free to make it either of the Italian Spanish or French fashion indifferently But after it is made it is necessary that it be of that fashion whereof he hath made it that is by a necessity of supposition But this doth neither hinder the cause from being a free cause nor the effect from being a free effect but the one did produce freely and the other was freely produced So the contradiction is vanished In the second part of his answer he grants that there are some free Agents and some contingent Agents and that perhaps the beauty of the world doth require it but like a shrewd Cow which after she hath given her milk casts it down with her foot in the conclusion he tells us that nevertheless they are all necessary This part of his answer is a meer Logomachy as a great part of the controversies in the world are or a contention about words What is the meaning of necessary and free and contingent actions I have shewed before what free and necessary do properly signifie but he misrecites it He saith I make all Agents which want deliberation to be necessary but I acknowledge that many of them are contingent Neither do I approove his definition of contingents though he say I concur with him that they are such agents as work we know not how For according to this description many necessary actions should be contingent and many contingent actions should be necessary The Loadstone draweth Iron the Jet chaff we know not how and yet the effect is necessary and so it is in all Sympathies and Antipathies or occult qualities Again a man walking in the streets a Tile falls down from an house and breaks his head We know all the causes we know how this came to pass The man walked that way the pin failed the Tile fell just when he was under it And yet this is a contingent effect The man might not have walked that way and then the Tile had not fallen upon him Neither yet do I understand here in this place by contingents such events as happen besides the scope or intention of the Agents as when a man digging to make a grave finds a Treasure though the word be sometimes so taken But by contingents I understand all things which may be done and may not be done may happen or may not happen by reason of the in determination or accidentall concurrence of the causes And those same things which are absolutely Incontingent and yet Hypothetically necessary As supposing the Passenger did walk just that way just at that time and that the pin did fail just then and the Tile fall it was necessary that it should fall upon the Passengers head The same defence will keep out his shower of rain But we shall meet with his shower of rain again Numb 34. Whither I refer the further explication of this point Numb 17. J. D. argument 5 FIftly take away liberty and you take away the very nature of evill and the formall reason of sin If the hand of the Painter were the law of painting or the hand of the Writer the law of writing whatsoever the one did write or the other paint must infallibly be good Seeing therefore that the first cause is the rule and Law of goodness if it do necessitate the will or the person to evill either by it self immediatly or mediatly by necessary flux of second causes it will no longer be evill The essence of sin consists in this that one commit that which he might a void If there be no liberty to produce sin there is no such thing as sin in the world Therefore it appeares both from Scripture and reason that there is true Liberty T. H. TO the fift Argument from reason which is that if liberty be taken away the nature and formall reason of sin is taken away I answer by denying the consequence The nature of sin consisteth in this that the action done proceed from our will and be against the Law A Judge in judging whether it be sin or not which is done against the Law looks at no higher cause of the action then the will of the doer Now when I say the action was necessary I do not say it was done against the will of the doer but with his will and so necessarily because mans will that is every act of the will and purpose of man had a sufficient and therefore a necessary cause and consequently every voluntary action was necessitated An action therefore may be voluntary and a sin and nevertheless be necessary And because God may afflict by right derived from his Omnipotency though sin were not And the example of punishment on voluntary sinners is the cause that produceth Justice and maketh sin less frequent For God to punish such sinners as I have shewed before is no injustice And thus you have my answer to his objections both out of Scripture and reason J. D. SCis tu simulare cupressum quid hoc It was shrewd counsail which Alcibiades gave to Themistocles when he was busy about his accounts to the State that he should rather study how to make no accounts So it seemes T. H. thinks it a more compendious way to baulk an argument then to satisfie it And if he can produce a Rowland against an Oliver if he can urge a reason against a reason he thinks he hath quitted himself fairely But it will not serve his turn And that he may not complain of misunderstanding it as those who have a politick deafness to hear nothing but what liketh them I will first reduce mine argument into form and then weigh what he saith in answer or rather in opposition to it That opinion which takes away the formall reason of sin and by consequence sin it self is not to be approoved this is cleer because both Reason and Religion Nature and Scripture do proove and the whole world confesseth that there is sin But this opinion of the necessity of all things by reason of a conflux of second causes ordered and determined by the first cause doth take away the very formall reason of sin This is prooved thus That which makes sin it self to be good and just and lawfull takes away the formall cause and distroyes the essence of sin for if sin be good and just and lawfull it is no more evill it is no sin no anomy But this opinion of the necessity of all things makes sin to be very good and just and lawfull for nothing can flow essentially by way of Physicall determination from the first cause which is the Law and Rule of Goodness and Justice but that which is good and just and lawfull but this opinion makes sin to proceed essentially by way of Physicall determination from the first cause as appeares in T. H. his whole discourse Neither is it materiall at all whether it proceed immediatly from the first cause or mediately so as it be by a necessary flux of second and determinate causes which
for help and did what he could to defend himself but all would not serve The servant is innocent if he was to be tried before a Court of Areopagites Or suppose the Ruffians did not take it from him by force but drew their swords and threatned to kill him except he delivered it himself no wise man will conceive that it was either the Masters intention or the servants duty to hazard his life or his limbes for saving of such a trifling sum But on the other side suppose this servant passing by some Cabaret or Tennis-court where his Camerads were drinking or playing should stay with them and drink or play away his mony and afterwards plead as T. H. doth here that he was overcome by the meer strength of temptation I trow neither T. H. nor any man els would admit of this excuse but punish him for it because neither was he necessitated by the temptation and what strength it had was by his own fault in respect of that vitious habit which he had contracted of drinking or gaming Jam. 1 14. Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and entised Disordered passions of anger hatred lust if they be consequent as the case is here put by T. H. and flow from deliberation and election they do not only not diminish the fault but they aggravate it and render it much greater He talks much of the motives to do and the motives to forbear how they work upon and determine a man as if a reasonable man were no more than a Tennis-ball to be tossed to and fro by the Racketts of the second causes As if the will had no power to moove it self but were meerly passive like an artificiall Popingay remooved hither and thither by the bolts of the Archers who shoot on this side and on that What are motives but reasons or discourses framed by the understanding and freely mooved by the will What are the will and the understanding but faculties of the same soul and what is liberty but a power resulting from them both To say that the will is determined by these motives is as much as to say that the Agent is determined by himself If there be no necessitation before the judgment of right reason doth dictate to the will then there is no antecedent no extrinsecall necessitation at all All the world knowes that when the Agent is determined by himself then the effect is determined likewise in its cause But if he determined himself freely then the effect is free Motives determine not naturally but morally which kind of determination may consist with true liberty But if T. H. his opinion were true that the will were naturally determined by the Physicall and speciall influence of extrinsecall causes not onely motives were vain but reason it self and deliberation were vain No saith he they are not vain because they are the means Yes if the means be superfluous they are vain what needed such a circuit of deliberation to advise what is fit to be done when it is already determined extrinsecally what must be done He saith that the ignorance of the true causes and their power is the reason why we ascribe the effect to liberty but when we seriously consider the causes of things we acknowledge a necessity No such thing but just the contrary The more we consider and the cleerer we understand the greater is the liberty and the more the knowledge of our own liberty The less we consider and the more incapable that the understanding is the lesser is the liberty and the knowledge of it And where there is no consideration nor use of reason there is no liberty at all there is neither morall good nor evill Some men by reason that their exteriour senses are not totally bound have a trick to walk in their sleep Suppose such an one in that case should cast himself down a pair of staires or from a bridge and break his neck or drown himself it were a mad Jury that would find this man accessary to his own death Why because it was not freely done he had not then the use of reason Lastly he tells us that the will doth choose of necessity as well as the fire burnes of necessity If he intend no more but this that election is the proper and naturall act of the will as burning is of the fire or that the elective power is as necessarily in a man as visibility he speaks truly but most impertinently For the question is not now of the elective power in actu primo whether it be an essentiall faculty of the soul but whether the act of electing this or that particular object be free undetermined by any antecedent and extrinsecall causes But if he intend it in this other sense that as the fire hath no power to suspend its burning nor to distinguish between those combustible matters which are put unto it but burnes that which is put unto it necessarily if it be combustible So the will hath no power to refuse that which it wills nor to suspend its own appetite He erres grossely The will hath power either to will or nill or to suspend that is neither to will nor nill the same object Yet even the burning of the fire if it be considered as it is invested with all particular circumstances is not otherwise so necessary an action as T. H. imagineth Two things are required to make an effect necessary First that it be produced by a necessary cause such as fire is Secondly that it be necessarily produced Protagoras an Atheist began his Book thus Concerning the gods I have nothing to say whether they be or they be not for which his Book was condemned by the Athenians to be burned The fire was a necessary agent but the sentence or the application of the fire to the Book was a free act and therefore the burning of his Book was free Much more the rationall will is free which is both a voluntary agent and acts voluntarily My second reason against this distinction of Liberty from Compulsion but not from necessitation is new and demonstrates cleerly that to necessitate the will by a Physicall necessity is to compell the will so far as the will is capable of Compulsion and that he who doth necessitate the will to evill after that manner is the true cause of evill and ought rather to be blamed than the will it self But T. H. for all he saith he is not surprised can be contented upon better advise to steal by all this in silence And to hide this tergiversation from the eyes of the Reader he makes an empty shew of braving against that famous and most necessary distinction between the elicite and imperate acts of the will first because the termes are improper secondly because they are obscure What Triviall and Grammaticall objections are these to be used against the universall currant of Divines and Philosophers Verborum ut nummorum It is in words as
from the speciall influence of any outward determining causes And so it is onely a necessity upon supposition Concerning Medaeas choise the strength of the argument doth not lye either in the fact of Medaea which is but a fiction or in the authority of the Poet who writes things rather to be admired than believed but in the experience of all men who find it to be true in themselves That sometimes reason doth shew unto a man the exorbitancy of his passion that what he desires is but a pleasant good that what he loseth by such a choise is an honest good That that which is honest is to be preferred before that which is pleasant yet the will pursues that which is pleasant and neglects that which is honest St. Paul saith as much in earnest as is feined of Medaea That he approoved not that which he did and that he did that which he hated Rom. 7.15 The Roman Story is mistaken There was no bribe in the case but affection Whereas I urge that those things which are neerer to the senses do moove more powerfully he layes hold on it and without answering to that for which I produced it infers That the sense of present good is more immediate to the action than the foresight of evill consequents Which is true but it is not absolutely true by any antecedent necessity Let a man do what he may do and what he ought to do and sensitive objects will lose that power which they have by his own fault and neglect Antecedent or indeliberate concupiscence doth sometimes but rarely surprise a man and render the action not free But consequent and deliberated concupiscence which proceeds from the rationall will doth render the action more free not less free and introduceth onely a necessity upon supposition Lastly he saith that a mans mourning more for the loss of his Child than for his sin makes nothing to the last dictate of the understanding Yes very much Reason dictates that a sin committed is a greater evill than the loss of a child and ought more to be lamented for yet we see daily how affection prevailes against the dictate of reason That which he inferrs from hence that sorrow for sin is not voluntary and by consequence that repentance proceedeth from causes is true as to the latter part of it but not in his sense The causes from whence repentance doth proceed are Gods grace preventing and mans will concurring God prevents freely man concurs freely Those inferiour Agents which sometimes do concur as subordinate to the grace of God do not cannot determine the will naturally And therefore the former part of his inference that sorrow for sin is not voluntary is untrue and altogether groundless That is much more truly and much more properly said to be voluntary which proceeds from judgment and from the rationall will than that which proceeds from passion and from the sensitive will One of the main grounds of all T. H. his errours in this question is that he acknowledgeth no efficacy but that which is naturall Hence is this wild consequence Repentance hath causes and therefore it is not voluntary Free effects have free causes necessary effects necessary causes voluntary effects have sometimes free sometimes necessary causes Numb 24. J. D. FIftly and lastly the Divine labours to find out a way how liberty may consist with the prescience and decrees of God But of this I had not very long since occasion to write a full discourse in answer to a Treatise against the prescience of things contingent I shall for the present only repeat these two things First we ought not to desert a certain truth because we are not able to comprehend the certain manner God should be but a poor God if we were able perfectly to comprehend all his Actions and Attributes Secondly in my poor judgment which I ever do ever shall submit to better the readiest way to reconcile Contingence and Liberty with the decrees and prescience of God and most remote from the altercations of these times is to subject future cōtingents to the aspects of God according to that presentiallity which they have in eternity Not that things future which are not yet existent coexistent with God but because the infinite knowledge of God incircling all times in the point of eternity doth attain to their future Being from whence proceeds their objective and intelligible Being The main impediment which keeps men from subscribing to this way is because they conceive eternity to be an everlasting succession and not one indivisible point But if they consider that whatsoever is in God is God That there are no accidents in him for that which is infinitely perfect cannot be further perfected That as God is not wise but Wisedom it self not just but Justice it self so he is not eternall but Eternity it self They must needs conclude that therefore this eternity is indivisible because God is indivisible and therefore not successive but altogether an infinite point comprehending all times within it self T. H. THE last part of this discourse conteineth his opinion about reconciling Liberty with the Prescience and Decrees of God otherwise than some Divines have done against whom he had formerly written a Treatise out of which he only repeateth two things One is that we ought not to desert a certain truth for not being able to comprehend the certain manner of it And I say the same as for example that he ought not to desert this certain truth That there are certain and necessary causes which make every man to will what he willeth though he do not yet conceive in what manner the will of man is caused And yet I think the manner of it is not very hard to conceive seeing that we see daily that praise dispraise reward punishment good and evill sequells of mens actions retained in memory do frame and make us to the election of whatsoever it be that we elect And that the memory of such things proceeds from the senses And sense from the operation of the objects of sense which are externall to us and governed onely by God Almighty And by consequence all actions even of free and voluntary Agents are necessary The other thing he repeateth is that the best way to reconcile Contingency and Liberty with the prescience and decrees of God is to subject future contingents to the aspect of God The same is also my opinion but contrary to what he hath all this while laboured to prove For hitherto he held liberty and necessity that is to say liberty and the decrees of God irreconcilable unless the aspect of God which word appeareth now the first time in this discourse signifie somewhat els besides Gods will and decree which I cannot understand But he adds that we must subject them according to that presentiality which they have in eternity which he sayes cannot be done by them that conceive eternity to be an everlasting succession but onely by them that conceive
Certainly the proper naturall motion of water as of all heavy bodies is to descend directly downwards towards the center as we see in rain which falls down perpendicularly Though this be far from a free act which proceeds from a rationall appetite yet it is a naturall act and proceeds from a naturall appetite and hath its reason within in self So hath not the current of the River in its channell which must not be ascribed to the proper nature of the water but either to the generall order of the universe for the better being and preservation of the creatures otherwise the waters should not moove in Seas and Rivers as they do but cover the face of the earth and possess their proper place between the aire and the earth according to the degree of their gravity Or to an extrinsecall principle whilest one particle of water thrusteth and forceth forward another and so comes a current or at least so comes the current to be more impetuous to which motion the position of the earth doth contribute much both by restraining that fluid body with its banks from dispersing it self and also by affording way for a faire and easy descent by its proclivity He tells us sadly that the water wants liberty to go over the banks because there is an extrinsecall impediment But to ascend up the channell it wants not liberty but power Why Liberty is a power if it want power to ascend it wants liberty to ascend But he makes the reason why the water ascends not up the channell to be intrinsecall and the reason why it ascends not over the banks to be extrinsecall as if there were not a rising of the ground up the channell as well as up the banks though it be not so discernible nor alwayes so sudden The naturall appetite of the water is as much against the ascending over the banks as the ascending up the channell And the extrinsecall impediment is as great in ascending up the channell as over the banks or rather greater because there it must moove not onely against the rising soile but also against the succeeding waters which press forward the former Either the River wants liberty for both or els it wans liberty for neither But to leave his metaphoricall faculties and his Catachresticall Liberty How far is his discourse wide from the true morall liberty which is in question between us His former description of a free Agent that is he who hath not made an end of deliberating though it was wide from the mark yet it came much neerer the truth than this definition of Liberty unless perhaps he think that the water hath done deliberating whether it will go over the banks but hath not done deliberating whether it will go up the channell Numb 30. T. H. SIxtly I conceive nothing taketh beginning from it self but from the action of some other immediate Agent without it self And that therefore when first a man had an appetite or will to something to which immediately before he had no appetite nor will the cause of his will is not the will it self but something els not in his own disposing So that where as it is out of controversy that of voluntary actions the will is a necessary cause And by this which is said the will is also caused by other things whereof it disposeth not it followeth that voluntary actions have all of them necessary causes and therefore are necessitated J. D. THis sixt point doth not consist in explicating of tearmes as the former but in two proofs that voluntary actions are necessitated The former proof stands thus Nothing takes beginning from it self but from some Agent without it self which is not in its own disposing therefore c. concedo omnia I grant all he saith The will doth not take beginning from it self Whether he understand by will the faculty of the will which is a power of the reasonable soul it takes not beginning from it self but from God who created and infused the Soul into man and endowed it with this power Or whether he understand by will the act of willing it takes not beginning from it self but from the faculty or from the power of willing which is in the Soul This is certain finite and participated things cannot be from themselves nor be produced by themselves What would he conclude from hence that therefore the act of willing takes not its beginning from the faculty of the will Or that the faculty is alwayes determined antecedently extrinsecally to will that which it doth will He may as soon draw water out of a pumice as draw any such conclusion out of these premisses Secondly for his taking a beginning Either he understands a beginning of being or a beginning of working and acting If he understand a beginning of being he saith most truly that nothing hath a beginning of being in time from it self But this is nothing to his purpose The question is not between us whether the Soul of man or the will of man be eternall But if he understand a beginning of working or mooving actually it is a gross errour All men know that when a stone descends or fire ascends or when water that hath been heated returnes to its former temper the beginning or reason is intrinsecall and one and the same thing doth moove and is mooved in a diverse respect It mooves in respect of the form and it is mooved in respect of the matter Much more man who hath a perfect knowledge and prenotion of the end is most properly said to moove himself Yet I do not deny but that there are other beginnings of humane actions which do concur with the will some outward as the first cause by generall influence which is evermore requisite Angells or men by perswading evill spirits by tempting the object or end by its appetibility the understanding by directing So passions and acquired habits But I deny that any of these do necessitate or can necessitate the will of man by determining it Physically to one except God alone who doth it rarely in extraordinary cases And where there is no antecedent determination to one there is no absolute necessity but true Liberty His second argument is ex concessis It is out of controversy saith he that of voluntary actions the will is a necessary cause The argument may be thus reduced Necessary causes produce necessary effects but the Will is a necessarie cause of voluntary actions I might deny his major Necessary causes do not alwayes produce necessary effects except they be also necessarily produced as I have shewed before the burning of Protagoras his book But I answer cleerly to the minor that the will is not a necessary cause of what it wills in particular actions It is without controversy indeed for it is without all probability That it wills when it wills is necessary but that it wills this or that now or then is free More expresly the act of the will may be considered three wayes
Either in respect of its nature or in respect of its exercise or in respect of its object First for the nature of the act That which the will wills is necessarily voluntary because the will cannot be compelled And in this sense it is out of controversy that the will is a necessary cause of voluntary actions Secondly for the exercise of its acts that is not necessary The will may either will or suspend its act Thirdly for the object that is not necessary but free the will is not extrinsecally determined to its objects As for example The Cardinalls meet in the conclave to chose a Pope whom they chose he is necessarily Pope But it is not necessary that they shall chose this or that day Before they were assembled they might defer their assembling when they are assembled they may suspend their election for a day or a week Lastly for the person whom they will choose it is freely in their own power otherwise if the election were not free it were void and no election at all So that which takes its beginning from the will is necessarily voluntary but it is not necessary that the will shall will this or that in particular as it was necessary that the person freely elected should be Pope but it was not necessary either that the election should be at this time or that this man should be elected And therefore voluntary acts in particular have not necessary causes that is they are not necessitated Numb 31. T. H. SEventhly I hold that to be a sufficient cause to which nothing is wanting that is needfull to the producing of the effect The same is also a necessary cause for if it be possible that a sufficient cause shall not bring forth the effect then there wanted somewhat which was needfull to the producing of it and so the cause was not sufficient But if it be impossible that a sufficient cause should not produce the effect then is a sufficient cause a necessary cause for that is said to produce an effect necessarily that cannot but produce it Hence it is manifest that whatsoever is produced is produced necessarily for whatsoever is produced hath had a sufficient cause to produce it or els it had not been And therefore also voluntary actions are necessitated J. D. THis section containes a third Argument to proove that all effects are necessary for clearing whereof it is needfull to consider how a cause may be said to be sufficient or insufficient First severall causes singly considered may be insufficient and the same taken conjointly be sufficient to produce an effect As two horses jointly are sufficient to draw a Coach which either of them singly is insufficient to do Now to make the effect that is the drawing of the Coach necessary it is not onely required that the two horses be sufficient to draw it but also that their conjunction be necessary and their habitude such as they may draw it If the owner of one of these horses will not suffer him to draw If the Smith have shod the other in the quick and lamed him If the horse have cast a shoe or be a resty jade and will not draw but when he list then the effect is not necessarily produced but contingently more or less as the concurrence of the causes is more or less contingent Secondly a cause may be said to be sufficient either because it produceth that effect which is intended as in the generation of a man or els because it is sufficient to produce that which is produced as in the generation of a Monster The former is properly called a sufficient cause the later a weak and insufficient cause Now if the debility of the cause be not necessary but contingent then the effect is not necessary but contingent It is a rule in Logick that the conclusion alwayes followes the weaker part If the premises be but probable the conclusion cannot be demonstrative It holds as well in causes as in propositions No effect can exceed the vertue of its cause If the ability or debility of the causes be contingent the effect cannot be necessary Thirdly that which concernes this question of Liberty from necessity most neerely is That a cause is said to be sufficient in respect of the ability of it to act not in respect of its will to act The concurrence of the will is needfull to the production of a free effect But the cause may be sufficient though the will do not concur As God is sufficient to produce a thousand worlds but it doth not follow from thence either that he hath produced them or that he will produce them The blood of Christ is a sufficient ransome for all mankind but it doth not follow therefore that all mankind shall be actually saved by vertue of his Blood A man may be a sufficient Tutour though he will not teach every Scholler and a sufficient Physitian though he will not administer to every patient Forasmuch therefore as the concurrence of the will is needfull to the production of every free effect and yet the cause may be sufficient in sensu diviso although the will do not concur It followes evidently that the cause may be sufficient and yet something which is needfull to the production of the effect may be wanting and that every sufficient cause is not a necessary cause Lastly if any man be disposed to wrangle against so clear light and say that though the free Agent be sufficient in sensu diviso yet he is not sufficient in sensu composito to produce the effect without the concurrence of the will he saith true but first he bewrayes the weakness and the fallacy of the former argument which is a meer trifling between sufficiency in a divided sense and sufficiency in a compounded sense And seeing the concurrence of the will is not predetermined there is no antecedent necessity before it do concur and when it hath concurred the necessity is but hypotheticall which may consist with liberty Numb 32. T. H. LAstly I hold that ordinary definition of a free Agent namely that a free Agent is that which when all things are present which are needfull to produce the effect can nevertheless not produce it Implies a contradiction and is non-sense being as much as to say the cause may be sufficient that is necessary and yet the effect not follow J. D. THis last point is but a Corollary or an Inference from the former doctrine that every sufficient cause produceth its effect necessarily which pillar being taken away the superstructure must needs fall to the ground having nothing left to support it Lastly I hold saith he what he is able to proove is something So much reason so much trust but what he holds concernes himself not others But what holds he I hold saith he that the ordinary definition of a free Agent implies a contradiction and is non-sense That which he calls the ordinary definition of liberty is the very definition
interposition of the earth to be the cause of the Eclipse of the Moon Or the most certain occurrent in the nature of things And now that I have answered T. H. his Arguments drawn from the private conceptions of men concerning the sense of words I desire him seriously without prejudice to examine himself and those natural notions which he findes in himself not of words but of things these are from nature those are by imposition whether he doth not finde by experience that he doth many things which he might have left undone if he would and omits many things which he might have done if he would whether he doth not somethings out of meer animosity and will without either regard to the direction of right reason or serious respect of what is honest or profitable onely to shew that he will have a dominion over his own actions as we see ordinarily in Children and wise men finde at some times in themselves by experience And I apprehend this very defence of necessity against liberty to be partly of that kinde Whether he is not angry with those who draw him from his study or cross him in his desires if they be necessitated to do it why should he be angry with them any more than he is angry with a sharp winter or a rainy day that keeps him at home against his antecedent will whether he doth not sometime blame himself and say O what a fool was I to do thus and thus or wish to himself O that I had been wise or O that I had not done such an act If he have no dominion over his actions if he be irresistibly necessitated to all things what he doth he might as well wish O that I had not breathed or blame himself for growing old O what a fool was I to grow old Numb 34. T. H. FOr the seventh point that all events have necessary causes it is there proved in that they have sufficient causes Further Let us in this place also suppose any event never so casuall as for example the throwing Ambs-ace upon a paire of Dice and see if it must not have been necessary before it was thrown for seeing it was thrown it had a beginning and consequently a sufficient cause to produce it consisting partly in the Dice partly in the outward things as the posture of the parties hand the measure of force applied by the caster The posture of the parts of the Table and the like In summe there was nothing wanting that was necessarily requisite to the producing of that particular cast and consequently that cast was necessarily thrown For if it had not been thrown there had wanted somewhat requisite to the throwing of it and so the cause had not been sufficient In the like manner it may be proved that every other accident how contingent soever it seeme or how voluntary soever it be is produced necessarily which is that J. D. disputes against The same also may be proved in this manner Let the case be put for example of the weather T is necessary that to morrow it shall rain or not rain If therefore it be not necessary it shall rain it is necessary it shall not rain Otherwise it is not necessary that the proposition It shall rain or it shall not rain should be true I know there are some that say it may necessarily be true that one of the two shall come to pass but not singly that it shall rain or it shall not rain Which is as much as to say One of them is necessary yet neither of them is necessary And therefore to seeme to avoid that absurdity they make a distinction that neither of them is true determinatè but indeterminatè Which distinction either signifies no more than this One of them is true but we know not which and so the necessity remains though we know it not Or if the meaning of the distinction be not that it has no meaning And they might as well have said One of them is true Tytyrice but neither of them Tupatulice J. D. HIs former proof that all sufficient causes are necessary causes is answered before Numb 31. And his two instances of casting Ambs-ace raining to morrow are altogether impertinent to the question now agitated between us for two reasons First our present controversie is concerning free actions which proceed from the liberty of mans will both his instances are of contingent actions which proceed from the indetermination or contingent concurrence of natural causes First that there are free actions which proceed meerly from election without any outward necessitation is a truth so evident as that there is a Sun in the Heavens and he that doubteth of it may as well doubt whether there be a shell without the Nut or a stone within the Olive A man proportions his time each day and allots so much to his Devotions so much to his Study so much to his Diet so much to his Recreations so much to necessary or civil visits so much to his rest he who will seek for I know not what causes of all this without himself except that good God who hath given him a reasonable Soul may as well seek for a cause of the Egyptian Pyramides among the Crocodiles of Nilus Secondly for mixt actions which proceed from the concurrence of free and natural Agents though they be not free yet they are not necessary as to keep my former instance a man walking through a street of a Citie to do his occasions a Tile falls from an House and breaks his head the breaking of his head was not necessary for he did freely choose to go that way without any necessitation neither was it free for he did not deliberate of that accident therefore it was contingent and by undoubted consequence there are contingent actions in the World which are not free Most certainly by the concurrence of free causes as God the good and bad Angels and men with natural Agents sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident many events happen which otherwise had never hapned many effects are produced which otherwise had never been produced And admitting such things to be contingent not necessary all their consequent effects not onely immediate but mediate must likewise be contingent that is to say such as do not proceed from a continued connexion and succession of necessary causes which is directly contrary to T. H. his opinion Thirdly for the actions of bruit beasts though they be not free though they have not the use of reason to restrain their appetites from that which is sensitively good by the consideration of what is rationaly good or what is honest and though their fancies be determined by nature to some kindes of work yet to think that every individual action of theirs and each animal motion of theirs even to the least murmure or gesture is bound by the chain of unalterable necessity to the extrinsecal causes or objects I see no ground for it Christ saith one
of these Sparrows doth not fall to the ground without your Heavenly Father that is without an influence of power from him or exempted frō his disposition he doth not say which your heavenly Father casteth not down Lastly for the natural actions of inanimate Creatures wherein there is not the least concurrence of any free or voluntary Agents the questiō is yet more doubtfull for many things are called cōtingent in respect of us because we know not the cause of them which really in themselves are not contingent but necessary Also many things are contingent in respect of one single cause either actually hindred or in possibility to be hindred which are necessary in respect of the joynt concurrence of all collateral causes But whether there be a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning so as they must all have concurred as they have done in the same degree of power have been deficient as they have beē in all events whatsoever would require a further examination if it were pertinent to this question of liberty but it is not It is sufficient to my purpose to have shewed that all elective actions are free from absolute necessity And moreover that the concurrence of voluntary and free Agents with natural causes both upon purpose and accidentally hath helped them to produce many effects which otherwise they had not produced and hindred them from producing many effects which otherwise they had produced And that if this inintervention of voluntary and free Agents had been more frequent than it hath been as without doubt it might have been many natural events had been otherwise than they are And therefore he might have spared his instances of casting Ambs-ace and raining to morrow And first for his casting Ambs-ace If it be thrown by a fair Gamester with indifferent Dice it is a mixt action the casting of the Dice is free but the casting of Ambs-ace is contingent a man may deliberate whether he will cast the Dice or not but it were folly to deliberate whether he will cast Ambs-ace or not because it is not in his power unless he be a cheater that can cogge the Dice or the Dice be false Dice then the contingency or the degree of contingency ceaseth accordingly as the Caster hath more or less cunning or as the figure or making of the Dice doth incline them to Ambs-ace more than to another cast or necessitate them to this cast and no other Howsoever so far as the cast is free or contingent so far it is not necessary And where necessity begins there liberty and contingency do cease to be Likewise his other instance of raining or not raining to morrow is not of a free elective act nor alwayes of a contingent act In some Countries as they have their nati venti their certain winds at set seasons so they have their certain and set rains The Aethiopian rains are supposed to be the cause of the certain inundation of Nilus In some eastern Countries they have rain onely twice a year and those constant which the Scriptures call the former and the later rain In such places not onely the causes do act determinately and necessarily but also the determination or necessity of the event is foreknown to the inhabitants In our Climate the natural causes coelestial and sublunary do not produce rain so necessarily at set times neither can we say so certainly and infallibly it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow Neverthelesse it may so happen that the causes are so disposed and determined even in our climate that this proposition it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow may be necessary in it self and the Prognosticks or tokens may be such in the sky in our own bodies in the creatures animate and inanimate as weather-glasses c. that it may become probably true to us that it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow But ordinarily it is a contingent proposition to us whether it be contingent also in it self that is whether the concurrence of the causes were absolutely necessary whether the vapours or matter of the rain may not yet be dispersed or otherwise consumed or driven beyond our coast is a speculation which no way concerns this question So we see one reason why his two instances are altogether impertinent because they are of actions which are not free nor elective nor such as proceed from the liberty of mans will Secondly our dispute is about absolute necessity his proofs extend onely to Hypothetical necessity Our question is whether the concurrence and determination of the causes were necessary before they did concur or were determined He proves that the effect is necessary after the causes have concurred and are determined The freest actions of God or man are necessary by such a necessity of supposition And the most contingent events that are as I have shewed plainly Numb 3. where his instance of Ambs-ace is more fully answered So his proof looks another way from his proposition His proposition is that the casting of Ambs-ace was necessary before it was thrown His proof is that it was necessary when it was thrown examine all his causes over and over and they will not afford him one grain of antecedent necessity The first cause is in the Dice True if they be false Dice there may be something in it but then his contingency is destroyed If they be square Dice they have no more inclination to Ambs-ace than to Cinque and Quater or any other cast His second cause is the posture of the parties hand But what necessity was there that he should put his hand into such a posture None at all The third cause is the measure of the force applied by the caster Now for the credit of his cause let him but name I will not say a convincing reason nor so much as a probable reason but even any pretence of reason how the Caster was necessitated from without himself to apply just so much force and neither more or lesse If he cannot his cause is desperate and he may hold his peace for ever his last cause is the posture of the Table But tell us in good earnest what necessity there was why the Caster must throw into that Table rather than the other or that the Dice must fall just upon that part of the Table before the cast was thrown He that makes these to be necessary causes I do not wonder if he make all effects necessary effects If any one of these causes be contingent it is sufficient to render the cast contingent and now that they are all so contingent yet he will needs have the effect to be necessary And so it is when the cast is thrown but not before the cast was thrown which he undertook to prove who can blame him for being so angry with the School-men and their distinctions of necessity into absolute and hypothetical seeing they touch
as for a man to consult and ponder with himself whether he should draw in his Breath or whether he should increase in stature Secondly to resolve implies a mans dominion over his own actions and his actuall determination of himself but he who holds an absolute necessity of all things hath quitted this dominion over himself and which is worse hath quitted it to the second extrinsecal causes in which he makes all his actions to be determined one may as well call again Yesterday as resolve or newly determine that which is determined to his hand already I have perused this treatise weighed T. H. his answers considered his reasons and conclude that he hath missed and misled the question that the answers are evasions that his Arguments are parologisms that the opinion of absolute and universall necessity is but a result of some groundless and ill chosen principles and that the defect is not in himself but that his cause will admit no better defence and therefore by his favour I am resolved to adhere to my first opinion perhaps another man reading this discourse with other eyes judgeth it to be pertinent and well founded How comes this to pass the treatise is the same the exteriour causes are the same yet the resolution is contrary Do the second causes play fast and loose do they necessitate me to condemn and necessitate him to maintain what is it then the difference must be in our selves either in our intellectuals because the one sees clearer then the other or in our affections which betray our understandings and produce an implicite adhaerence in the one more than in the other Howsoever it be the difference is in our selves The outward causes alone do not chain me to the one resolution nor him to the other resolution But T. H. may say that our severall and respective deliberations and affections are in part the causes of our contrary resolutions and do concur with the outward causes to make up one totall and adaequate cause to the necessary production of this effect If it be so he hath spun a fair thred to make all this stir for such a necessity as no man ever denied or doubted of when all the causes have actually determined themselves then the effect is in being for though there be a priority in nature between the cause and the effect yet they are together in time And the old rule is whatsoever is when it is is necessarily so as it is This is no absolute necessity but onely upon supposition that a man hath determined his own liberty When we question whether all occurrences be necessary we do not question whether they be necessary when they are nor whether they be necessary in sensu composito after we have resolved and finally determined what to do but whether they were necessary before they were determined by our selves by or in the praecedent causes before our selves or in the exteriour causes without ourselves It is not inconsistent with true liberty to determine it self but it is inconsistent with true liberty to be determined by another without it self T. H. saith further that upon your Lordships desire and mine he was contented to begin with this discourse of liberty and necessity that is to change his former resolution If the chain of necessity be no stronger but that it may be snapped so easily in sunder if his will was no otherwise determined from without himself but onely by the signification of your Lordships desire and my modest intreaty then we may safely conclude that humane affairs are not alwaies governed by absolute necessity that a man is Lord of his own actions if not in chief yet in mean subordinate to the Lord Paramount of Heaven and Earth and that all things are not so absolutely determined in the outward and precedent causes but that fair intreaties and morall perswasions may work upon a good nature so far as to prevent that which otherwise had been and to produce that which otherwise had not been He that can reconcile this with an Antecedent Necessity of all things and a Physicall or naturall determination of all causes shall be great Apollo to me Whereas T. H. saith that he had never uttered his opinion of this question I suppose he intends in writing my conversation with him hath not been frequent yet I remember well that when this question was agitated between us two in your Lordships Chamber by your command he did then declare himself in words both for the absolute necessity of all events and for the ground of this necessity the Flux or concatenation of the second causes Numb 2. T. H. ANd first I assure your Lordship I find in it no new Argument neither from Scripture nor from reason that I have not often heard before which is as much as to say that I am not surprised J. D. THough I be so unhappy that I can present no novelty to T. H. yet I have this comfort that if he be not surprised then in reason I may expect a more mature answer from him and where he failes I may ascribe it to the weakness of his cause not to want of preparation But in this case I like Epictetus his Counsell well that the Sheep should not brag how much they have eaten or what an excellent pasture they do go in but shew it in their Lamb and VVool. Apposite answers and down right Arguments advantage a cause To tell what we have heard or seen is to no purpose when a respondent leaves many things untouched as if they were too hot for his Fingers and declines the weight of other things and alters the true state of the question it is a shrewd sign either that he hath not weighed all things maturely or else that he maintains a desperate cause Numb 3. T. H. THe Praeface is an handsome one but it appears even in that that he hath mistaken the question for whereas he saies thus If I be free to write this discourse I have obteined the cause I deny that to be true for 't is not enough to his freedom of writing that he had not written it unless he would himself if he will obtein the cause he must prove that before he writ it it was not necessary he should write it afterward It may be he thinks it all one to say I was free to write it and it was not necessary I should write it But I think otherwise for he is free to do a thing that may do it if he have the will to do it and may forbear if he have the will to forbear And yet if there be a necessity that he shall have the will to do it the action is necessarily to follow And if there be a necessity that he shall have the will to forbear the forbearing also will be necessary The question therefore is not whether a man be a free agent that is to say whether he can write or forbear speak or be silent according to his
will but whether the will to write and the will to forbear come upon him according to his will or according to any thing else in his own power I acknowledge this liberty that I can do if I will but to say I can will if I will I take it to be an absurd speech Wherefore I cannot grant him the cause upon this Preface J. D. TAcitus speaks of a close kind of adversaries which evermore begin with a mans praise The Crisis or the Catastrophe of their discourse is when they come to their but As he is a good natured man but he hath a naughty quality or he is a wise man but he hath committed one of the greatest follies So here the Praeface is an handsome one but it appears even in this that he hath mistaken the question This is to give an Inch that one may take away an Ell without suspicion to praise the handsomness of the Porch that he may gain credit to the vilifying of the House Whether of us hath mistaken the question I refer to the judicious Reader Thus much I will maintain that that is no true necessity which he calls necessity nor that liberty which he calls liberty nor that the question which he makes the question First for liberty that which he calls liberty is no true liberty For the clearing whereof it behooveth us to know the difference between these three Necessity Spontaneity and Liberty Necessity and Spontaneity may sometimes meet together so may spontaneity and liberty but reall necessity and true liberty can never meet together somethings are necessary and not voluntary or spontaneous somethings are both necessary and voluntary somethings are voluntary and not free somethings are both voluntary free But those things which are truly necessary can never be free and those things which are truly free can never be necessary Necessity consists in an Antecedent determination to one Spontaneity consists in a conformity of the Appetite either intellectual or sensitive to the object True liberty consists in the elective power of the rational will That which is determined without my concurrence may nevertheless agree well enough with my fancy or desires and obtein my subsequent consent But that which is determined without my concurrence or consent cannot be the object of mine election I may like that which is inevitably imposed upon me by another but if it be inevitably imposed upon me by extrinsecall causes it is both folly for me to deliberate and impossible for me to choose whether I shall undergo it or not Reason is the root the fountain the originall of true liberty which judgeth and representeth to the will whether this or that be convenient whether this or that be more convenient Judge then what a pretty kind of liberty it is which is maintained by T. H. such a liberty as is in little Children before they have the use of reason before they can consult or deliberate of any thing Is not this a Childish liberty and such a liberty as is in brute Beasts as Bees and Spiders which do not learn their faculties as we do our trades by experience and consideration This is a brutish liberty such a liberty as a Bird hath to flie when her wings are clipped or to use his own comparison such a liberty as a lame man who hath lost the use of his lims hath to walk Is not this a ridiculous liberty Lastly which is worse then all these such a liberty as a River hath to descend down the Channell what will he ascribe liberty to inanimate Creatures also which have neither reason nor spontaneity nor so much as sensitive appetite Such is T. H. his liberty His necessity is just such another a necessity upon supposition arising from the concourse of all the causes including the last dictate of the understanding in reasonable creatures The adaequate cause and the effect are together in time and when all the concurrent causes are determined the effect is determined also and is become so necessary that it is actually in being But there is a great difference between determining and being determined if all the collaterall causes concurring to the production of an effect were antecedently determined what they must of necessity produce and when they must produce it then there is no doubt but the effect is necessary But if these causes did operate freely or contingently if they might have suspended or denied their concurrence or have concurred after another manner then the effect was not truly and Antecedently necessary but either free or contingent This will be yet clearer by considering his own instance of casting Ambs-Ace though it partake more of contingency then of freedom Supposing the positure of the parties hand who did throw the Dice supposing the figure of the Table and of the Dice themselves supposing the measure of force applied and supposing all other things which did concur to the production of that cast to be the very same they were there is no doubt but in this case the cast is necessary But still this is but a necessity of supposition for if all these concurrent causes or some of them were contingent or free then the cast was not absolutely necessary To begin with the Caster He might have denied his concurrence and not have cast at all He might have suspended his concurrence and not have cast so soon He might have doubled or diminished his force in casting if it had pleased him He might have thrown the dice into the other table In all these cases what becomes of his ambs-ace The like uncertainties offer themselves for the maker of the tables and for the maker of the dice and for the keeper of the tables and for the kind of wood and I know not how many other circumstances In such a mass of contingencies it is impossible that the effect should be antecedently necessary T. H. appeales to every mans experience I am contented Let every one reflect upon himself and he shall find no convincing much less constreining reason to necessitate him to any one of these particular acts more than another but onely his own will or arbitrary determination So T. H. his necessity is no absolute no antecedent extrinsecall necessity but meerly a necessity upon supposition Thirdly that which T. H. makes the question is not the question The question is not saith he Whether a man may write if he will and forbear if he will but whether the will to write or the will to forbear come upon him according to his will or according to any thing els in his own power Here is a distinction without a difference If his will do not come upon him according to his will then he is not a free nor yet so much as a voluntary agent which is T. H. his liberty Certainly all the freedom of the agent is from the freedom of the will If the will have no power over it self the agent is no more free than a staff in a mans
this They who may do and might have done many things which they leave undone and who leave undone many things which they might do are not necessitated nor precisely and antecently determined to do what they do But we might do many things which we do not and we do many things which we might leave undone as appeares evidently by the texts alledged Therefore we are not antecedently and precisely determined nor necessitated to do all things which he do What is here of election in this Argument To what proposition to what tearm doth T. H. apply his answer He neither affirmes nor denieth nor distinguisheth of any thing contained in my argument Here I must be bold to call upon him for a more pertinent answer Numb 10. J. D. argument 3 THirdly if there be no true liberty but all things come to pass by inevitable necessity then what are all those interrogations and objurgations and reprehensions and expostulations which we find so frequently in holy Scriptures be it spoken with all due respect but feined and hypocriticall exaggerations Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded that thou shouldest not eat Gen. 3.11 And ver 13. he saith to Eve Why hast thou done this And to Cain Why art thou wroth and why is thy countenance cast down And why will ye dy O house of Israel Doth God command openly not to eat and yet secretly by himself or by the second causes necessitate him to eat Doth he reprehend him for doing that which he hath antecedently determined that he must doe Doth he propose things under impossible conditions Or were not this plain mockery and derision Doth a loving Master chide his servant because he doth not come at his call and yet knowes that the poor servant is chained and fettered so as he cannot moove by the Masters own order without the servants default or consent They who talk here of a twofold will of God secret and revealed and the one opposite to the other understand not what they say These two wills concerne severall persons The secret will of God is what he will do himself The revealed will of God is what he would have us to do It may be the secret will of God to take away the life of the Father yet it is Gods revealed will that his Son should wish his life and pray for his life Here is no contradiction where the Agents are distinct But for the same person to command one thing and yet to necessitate him that is commanded to do another thing To chide a man for doing that which he hath determined inevitably and irresistibly that he must do This were I am afraid to utter what they are not afraid to assert the highest dissimulation Gods chiding prooves mans liberty T. H. TO the third and fift arguments I shall make but one answer J. D. CErtainly distinct Arguments as the third and fift are the one drawn from the truth of God the other drawn from the Justice of God the one from his objurgations and reprehensions the other from his Judgments after life did require distinct answers But the plain truth is that neither here nor in his answer to the fift Argument nor in this whole Treatise is there one word of solution or satisfaction to this Argument or to any part of it All that looks like an answer is contained Numb 12. That which he does is made just by his doing Just I say in him not alwayes just in us by the example for a man that shall command a thing openly and plot secretly the hinderance of the same if he punish him whom he commanded so for not doing it is unjust I dare no insist upon it I hope his meaning is not so bad as the words intimate and as I apprehend That is to impute falshood to him that is Truth it self and to justifie feining and dissimulation in God as he doth tyranny by the infiniteness of his power and the absoluteness of his dominion And therefort by his leave I must once again tender him a new summons for a full and clear Answer to this Argument also He tells us that he was not surprised Whether he were or not is more than I know But this I see plainly that either he is not provided or that his cause admits no choise of answers The Jews dealt ingenuously when they met with a difficult knot which they could not untie to put it upon Elias Elias will answer it when he comes Numb 11. J. D. argument 4 FOurthly if either the decree of God or the foreledge of God or the influence of the Stars or the concatenation of causes or the physicall or morall efficacy of objects or the last dictate of the understanding do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty For he was subjected to the same decrees the same praescience the same constellations the same causes the same objects the same dictates of the understanding But quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulus odi The greatest opposers of our liberty are as earnest maintainers of the liberty of Adam Therefore none of these supposed impediments take away true liberty T. H. THe fourth Argument is to this effect If the decree of God or his foreknowledge or the influence of the Stars or the concatenation of causes or the physicall or morall efficacy of causes or the last dictate of the understanding or whatsoever it be do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty Quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulus odi That which I say necessitateth and determinateth every action that be may no longer doubt of my meaning is the sum of all those things which being now existent conduce and concurre to the production of that action hereafter whereof if any one thing now were wanting the effect could not be produced This concourse of causes whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes may well be called in respect they were all set and ordered by the eternall cause of all things God Almighty the decree of God But that the fore-knowledge of God should be a cause of any thing cannot be truly said seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge depends on the existence of the things known and not they on it The influence of the Stars is but a small part of the whole cause consisting of the concourse of all Agents Nor doth the concourse of all causes make one simple chain or concatenation but an innumerable number of chains joyned together not in all parts but in the first link God Almighty and consequently the whole cause of an event does not alwaies depend upon one single chain but on many together Naturall efficacy of objects does determine voluntary Agents and necessitates the will and consequently the action but for morall efficacy I understand not what he means by it The last dictate of the judgement concerning the good or bad that
may follow on any action is not properly the whole cause but the last part of it And yet may be said to produce the effect necessarily in such manner as the last feather may be said to break an Horses back when there were so many laid on before as there wanted but that to do it Now for his Argument That if the concourse of all the causes necessitate the effect that then it follows Adam had no true liberty I deny the consequence for I make not onely the effect but also the election of that particular effect to be necessary in as much as the will it self and each propension of a man during his deliberation is as much necessitated and depends on a sufficient cause as any thing else whatsoever As for example it is no more necessary that fire should burn then that a man or other creature whose limbs be moved by fancy should have election that is liberty to do what he has a fancy to though it be not in his will or power to choose his fancy or choose his election or will This Doctrin because he saies he hates I doubt had better been suppressed as it should have been if both your Lordship and he had not pressed me to an answer J. D. THis Argument was sent forth onely as an espie to make a more full discovery what were the true grounds of T. H. his supposed necessity which errand being done and the foundation whereupon he builds being found out which is as I called it a concatenation of causes and as he calles it a concourse of necessary causes It would now be a superfluous and impertinent work in me to undertake the refutation of all those other opinions which he doth not undertake to defend And therefore I shall wave them for the present with these short animadversions Concerning the eternall decree of God he confounds the decree it self with the execution of his decree And concerning the fore-knowledge of God he confounds that speculative knowledge which is called the knowledge of vision which doth not produce the intellective objects no more then the sensitive vision doth produce the sensible objects with that other knowledge of God which is called the knowledge of approbation or a practicall knowledge that is knowledge joyned with an act of the will of which Divines do truly say that it is the cause of things as the knowledge of the Artist is the cause of his work God made all things by his word Joh. 1. that is by his wisdom Concerning the influences of the Stars I wish he had expressed himself more clearly For as I do willingly grant that those Heavenly Bodies do act upon these sublunary things not onely by their motion and light but also by an occult vertue which we call influence as we see by manifold experience in the Loadstone and Shell-fish c. So if he intend that by these influences they do naturally or physically determine the will or have any direct dominion over humane Counsels either in whole or in part either more or less he is in an errour Concerning the concatenation of causes whereas he makes not one chain but an innumerable number of chains I hope he speaks hyperbolically and doth not intend that they are actually infinite the difference is not materiall whether one or many so long as they are all joyned together both in the first linck and likewise in the effect It serves to no end but to shew what a shadow of liberty T. H. doth fancy or rather what a dream of a shadow As if one chain were not sufficient to load poor man but he must be clogged with innumerable chains This is just such another freedom as the Turkish Galli-slaves do injoy But I admire that T. H. who is so versed in this question should here confess that he understands not the difference between physicall or naturall and morall efficacy And much more that he should affirm that outward objects do determine voluntary agents by a naturall efficacy No object no second agent Angell or Devill can determine the will of man naturally but God alone in respect of his supreme dominion over all things Then the will is determined naturally when God Almighty besides his generall influence whereupon all second causes do depend as well for their being as for their acting doth moreover at sometimes when it pleaseth him in cases extraordinary concurre by a speciall influence and infuse something into the will in the nature of an act or an habit whereby the will is moved and excited and applied to will or choose this or that Then the will is determined morally when some object is proposed to it with perswasive reasons and arguments to induce it to will Where the determination is naturall the liberty to suspend its act is taken away from the will but not so where the determination is morall In the former case the will is determined extrinsecally in the latter case intrinsecally The former produceth an absolute necessity the latter onely a necessity of supposition If the will do not suspend but assent then the act is necessary but because the will may suspend and not assent therefore it is not absolutely necessary In the former case the will is moved necessarily and determinately In the latter freely and indeterminately The former excitation is immediate the latter is mediate mediante intellectu and requires the help of the understanding In a word so great a difference there is between naturall and morall efficacy as there is between his opinion and mine in this question There remains onely the last dictate of the understanding which he maketh to be the last cause that concerneth to the determination of the will and to the necessary production of the act as the last feather may be said to break an Horses back when there were so many laid on before that there wanted but that to do it I have shewed Numb 7. that the last dictate of the understanding is not alwaies absolute in it self nor conclusive to the will and when it is conclusive yet it produceth no Antecedent nor Extrinsecall necessity I shall onely adde one thing more in present That by making the last judgement of right reason to be of no more weight then a single feather he wrongs the understanding as well as he doth the will the indeavours to deprive the will of its supreme power of application and to deprive the understanding of its supreme power of judicature and definition Neither corporeall agents and objects nor yet the sensitive appetite it self being an inferiour faculty and affixed to the Organ of the Body have any direct or immediate dominion or command over the rationall will It is without the sphear of their activity All the access which they have unto the will is by the means of the understanding sometimes clear and sometimes disturbed and of reason either right or mis-informed Without the help of the understanding all his second causes were not able of
Matth. 7.7 St. Paul tells the Corinthians 2 Cor. 1.11 that he was helped by their prayers that 's not all that the gift was bestowed upon him by their means So prayer is a means And St. James saith cap. 5.16 The effectuall fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much If it be effectuall then it is a cause To shew this efficacy of prayer our Saviour useth the comparison of a Father towards his Child of a Neighbour towards his Neighbour yea of an unjust Judge to shame those who think that God hath not more compassion than a wicked man This was signified by Jacobs wrestling and prevailing with God Prayer is like the Tradesmans tools wherewithall he gets his living for himself and his family But saith he Gods will is unchangeable What then He might as well use this against study Physick and all second causes as against Prayer He shewes even in this how little they attribute to the endeavours of men There is a great difference between these two mutare voluntatem to change the will which God never doth in whom there is not the least shadow of turning by change His will to love and hate was the same from eternity which it now is and ever shall be His love and hatred are immovable but we are removed Non tellus cymbam tellurem cymba reliquit And velle mutationem to will a change which God often doth To change the will argues a change in the Agent but to will a change only argues a change in the object It is no inconstancy in a man to love or to hate as the object is changed Praesta mihi omnia eadem idem sum Prayer works not upon God but us It renders not him more propitious in himself but us more capable of mercy He saith this That God doth not bless us except we pray is a motive to prayer Why talks he of motives who acknowledgeth no liberty nor admitts any cause but absolutely necessary He saith Prayer is the gift of God no less than the blessing which we pray for and conteined in the same decree with the blessing It is true the spirit of prayer is the gift of God will he conclude from thence that the good imployment of one talent or of one gift of God may not procure another Our Saviour teacheth us otherwise Come thou good and faithfull servant thou hast been faithfull in little I will make thee ruler over much Too much light is an enemy to the light and too much Law is an enemy to Justice I could wish we wrangled less about Gods Decrees untill we understood them better But saith he Thanksgiving is no cause of the blessing past and prayer is but a thanksgiving He might even as well tell me that when a beggar craves an almes and when he gives thanks for it it is all one Every thanksgiving is a kind of prayer but every prayer and namely Petition is not a thanks-giving In the last place he urgeth that in our prayers we are bound to submit our wills to Gods Will who ever made any doubt of this we must submit to the Preceptive will of God or his Commandments we must submit to the effective Will of God when he declares his good pleasure by the event or otherwise But we deny and deny again either that God wills things ad extra without himself necessarily or that it is his pleasure that all second causes should act necessarily at all times which is the question and that which he allegeth to the contrary comes not neer it Numb 16. J. D. argument 4 FOurthly the order beauty and perfection of the world doth require that in the Universe should be Agents of all sorts some necessary somefree some contingent He that shall make either all things necessary guided by destiny or all things free governed by election or all things contingent happening by chance doth overthrow the beauty and the perfection of the world T. H. THE fourth Argument from reason is this The Order Beauty and Perfection of the world requireth that in the Vniverse should be Agents of all sorts some necessary some free some contingent He that shall make all things necessary or all things free or all things contingent doth overthrow the beauty and perfection of the world In which Argument I observe first a contradiction For seeing he that maketh any thing in that he maketh it he maketh it to be necessary it followeth that he that maketh all things maketh all things necessary to be As if a workman make a garment the garment must necessarily be So if God make every thing every thing must necessarily be Perhaps the beauty of the world requireth though we know it not that some Agents should work without deliberation which he calls necessary Agents And some Agents with deliberation and those both he and I call free Agents And that some Agents should work and we not know how And them effects we both call contingent But this hinders not but that he that electeth may have his election necessarily determined to one by former causes And that which is contingent and imputed to Fortune be nevertheless necessary and depend on precedent necessary causes For by contingent men do not mean that which hath no cause but which hath not for cause any thing which we perceive As for example when a Travailer meets with a shower the journey had a cause and the rain had a cause sufficient enough to produce it but because the journey caused not the rain nor the rain the journey we say they were contingent one to another And thus you see though there be three sorts of events Necessary Contingent and Free yet they may be all necessary without the destruction of the beauty or perfection of the Univers J. D. THE first thing he observes in mine Argument is contradiction as he calls it but in truth it is but a deception of the sight As one candle sometimes seems to be two or a rod in the water shewes to be two rods Quicquid recipitur recipitur ad modum recipient is But what is this contradiction Because I say he who maketh all things doth not make them necessary What a contradiction and but one proposition That were strange I say God hath not made all Agents necessary he saith God hath made all Agents necessary Here is a contradiction indeed but it is between him and me not between me and my self But yet though it be not a formall contradiction yet perhaps it may imply a contradiction in adjecto Wherefore to clear the matter and dispell the mist which he hath raised It is true that every thing when it is made it is necessary that it be made so as it is that is by a necessity of infallibility or supposition supposing that it be so made but this is not that absolute antecedent necessity whereof the question is between him and me As to use his own instance Before the Garment be made the Tailor is
produce it inevitably To these proofs he answers nothing but onely by denying the first consequence as he calls it and then sings over his old song That the nature of sin consisteth in this that the action proceeds from our will and be against the Law which in our sense is most true if he understand a just Law and a free rationall will But supposing as he doth that the Law injoines things impossible in themselves to be done then it is an unjust and Tyrannicall Law and the transgression of it is no sin not to do that which never was in our power to do And supposing likewise as he doth that the will is inevitably determined by speciall influence from the first cause then it is not mans will but Gods Will and flowes essentially from the Law of Goodness That which he addes of a Judge is altogether impertinent as to his defence Neither is a Civill Judge the proper Judge nor the Law of the Land the proper Rule of Sin But it makes strongly against him for the Judge goes upon a good ground and even this which he confesseth that the Judge looks at no higher cause then the will of the doer prooves that the will of the doer did determine it self freely and that the malefactor had liberty to have kept the Law if he would Certainly a Judge ought to look at all materiall circumstances and much more at all essentiall causes Whether every sufficient cause be a necessary cause will come to be examined more properly Numb 31. For the present it shall suffice to say that liberty flowes from the sufficiency and contingency from the debility of the cause Nature never intends the generation of a monster If all the causes concur sufficiently a perfect creature is produced but by reason of the insufficiency or debility or contingent aberration of some of the causes sometimes a Monster is produced Yet the causes of a Monster were sufficient for the production of that which was produced that is a Monster otherwise a Monster had not been produced What is it then A Monster is not produced by vertue of that order which is set in Nature but by the contingent aberration of some of the naturall causes in their concurrence The order set in Nature is that every like should beget its like But supposing the concurrence of the causes to be such as it is in the generation of a Monster the generation of a Monster is necessary as all the events in the world are when they are that is by an hypotheticall necessity Then he betakes himself to his old help that God may punish by right of omnipotence though there were no sin The question is not now what God may do but what God will do according to that Covenant which he hath made with man Fac hoc vives Do this and thou shalt live whether God doth punish any man contrary to this Covenant Hosea 13.9 O Israel thy destruction is from thy self but in me is thy help He that wills not the death of a Sinner doth much less will the death of an innocent Creature By death or destruction in this discourse the onely separation of Soul and Body is not intended which is a debt of nature and which God as Lord of Life and Death may justly do and make it not a punishment but a blessing to the party but we understand the subjecting of the Creature to eternall torments Lastly he tells of that benenefit which redounds to others from Exemplary Justice which is most true but not according to his own grounds for neither is it Justice to punish a man for doing that which it was impossible alwayes for him not to do Neither is it lawfull to punish an innocent person that good may come of it And if his opinion of absolute necessity of all things were true the destinies of men could not be altered either by examples or fear of punishment Numb 18. J. D. BUt the Patrons of necessity being driven out of the plain field with reason have certain retreats or distinctions which they fly unto for refuge First they distinguish between Stoicall necessity and Christian necessity between which they make a threefold difference First say they the Stoicks did subject Jupiter to destiny but we subject destiny to God I answer that the Stoicall and Christian destiny are one and the same fatum quasi effatum Jovis Hear Seneca Destiny is the necessity of all things and actions depending upon the disposition of Jupiter c. I add that the Stoicks left a greater liberty to Jupiter over destiny than these Stoicall Christians do to God over his decrees either for the beginnings of things as Euripides or for the progress of of them as Chrysippus or at least of the circumstances of time and place as all of them generally So Virgil Sed trahere moras ducere c. So Osyris in Apuleius promiseth him to prolong his life Ultra fato constituta tempora beyond the times set down by the destinies Next they say that the Stoicks did hold an eternall flux and necessary connexion of causes but they believe that God doth act praeter contra naturam besides and against nature I answer that it is not much materiall whether they attribute necessity to God or to the Starrs or to a connexion of causes so as they establish necessity The former reasons do not onely condemn the ground or foundation of necessity but much more necessity it self upon what ground soever Either they must run into this absurdity that the effect is determined the cause remaining undetermined or els hold such a necessary connexion of causes as the Stoicks did Lastly they say the Stoicks did take away liberty and contingence but they admit it I answer what liberty or contingence was it they admit but a titular liberty and an empty shadow of contingence who do profess stifly that all actions and events which either are or shall be cannot but be nor can be otherwise after any other manner in any other Place Time Number Order Measure nor to any other end than they are and that in respect of God determining them to one what a poor ridiculous liberty or contingence is this Secondly they distinguish between the first cause and the second causes they say that in respect of the second causes many things are free but in respect of the first cause all things are necessary This answer may be taken away two wayes First so contraries shall be true together The same thing at the same time shall be determined to one and not determined to one the same thing at the same time must necessarily be and yet may not be Perhaps they will say not in the same respect But that which strikes at the root of this question is this If all the causes were onely collaterall this exception might have some colour but where all the causes being joined together and subordinate one to another do make but one totall
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 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 wings Or a man imprisoned or fettered is he therefore free to walk where he will because he hath feet and a low 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 remooved HE saith a man may perhaps answer that the necessity of things held by him is not a Stoicall necessity but a Christian necessity c. but this distinction I have not used nor indeed have ever heard before Nor do I think any man could make Stoical and Christian two kinds of necessities 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 joyned 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 together of all causes subordinate to the first into one totall cause If any one of those saith he especially the first produce its effect necessarily then all the rest are determined and the effect also necessary Now it is manifest that the first cause is a necessary cause of all the effects that are next and immediat to it and therefore by his 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 noteth 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 acknowledge 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 back-dore after they had openly cast it out at the fore-dore 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 two 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 quarrell 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 tearme 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 fatum Christianum do offend him Let him call it with Lipsius fatum verum who divides destiny into four kinds 1. Mathematicall or Astrologicall destiny 2. Naturall destiny 3. Stoicall 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 Counsail 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 appeares 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 ringleader 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 Damiae 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 rest 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 one 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
not truly empty and that the aire is a true body I might give an hundred such like instances He who leaves the conduct of his understanding to follow vulgar notions shall plunge himself into a thousand errours like him who leaves a certaine guide to follow an ignis fatuus or a Will with the wispe So his proposition is false His reason That matter of fact is not verified by other mens Arguments but by every mans own sense and memory is likewise maimed on both sides whether we hear such words or not is matter of fact and sense is the proper judge of it But what these words do or ought truely to signifie is not to be judged by sense but by reason Secondly reason may and doth oftentimes correct sense even about its proper object Sense tells us that the Sun is no bigger than a good Ball but reason demonstrates that it is many times greater than the whole Globe of the earth As to his instance How can it be proved that to love a thing and to think it good is all one to a man that doth not make his own meaning by these words I confess it cannot be proved for it is not true Beauty and likeness and love do conciliate love as much as goodness cos amoris amor Love is a passion of the will but to judge of goodness is an act of the understanding A Father may love an ungracious Childe and yet not esteem him good A man loves his own house better than another mans yet he cannot but esteem many others better than his own His other instance How can it be proved that eternity is not nunc stans to a man that sayes these words by custom and never considers how he can conceive the thing it self in his minde is just like the former not to be proved by reason but by fancie which is the way he takes And it is not unlike the counsel which one gave to a Novice about the choise of his wise to advice with the Bels as he fancied so they founded either take her or leave her Then for his assumption it is as defective as his proposition That by these words spontaneity c. men do understand as he conceives No rational man doth conceive a spontaneous action and an indeliberate action to be all one every indeliberate action is not spontaneous The fire considers not whether it should burn yet the burning of it is not spontaneous Neither is every spontaneous action indeliberate a man may deliberate what he will eat and yet eat it spontaneously Neither doth deliberation properly signifie the considering of the good and evil sequels of an action to come But the considering whether this be a good and fit means or the best and fittest means for obtaining such an end The Physician doth not deliberate whether he should cure his Patient but by what means he should cure him Deliberation is of the means not of the end Much less doth any man conceive with T. H. that deliberation is an imagination or an act of fancy not of reason common to men of discretion with mad men and natural fools and children and bruit beasts Thirdly neither doth any understanding man conceive or can conceive either that the will is an act of our deliberation the understanding and the will are two distinct faculties or that onely the last appetite is to be called our will So no man should be able to say this is my will because he knows not whether he shall persevere in it or not Concerning the fourth point we agree that he is a free Agent that can do if he will and forbear if he will But I wonder how this dropped from his pen what is now become of his absolute necessity of all things If a man be free to do and to forbear any thing will he make himself guilty of the non-sence of the School-men and run with them into contradictions for company It may be he will say he can do if he will and forbear if he will but he cannot will if he will This will not serve his turn for if the cause of a free action that is the will to be determined then the effect or the action it self is likewise determined a determined cause cannot produce an undetermined effect either the Agent can will and forbear to will or else he cannot do and forbear to do But we differ wholy about the fifth point He who conceives liberty aright conceives both a liberty in the subject to will or not to will and a liberty to the object to will this or that and a liberty from impediments T. H. by a new way of his own cuts off the liberty of the subject as if a stone was free to ascend or descend because it hath no outward impediment And the liberty towards the object as if the Needle touched with the Load-stone were free to point either towards the North or towards the South because there is not a Barrecado in its way to hinder it yea he cuts off the liberty from inward impediments also As if an Hawk were at liberty to fly when her wings are plucked but not when they are tied And so he makes liberty from extrinsecal impediments to be compleat liberty so he ascribes liberty to bruit beasts and liberty to Rivers and by consequence makes Beasts and Rivers to be capeable of sin and punishment Assuredly Xerxes who caused the Hellespont to be beaten with so many stripes was of this opinion Lastly T. H. his reason that it is custom or want of ability or negligence which makes a man conceive otherwise is but a begging of that which he should prove Other men consider as seriously as himself with as much judgement as himself with less prejudice than himself and yet they can apprehend no such sense of these words would he have other men feign that they see fiery Dragons in the Air because he affirms confidently that he sees them and wonders why others are so blinde as not to see them The reason for the sixth point is like the former a phantastical or imaginative reason How can a man imagine any thing to begin without a cause or if it should begin without a cause why it should begin at this time rather than at that time He saith truely nothing can begin without a cause that is to be but it may begin to act of it self without any other cause Nothing can begin without a cause but many things may begin and do begin without necessary causes A free cause may as wel choose his time when he will begin as a necessary cause be determined extrinsically when it must begin And although free effects cannot be foretold because they are not certainly predetermined in their causes yet when the free causes do determine themselves they are of as great certainty as the other As when I see a Bell ringing I can conceive the cause of it as well why it rings now as I know the
to support it If it be an Agent saith he it can work what of this A posse ad esse non valet argumentum from can work to will work is a weak inference And from will work to doth work upon absolute necessity is another gross inconsequence He proceeds thus If it work there is nothing wanting of what is requisite to produce the action True there wants nothing to produce that which is produced but there may want much to produce that which was intended One horse may pull his heart out and yet not draw the Coach whither it should be if he want the help or concurrence of his fellowes And consequently saith he the cause of the action is sufficient Yes sufficient to do what it doth though perhaps with much prejudice to it self but not alwayes sufficient to do what it should do or what it would do As he that begets a Monster should beget a man and would beget a man if he could The last link of his argument follows And if sufficient then also necessary stay there by his leave there is no necessary connexion between sufficiency and efficiency otherwise God himself should not be All-sufficient Thus his Argument is vanished But I will deal more favourably with him and grant him all that which he labours so much in vain to prove That every effect in the world hath sufficient causes Yea more that supposing the determination of the free and contingent causes every effect in the world is necessary But all this will not advantage his cause the black of a bean for still it amounts but to an hypotheticall necessity and differs as much from that absolute necessity which he maintains as a Gentleman who travailes for his pleasure differs from a banished man or a free Subject from a slave Numb 36. T. H. AND thus you see how the inconveniences which he objecteth must follow upon the holding of necessity are avoided and the necessity it self demonstratively prooved To which I could add if I thought it good Logick the inconveniency of denying necessity as that it distroyes both the Decrees and Prescience of God Almighty for whatsoever God hath purposed to bring to pass by man as an instrument or foreseeth shall come to passe A man if he have Liberty such as he affirmeth from necessitation might frustrate and make not to come to pass And God should either not foreknow it and not Decree it or he should foreknow such things shall be as shall never be and decree that which shall never come to pass J. D. THus he hath laboured in vain to satisfie my reasons and to proove his own assertion But for demonstration there is nothing like it among his Arguments Now he saith he could add other Arguments if he thought it good Logick There is no impediment in Logick why a man may not press his Adversary with those absurdities which flow from his opinion Argumentum ducens ad impossibile or ad absurdum is a good form of reasoning But there is another reason of his forbearance though he be loth to express it Haeret lateri laethalis arundo The Arguments drawn from the attributes of God do stick so close in the sides of his cause that he hath no mind to treate of that subject By the way take notice of his own confession that he could add other reasons if he thought it good Logick If it were predetermined in the outward causes that he must make this very defence and no other how could it be in his power to add or substract any thing Just as if a blind-man should say in earnest I could see if I had mine eyes Truth often breaks out whilest men seek to smother it But let us view his Argument If a man have liberty from necessitation he may frustrate the Decrees of God and make his prescience false First for the Decrees of God This is his Decree that man should be a free Agent If he did consider God as a most simple Act without priority or posteriority of time or any composition He would not conceive of his Decrees as of the Lawes of the Medes and Persians long since enacted and passed before we were born but as coexistent with our selves and with the acts which we do by vertue of those Decrees Decrees and Attributes are but notions to help the weakness of our understanding to conceive of God The Decrees of God are God himself and therefore justly said to be before the foundation of the world was laid And yet coexistent with our selves because of the Infinite and Eternall being of God The summe is this The Decree of God or God himself Eternally constitutes or ordaines all effects which come to to pass in time according to the distinct natures or capacities of his creatures An Eternall Ordination is neither past nor to come but alwaies present So free actions do proceed as well from the Eternall Decree of God as necessary and from that order which he hath set in the world As the Decree of God is Eternall so is his Knowledge And therefore to speak truly and properly there is neither fore-knowledge nor after-knowledge in him The Knowledge of God comprehends all times in a point by reason of the eminence vertue of its infinite perfection And yet I confess that this is called fore-knowledge in respect of us But this fore-knowledge doth produce no absolute necessity Things are not therefore because they are fore-known but therfore they are fore-known because they shall come to pass If any thing should come to pass otherwise than it doth yet Gods knowledge could not be irritated by it for then he did not know that it should come to pass as now it doth Because every knowledge of vision necessarily presupposeth its object God did know that Judas should betray Christ but Judas was not necessitated to be a traitor by Gods knowledge If Judas had not betrayed Christ then God had not fore-known that Judas should betray him The case is this A watch-man standing on the steeples-top as it is the use in Germany gives notice to them below who see no such things that company are coming and how many His prediction is most certain for he sees them What a vain collection were it for one below to say what if they do not come then a certaine prediction may fail It may be urged that there is a difference between these two cases In this case the coming is present to the Watch-man but that which God fore-knowes is future God knowes what shall be The Watch-man onely knowes what is I answer that this makes no difference at all in the case by reason of that disparity which is between Gods knowledge and ours As that coming is present to the Watchman which is future to them who are below So all those things which are future to us are present to God because his Infinite and Eternall knowledge doth reach to the future being of all Agents and events Thus much is
A DEFENCE OF TRUE LIBERTY FROM ANTE-CEDENT AND Extrinsecall Necessity Being an answer to a late Book of Mr. Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury intituled A Treatise of Liberty and Necessity Written by the Right Reverend John Bramhall D. D. and Lord Bishop of Derry LONDON Printed for John Crook and are to be sold at his Shop at the sign of the Ship in St. Pauls Church-yard 1655. To the Right Honourable the Marquis of Newcastle c. SIR If I pretended to compose a complete 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 Common-wealth against the blasphemous desperate and destructive opinion of fatall destiny But as mine 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 as being freer from passions and tergiversations less subject to mistakes and misrelations wherein paralogismes are more quickly detected impertinencies discovered confusion avoided So my present intention is onely to vindicate that discourse and together with it 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 satisfied my self Your Lorships most obliged to love and serve you I. D. TO THE READER CHristian Reader this ensuing treatise was neither penned nor intended for the Press but privately undertaken that by the ventilation of the question truth might be cleared from mistakes The same was Mr. Hobbs his desire at that time as appeareth by four passages in his Book P. 18. 26. 35. 80. wherein he requesteth and beseecheth that it may be kept private But either through forgetfulness or change of judgment he hath now caused or permitted it to be printed in England without either adjoining my first discourse to which he wrote that answer or so much as mentioning this Reply which he hath had in his hands now these eight years So wide is the date of his letter in the year 1652. from the truth and his manner of dealing with me in this particular from ingenuity if the edition were with his own consent Howsoever here is all that passed between us upon this subject without any addition or the least variation from the originall Concerning the nameless Authour of the preface who takes upon him to hang out an Ivy bush before this rare piece of sublimated Stoacisme to invite passengers to purchase it As I know not who he is so I do not much heed it nor regard either his ignorant censures or hyperbolicall expressions The Church of England is as much above his detraction as he is beneath this question Let him lick up the spittle of Dionysius by himself as his servile flatterers did and protest that it is more sweet than Nectar we envie him not much good may it do him His very frontispiece is a sufficient confutation of his whole preface wherein he tells the world as falsly and ignorantly as confidently that all controversy concerning Predestination Election Free-will Grace Merits Reprobation c. is fully decided and cleared Thus he accustometh his pen to run over beyond all lilimits of truth and discretion to let us see that his knowledge in Theologicall Controversies is none at all and into what miserable times we are fallen when blind men will be the onely judges of colours Quid tanto dignum feret hic promissor hiatu There is yet one thing more whereof I desire to advertise the Reader Whereas Mr. Hobbs mentions my objections to his Book De Cive P. 1. It is true that ten yeares since I gave him about 60. exceptions the one half of them Politicall the other half Theologicall to that Book and every exception justified by a number of reasons to which he never yet vouchsafed any answer Nor do I now desire it for since that he hath published his Leviathan Monstrum horrendum informe ingens cuilumen ademptum which affords much more matter of exception And I am informed that there are already two the one of our own Church the other a stranger who have shaken in pieces the whole Fabrick of his City that was but builded in the air and resolved that huge mass of his seeming Leviathan into a new nothing and that their labours will speedily be published But if this information should not prove true I will not grudge upon his desire God willing to demonstrate that his principles are pernicious both to Piety and Policy and destructive to all relations of mankind between Prince and Subject Father and Child Master and Servant Husband and Wife And that they who maintain them obstinately are fitter to live in hollow-trees among wild beasts than in any Christian or Politicall Society so God bless us A VINDICATION OF TRUE LIBERTY FROM Antecedent and Extrinsecal Necessity Numb 1. J. D. EIther I am free to write this discourse for Liberty against Necessity or I am not free If I have obteined the cause and ought not to suffer for the truth If I be not free yet I ought not to be blamed since I do it not out of any voluntary election but out of an inevitable necessity T. H. RIght Honourable I had once resolved to answer J. D's objections to my Book De Cive in the first place as that which concerns me most and afterwards to examine this discourse of Liberty and Necessity which because I never had uttered my opinion of it concerned me the less But seeing it was both your Lordships and J. D.'s desire that I should begin with the latter I was contented so to do And here I present and submit it to your Lordships judgement J. D. THe first day that I did read over T. H. his defence of the necessity of all things was April 20. 1646. which proceeded not out of any disrespect to him for if all his discourses had been Geometrical demonstrations able not onely to perswade but also to compell assent all had been one to me first my journey and afterwards some other trifles which we call business having diverted me untill then And then my occasions permitting me and an advertisement from a friend awakening me I set my self to a serious examination of it We commonly see those who delight in Paradoxes if they have line enough confute themselves and their speculatives and their practicks familiarly enterferre one with another The very first words of T. H. his defence trip up the heels of his whole cause I had ones resolved To resolve praesupposeth deliberation but what deliberation can there be of that which is inevitably determined by causes without our selves before we do deliberate can a condemned man deliberate whether he should be executed or not It is even to as much purpose
hand Secondly he makes but an empty shew of a power in the will either to write or not to write If it be precisely and inevitably determined in all occurrences whatsoever what a man shall will and what he shall not will what he shall write and what he shall not write to what purpose is this power God and Nature never made any thing in vain but vain and frustraneous is that power which never was and never shall be deduced into Act. Either the agent is determined before he acteth what he shall will and what he shall not will what he shall act and what he shall not act and then he is no more free to act than he is to will Or els he is not determined and then there is no necessity No effect can exceed the vertue of its cause if the action be free to write or to forbear the power or faculty to will or nill must of necessity be more free Quod efficit tale illud magis est tale If the will be determined the writing or not writing is likewise determined and then he should not say he may write or he may forbear but he must write or he must forbear Thirdly this answer contradicts the sense of all the world that the will of man is determined without his will or without any thing in his power Why do we ask men whether they will do such a thing or not Why do we represent reasons to them Why do we pray them Why do we intreat them Why do we blame them if their will come not upon them according to their will Wilt thou be made clean said our Saviour to the Paralitike person John 5.6 to what purpose if his will was extrinsecally determined Christ complains We have piped unto you and ye have not danced Matth. 11.17 How could they help it if their wills were determined without their wills to forbear And Matth. 23.37 I would have gathered your children together as the Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings but ye would not How easily might they answer according to T. H. his doctrine Alas blame not us Our wills are not in our own power or disposition if they were we would thankfully embrace so great a favour Most truly said St. Austin De lib. Au. l. 3. c. 30. Our will should not be a will at all if it were not in our power This is the belief of all mankind which we have not learned from our Tutors but is imprinted in our hearts by nature We need not turn over any obscure books to find out this truth The Poets chant it in the Theaters the Shepheards in the mountains The Pastors teach it in their Churches the Doctors in the Universities The common people in the marketts and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto it except an handfull of men who have poisoned their intellectualls with paradoxicall principles Fourthly this necessity which T. H. hath devised which is grounded upon the necessitation of a mans will without his will is the worst of all others and is so far from lessening those difficulties and absurdities which flow from the fatall destiny of the Stoicks that it increaseth them and rendreth them unanswerable No man blameth fire for burning whole Cities No man taxeth poison for destroying men but those persons who apply them to such wicked ends If the will of man be not in his own disposition he is no more a free agent than the fire or the poison Three things are required to make an act or omission culpable First that it be in our power to perform it or forbear it Secondly that we be obliged to perform it or forbear it respectively Thirdly that we omit that which we ought to have done or do that which we ought to have omitted No man sins in doing those things which he could not shun or forbearing those things which never were in his power T. H. may say that besides the power men have also an appetite to evill objects which renders them culpable It is true but if this appetite be determined by anothers not by themselves Or if they have not the use of reason to curb or restrain their appetites they sin no more than a stone descending downeward according to its naturall appetite or the brute beasts who commit voluntary errours in following their sensitive appetites yet sin not The question then is not whether a man be necessitated to will or nill yet free to act or forebear But having the ambiguous acceptions of the word free the question is plainly this whether all agents and all events natural civill moral for we speak not now of the conversion of a sinner that concerns not this question be predetermined extrinsecally and inevitably without their own concurrence in the determination so as all actions and events which either are or shall be cannot but be nor can be otherwise after any other manner or in any other place time number measure order nor to any other end than they are And all this in respect of the supreme cause or a concourse of extrinsecall causes determining them to one So my preface remaines yet unanswered Either I was extrinsecally and inevitably predetermined to write this discourse without any concurrence of mine in the determination and without any power in me to change or oppose it or I was not so predetermined If I was then I ought not to be blamed for no man is justly blamed for doing that which never was in his power to shun If I was not so predetermined then mine actions and my will to act are neither compelled nor necessitated by any extrinsecall causes but I elect and choose either to write or to forbear according to mine own will and by mine own power And when I have resolved and elected it is but a necessity of supposition which may and doth consist with true liberty not a real anteeedent necessity The two hornes of this Dilemma are so strait that no mean can be given nor room to pass between them And the two consequences are so evident that in stead of answering he is forced to decline them Numb 4. J. D. AND so to fall in hand with the question without any further proems or prefaces By liberty I do understand neither a liberty from sin nor a liberty from misery nor a liberty from servitude nor a liberty from violence but I understand a liberty from necessity or rather from necessitation that is an universall immunity from all inevitability and determination to one whether it be of the exercise only which the Schooles call a liberty of contradiction and is found in God and in the good and bad Angells that is not a liberty to do both good and evill but a liberty to do or not to do this or that good this or that evill respectively or whether it be a liberty of specification and exercise also which the Schooles call liberty of contrariety and is found in men indowed with reason and
or Common-wealths sometimes the people sometimes the Common Councell have power to name so many persons for such an office and the Supreme Magistrate or Senate or lesser Councell respectively to choose one of those And all this is done with that caution and secrecy by billetts or other means that no man knowes which way any man gave his vote or with whom to be offended If it were necessarily and inevitably predetermined that this individuall person and no other shall and must be chosen what needed all this circuit and caution to do that which is not possible to be done otherwise which one may do as well as a thousand and for doing of which no rationall man can be offended if the Electors were necessarily predetermined to elect this man and no other And though T. H. was pleased to passe by my University instance yet I may not untill I see what he is able to say unto it The Junior of the Mess in Cambridge divides the meat into foure parts The Senior chooseth first then the second and third in their order The Junior is determined to one and hath no choise left unless it be to choose whether he will take that part which the rest have refused or none at all It may be this part is more agreable to his mind than any of the others would have been but for all that he cannot be said to choose it because he is determined to this one Even such a liberty of election is that which is established by T. H. Or rather much worse in two respects The Junior hath yet a liberty of contradiction left to choose whether he will take that part or not take any part but he who is precisely predetermined to the choise of this object hath no liberty to refuse it Secondly the Junior by dividing carefully may preserve to himself an equall share but he who is wholly determined by extrinsecall causes is left altogether to the mercy and disposition of another Thirdly I proove it by the texts alledged Numb 30.13 If a wife make a vow it is left to her husbands choise either to establish it or make it void But if it be predetermined that he shall establish it it is not in his power to make it void If it be predetermined that he shall make it void it is not in his power to establish it And howsoever it be determined yet being determined it is not in his power indifferently either to establish it or to make it void at his pleasure So Joshua 24.15 Choose you this day whom ye will serve But I and my house will serve the Lord. It is too late to choose that this day which was determined otherwise yesterday whom ye will serve whether the gods whom your fathers served or the gods of the Amorites Where there is an election of this or that these gods or those gods there must needs be either an indifferency to both objects or at least a possibility of either I and my house will serve the Lord. If he were extrinsecally predetermined he should not say I will serve but I must serve And 2 Sam. 24.12 I offer thee three things choose thee which of them I shall do How doth God offer three things to Davids choise if he had predetermined him to one of the three by a concourse of necessary extrinsecall causes If a soveraign Prince should descend so far as to offer a delinquent his choice whether he would be fined or imprisoned or banished and had under hand signed the sentence of his banishment what were it els but plain drollery or mockery This is the argument which in T. H. his opinion looks another way If it do it is as the Parthians used to fight flying His reason followes next to be considered Numb 7. T. H. FOr if there come into the husbands mind greater good by establishing than abrogating such a vow the establishing will follow necessarily And if the evill that will follow thereon in the husbands opinion outweigh the good the contrary must needs follow And yet in this following of ones hopes and feares consisteth the nature of election So that a man may both choose this and cannot but choose this And consequently choosing and necessity are joyned together J. D. THere is nothing said with more shew of reason in this cause by the patrons of necessity and adversaries of true liberty than this That the will doth perpetually and infallibly follow the last dictate of the understanding or the last judgment of right reason And in this and this onely I confess T. H. hath good seconds Yet the common and approved opinion is contrary And justly For First this very act of the understanding is an effect of the will and a testimony of its power and liberty It is the will which affecting some particular good doth ingage and command the understanding to consult and deliberate what means are convenient for atteining that end And though the will it self be blind yet its object is good in generall which is the end of all human actions Therefore it belongs to the will as to the Generall of an Army to moove the other powers of the soul to their acts and among the rest the understanding also by applying it and reducing its power into act So as whatsoever obligation the understanding doth put upon the will is by the consent of the will and derived from the power of the will which was not necessitated to moove the understanding to consult So the will is the Lady and Mistris of human actions the understanding is her trusty counseller which gives no advise but when it is required by the will And if the first consultation or deliberation be not sufficient the will may moove a review and require the understanding to inform it self better and take advise of others from whence many times the judgment of the understanding doth receive alteration Secondly for the manner how the understanding doth determine the will it is not naturally but morally The will is mooved by the understanding not as by an efficient having a causall influence into the effect but only by proposing and representing the object And therefore as it were ridiculous to say that the object of the sight is the cause of seeing so it is to say that the proposing of the object by the understanding to the will is the cause of willing and therefore the understanding hath no place in that concourse of causes which according to T. H. do necessitate the will Thirdly the judgment of the understanding is not alwayes practicè practicum nor of such a nature in it self as to oblige and determine the will to one Sometimes the understanding proposeth two or three means equally available to the altering of one and the same end Sometimes it dictateth that this or that particular good is eligible or fit to be chosen but not that it is necessarily eligible or that it must be chosen It may judge this or that to
which is good But hatred there signifies Comparative hatred or a less degree of love or at the most a negation of love As Gen. 29.31 When the Lord saw that Leah was hated we may not conclude thence that Jacob hated his Wife The precedent verse doth fully expound the sense ver 30. Jacob loved Rachel more then Leah So Mat. 6.24 No man can serve two Masters for either he will hate the one and love the other So Luke 14.26 If any Man hate not his Father and Mother c. he cannot be my Disciple St. Mathew tells us the sense of it Math. 10.37 He that loveth Father or Mother more then me is not worthy of me Secondly those words ver 15. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy do prove no more but this that the preferring of Jacob before Esau and of the Christians before the Jews was not a debt from God either to the one or to the other but a work of mercy And what of this All men confess that Gods mercies do exceed mans deserts but Gods punishments do never exceed mans misdeeds As we see in the Parable of the Labourers Matth. 20. Friend I do thee no wrong did not I agree with thee for a penny Is it not lawfull for me to do with mine own as I will Is thy eye evill because I am good Acts of Mercy are free but acts of Justice are due That which follows ver 17. comes something nearer the cause The Scripture saith unto Pharoah for this same purpose I have raised thee up that is I have made thee a King or I have preserved thee that I might shew my power in thee But this particle that doth not alwaies signifie the main end of an action but sometimes onely a consequent of it As Matth. 2.15 He departed into Egypt that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet out of Egypt have I called my Son without doubt Josephs aim or end of his journey was not to fulfill prophesies but to save the life of the Child Yet because the fulfilling of the prophecy was a consequent of Josephs journy he saith That it might be fulfilled So here I have raised thee up that I might shew my power Again though it should be granted that this particle that did denote the intention of God to destroy Pharaoh in the Red Sea yet it was not the Antecedent intention of God which evermore respects the good and benefit of the creature but Gods consequent intention upon the praevision of Pharaohs obstinacy that since he would not glorifie God in obeying his word he should glorifie God undergoing his judgements Hitherto we find no aeternal punishments nor no temporal punishment without just deserts It follows ver 18. whom he will he hardneth Indeed hardness of heart is the greatest judgement that Gods lays upon a sinner in this use worse then all the Plagues of Egypt But how doth God harden the heart not by a naturall influence of any evill act or habit into the will nor by inducing the will with perswasive motives to obstinacy and rebellion for God tempteth no man but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and intised Jam. 1.13 Then God is said to harden the heart three wayes First negatively and not positively not by imparting wickedness but by not imparting grace as the Sun descending to the tropick of Capricorne it is said with us to be the cause of Winter that is not by imparting cold but by not imparting heat It is an act of mercy in God to give his grace freely but to detein it is no act of injustice So the Apostle opposeth hardning to shewing of mercy To harden is as much as not to shew mercy Secondly God is said to harden the heart occasionally and not causally by doing good which incorrigible sinners make an occasion of growing worse and worse and doing evill as a Master by often correcting of an untoward Scholar doth accidentally and occasionally harden his heart and render him more obdurate insomuch as he growes even to despise the Rod. Or as an indulgent parent by his patience and gentleness doth incourage an obstinate son to become more rebellious So whether we look upon Gods frequent judgments upon Pharaoh or Gods iterated favours in removing and withdrawing those judgments upon Pharaohs request both of them in their severall kinds were occasions of hardning Pharaohs heart the one making him more presumptuous the other more desperately rebellious So that which was good in it was Gods that which was evill was Pharaohs God gave the occasion but Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration This is cleerly confirmed Gen. 8.15 When Pharaoh saw that there was respite he hardned his heart And Gen. 9.34 When Pharaoh saw that the Rain and the Hail and the Thunders were ceased he sinned yet more and hardned his heart he and his servants So Psal 105.25 He turned their hearts so that they hated his people and dealt subtilly with them That is God blessed the Children of Israel whereupon the Egyptians did take occasion to hate them as is plain Exod. 1. ver 7 8 9 10. So God hardened Pharaohs heart and Pharaoh hardened his own heart God hardened it by not shewing mercy to Pharaoh as he did to Nebuchadnezzar who was as great a sinner as he or God hardned it occasionally but still Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration by determining his own will to evill and confirming himself in his obstinacy So are all presumptuous sinners Psal 95.8 Harden not your hearts as in the provocation as in the day of temptation in the wilderness Thirdly God is said to harden the heart permissively but not operatively nor effectively as he who only le ts loose a Greyhound out of the slip is said to hound him at the Hare Will you see plainly what St. Paul intends by hardning Read ver 22. What if God willing to shew his wrath and to make his power known that is by a consequent will which in order of nature followes the provision of sin indured with much long suffering the vessells of wrath fitted to destruction And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessells of mercy c. There is much difference between induring and impelling or inciting the vessells of wrath He saith of the vessells of mercy that God prepared them unto glory But of the vessells of wrath he saith only that they were fitted to destruction that is not by God but by themselves St. Paul saith that God doth endure the vessells of wrath with much long suffering T. H. saith that God wills and effects by the second causes all their actions good and bad that he necessitateth them and determineth them irresistibly to do those acts which he condemneth as evill and for which he punisheth them If doing willingly and enduring If much long suffering and necessitating imply not a contrariety one to another reddat
deny that it makes consultations to be in vain 't is the consultation that causeth a man and necessitateth him to choose to do one thing rather than another So that unless a man say that cause to be in vain which necessitateth the effect he cannot infer the superfluousness of consultation out of the necessity of the election proceeding from it But it seemes he reasons thus If I must needs do this rather than that then I shall do this rather than that though I consult not at all which is a false proposition a falfe consequence and no better than this If I shall live till to morrow I shall live till to morrow though I run my self through with a sword to day If there be a necessity that an action shall be done or that any effect shall be brought to pass it does not therefore follow that there is nothing necessarily required as a means to bring it to pass And therefore when it is determined that one thing shall be chosen before another 't is determined also for what cause it shall be chosen which cause for the most part is deliberation or consultation And therefore consultation is not in vain and indeed the less in vain by how much the election is more necessitated The same answer is to be given to the third supposed inconveniency Namely that admonitions are in vain for admonitions are parts of consultations The Admonitor being a Counsailer for the time to him that is admonished The fourth pretended inconveniency is that praise and dispraise reward and punishment will be in vain To which I answer that for praise and dispraise they depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised or dispraised For what is it els to praise but to say a thing is good Good I say for me or for some body els or for the State and Commonwealth And what is it to say an action is good but to say it is as I would wish or as another would have it or according to the will of the State that is to say according to Law Does J. D. think that no action can please me or him or the Commonwealth that should proceed from necessity Things may be therefore necessary and yet prayseworthy as also necessary and yet dispraised and neither of both in vain because praise and dispraise and likewise reward and punishment do by example make and conform the will to good or evill It was a very great praise in my opinion that Velleius Paterculus gives Cato where he sayes he was good by nature Et quia aliter esse non potuit The fift and sixt inconvenience that Councells Arts Arms Books Instruments Study Medicines and the like would be superfluous the same answer serves that to the former That is to say that this consequence if the effect shall necessarily come to pass then it shall come to pass without its cause is a false one And those things named Councells Arts Arms c. are the causes of those effects J. D. NOthing is more familiar with T. H. than to decline an argument But I will put it into form for him The first inconvenience is thus pressed Those Lawes are unjust and Tyrannicall which do prescribe things absolutely impossible in themselves to be done and punish men for not doing of them But supposing T. H. his opinion of the necessity of all things to be true all Lawes do prescribe absolute impossibilities to be done and punish men for not doing of them The former proposition is so clear that it cannot be denied Just Lawes are the Ordinances of right reason but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not the Ordinances of right reason Just Lawes are instituted for the publick good but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not instituted for the publick good Just Laws do shew unto a man what is to be done and what is to be shunned But those Lawes which prescribe impossibilities do not direct a man what he is to do and what he is to shun The Minor is as evident for if his opinion be true all actions all transgressions are determined antecedently inevitably to be done by a naturall and necessary flux of extrinsecall causes Yea even the will of man and the reason it self is thus determined And therefore whatsoever Laws do prescribe any thing to be done which is not done or to be left undone which is done do prescribe absolute impossibilities and punish men for not doing of impossibilities In all his answer there is not one word to this argument but only to the conclusion He saith that not the necessity but the will to break the Law makes the action unjust I ask what makes the will to break the Law is it not his necessity What getts he by this A perverse will causeth injustice and necessity causeth a perverse will He saith the Law regardeth the will but not the precedent causes of action To what proposition to what tearm is this answer he neither denies nor distinguisheth First the question here is not what makes actions to be injust but what makes Lawes to be unjust So his answer is impertinent It is likewise untrue for First that will which the Law regards is not such a will as T. H. imagineth It is a free will not a determined necessitated will a rationall will not a brutish will Secondly the Law doth look upon precedent causes as well as the voluntariness of the action If a child before he be seven years old or have the use of reason in some childish quarrell do willingly stab another whereof we have seen experience yet the Law looks not upon it as an act of murther because there wanted a power to deliberate and consequently true liberty Man-slaughter may be as voluntary as murther and commonly more voluntary because being done in hot blood there is the less reluctation yet the Law considers that the former is done out of some sudden passion without serious deliberation and the other out of prepensed malice and desire of revenge and therefore condemnes murther as more wilfull and more punishable than man-slaughter He saith that no Law can possibly be unjust And I say that this is to deny the conclusion which deserves no reply But to give him satisfaction I will follow him in this also If he intended no more but that unjust Lawes are not Genuine Lawes nor bind to active obedience because they are not the ordinations of right reason nor instituted for the common good nor prescribe that which ought to be done he said truly but nothing at all to his purpose But if he intend as he doth that there are no Lawes de facto which are the ordinances of reason erring instituted for the common hurt and prescribing that which ought not to be done he is much mistaken Pharaohs Law to drown the Male Children of the Israelites Exod. 1.22 Nebuchadnezzars Law that whosoever did not fall down and worship the golden image which he
which is given by the much greater part of Philosophers Schoolmen And doth he think that all these spake non-sense or had no more judgment than to contradict themselves in a definition He might much better suspect himself than censure so many Let us see the definition it self A free Agent is that which when all things are present that are needfull to produce the effect can nevertheless not produce it I acknowledge the old definition of Liberty with little variation But I cannot see this non-sense nor discover this contradiction For in these words all things needfull or all things requisite the actuall determination of the will is not included But by all things needfull or requisite All necessary power either operative or elective all necessarie instruments and adjuments extrinsecall and intrinsecall and all conditions are intended As he that hath pen and ink and paper a table a desk and leisure the art of writing and the free use of his hand hath all things requisite to write if he will and yet he may forbear if he will Or as he that hath men and mony and armes and munition and shipps and a just cause hath all things requisite for war yet he may make peace if he will Or as the King proclaimed in the Gospell Matth. 22.4 I have prepared my dinner my oxen and my fatlings are killed all things are ready come unto the marriage According to T. H. his doctrine the guests might have told him that he said not truly for their own wills were not ready And indeed if the will were as he conceives it is necessitated extrinsecally to every act of willing if it had no power to forbear willing what it doth will nor to will what it doth not will then if the will were wanting something requisite to the producing of the effect was wanting But now when Science and conscience reason and Religion our own and other mens experience doth teach us that the will hath a dominion over its own acts to will or nill without extrinsecall necessitation If the power to will be present in actu primo determinable by our selves then there is no necessary power wanting in this respect to the producing of the effect Secondly these words to act or not to act to work or not to work to produce or not to produce have reference to the effect not as a thing which is already done or doing but as a thing to be done They imply not the actuall production but the producibility of the effect But when once the will hath actually concurred with all other causes and conditions and circumstances then the effect is no more possible or producible but it is in being and actually produced Thus he takes away the subject of the question The question is whether effects producible be free from necessity He shuffles out effects producible and thrusts in their places effects produced or which are in the act of production Wherefore I conclude that it is neither non-sense nor contradiction to say that a free Agent when all things requisite to produce the effect are present may nevertheless not produce it Numb 33. T. H. FOr my first five points where it is explicated First what Spontaneity is Secondly what Deliberation is Thirdly what Will Propension and Appetite is Fourthly what a free Agent is Fiftly what Liberty is There can be no other proof offered but every mans own experience by reflecting on himself and remembring what he useth to have in his mind that is what he himself meaneth when he saith an action is spontaneous A man deliberates such is his will That Agent or that action is free Now he that so reflecteth on himself cannot but be satisfied but that deliberation is the considering of the good evill sequells of the action to come That by Spontaneity is meant inconsiderate proceeding for els nothing is meant by it That will is the last act of our Deliberation That a free Agent is he that can do if he will and forbear if he will And that Liberty is the absence of exteruall impediments But to those that out of custome speak not what they conceive but what they hear and are not able or will not take the pains to consider what they think when they hear such words no argument can be sufficient because experience and matter of fact is not verified by other mens Arguments but by every mans own sense and memory For example how can it be prooved that to love a thing and to think it good are all one to a man that does not mark his own meaning by those words Or how can it be prooued that Eternity is not nunc Stans to a man that sayes these words by custome and never considers how he can conceive the thing it self in his mind Also the sixt point that a man cannot imagine any thing to begin without a cause can no other way be made known but by trying how he can imagine it But if he try he shall find as much reason if there be no cause of the thing to conceive it should begin at one time as another that is he hath equall reason to think it should begin at all times which is impossible And therefore he must think there was some speciall cause why it began then rather than sooner or later or els that it began never but was Eternall J. D. NOw at length he comes to his main proofs He that hath so confidently censured the whole current of School-men and Philosophers of non-sense had need to produce strong evidence for himself So he calls his reasons Numb 36. demonstrative proofs All demonstrations are either from the cause or the effect not from private notions and conceptions which we have in our minds That which he calls a demonstration deserves not the name of an intimation He argues thus That which a man conceives in his mind by these words Spontaneity Deliberation c. that they are This is his proposition which I deny The true natures of things are not to be judged by the private ideas or conceptions of men but by their causes and formall reasons Ask an ordinary person what upwards signifies and whether our Antipodes have their heads upwards or downwards And he will not stick to tell you that if his head be upwards theirs must needs be downwards And this is because he knowes not the formall reason thereof That the Heavens incircle the earth and what is towards heaven is upwards This same erronious notion of vpwards and downwards before the true reason was fully discovered abused more than ordinary capacities as appeares by their arguments of pendâ—…li homines and pendulae arbores Again what do men conceive ordinary by this word empty as when they say an empty vessell or by this word Body as when they say there is no body in that roome they intend not to exclude the aire either out of the vessell or out of the roome Yet reason tells us that the vessell is