by the private ideas or conceptions of men but by their causes and formal reasons Ask an ordinary person what upwards
which no man that hath his eyes in his head can dâ—â—bt oâ— g If all this will not satisfie him I will give one of his own kind of proofs that is an instance That which necessitates all things according to T. H. is the decree of God or that order which is set to all things by the eternal cause Numb 11. Now God himself who made this necessitating decree was not subjected to it in the making thereof neither was there any former order to oblige the first cause necessarily to make such a decree therefore this decree being an act ad extra was freely made by God without any necessitation Yet nevertheless this disjunctive proposition is necessarily true Either God did make such a decree or he did not make such a decree Again though T. H. his opinion were true that all events are necessary and that the whole Christian world are deccived who believe that some events are free from necessity yet he will not deny but if it had been the good pleasure of God he might have made some causes free from necessity seeing that it neither argues any imperfection nor implies any contradiction Supposing therefore that God had made some second causes free from any such antecedent determination to one yet the former disjunction would be necessarily true Either this free undetermined cause will act after this manner or it will not act after this manner Wherefore the necessary truth of such a disjunctive proposition doth not prove that either of the members of the disjunction singly considered is determinately true in present but onely that the one of them will be determinately true to morrow Animadversions upon the Answer to Numb XXXIV a HIs former proof that all sufficient causes are necessary causes is answered before Numb 31. When he shall have read my Animadversions upon that Answer of his he will think otherwise whatsoever he will confesse b And his two instances of casting Ambs-ace and of raining to morrow are altogether impertinent to the question for two reasons His first reason is because he saith our present controversy is concerning free actions which proceed from the Liberty of mans Will and both his instances are of contingent actions which proceed from the indetermination or contingent concurrence of natural causes He knows that this part of my discourse which beginneth at Numb 25. is no dispute with him at all but a bare seâ—ting down of my opinion concerning the natural necessity of all things which is opposite not onely to the Liberty of Will but also to all contingence that is not necessary And therefore these instances were not impertinent to my purpose and if they be impertinent to his opinion of the Liberty of mans Will he does impertinently to meddle with them And yet for all he pretends here that the question is onely ab ut Liberty of the Will Yet in his first discourse Number the 16. he maintains that the order beauty and perfection of the world doth require that in the Universe should be Agents of all sorts some necessary some Free some contingent And my purpose here is to shew by those instances that those things which we esteem most contingent are neverthelesse necessary Besides the controversy is not whether free actions which proceed from the Liberty of mans Will be necessary or not for I know no action which proceedeth from the Liberty of mans Will But the question is whether those actions which proceed from the mans Will be necessary The mans Will is something but the Liberty of his Will is nothing Again the question is not whether contingent actions which proceed from the indetermination or contingent concurrence of natural causes for there is nothing that can proceed from indetermination but whether contingent actions be necessary before they be done or whether the concurrence of natural causes when they happen to concur were not necessitated so to happen or whether whatsoever chanceth be not necessitated so to chance And that they are so necessitated I have proved already with such arguments as the Bishop for ought I see cannot answer For to say as he doth 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 is no proof 'T is indeed as cleer as the Sun that there are free actions proceeding from Election but that there is Election without any outward necessitation is dark enough c Secondly for mixt actions which proceed from the concurrence of free and natural Agents though they be not free yet they are not necessary c. For proof of this he instanceth in a Tile that falling from an house breaks a mans head neither necessarily nor freely and therefore contingently Not necessarily for saith he he did freely choose to go that way without any necessitation Which is as much as taking the question it self for a proof For what is else the question but whether a man be necessitated to choose what he chooseth Again saith he it was not Free because he did not deliberate whether his head should be broken or not and conâ—ludes therefore it was contingent and by undoubted consequence there are contingent actions in the world which are not free This is true and denied by none but he should have proved that such contingent actions are not antecedently necessary by a concurrence of natural causes though a little before he granteth they are For whatsoever is produced by concurrence of natural causes was antecedently determined in the cause of such concurrence though as he calls it contingent concurrence not perceiving that concurrence and contingent concurrence are all one and suppose a continued connection and succession of causes which make the effect necessarily future So that hitherto he hath proved no other contingence then that which is necessary d Thirdly for the actions of brute beasts c. To think each animal motion of theirs is bound by the chain of unalterable necessity I see no ground for it It maketh nothing against the truth that he sees no ground for it I have pointed out the ground in my former discourse and am not bound to find him eyes He himself immediately citeth a place of Scripture that proveth it where Christ saith one of these sparrows doth not fall to the ground without your heavenly father which place if there were nâ— more were a sufficient ground for the assertion of tâ—e necessity of all those changes of animal motion in birds and other living creatures which seem to us so uncertain But when a man is dizzy with influence of power elicite acts permissive will Hypothetical necessity and the like unintelligible terms the ground goes from him By and by after he confesseth that many things are called contingent in respect of us because we know not the cause oâ— tâ—em which really and in themselves are not contingent bu necessary and errâ— therein the other way for he says in effect that
no good by fight 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. knows the comparison so we take our own errours to be truths and other mens truths to be errours b 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 in 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 and Goodness and Truth such an errour as renders men more devour 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 perswades us too much to our loss But let us see what is the imaginary cause of our 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 Immortal Independent Or by attributing 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 c 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 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 injustice 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 original 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 Eternal Decrees with as much confidence as if they had been all their lives of his cabinet councel 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 â—olech 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 pitiful cries from the ears of their Parents So d they make a noise with their declamations against those who dare dispute of the Nature of God that is who dare set forth â—â—s Justice and his goodness and his truth and his Philanthropy onely to deaf the ears and dim the eyes of the Christian world lest they should hear the lamentable ejulations and howlings or see that rueful spectacle of millions of souls tormented for evermore e 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 oâ— all consolation f This is life eternal saith our Saviour to know the onely true God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent Joh. 17. 3. Pure Religion and und filed 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 Sâ— James Jam. 1. 27. Fear God and keâ—p his Commandments for this 〈◊〉 the whole duty of man saith Solomon â—câ—les 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 honouâ— both in attributes and â—â—â—ions 〈◊〉 they in their several Lieutenancâ—â—â— shaâ— ordain That is to say â—e 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 ears that I should have missed his meaning but that I consulted with his Book De Civ c. 15. Sect. 16. and c. 17. Sect. 28. What if the Magistrate shall be no Christiam 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 Laws 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 colimus omnes Aeternum colemus Principem dierum Factorem Dominumque Galieni Animadversions upon the Answer to the Postscript Numb XXXVIII HE taketh it ill that I say that Arguments do seldome work on men of wit and learning when they have once engaged themselves in a contrary opinion Neverthelesse it is not onely certain by experience but also there is reason for it and that grounded upon the natural disposition of mankind For it is natural to all men to defend those opinions which they have once publickly engaged themselves to maintain because to have that detected for errour which they have publickly maintained for truth is never without some dishonour more or lesse and to find in themselves that they have spent a great
opinions when they are taught as they are often in Divinity Books and from the Pulpit I could hardly guesse but that I remember that there have been Books written to intitle the Bishops to a Divine right underived from the civil Soveraign But because he maketh it so â—aynous a matter that the supreme civil Magistrate should be Christs Lieutenant upon earth let us suppose that a Bishop or a Synode of Bishops should be set up which I hope never shall for our civil Soveraign then that which he objecteth here I could object in the same words against himself For I could say in his oâ—n words This is life eternal to know the onely true God and Jesus Christ Joh. 17. 3. Pure Religion and undefiled before God is this to visit the Fatherless c. James 1. 27. Fear God and keep his Commandments Eccles. 12. 13. But the Bishop hath found a more compendious way to Heaven namely that true Religion consisteth in obedience to Christs Lieutenants that is now by supposition to the Bishops That is to say that every Christian of what nation soever coming into the Country which the Bishopâ— governe should be of their Religion He would make the civil Magistrate to be Christs Lieutenant upon earth for matters of Religion and supreme Judge in all controversies and say they ought to be obeyed by al how strange soever and uncouth it seem to him now the Soveraignity being in others And I may say to him what if the Magistrate himself I mean by supposition the Bishops should be wicked 〈…〉 What if they should command as much contrary to the â—…w of 〈◊〉 oâ— nature as every any Christian King did which is very possible must we obey them rather then God Is the civill Magistrate become now the onely ground and pâ—â—lar of truth No. Synedri jussum est voce Episcoporum Ipsum quod colit ut colamus omnes Aeternum colemus Principem dierum Factorem Dominumque Epilcoporum And thus the Bishop may see there is 〈…〉 difference between his Ode and my â—arode to it and that both of them are of equal force 〈◊〉 conclud nothinâ— The Bishop knows that the Kings of England since the time of Henry the 8. have been 〈…〉 by 〈…〉 Parliament supream Governors oâ— the Church of England in 〈…〉 both civil and Ecclesiastical that is to say 〈…〉 matters both Ecclesiastical and civil anâ— consequently oâ— this Church Supreme head on Earth though perhaps he will not allow that 〈…〉 me of Hâ—â—d I should wonder therefore whom the Bishop would have to be Christs Lieutenant here in England for matters of Religion if not the supreme Governor â—nd Head of the Church of England 〈…〉 Man or Women whosoever he be that hath the Soveraign Power but that I know he challenges it to the Bishops and thinks thaâ— King Henry the 8. took the Ecclesiastical Power away from the Pope to settle it not in himself but them But he ought to have known that what 〈…〉 or Power oâ— Ordaiâ—ing 〈…〉 the Popâ—s had here in the time of the Kings Predecessours til Henry the 8. they derived it all from the Kings Power though they did not acknowledge it and the Kings connived at it either not knowing their own right or not daring to challenge it til such tiâ—e as the behaviour of the Romane Clergie had undeceived the people which otherwise would have sided with them Nor was it unlawful for the King to take from them the Authority he had given them as being Pope enough in his own Kingdome without depending on a forraign one nor is it to be called Schisme unlesse it be Schisme also in the head of a Family to discharge as often 〈◊〉 he shall see cause the School-Masters he enter â—ineth to teach his Children If the Bishop and Dr. Hammond when they did write in defence of the Church of England against imputation of Schisme quitting their own pretences of jurisdiction and Jus divinum had gone upon these principles of mine they had not been so shrewdly handled as they have been by an English Papist that wrote against them And now I have done answering to his Arguments I shall here â—n the end of all taee that Liberty of censuring his while Book which he hath taken in the beginning of censuring mine I have saith he Numb 1. perused T. H. his answers considered his reasons and conclude he hath missed and miâ—â—aid the question that his answers are evasions that his Arguments are â—aralogismes and that the opinion of absolute and universal necessity is but a 〈…〉 some groundless and ill chosen Principles And now it is my turn to censure And first â—oâ— the strength of his discourse and knowledge of the point in question I think it much inferiour to that which might have been written by any man living that had no other learning besides the ability to wriâ—e his mind but as well perhaps as the same man would have done it if to the ability of writing his mind he had added the study of School-Divinity Secondly for the manners of it for to a publick writing there belongeth good manners it consisteth in railing and exclaiming and scurrilous jesting with now and then an unclean and mean instance And lastly for his elocution the vertue whereof lieth not in the flux of words but in perspicuity it is the same Language with that of the Kingdome of Darkness One shall find in it especially where â—e should speak most closely to the question such words as these Divided sense Compounded sense Hypothetical necessity Liberty of Exercise Liberty of specification Liberty of contradiction Liberty of contrariety Knowledge of approbation Practical knowledge General influence Special influence Instinct Qualities infused Efficatious election Moral efficacy Moral motion Metaphorical motion Practice practicum Motus primo primi Actus eliciti Actus imperati Permissive will Consequent will Negative obduration Deficient cause Simple act Nunc stans other like words of non-sense divided besides many propositions such as thâ—se The Will is the Mistris of humane Actions The understanding iâ— her counseller The Will chuseth The Will willeth The Will suspends its own Act The Understanding understandeth I wonder how he mist saying The Understanding suspendeth its own Act The Will applies the understanding to deliberate The Will requires of the Understanding a riview The Wil determines it self A change may be Willed without changing of the Will Man concurrs with God in causing his own Will The Will causeth willing Motives determine the Will not naturally but morally The same Action may be both future and not future God is not Just but Justice not eternal but eternity Eternity is Nunc stans Eternity is an infinite point which comprehendeth al time not formally but eminently Al eternity is coexistent with to day and the same coexistent with to morrow and many other like speeches of non-sense compounded Which the truth can never stand in need of Perhaps the Bishop will say these Terms and Phrases
are intelligible enough for he hath said in his Reply to Numb 24. that his opinion is demonstrable in reason though he be not able to comprehend how iâ— consisteth together with Gods eternal Prescience and though it exceed his weak capacitie yet he ought to adhere to that truth which is manifest so that to him that truth is manifest â—nd demonstrable by reason which is beyond his capacity so that words beyond capacity are with him intelligible enough But the Reader is to be Judge of that I could add many other passages that discover both his little Logick as taking tâ—â— insignificant word above recited for Terms of Art aâ—d hiâ— no Philosophy in distinguishing between moral and â—â—turâ—lâ— mâ—tion and by calling some motions Metaphorical and his thâ—r offers at the causes of sight and of the descent of heavy lies and his talk of the inclination of the Lâ—ud-stone and diverse other places of his Book But to make an end I shall briefly draw up the sum of what we have both said That which I have maintained is that no man hath his future will in his own present power That it may be changed by others and by the change of things without him and when it is changed it is not changed nor determined to any thing by it self and that when it is undetermined it is no Will because every one that willeth willeth something in particular That deliberation is common to men with beasts as being alternate appetite and not ratiocination and the last act or appetite therein and which is immediately followed by the action the onely will that can be taken notice of by others and which onely maketh an action in publick judgment voluntary That to be free is no more then to do if a man will and if he will to forbear and consequently that this freedome is the freedome of the man and not of the Will That the Will is not free but subject to change by the operation of external causes That all external causes depend necessarily on the first eternal cause God Almighty who worketh in us both to Will and to do by the mediation of second causes That seeing neither man nor any thing else can work upon it self it is impossible that any man in the framing of his own Will should concur with God either as an Actor or as an Instrument That there is nothing brought to passe by fortune as by a cause nor any thing without a cause or concurrence of causes sufficient to bring it so to passe and that every such cause and their concurrence do proceed from the providence good pleasure and working of God and consequently though I do with others call many events Contingent and say they happen yet because they had every of them their several sufficient causes and those causes again their former causes I say they happen necessarily And though we perceive not what they are yet there are of the most Contingent events as necessary causes as of those events whose causes we perceive or else they could not possibly be foreknown as they are by him that foreknoweth all things On the contrary the Bishop maintaineth That the Will is free from necessitation and in order thereto that the Judgment of the understanding is not alwayes practice practicum nor of such a nature in it self as to oblige and determine the Will to one though it be true that Spontaneity and determination to one may consist together That the Will determineth it self and that external things when they change the Will do work upon it not naturally but morally not by natural motion but by moral and Metaphorical motion That when the Will is determined naturally it is not by Gods general influence whereon depend all second causes but by special influence God concurring and powring something into the Will That the Will when it suspends not its Act makes the Act necessary but because it may suspend and not assent it is not absolutely necessary That sinful acts proceed not from Gods Will but are willed by him by a permissive Will not an operative Will and hardeneth the heart of man by a negative obduration That mans Will is in his own power but his motus primo primi not in his own power nor necessary save onely by a Hypothetical necessity That the Will to change is not always a change of Wil That not all things which are produced are produced from sufficient but some things from deficient causes That if the Power of the Will be present in actu primo then therâ— is nothing wanting to the production of the effect That a cause may be sufficient for the production of an effect though it want something necessary to the production thereof because the Will may be wanting That a necessary cause doth not alwayes necessarily produce its effect but onely then when the effect is necessarily produced He proveth also that the Will is free by that universal notion which the World hath of election For when of the six electors the votes are divided equally the King of Bohemia hath a casting voyce That the Prescience of God supposeth no necessity of the future existence of the things foreknown because God is not eternal but eternity and eternity is as standing Now without succession of time and therefore God foresees all things intuitively by the presentiallity they have in Nunc stans which comprehendeth in it all time past present and to come not formally but eminently and vertually That the Will is free even then when it acteth but that is in a compounded not in a divided sense That to be made and to be eternal do consist together because Gods Decrees are made and are nevertheless eternal That the order beauty and perfection of the World doth require that in the universe there should be Agents of all sorts some necessary some free some contingent That though it be true that to morrow it shall rain or not rain yet neither of them is true determinatè That the Doctrine of necessity is a blasphemous desperate and destructive doctrinâ— That it were better to be an Atheist that then to hold it he that maintaineth it is fitter to be refuted with Rodds then with Arguments And now whether this his Doctrine or mine be the more intelligible more rational or more coâ—â—ormable to Gords Word I leave it to the Judgment of the Reader But whatsoever be the truth of the disputed Question the Reader may peradventure think I have not used the Bishop with that respect I ought or without disadvantage of my cause I might have done for which I am to make a short Apologie A little before the last Parliament of the â—â—te King when every man 〈…〉 freely against the then present Government I thought it worth my study to consider the grounds and consequences of such behaviour and whether it were conformable or contrary to reason and to the Word of God and after some time I did put in order and publish my thoughts thereof first in Latine and then again the same in English where I endeavoured to prove both by reason and Scripture That they who have once submitted themselves to any Soveraign Governour either by express acknowledgment of his power or by receiving protection from his Laws are obliged to be true and faithful to him and to acknowledge no other supreme power but him in any matter or question whatsoever either civill or Ecclesiastical In which Books of mine I pursued my subject without taking notice of any particular man that held any opinion contrary to that which I then writ onely in general I maintained that the office of the Clergy in respect of the supreme civil power was not Magisterial but Ministerial and that their teaching of the People was founded up nâ—o other Authority then that of the civil Soveraign and all this without any word tending to the disgrace either of Episcopacy or of Presbytery Nevertheless I find since that divers of them whereof thâ— Bishop of Derry is one have taken offence especially at two things one that I make the supremacy in matters of Religion to residâ— in the civil Soveraign the other that being no Clergy-man I deliver Doctrines and ground them uâ—on Words of the Scripture which Doctrines they being by profession Divines have never taught And in this their displeasure divers of them in their Books and Sermons without answering any of my Arguments have not onely exclâ—iâ—ed against my Doctrine but reviled me and endeavoured to make me hateful 〈…〉 things for which if they knâ—w their own and the Publick good they ought to have given me thanks There is also one of them that taking offence at me for blaming in part the Discipline instituted heretofore and regulated by the Authority of the Pope in the Universities not onely ranks me amongst thosâ— men that would have the Revenue of the Universities diminished and sayes plainly I have no Religion but also thinks me so simple and ignorant of the World as to believe that our Universities maintain Popery And this is the Author of the Book called Vindiciae Academiarum If either of the Universities had thought it self injured I believe it could have Authorised or appointed some member of theirs whereof there be many abler men then he to have made their vinâ—ication But this Vindex as little Doggs to plâ—ase their Masters use to bark in token of their sedulity indifferently at strangers till they be rated off unprovoked by me hath fallen upon me without bidding I have been publiquely injured by many of whom I took no notice supposing that that humour would spend it self but seeing it last and grow higher in this writing I now answer I thought it necessary at last to make of some of them and first of this Bishop an Example FINIS