conformity or an adaequation of the sign to the thing said which we call Veracity When one thing is commanded publickly and the same is hindered privately and the party so hindered is punished for not doing that which was impossible for him to do Where is the veracity where is the conformity and adaequation of the sign to the thing said I dare not tell Mr. Hobbes that he understandeth not these things but I fear it very much If he do his cause is bad or he is but an ill Advocate Next to reconcile the goodnesse of God with his principles he answereth first to the thing That living creatures of all sorts are often in torments as well as men which they could not be without the will of God I know no torments of the other creatures but death and death is a debt to nature not an act of punitive justice The pangs of a violent death are lesse than of a natural besides the benefit that proceedeth thence for the sustenance of men for which the creatures were created See what an Argument here is for all his answers are recriminations or exceptions from brute beasts to men from a debt of nature to an act of punitive justice from a sudden death to lingring torments ut sentiant se mori from a light affliction producing great good to endlesse intolerable pains producing no good but onely the satisfaction of justice Then to the phrase of Gods delighting in torments He answereth That God delighteth not in them It is true God is not capable of passions as delight or grief but when he doth those things that men grieving or delighting do the Scriptures by an anthropopathy do ascribe delight or grief unto him Such are his exceptions not to the thing but to the phrase because it is too Scholastical or too elegant I see he liketh no tropes or figures But in all this here is not one word of answer to the thing it self That that which is beyond the cruelty of the most bloody men is not agreeable to the Father of Mercies to create men on purpose to be tormented in endlesse flames without their own faults And so contrary to the Scriptures that nothing can be more wherein punishment is called Gods strange Work his strange Act For God made not death neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living but ungodly men with their works and words called it unto them It this place seem to him Apocryphall he may have twenty that are Canonicall As I live saith the Lord God I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked but that he turn from his way and live Turn ye turn ye from your evil wayes for why will ye die O house of Israel That his opinion destroyeth the justice of God by making him punish others for his own acts is so plain that it admitteth no defence And if any further corroboration were needful we have his own confession That there can be no punishment but for crimes that might have been lest undone Yet he keepeth a shuffling of terms afflictions and bruit creatures which by his own confession are not capable of moral goodnesse or wickednesse and consequently not subject to punishment and quite taking away the proportion between sin and punishment onely to make a shew of answering to them who do not or cannot weigh what is said Among guilty persons to single out one to be punished for examples sake is equall and just that the punishment may fall upon few fear to offend upon all But to punish innocent persons for examples sake is onely an example of great injustice That which he calleth my opinion of the endlesse tormenrs of hell I learned from Christ himself Go ye cursed into everlasting fire and from my creed When Origen and some others called the mercifull Doctours did indeavour to possesse the Church with their opinion of an universall restitution of all creatures to their pristine estate after sufficient purgation it was rejected by the Church Without doubt a sin against infinite majesty and an aversion from infinite goodnesse do justly subject the offenders to infinite punishment But he talketh as though God were obliged to do acts of grace and to violate his own ordinances that he might save men without their own wills God loves his own creatures well but his own justice better Whereas I shewed That this opinion destroyeth the omnipotence of God by making him the authour or cause of sinne and of all defects which are the fruits of impotence not of power He distinguisheth between the cause of sinne and the authour of sinne granting that God is the cause of sinne He will say That this opâ—…nion makes him God the cause of sinne But does not the Bishop think him the cause of all actions And are not sins of commission actions Is murther no action Doth not God himself say there is no evill in the City which I have not done And was not murther one of those evils But he denieth that God is the authour of sinne that is God doth not own it God doth not give a warrant for it God doth not command it This is down-right blasphemy indeed When he took away the devill yet I did not suspect that he would so openly substitute God Almighty in his place Simon Magus held that God was the cause of sinne but his meaning was not so bad He only blameth God for not making man impeccable The Manichees and Marcionites did hold that God was the cause of sinne but their meaning was not so bad they meant it not of their good God whom they called light but of their bad God whom they termed darknesse But T. H is not afraid to charge the true God to be the very acter of all sinne When the Prophet asketh Shall there be evill in a City and the Lord hath not done it He speaketh expressely of evill of punishment not at all of the evill of sinne Neither will it avail him in the least that he maketh not God to be the authour of sinne For first it is worse to be the physicall or naturall cause of sinne by acting it than to be the morall cause of sinne by commanding it If a man be the Authour of that which he commandeth much more is he the authour of that which he acteth To be an authour is lesse than to be an actour A man may be an authour by perswasion or by example as it is said of Vespasian that he being antiquo cultu victuque was unto the Romans praecipuus astricti moris author by his observing of the ancient dyet of the country and the old fashion of apparrel He was unto the Romans the principall authour of their frugality Hath not he done God Almighty good service to acquit him from being the authour of sinne which is lesse and to make him to be the proper cause of all sin which is more Thus to maintain fate he hath deserted the
there be true liberty in the world we know well whereunto to impute all these disorders but if there be no true liberty in the world free from antecedent necessitation then they all fall directly upon God Almighty and his Providence The last question is concerning his definition of contingent That they are such Agents as work we know not how Against which I gave him two exceptions in my defence One was this Many Agents work we know not how as the Loadstone draweth iron the Jet chaff and yet they are known and acknowledged to be necessary and not contingent Agents Secondly many Agents do work we know how as a stone falling down from an house upon a mans head and yet we do not account it a necessary but a contingent event by reason of the accidental concurrence of the causes I have given him other instances in other parts of this Treatise And if need be he may have twenty more And yet though his definition was shewed formerly to halt down-right on both sides yet he good man is patient and never taketh the least notice of it But onely denyeth the consequence and over-looketh the proofes His objection about the indetermination of the causes That indetermination doth nothing because it maketh the event equal to happen and not to happen is but a flash without any one grain of solidity For by indetermination in that place is clearly understood not to be predetermined to one by extrinsecal causes but to be left free to its own intrinsecal determination this way or that way indifferently So the first words By reason of the indetermination have referrence to free Agents and free Events And the other words Or accidentall concurrence of the causes have referrence to casuall Events And both together referendo sigul◅ singulis do include all contingents as the word is commonly and largely taken by old Philosophers Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 17. REader I do not wonder now and then to see T. H. sink under the weight of an absurdity in this cause A back of steel were not able to bear all those unsupportable consequences which flow from this opinion of fatall destiny But why he should delight to multiplle needlesse absurdities I do not know Allmost every Section produceth some new monster In this seventeenth Section I demonstrated clearly that this opinion of universal necessity doth take away the nature of sinne That which he saith in answer thereunto is that which followeth First it is true he who taketh away the liberty of doing according to the will taketh away the nature of sinne but he that denieth the liberty to will doth not so This answer hath been sufficiently taken away already both in the defence and in these Castigations Inevitable and unresistible necessity doth as much acquit the will from sin as the action Again whereas I urged That whatsoever proceedeth essentially by way of physicall determination from the first cause is good and just and lawfull he opposeth That I might as well have concluded that what soever man hath been made by God is a good and just man So I might What should hinder me to conclude that every man and every creature created by God is good qua talis as it is created by God but being but a creature it is not immutably good as God himself is If he be not of the same opinion he must seek for companions among those old Hereticks the Manichees or Marcionites So he cometh to his main answer Sin is not a thing really made Those things which at first were actions were not then sins though actions of the same nature with those which were afterwards sins Nor was then the will to any thing a sin though it were a will to the same thing which in willing now we should sin Actions became then sins first when the Commandemens came c. There can no action be made sin but by the law Therefore this opinion though it derive actions essentially from God it derives not sins essentially from him but relatively and by the Cōmandement The first thing I observe in him is a contradiction to himself Now he maketh the anomy or the irregularity and repugnance to the law to be the sinne before he conceiveth the action it self to be the sin Doth not the Bishop think God to be the cause of all actions And are not sins of commission actions Is murther no action And doth not God himself say there is no evil in the City which I have not done And was not murther one of those evills c. I am of opinion that the distinction of causes into efficient and deficient is Bohu and signifieth nothing This might have been pardoned to him But his second slip is worse That the World was I know not how long without sin I did demonstrate That upon his grounds all sins are essentially from God and consequently are lawfull and just He answereth That the actions were from God but the actions were not sins at the first untill there was a law What is this to the purpose It is not materiall when sin did enter into the World early or late so as when it did enter it were essentially from God which it must needs be upon his grounds that both the murther and the law against murther are from God And as it doth not help his cause at all so it is most false What actions were there in the World before the sinne of the Angell He charged the Angels with folly And if God spared not the Angels that sinned but cast them down to hell and the Angels which kept not their first estate What were those first actions that were before the sinne of Adam By one man sinne entred into the World and death by sinne Thirdly he erreth most grossely in supposing that the World at first was lawlesse The World was never without the eternall law that is the rule of justice in God himself and that which giveth force to all other laws as the Divine Wisdom saith By me Kings raign and Princes decree justice And sinne is defined to be that which is acted said or thought against the eternall law But to let this passe for the present because it is transcendentally a law How was the World ever without the law of nature which is most properly a law the law that cannot lie not mortal from mortal man not dead or written in the paper without life but incorruptible written in the heart of man by the finger of God himself Let him learn sounder doctrine from St. Paul For when the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law these having not the law are a law unto themselves which shew the work of the law written in their hearts their consciences also bearing witnesse and their thoughts the mean while accusing or excusing one another I passe by those Commandements of God which were delivered by tradition from hand to
no sufficient premises to infer truth or convinâ—… falshhood Let them be Oblations or Sacrifices of praise if he will but are they not likewise truths Hath not God given the same attributes to himself every where in holy Scripture Doth God stand in need of a lie to uphold his honour It is true they are not perfectly conceivable by mortall man The goodnesse and justice and mercy and truth of God are transcendent above the goodness and justice and mercy and truth of men and of a quite different nature from them As St Austine said God is good without quality great without quantity a Creatour without indigence every where without place eternall without time But yet we do understand these attributes so far as to remove from God all contrary imperfections He that is good or goodnesse it self can not be the authour of evill He that is true or truth it self cannot lie or dissemble He that is mercifull or mercy it self cannot be guilty of tyranny or cruel He that is just or justice it self cannot do unjust actions And thus far the attributes of God are argumentative That be far from thee to slay the righteous with the wicked Shal not the Judge of all the earth do right I come now to his Texts of Scripture and first to those which he saith do make for him To which I answer first in generall That there is not one of them all pertinent to the present question they concern not true liberty from extrinsecall necessity but the power of free will in morall and supernaturall acts wherein we acknowledge That the will of man hath not power to determine it self aright without the assistance of Grace His arguments tend rather to prove that God is the authour of sin or that he saves men without their own endeavours than to disprove true liberty Secondly I answer That though his allegations were pertinent yet they come all short of his conclusion He should prove that all acts of free Agents are necessitated antecedently and extrinsecally and he endeavoureth onely to prove that some particular acts of some particular persons were not free from necessity Which Thesis we do not simply disapprove though we dislike his instances God may and doth sometimes extraordinarily determine the will of man to one but when it is so determined the act may be voluntary not free So he concludeth not contradictorily Concerning his places in particular To his first place Gen. 45. 5. I answer That we ought to distinguish between the action of Josephs brethren which was evill and the passion of Joseph which was good God willed and predefined the suffering of Joseph and disposed them to his own glory and the good of his Church God sent Joseph before how dispositively to preserve life But he willed not nor predefined the action of his brethren otherwise than permissively or at the most occasionally by doing good which they made an occasion of doing evill or in respect of the order of their evill act The very same answer serveth to Acts 2. 23. and Acts 4. 27 28. To his instances of Gods hardening the heaâ—…t Exod. 7. 3. and Deut. 2. 30. and to Rom. 9. 16. he hath had a large answer in my former defence To Shimei's cursing David 2 Sam. 16. 10. I answer three wayes first That God is often said to do or will those things which he doth onely will to permit and dispose All that was acted against Job is ascribed to God The Lord hath taken away yet it is as clear as the noon-day sun That Gods concurrence in the determination of Jobs sufferings in respect of Satan was onely permssive Secondly God was the cause of Schimeis cursing David occasionally by afflicting David for his sins which exposed him to Shimeis curses So we say occasion makes a thief and gifts blind the eyes of the wise Thirdly God was the cause of Shimeis cursing David not as the authour of that evill but as the authour of the order in evill that is by restreining Shimeis malice from breaking out at other times and in another manner and letting him loose to vent his vindictive thoughts at that time in that manner So he who shuts all the doors and windows in a Chamber and leaves onely one open is in some sort the cause why a desperate person throws himself down headlong from that window rather than from another In the same sense the cause of Rehoboams obstinacy is said to be from the Lord 1 Kings 12. 15. God is not obliged to confer prudence and other favours upon undeserving persons So likewise God is said to lay a stumbling block before a wicked person Ezek. 3. 20. and therefore this note thence That the sins of the wicked are not the cause of their punishment is a meer collusion The order in evill is Gods the sins are their own what he objecteth out of Job 12. 14. c. and likewise out of Isaiah 10. 6. concerning the King of Assyria deserveth no answer God may freely and justly withdraw his protection and his other graces and favours from his creatures and leave them to be afflicted for their offences by evill Agents and Instruments and dispose the sins of others to be their punishments without necessitating them to acts morally evill Job is as far from disputing our question in that place as these places by him alleadged are from making God the author of evil by a physical determination The Prophet Jeremy saith Jer. 10 23. O Lord I know that the way of man is not in himself it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps Most true man is not secured from danger by his own wisdom and care but by Gods providence and protection nor preserved from all sin and utter destruction by the power of his own free will but by the speciall grace of God which doth freely prevent us pursue us excite us assist us operate in us cooperate with us by permanent habits by transient motions sufficiently effectually according to his good pleasure whose grace is the onely fountain of salvation If we fancied an all-sufficient or independent power to our selves this text were to the purpose now it signifies nothing Our Saviour saith John 6. 44. No man can come unto me except the father which hath sent me draw him Scis tu simulare cupressum quid hoc He knows how to paint a Cypresse tree but what is that to the question of liberty and necessity The coming unto Christ is a â—…upernaturall action and requireth the preventing or preparing grace of God which is called his fathers drawing But this drawing is not such a physicall determination of the will as to destroy liberty in the very act of conversion but an inward calling in an opportune time a perswading of the heart an inlightning of the mind an inspiring of the â—…eed of good desires yet withall leaving to â—…he will its naturall freedom to elect and will actually and to consent to
by special influence did necessitate the second causes to operate as they did and if they being thus determined did necessitate man inevitably unresistably by an essential subordination of causes to do whatsoever he did then one of these two absurdities must follow either That there is no such thing as sin in the World or That God is more guilty of it than man as the motion of the watch is more from the Artificer who makes it and winds it up than from the watch it self To this he answereth onely this That my consequence is no stronger then if out of this That a man is lame necessarily one should inferre That either he is not lame or that his lamenesse proceeded necessarily from the will of God And is it possible that he doth not see that this inference followeth clearly and necessarily from his principles If he doth not I will help his eye-sight All actions and accidents and events whatsoever do proceed from the will of God as the principal cause determining them to do what they are by a naturall necessary subordination of causes This is the principle I assume that which no man can deny But the lamenesse of this man whom he mentioneth is an accident or event Therefore this lamenesse upon his principles is from the will of God c. Castigations upon the Animadversions Num. 12. IN this Section he behaveth himself as the Hound by Nilus drinketh and runneth as if he were afraid to make any stay quite omitting the whole contexture and frame of my discourse onely catching here and there at some phrase or odd ends of broken sentences The authority of St. Paul was formerly his Palladium the fate of his opinion of Fate or his seven-fold shield which he bore up against all assailants And now to desert it as the Oestredge doth her egges in the sand and leave it to the judgement of the Reader to think of the same as he pleaseth seemeth strange That man usually is in some great distresse who quitteth his buckler I desire but the judicious Reader upon the By to compare my former defence with his trifling exceptions and I do not fear his veredict He saith it is blasphemy to say that God can sin so it is blasphemy also to say that God is the authour or cause of any sinne This he himself saith at least implicitly and this he cannot but say so long as he maintaineth an universal antecedent necessity of all things flowing from God by a necessary flux of second causes He who teacheth that all men are determined to sin antecedently without their own concurrence irresistibly beyond their own power to prevent it and efficaciously to the production of sinne He who teacheth that it is the antecedent will of God that men should sinne and must sinne He who maketh God to be not onely the cause of the act and of the law but likewise of the irregularity or deviation and of that very anomy wherein the being of sin so far as sin hath a being doth consist maketh God to be the principall cause and authour of sin But T. H. doth all this He saith it is no blasphemy to say that God hath so ordered the World that sin may necessarily be committed That is true in a right sense if he understand onely a necessity of infallability upon Gods presence or a necessity of supposition upon Gods permission But what trifling minsing of the matter is this Let him cough out and shew us the bottom of his opinion which he cannot deny that God hath so ordered the World that sin must of necessity be committed and inevitably be committed that it is beyond the power of man to help it or hinder it and that by vertue of Gods omnipotent will and eternall decree This is that which we abominate Yet he telleth us That it cannot be said that God is the authour of sin because not he that necessitateth an action but he who doth command or warrant it is the authour First I take that for granted which he admitteth that by his opinion God necessitateth men to sinfull actions which is a blasphemy as well as the other Secondly his later part of his assertion is most false That he onely who commandeth or warranteth sin is the authour of it He who acteth sin he who necessitateth to sin he who first bringes sin into the World is much more the authour of it than the bare commander of it They make God to be the proper and predominate cause of sin by an essential subordination of the sin of man to the will of God and in essential subordinates allwayes the cause of the cause is the cause of the effect If there had never been any positive commandment or law given yet sin had still been sin as being contrary to the eternall law of justice in God himself If an Heathen Prince should command a Christian to sacrifice to Idols or Devils and he should do it not the commander onely but he who commits the idolatry is the cause of the sin His instance in the Act of the Israelites robbing the Egyptians of their Jewels is impertinent For it was no robbery nor sin God who is the Lord Paramount of Heaven and Earth having first justly transfered the right from the Egyptians to the Israelites and in probability to make them some competent satisfaction for all that work and drudgery which they had done for the Egyptians without payment This is certain if God necessitate the Agent to sin either the act necessitated is no sin or God is the principall cause of it Let him chuse whether of these two absurdities this Scylla or that Charybdis he will fall into The reason which he gives of Gods objurgations to convince men that their wills were not in their own power but in Gods power is senselesse and much rather proveth the contrary that because they were chidden therefore their wills were in their own power And if their wills had not been in their own power most certainly God would not have reprehended them for that which was not their own fault He saith That by interpreting hardening to be a permission of God I attribute no more to God in such actions then I might attribute to any of Pharaohs servants the not perswading their master c. As if Pharaohs servants had the same power over their master that God Allmighty had to hinder him and stop him in his evill courses As if Pharaohs servants were able to give or withhold grace as if Pharoahs servants had divine power to draw good out of evill and dispose of sin to the advancement of Gods glory and the good of his Church As if an humble petition or perswasion of a servant and a physicall determination of the will by a necessary flux of naturall causes were the same thing He who seeth a water break over its banks and suffers it to run out of its due channel that he may draw it by furrows into
aut faciendum quod cognoscit the understanding extended to injoy or do that which it knoweth it must needs be that the more reason the lesse passion the lesse reluctance and consequently the more liberty He saith When we mark not the force that moves us we think that it is not causes but liberty that produceth the action I rendred him thus The ignornnce of the true causes and their power is the reason that we ascribe the effect to liberty Where lieth the fault that which he calleth force and strength I call power and for that which moves us I say causes as he himself doth exexpresse himself in the same place Where I say the will causeth he saith the man chuseth As if there were any difference between these two the eye seeth and the man seeth This and a confounding of voluntas with volitio the faculty of willing with the act of willing and a young suckling contradiction which he hath found out That the will hath power to refuse what he willeth that is before it have willed it not after is the substance of this Animadversion which deserve no other answer but that a man should change his risibility into actual laughter I produced two reasons to prove that true liberty is a freedom not only from compulsion but from necessity The former drawn from the nature of election or the act of the will which is allwayes inter plura the later which I called a new Argument because it had not formerly been touched in this Treatise taken from the nature of the faculty of the will or of the soul as it willeth which is not capable of any other compulsion but necessitation And if it be physically necessitated it is thereby acquitted from all guilt and the fault transferred upon those causes that did necessitate it This argument indeed began with a distinction but proceeded to a demonstration which was reduced by me into form in my defence to which he hath given no shew of satisfaction either in his first answer or in these Animadversions except it be a concedo omnia or a granting of the conclusion The same ground which doth warrant the names of Tyrant Praemunire Sunday Monday Tuesday that is Use Quem penes arbitrium est vis norma loquendi doth likewise justifie these generally received terms of the Elicite and Imperate Acts of the will there being scarcely one Authour who hath written upon this subject in Latine that doth not use them and approve them In the councel of Dort which he himself mentioneth he may find this truth positively maintained that voluntas elicit actum suum Where he may likewise find what morall perswasives or motives are if he have a desire to learn Allthough he be convicted that it followeth from his principles That God is the cause of all sin in the world yet he is loath to say so much for that is an unseemly phrase to say that God is the cause of sin because it soundeth so like a saying that God sinneth yea it is even as like it as one egge is like another or rather it is not like it for it is the very same Nullum simile est idem He that is the determining cause of sin in others sinneth himself It is as well against the eternall law that is the rule of justice which is in God himself to make another to sin as to sin Yet though he will not avow such an unseemly phrase That God is the cause of sin Yet he doth indeavour to prove it by four texts of holy Scripture which are alltogether impertiuent to his purpose The first is that of the Prophet Amos Shall there be evill in a City and the Lord hath not done it But that is clearly understood of the evill of punishment not of the evill of sin To the three other places That the Lord said unto Shimei curse David and that the Lord put a lying spirit into the mouth of Ahabs Prophets And that of Rehoboams not hearkning to the people the Reader may find a satisfactory answer formerly But because he seemeth to ground much upon those words which are added to the last place for the cause was from the Lord conceiving some singular virtue to lie in them and an ovation at least to be due unto himself I will not say least the Bishop exclaim against me applauding himself like the flie upon the Cart-wheel See what a dust I do raise I will take the liberty to tell him further That there is nothing of any cause of sin in the text but of a cause of Jeroboams advancement as he might have perceived plainly by the words immediately following The cause was from the Lord that he might perform his saying which the Lord spake by Ahijah the Shilonite unto Ieroboam the son of Nebat Which saying was this I will rent the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and will give ten tribes to thee So he hath produced an evil effect of punishment for an evil effect of sin and a cause of advancement for a cause of sin and a permitting or ordering or disposing of sin for a necessitating or determining to sin Yet he produceth six witnesses to prove that liberty is not opposed to necessity but to compulsion Luther Zanchy Bucer Calvin Moulin and the Synod of Dort First Reader I desire thee to judge of the partiality of this man who rejecteth all humane authority in this cause as he hath reason for it were an easie thing to overwhelme and smother him and his cause with testimonies of Councels Fathers Doctours of all Ages and Communions and all sorts of Classick Authours and yet to seek for protection under the authority of a few Neoterick Writers A double weight and a double measure are an abomination Aut haec illis sunt habenda aut illa cum his amittenda sunt Harum duarum conditionum nunc utram malis vide If he will reap the benefit of humane authority he must undergoe the inconvenience also Why may he use the testimony of Calvine against me in this cause and I may not make use of the testimonies of all the Ancients Greek and Latine against him whom Calvine himself confesseth to have been for liberty against necessiry Semper apud Latinos liberi arbitrii nomen extitit Graecos vero non puduit multo arrogantius usurpare vocabulum siquidem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dixerunt acsi potest as suiipsius penes hominem fuisset But I am able to give him that advantage in this cause Secondly a man may see by his citing of these testimonies that he hath taken them up upon trust without ever perusing them in the Authours themselves I demand therefore whether he will be tried by his own witnesses in this case in difference between him and me that is concerning universal necessity in natural civil and external actions by reason of a necessary connextion of second causes and a natural determination of
that Soveraigns are all subject to the laws of nature because such laws be divine and cannot by any man or Common-woalth be abrogated In one place hemaintaineth that all men by nature are equal among themselvs In another place that the father of every man was originally his Soveraign Lord with power over him of life death He acknowledgeth that God is not onely good and just and merciful but the best That nature doth dictate to us that God is to be honoured and that to honour is to think as highly of his power and goodnesse as is possible and that nothing ought to be attributed to him but what is honourable Nothing can be more contrary to this goodnesse or more dishonourable to God than to make him to be the cause of all the sinne in the World Perhaps he will say that this opinion maketh God the cause of sin But doth not the Bishop think him the cause of all actions And are not sins of commission actions Is murder no action And doth not God himself say Non est malum in civitate quod ego non feci And was not murder one of those evils The like doctrine he hath Qu. p. 108. and 234. I chanced to say that if a child before he have the use of reason shall kill a man in his passion yet because he had no malice to incite him to it nor reason to restrein him from it he shall not die for it in the strict rules of particular justice unlesse there be some mixture of publick justice in the case shewing onely what was the law not what was my opinion An innocent child for terrour to others in some cases may be deprived of those honours and inheritances which were to have discended upon him from his father but not of his life Amazia slew the murderers of the King his father but he slew not their children but did as it is written in the Law in the book of Moses The fathers shall not dye for the children nor the children for the fathers And he presently taxed me for it The Bishop would make but an ill Iudge of innocent children And the same merciful opinion he maintaineth elsewhere All punishments of innocent Subjects be they great or little are against the law of nature For punishment is only for transgression of the law and therefore there can be no punishment of the innocent Yet within few lines after he changeth his note In Subjects who deliberately deny the authority of the Common-wealth established the vengeance is lawfully extended not onely to the fathers but also to the third and fourth generation His reason is because this offence consisteth in renouncing of subjection so they suffer not as Subjects but as enemies Well but the children were born subjects as well as the father and they never renounced their subjection how come they to lose their birth-right and their lives for their fathers fault if there can be no punishment of the innocent so the contradiction stands still But all this is but a copy of his countenance I have shewed formerly expressely out of his principles That the foundation of the right of punishing exercised in every Common-wealth is not the just right of the Soveraign for crimes committed but that right which every man by nature had to kill every man Which right he saith every Subject hath renounced but the Soveraign by whose authority punishment is inflicted hath not So if he do examine the crime in justice and condemn the delinquent then is properly punishment If he do not then it is an hostile act but both waies just and allowable Reader if thou please to see what a slippery memory he hath for thine own satisfaction read over the beginning of the eight and twentieth Chapter of his Leviathan Innocents cannot be justly punished but justly killed upon his principles But this very man who would seem so zealous sometimes for humane justice that there can be no just punishment of innocents no just punishment but for crimes committed how standeth he affected to divine justice He reguardeth it not at all grounding every where Gods right to afflict the Creatures upon his omnipotence and maintaining that God may as justly afflict with eternal torments without sin as for sin Though God have power to afflict a man and not for sinne without in justice Shall we think God so cruel as to afflict a man and not for sinne with extream and endlesse torments Is it not cruelty No more than to do the same for sinne when he that afflicteth might without trouble have kept him from sinning Whether God do afflict eternally or punish eternally whether the Soveraign proceed judciially or in an hostile way so it be not for any crime committed it is all one as to the justice of God and the Soveraign and all one as to the sufferings of the innocent But it may and doth often happen in Common-wealths that a Subject may be put to death by the command of the Soveraign power and yet neither do the other wrong that is to say both be innocent for that is the whole scope of the place It is against the law of nature to punish innocent Subjects saith one place but innocent Subjects may lawfully be killed or put to death saith another Sometimes he maketh the institution of Soveraignty to be only the laying down the right of Subjects which they had by nature For he who renounceth or passeth away his right giveth not to any other man a right which he had not before because there is nothing to which every man had not right by nature but onely standeth out of his way that he may enjoy his own original right without hinderance from him not without hinderance from another And elsewhere The Subjects did not give the Soveraign that right but onely in laying down theirs strengthened him to use his own c. So it was not given but left to him and to him only And the translation of right doth consist onely in not resisting He might as well have said and with as much sense the transferring of right doth consist in not transferring of right At other times he maketh it to be a surrender or giving up of the subjects right to govern himself to this man A conferring of all their power and strength upon one man that may reduce all their wills by plurality of voices to one wil. An appointing of one man to bear their person and acknowledging themselves to be the authours of whatsoever the Soveraign shall act or cause to be acted in those things which concerne the common safety a submission of their wills to his will their judgements to his judgement And David did no injury to Uriah because the right to do what he pleased was given him by Uriah himself Before we had a transferring without transferring now we have a giving up without giving up an appointing or constituting
name of Gods grace which will afford no shelter for his errour Our question was not about the concurrence of grace and free-will in the conversion of a sinner but meerly about the liberty or necessity of all naturall and civil events when he hath acquitted himself like a man in the former cause then he is free to undertake the second The next collection is of such places of Scripture as say there is election of which T. H. is pleased to affirm That they make equally for him and me I do not blame him if he desire that all places which maintain Election and that all natural and civil events should quite be sequester'd from this controversie For it is not possible to reconcile these places with fatal necessity All choice or election is of more than one but there can be no choice of more than one where there is an extrinsecal determination of all particular events with all their circumstances inevitably irresistibly to one by a fluxe of natural causes So they leave no manner of Election at all no more freedom to chuse a mans actions than to chuse his will But all these places and many more prove expressely that a man is free not onely to do it if he will but to will The reason is evident because to chuse is to will the proper elicite immediate act of the will and to chuse one thing before another is nothing else but to will one thing before another But all these places say that a man is free to chuse that is to will one thing before another Chuse life saith one place Chuse whom ye will serve saith a second place Chuse one of three saith a third place and so of the rest But I have pressed these places formerly and shall do further if there be occasion His third sort of Texts are those which seem to make for me against him But I am at age to chuse and urge mine own arguments for my self and cannot want weapons in this cause Therefore he may forbear such a thanklesse office He telleth us of a great apparent contradiction between the first sort of Texts and the last but being both Scripture they may and must be reconciled This is first to wound the credit of the Scriptures and then to give them a plaister The supposed contradiction is in his own phansie Let him take them according to the analogy of faith in that sense wherein the Church hath ever taken them and there is no shew of contradiction The Scripture consists not in the words but in the sense not in the outside but in the marrow He demands Whether the selling of Ioseph did follow infallibly and inevitably upon the permission of God I answer If we consider Gods permission alone neither inevitably nor infallibly If we consider his permission joyntly with his prescience then infallibly but not inevitably Foreknowledge doth no more necessitate events to come to passe than after-knowledge Gods prescience did no more make Judas his treason inevitable to him than my remembrance now of what was done yesterday did make it inevitable then to him that did it He urgeth further So the prescience of God might have been frustrated by the liberty of humane will I answer nothing lesse The natures and essences of all things come to passe because they were foreknown by God whose knowledge was the directive cause of them But the acts and operations of free Agents are therefore foreknown because they will come to pass If any thing should come to pass otherwise God had foreknown from eternity that it should have come to passe otherwise because his infinite understanding doth encompasse all times and all events in the instant of eternity And consequently he beholds all things past present and to come as present And therefore leaving those forms of speech which are accommodated to us and our capacities To speak properly there is neither fore-knowledge nor after-knowledge in God who neither knows one thing after another nor one thing by deduction from another He askes Whether the treachery and fratricide of Iosephs brethren were no sin I answer yes and therefore it was not from God positively but permissively and dispositively Ye thought evil against me but God meant it unto good to save much people alive But he urgeth Joseph said Be not grieved nor angry with your selves that ye sold me hither Ought not a man to be grieved and angry with himself for sinning Yes but penitent sinners such as Josephs brethren were have great cause of joy and comfort when they understand that God hath disposed their sin to his glory their own good and the benefit of others He demands further Doth God barely permit corporal motions and neither will them nor nill them Or how is God the cause of the motion and the cause of the law yet not of the irregularity It were a much readier way to tell us at once directly That either there is no sin in the World or that God is the authour of sin than to be continually beating the bush after this manner But I answer All corporal motion in general is from God not onely permissively but also causally that is by a general influence but not by a special influence The specifical determination of this good general power to evil is from the free Agent who thereby doth become the cause of the irregularity There is no contrariety between motion in general and the law but between the actual and determinate abuse of this good locomitive power and the law He demands Whether the necessity of hardnesse of heart be not as easily derived from Gods permission that is from his withholding his grace as from his positive decree This question is proposed in a confused blundering manner without declaring distinctly what grace he meaneth I answer two wayes First we are to distinguish between a necessity of consequence or an infallibility and a necessity of consequent or a causal necessity Supposing but not granting that hardnesse of heart is as inâ—…allibly derived from the one as from the other yet not so causally nor so culpably in â—…espect of God who is not obliged in justice â—…o give his free grace to his creature but he is â—…bliged by the rule of his own justice not to determine his own creature to evil and then punish him for the same evil Secondly I answer that even this supposed necessity of infabillity can no way be imputed to God who never forsakes his creature by with holding his grace from him until his creature have first forsaken him who never forsakes his creature so far but that he may by prayers and using good indeavours obtaine the aide of Gods grace either to prevent or remove hardnesse of heart When God created man he made him in such a condition that he did not need special exciting grace to the determination of his will to supernatural good And to all that are within the pale of his
Church he gives sufficient grace to prevent hardnesse of heart if they will If man have lost his primogenious power if he will not make use of those supplies of grace which Gods mercy doth afford him that is his own fault But still here is no physical determination to evil here is no antecedent extrinsecal determination of any man to hardnesse of heart here is nothing but that which doth consist with true liberty Lastly he saith We make God onely to permit evil and to will good actions conditionally and consequently if man will them So we ascribe nothing at all to God in the causation of any action good or bad He erreth throughout God is the total cause of all natures and all essences In evil actions God is cause of the power to act of the order in acting of the occasion and of the disposition thereof to good In good actions freely done he is the author original of liberty he enableth by general influence he concurreth by speciall assistance and cooperation to the performance of them and he disposeth of them to good He doth not will that meerly upon condition which himself hath prescribed nor consequently which he himself hath antecedently ordained and instituted Now having cleared all his exceptions it remaineth next to examine how he reconcileth the first and the third sort of Texts The will of God saith he sometimes signifieth the word of God or the commandments of God that is his revealed will or the signs or significations of his will Sometimes it signifieth an internal act of God that is his counsel and decree By his revealed will God would have all men to be saved but by his internal will he would not By his revealed will he would have gathered Ierusalem not by his inward will So when God saith What could I have done more to my vineyard that is to be understood outwardly in respect of his revealed will What directions what laws what threatnings could have been used more And when he saith It came not into my mind the sense is to command it This I take to be the scope and summe of what he saith Thus far he is right that he distinguisheth between the signifying will of God and his good pleasure for which he is beholding to the Schooles And that he makes the revealed will of God to be the rule of all our actions And that many things happen against the revealed will of God but nothing against his good pleasure But herein he erreth grossely that he maketh the revealed will of God and his internal will to be contrary one to another as if God did say one thing and mean another or command one thing and necessitate men to do another which is the grossest dissimilation in the World Odi illos seu claustrâ—… erebi quicunque loquuâ—…nr Ore aliud tacitoque aliud sub pectore condunt He saith It is not Christian to think if God had a purpose to save all men that any could be damned because it were a sign of want of power to â—…ffect what he would It is true if God had an absolute purpose to work all mens salvation irresistibly against their wills or without themselves But God hath no such absolute will to save all men He loves his creatures wel but his own justice better And he that made men without themselves will not save them without themselves He co-operates with all his creatures according to their distinct natures which he hath given them with necessary Agents necessarily with free Agents freely God hath given men liberty to assent to saving truth They abuse it He hath proposed a condition under which they may be saved They reject it So he willeth their salvation by an antecedent will and their damnation by a consequent will which two wills in God or within the Divine Essence are no way distinct for they are the same with the Divine Essence But they are distinguished onely in order to the things willed of God Neither is there the least contradiction between them The one shews us what God would have us to do The other is what God himself will do The one looks upon man as he was created by God or as he should have been or might have been without his own fault The other looks upon man as he is with all circumstances The one regards onely the order of the causes and means designed by God for our salvation The other regards also the application or misapplication of these meanes by our selves In answering to these words Say not thou it is through the Lord I fell away Say not thou he hath caused me to erre He distinguisheth between say not and think not as if it were unlawful to say so but not unlawful to think so Curse not thy King saith Solomon no not in thy thought much lesse thy God Thought is free from man but not from God It is not honourable saith he to say so No more is it to think so It is not lawful saith he to say that any action can be done which God hath purposed shall not be done that is in his language which shall not actually come to passe in due time Our Saviour was of another mind Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my father and he shall presently give me more than twelve Legions of Angels He knew some things can be done which never will be done Next he proceedeth to touch those inconveniencies which flow from the opinion of universal necessity but very gently and sparingly Arts and armes and bookes and consultations and medicines c. are not superfluous though all events be necessary because the means are equally necessitated with the event Suppose it were so so much the worse This must needs utterly destroy all care and solicitude of free Agents He is a madman that will vexe and trouble himself and take care and consult about things that are either absolutely necessary or absolutely impossible as about the rising of the Sun or about the draining of the sea with a sieve Yet such are all events and all the means to effect them in his opinion either as absolutely necessary as the rising of the Sun or as absolutely impossible as the draining of the Ocean with a sieve What need he take care for a Medicine or a Physician who knows that if he must recover and if a Medicine or a Physician be a necessary means for his recovery the causes will infallibly provide him one and it may be a better Medicine or a better Physician than he should have used If a man may recover or not recover both means and care to use means do well But if a man must recover or not recover that is if the end and the means be both predetermined the meanes may be necessary but all care and sollicitude is altogether vain and superfluous But he telleth the Reader that this absurdity followeth as much from my opinion as from his For as I
thing supposed was in the Agents power And where the contrary determination by the Agent being supposed the Event must necessarily have been otherwise And so he is come unwittingly under the protection of that old foolish rule which even now he renounced Whatsoever is when it is is necessarily so as it is I said most truely That that is not the question which he maketh to be the question For although at sometimes he assent to the right stating of the question yet at other times like a man that doth not understand himself he varieth quite from it And in the place of an absolute antecedent necessity he introduceth a consequent hypothecal necessity As we have seen even now in the case of ambs ace and where he argueth from prescience and where he reasoneth thus That which shall be shall be as if the manner how it should be were not materiall and where he maketh deliberation and perswasion to determine the will All these do amount to no more then a necessity upon supposition The question is as much or more of the liberty of doing what we will as willing what we will But he makes it to be only of willing He proceedeth like another Jehu He that cannot understand the difference between free to do if he will and free to will is not fit to hear this controversie disputed much lesse to be a writer in it Certainly I think he meaneth by himself for he neither understandeth what free is nor what the will is A bowle hath as much free-will as he the bowle is as much an agent as he neither of them according to his his opinion do move themselves originally The bias is as much to the bowle as his will is to him The bias is determined to the one so is his will The bowle doth not bias it self no more hath he the government of his own will but the outward causes It is not the fault of the bowle if it have too much bias or too little bias but his fault that biast it So if he chuse evill it is not his fault but the causes which biast him over much or over little or on the wrong side And this is all his freedom a determinate propension to one side without any possibility to incline the other way As a man that is nailed to a post is free to lay his ear to it Then as Diogenes called a displmued cock Platos man a living creature with two feet without feathers So I may call a bowle Mr. Hobbes his free Agent And yet he glorieth in this silly distinction and hugs himself for the invention of it It is true very few have learned from tutours that a man is not free to will nor do they find it much in books Yea when I call shepherds Poets Pastours Doctours and all mankind to bear witnesse for liberty he answereth That neither the Bishop nor they ever thought on this question If he make much of his own invention I do not blame him The infant will not live long before it be hissed out of the World In all my life I never saw a little empty boat bear so great a saile as if he meant te tow the World after him but when the sun is at the lowest it makes the longest shadows Take notice by the way that his freedom is such a freedom as none of mankind from the shepherd to the Doctour ever dreamed of before himself This vain unprofitable distinction which wounds himself and his cause more then his adversary and leaves him open to the blows of every one that will vouchsafe to assault him which contradicts both the truth and it self hath been twice taken away allready in a voider whither I refer the Reader and ought not like twice sodden Coleworts to have been served up again in triumph so quickly upon his single authority before this Treatise be ended I shall meet with it again to some purpose I wonder whether he do never cast away a thought upon the poor woman that was drowned bymischance whose dead body whilest her neighbours sought for down the river her husband who knew her conditions better than they advised them to seek up the river for all her life long she loved to be contrary to all others and he presumed she would swimme against the stream being dead Is it not hard that he who will not allow to other men any dominion over themselves or their own acts will himself needs usurpe an Universal Empire over the wills and understandings of all other men Is it not freedom enough saith he unlesse a mans will have power over his will and that his will must have another power within it to do voluntary acts His errour proceedeth from the confounding of voluntas and volitio the faculty of the will and the act of willing Not long after he reiterateth his mistake taxing me for saying that our wills are in our power adding that through ignorance I detect the same fault in St. Austine If he mean my ignorance to mistake St Austin let St. Austine himselfe be Judge Voluntas igitur nostra nec voluntas esset nisi esset in nostra potestate c. Therefore our will should not be our will unlesse it were in our power Because it is in our power it is free to us for that is not free to us which is not in our power c. If he mean that it is an errour in St. Austine he sheweth his insolence and vain-glory If this be an errour in him it is an errour in all the rest of the Fathers I will not bate him one of them in this cause Mr. Calvin whom he citeth sometimes in this Treatise professeth that he will not differ a syllable from St. Austine I do not say in this question of natural necessity or liberty which no man then doubted of but even in that higher question of the concurrence of grace with free-will So here is neither errour in St. Austine nor ignorance in me Whereas I demanded thus If whatsoever a man doth and willeth be predetermined to one precisely and inevitably to what purpose is that power whereof T. H. speaketh to do if he will and not to do if he will which is never deduced into act indifferently and in utramque partem and consequently frustraneous He answereth That all those things may be brought to passe which God hath from eternity predetermined In good time he might as well say that God hath given man a liberty to both parts to do or not to do to chuse or to refuse and yet hath limited him punctually and precisely to one part which is a pure contradiction to give him choice of two and yet restrain him to one He addeth that though the will be necessitated yet the doing what we will is liberty Yes it is the liberty of a bowle it is his mock liberty but it is no wise mans liberty where all deliberation is vain and all election
righteous with the wicked Necessity may justifie the sufferings of innocent persons in some cases But no necessity can warrant the punishment of innocent persons Innocentium lachrimae diluvio periculosiores Whether they did well or ill for the manner of the act who put out their bodily eyes because they supposed them to be an impediment to the eye of the soul is not pertinent to our purpose yet was apt enough to prove my intention that bodily blindnesse may sometimes be a benefit His instance in brute beasts which are afflicted yet cannot sin is extravagant I did not go about to prove that universal necessity doth take away afflictions it rather rendereth them unavoidable But I did demonstrate and he hath not been able to make any shew of an answer to it that it taketh away all just rewards and punishments which is against the universal notion and common belief of the whole World Brute beasts are not capable of punishment They are not knocked down out of vindictive justice for faults committed but for future use and benefit I said there was a vast difference between the light and momentany pangs of brute beasts and the intollerable and endlesse pains of Hell Sure enough Dionysius the Tyrant seeing an oxe knocked down at one blow said to his friends What a folly it is to quit so fair a command for fear of dying which lasts no longer a space He himself when his wits are calmer doth acknowledge as much as I and somewhat more Perhaps saith he if the death of a sinner were an eternall life in extream misery a man might as far as Job hath done expostulate with God Allmighty not accusing him of injustice c. but of litle tenderness love to mankind But now he is pleased to give another judgement of it As if the length or greatnesse of the pain made any difference of the justice or unjustice of inflicting it yes very much According to the measure of the fault ought to be the number of the stripes If the punishment exceed the offence it is unjust On the other side it is not onely an act of justice but of favour and grace to inflict temporary paines for a greater good Otherwise a Master could not justly correct his Scholler Otherwise a Chirurgion might not lance an impostume or put a man to pain to cure him of the stone If God afflict a man with a momentary sicknesse and make this sicknesse a means to fit him for an eternall weight of glory he hath no cause to complain of injustice He is angry that I would make men believe that he holds all things to be just that are done by them who have power enough to avoid punishment He doth me wrong I said no such thing If he be guilty of this imputation either directly or by consequence let him look to it he hath errours enough which are evident I did indeed con44te this tenet of his That irresistible power is the rule of justice of which he is pleased to take no notice in his Animadversions But whereas he doth now restrain this priviledge to that power alone which is absolutely irresistible he forgetteth himself over much having formerly extended it to all Soveraignes and Supreme Councels within their own dominions It is manifest therefore that in every Common-wealth there is some one man or Councel which hath c. a Soveraign and absolute power to be limited by the strength of the Common wealth and by no other thing What neither by the Law of God nor nature nor nations nor the municipall laws of the land nor by any other thing but his power and strength Good doctrine Hunc tu Romane caveto Lastly to make his presumtion compleat he indeavoureth to prove that God is not only the author of the Law which is most true and the cause of the act which is partly true because he is the onely fountain of power but that he is the cause of the irregularity that is in plain English which he delighteth in the sin it self I think saith he there is no man but understands c. That where two things are compared the similitude or dissimilitude regularity or irregularity that is between them is made in and by the things themselves that are compared The Bishop therefore that denies God to be the cause of the irregularity denies him to be the cause both of the law and of the action This is that which he himself calleth blasphemy elsewhere that God is the authour or cause of sin Sin is nothing but the irregularity of the Act. So St. John defineth it in expresse terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sin is an anomy or an irregularity or a transgression of the law For sin is nothing else but a declination from the rule that is an irregularity Another definition of sin is this Sin is that which is thought or said or done against the eternall law Still you see the formall reason of sin doth consist in the contrariety to the law that is the irregularity Othets define sinne to be a want of rectitude or a privation of conformity to the rule that is irregularity An irregular action is sin materially Irregularity is sin formally Others define sinne to be a free transgression of the commandement Every one of these definitions demonstrate that Mr. Hobbes maketh God to be properly the cause of sinne But let us weigh his argument He who is the cause of the law and the cause of the action is the cause of the irregularity but God is the cause of the law and the cause of the action I deny his assumption God indeed is the cause of the law but God is not the total or adaequate cause of the action Nay God is not at all the cause of the action qua talis as it is irregular but the free Agent To use our former instance of an unjust judge The Prince is the authour or cause of the law and the Prince is the cause of the judiciary action of the Judge in generall because the Judge deriveth all his power of judicature from the Prince But the Prince is not the cause of the irregularity or repugnance or non-conformity or contrariety which is between the Judges actions and the law but the Judge himself who by his own fault did abuse and misapply that good generall power which was committed and entrusted to him by the Prince he is the only cause of the anomy or irregularity Or as a Scrivener that teacheth one to write and sets him a copy is both the cause of the rule and of the action or writing and yet not the cause of the irregularity or deviation from the rule Sin is a defect or deviation or irregularity No defect no deviation no irregularity can proceed from God But herein doth consist T. H. his errour that he distinguisheth not between an essential and an accidentall subordination Or between a good generall power and the derermination or
kept the law and yet he had liberty to have kept the law if he would There is not the least starting hole for him through which he can endeavour to creep out of this contradiction but by making this supposition if he would to signifie nothing and to affirm that it was equally impossible for the Malefactor to will otherwise and to do otherwise Then see what a pretty liberty he hath left us even a meer impossibility If the Skie fall then we shall catch Larks Observe further the vanity of this distinction between liberty to do if we will and liberty to will When both the one liberty and the other are equally impossible upon his own grounds And yet with this mock-liberty which signifieth nothing he is fain to answer all the texts of Scripture which are brought against him and all the absurdities which are heaped upon him Lastly to say a man is free to do any thing if he will implieth that he hath power enough and there is nothing wanting to the doing of it but his will Otherwise if there be not power enough to do it as in this case upon his grounds there is not it is as ridiculou to say a Malefactor was free to have kept the law if he would as to say a man is free to jump over the sea if he will or to flie in the aire if he will Yet still he saith The will of the Malefactor did not determine it self Then by his own confession the Malefactor had the more wrong to be punished for that which was unavoidably and irresistibly imposed upon him If the Malefactor was necessitated from God by an essential determination of extrinsecall causes both to will as he did and to doe as he did he was no more a malefactour than his Judge I have no reason to retract any one syllable of what I said concerning monsters But he had need to retract his ordinary falsifying and dismembring and misinterpreting of my sayings I affirmed as all sound Philosophers do affirm That nature never intendeth the generation of a monster but that every monster is a deviation from the law of the first institution that every creature should beget another in his own likenesse Which proceedeth sometimes from the defect or inordinate force of the plasticall or forming virtue sometimes from the excesse or defect of the matter sometimes from the fault of the womb wherein the conception is perfected sometimes from other lesser reasons and therefore that the universal causes as God and the Sun are not to be blamed for monstrous births but that particular cause from which the excesse or defect or distortion did proceed What was herein to derogate from the God of nature who permitteth and disposeth of such irregularities in nature as he doth of sinnes in morality but with this difference That morall aberrations are culpable and punishable but aberrations in nature are onely deformities not sinnes When Philosophers do say that nature intendeth any end they do not mean that nature doth deliberate or resolve this or that but that nature doth act for an end which no man can deny with any credit The Spider makes her webs to catch flies there is natures end The Ante gathers provision in Summer for winter sustenance The Bee makes Cellâ—…s for a depository for hony and receptacles for young bees The Vine brings forth leaves flowers and grapes one in order to the production or preservation of another And lastly followeth the wine which is the end of all the rest which being the last was the first or principal end of nature It is not the part of a reall Scholler to except against evident truth upon Grammatical Scruples In the last Animadversion of this Section nothing is contained that is either new or requireth an Answer Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 18. I cited Lipsius onely to shew that the distinction of destiny into Christian and Stoick destiny was not mine And though Lipsius incurred some dislike by reason of some inusitate expressions yet there is no cause why T. H. should please himself so much as to think that Lipsius was of his opinion He was no such friend of any sort of destiny as to abandon the liberty of the will The Stoicks themselves came short of T. H. his universal necessity Yet I do not blame him if he desire to have one partner in such a desperate cause as this is That which concerneth him in the second distinction is this That though he acknowledge a mock-liberty that is a will or an appetite of the object yet he maintaineth that this appetite is neither moved nor excited nor determined to its act or appetibility of this or that lesse or more by the free Agent but altogether by extrinsecal causes And so the pretended free Agent is no more free than a bird which a man holdeth fast in his hand is free to flie whithersoever she will I said Those things which God wills without himself he wills freely and not necessarily which he censureth in this manner He sayes rashly and untruly Rashly because there is nothing without God who is infinite in whom are all things and in whom we live move and have our being And untruly because whatsoever God foreknew from eternity he willed from eternity and therefore necessarily What should I do should I fall down and thank this great Mogull as the Aethiopian slaves do their Emperour when they are lashed for thinking on me Although I know his Thrasonical humour very well that his animal spirits are meer bubbles of vain-glory that he knoweth right well that he cannot reign securely whilest there is one of a different opinion surviving yet I am perswaded that if he had been so well read or so much versed in the writings of other men as to know how many he wounded rashly and untruly in this rash and untrue censure he would have forborn it for his own sake Hath he never heard of a common rule in Theology that Opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa The works or acts of the Trinity without it self are undivided Or hath he never heard of that common distinction between a necessary being and a necessary acting The most perfect manner of being is necessary and therefore God is a necessary being and that which he willeth within himself he willeth necessarily because whatsoever is in God is God But the most perfect manner of acting without the Deity is freely and therefore the Schooles do agree that God is a free Agent without himself These free acts are princially two The first is the Creation whereby things created do passe from a not being to a being The second is Government by which all things created are moved and ordered to their ends All men acknowledge that the Dâ—…ity filleth all places by its Essence by its Presence by its Power being within all places and things but not included and without all places and things but not excluded They acknowledge that all
signifie the same thing in this place Onely to permit is opposed to acting to permit barely is opposed to disposing There are many things which God doth not act there is nothing which God doth not dispose He acteth good permitteth evil disposeth all things both good and evill He that cutteth the banks of a River is the active cause that the water floweth out of the Channel He that hindreth not the stream to break the banks when he could is the permissive cause And if he make no other use of the breaking out it is nuda permissio bare permission but if he disposeth and draweth the water that floweth out by furrowes to water the Medows then though he permit it yet he doth not barely permit it but disposeth of it to a further good So God onely permitteth evil that is he doth it not but he doth not barely permit it because he disposeth it to good Here he would gladly be nibling at the questions Whether universals be nothing but onely words Nothing in the World saith he is general but the significations of words and other signes Hereby affirming unawares that a man is but a word and by consequence that he himself is but a titular and not a real man But this question is alltogether impertinent in this place We do not by a general influence understand some universal substance or thing but an influence of indeterminate power which may be applyed either to good or evill The influence is a singular act but the power communicated is a general that is an indeterminate power which may be applied to acts of several kinds If he deny all general power in this sense he denieth both his own reason and his common sense Still he is for his old errour That eternity is a successive everlasting duration But he produceth nothing for it nor answereth to any thing which I urged against it That the eternity of God is God himself that if eternity were an everlasting duration then there should be succession in God then there should be former and later past and to come and a part without a part in God then all things should not be present to God then God should lose something namely that which is past and acquire something newly namely that which is to come and so God who is without all shadow of change should be mutable and change every day To this he is silent and silence argueth consent He saith Those many other wayes which are proposed by Divines for reconciling eternal prescience with liberty and contingency are proposed in vain if they mean the same liberty and contingency that I do for truth and errour can never be reconciled I do not wonder at his shew of confidence The declining sun maketh longer shadows and when a Merchant is nearest breaking he maketh the fairest shew to preserve his reputation as long as may be He saith he knoweth the loadstone hath no such attractive power I fear shortly he will not permit us to say that a plaister or a plantine leaf draweth What doth the loadstone then if it doth not draw He knoweth that the iron cometh to it or it to the iron Can he not tell whether This is worse than drawing to make iron come or go By potentiality he understandeth power or might Others understand possibility or indetermination Is not he likelely to confute the Schoolmen to good purpose Whereas I said that God is not just but justice it self not eternall but eternity it self He telleth me That they are unseemly words to be said of God he will not say blasphemous and Atheistical that God is not just that he is not eternal I do not fear that any one Scholler or any one understanding Christian in the World should be of his mind in this If I should spend much time in proving of such known truths approved and established by the Christian World I should shew my self almost as weak as he doth shew himself to talk of such things as he understandeth not in the least to the overthrowing of the nature of God and to make him no God If his God have accidents ours hath none If his God admit of composition and division ours is a simple essence When we say God is not just but justice not wise but wisdom doth he think that we speak of moral virtues or that we derogate or detract from God No we ascribe unto him a transcendental justice and wisdom that is not comprehended under our categories nor to be conceived perfectly by humane reason But why doth he not attempt to answer the reasons which I brought That that which is infinitely perfect cannot be further perfected by accidents That God is a simple essence and can admit no kind of composition That the infinite essence of God can act sufficiently without faculties That it consisteth not with divine perfection to have any passive or receptive powers I find nothing in answer to these but deep silence Attributes are names and justice and wisdom are moral virtues but the justice and wisdom and power and eternity and goodnesse and truth of God are neither names nor moral virtues but altogether do make one eternal essence wherein all perfections do meet in an infinite degree It is well if those words of our Saviour do escape him in his next Animadversions I am the truth Or St. Paul for making Deum and Deitatem God and the Godheads or Deity to be all one Or Solomon for personating God under the name of Wisdom in the abstract To prove eternity to be no successive duration but one indivisible moment I argued thus The divine substance is indivisible but eternity is the divine substance In answer to this in the first place he denyeth the Major That the divine substance is indivisible If he had not been a professed Christian but a plain Stoick I should not have wondred so much at this answer for they held that God was corporall If the divine substance be not indivisible then it is materiate then it is corporall then it is corruptible then the Anthropomorphites had reason to attribute humane members to God But the Scriptures teach us better and all the World consenteth to it That God is a Spirit that he is immortall and invisible that he dwelleth in light which no man can approach unto whom no man hath seen nor can see It is inconsistent with the nature of God to be finite It is inconsistent with the nature of a body to be infinite The speculations of Philosophors who had onely the light of reason were not so grosse who made God to be a most simple essence or simplicity it self All matter which is the originall of divisibility was created by God and therefore God himself cannot be material nor divisible Secondly he denyeth the minor That the eternity of God is the divine substance I proved it from that generally received rule Whatsoever is in God is God His answer is That
cause by which it was immediately produced The same may be said of the cause of this cause and backward eternally From whence it will follow that all the connexion of the causes of any effect from the beginning of the World are altogether existent in one and the same instant It is well that I meet with a beginning of the World for I was afraid of those words and so backwards eternaly If his Mathematical engins be such as these he will never prove so terrible an enemy as Archimedes He proveth that all immediate causes and their particular distinct effects successively were together in time at the very instant of their causation successively since the beginning of the World But he lets the question alone as bad Archers do the But Whether the first cause did determine the second to every individual act which it doth necessarily and without any supposition and the second the third and so downward to the last Of this he saith not a word Where there is no need of proof he swelleth with arguments where the question is he is silent I will shew him the palpable absurdity of his argument in an instance When Mr. Hobs made his Leviathan his Leviathan and he were necessarily coexistent in the same instant of time So likewise when his father did beget him his father and he were necessarily coexistent in the same instant of time The like may be said of his grandfather and his great grandfather and so upwards to the beginning of the World Therefore Adams begetting of Seth had a necessary connexion with his writing of his Leviathan so as to necessitate him antecedently and inevitably to write it and stuff it with Paradoxes Or thus A man kindles a fire to warm himself The fire and he are necessarily coexistent and there is necessary connexion between them Another man steals part of the fire and burns an house with it the fire and the conflagration are together and have a necessary connexion therefore the kindling of the fire had a necessary connexion with the burning of the house to render it inevitable See with what doughty arguments they use to catch Dotterels From hence he concludeth That consequently all the time from the beginning of the World or from eternity to this day is but one instant Better and better Why doth he not infer likewise that the sea burneth His premises will sustain the one as well as the other Why will he lose his cause for want of confidence If God who is an infinite Essence be free from all variablenesse and succession of time Must he who is but a turning shadow upon the old Exchange of this World challenge the same priviledge Because eternity is a nunc stans must successive parts of time make one instant or nunc stans But he addeth That by this time I know it is not so He hath been spinning a fair threed and now like a curst Cow casts down his meale with his foot First to endeavour to prove that it is so and then confesse that it is not so Neither can he say that he proceedeth upon my grounds whilest his own grounds are so much higher than mine I make but an hypothetical necessity which implieth onely an accidental connexion He maketh an absolute antecedent necessity which implieth a necessary connexion of the whole conjoinct series of causes and effects Castigations upon the Animadversions Num. 36. I Cited his sense that he could adde other arguments if he thought it good Logick He complaineth that I mis-recite his words which are I could adde if I thought it good Logick the inconvenience of denying necessity as that it destroyes both the Decrees and Prescience of God Almighty And are not these reasons drawn from the Decrees and Prescience of God Arguments or are they not his prime arguments How glad would this man be to find any little pretence of exception He distinguisheth between absurdities and inconveniences Absurdities he saith are impossibilities and it is a good forme of reasoning to argue from absurdities but not from inconveniences If all absurdities be impossibilities then there are no absurdities in rerum natura for there can be no impossibilities This it is to take the sense of words not from Artists in their own Arts but from his own imaginations By this reason there never was an absurd speech or absurd action in the World otherwise absurdities are not impossibilities But he hath confuted himself sufficiently in this Treatise One absurdity may be greater than another and one inconvenience may be greater than another but absurd and inconvenient is the same thing That is absurd which is incongruous unreasonable not fit to be heard Truth it self may accidentally be said in some sense to be inconvenient to some persons at some times But neither absurdities nor inconveniences in themselves do flow from truth Now let us see what are those incoveniences which he mentioneth here To destroy the decrees and prescience of God Almighty There can be no greater absurdities imagined than these things which he calleth inconveniencies He himself hath at the least ten several times drawn arguments in this Treatise from the prescience of God Where was his Logick then or his memory now And in this very place where he condemneth it as no good form of reasoning to argue from inconveniences yet he himself doth practice it and argues from inconveniences But he hath worn this subject so threed-bare without adding either new matter or new ornament that I will not weary the Reader with a needlesse repetition but refer him to my defence which I dare well trust with his Animadversions Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 37. IT is vain to talke any longer of keeping this controversie secret Neither do I regard whether it was made publick by his fault or his friends or who it was that hanged out the Ivie-bush before it to beg custom and procure utterance for his first fardel of Paradoxes He thinketh it is great confidence in me to say that the edge of his discourse was so abated that it could not easily hurt any rational man who was not over much possessed with prejudice But I have much more reason to wonder at his transcendent confidence The people of China did use to brag that they onely had two eyes The Europaeans one eye and all the rest of the World no eyes But he maketh himself to be a very Argus all eye better sighted than either Eagle or Serpent and all the rest of the Europaean World to be as blind as Moles or Beetles like so many changlings or enchanted persons that had lost their senses For my part I am more confident since I see his Animadversions than before And why should I not be confident in this cause Grant me but that there is a God that he is just and true and good and powerfull that there is an Heaven and an hell and a day of judgement that is rewards and punishments That good and evil
sin yet it ought to be numbred among the sins of imprudence or ignorance He addeth that an Atheist is punished not as a Subject is punished by his King because he did not observe laws but as an enemy by an enemy because he would not accept laws His reason is because the Atheist never submitted his will to the will of God whom he never thought to be And he concludeth that mans obligation to obey God proceedeth from his weaknesse Manifestum est obligationem ad prestandum ipsi Deo obedientiam incumbere hominibus propter imbecilitatem First it is impossible that should be a sin of meer ignorance or imprudence which is dirictly contrary to the light of natural reason The laws of nature need no new promulgation being imprinted naturally by God in the heart of man The law of nature was written in our hearts by the finger of God without our assent or rather the law of nature is the assent it self Then if nature dictate to us that there is a God and that this God is to be worshipped in such and such manner it is not possible that Atheisme should be a sin of meer ignorance Secondly a rebellious Subject is still a Subject de jure though not de facto by right though not by deed And so the most cursed Atheist that is ought by right to be the Subject of God and ought to be punished not as a just enemy but as a disloyal traytour Which is confessed by himself This fourth sin that is of those who do not by word and deed confesse one God the supreme King of Kings in the natural kingdom of God is the crime of high treason for it is a denial of divine power or Atheisme Then an Atheist is a traitour to God and punishable as a disloial Subject not as an enemy Lastly it is an absurd and dishonourable assertion to make our obedience to God to depend upon our weaknesse because we cannot help it and not upon our gratitude because we owe our being and preservation to him Who planteth a vineyard and eateth not of the fruit thereof Or who feedeth a flock and eateth not of the milk of the flock And again Thou art worthy O Lord to receive glory and honour and power for thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure they are and were created But it were much better or at least not so ill to be a downright Atheist than to make God to be such a thing as he doth and at last thrust him into the devils office to be the cause of all sinne For T. H. his god is not the God of Christians nor of any rational men Our God is every where and seeing he hath no parts he must be wholly here and wholly there and wholly every where So nature it self dictateth It cannot be said honourably of God that he is in a place for nothing is in a place but that which hath proper bounds of its greatness But T. H. his God is not wholly every where No man can conceive that any thing is all in this place and all in another place at the same time for none of these things ever have or can be incident to sense So far well if by conceiving he mean comprehending But then follows That these are absurd speeches taken upon credit without any signification at all from deceived Philosophers and deceived or deceiving School-men Thus he denyeth the ubiquity of God A circumscriptive a definitive and a repletive being in a place is some heathen language to him Our God is immutable without any shadow of turning by change to whom all things are present nothing past nothing to come But T. H. his god is measured by time losing something that is past and acquiring something that doth come every minute That is as much as to say That our God is infinite and his god is finite for unto that which is actually infinite nothing can be added neither time nor parts Hear himself Nor do I understand what derogation it can be to the divine perfection to attribute to it potentiality that is in English power so little doth he understand what potentiality is and successive duration And he chargeth it upon us as a fault that will not have eternity to be an endlesse succession of time How successive duration and an endlesse succession of time in God Then God is finite then God is elder to day than he was yesterday Away with blasphemies Before he destroyed the ubiquity of God and now he destroyeth his eternity Our God is a perfect pure simple indivisible infinite essence free from all composition of matter and form of substance and accidents All matter is finite and he who acteth by his infinite essence needeth neither organs nor faculties nor accidents to render him more compleat But T. H. his god is a divisible god a compounded god that hath matter and qualities or accidents Hear himself I argue thus The divine substance is indivisible but eternity is the divine substance The Major is evident because God is Actus simplicissimus The minor is confessed by all men that whatsoever is attributed to God is God Now listen to his answer The Major is so far from being evident that Actus simplicissimus signifieth nothing The Minor is said by some men thought by no man whatsoever is thought is understood The Major was this The divine substance is indivisible Is this far from being evident Either it is indivisible or divisible If it be not indivisible then it is divisible then it is materiate then it is corporeal then it hath parts then it is finite by his own confession Habere partes aut esse totum aliquid sunt uttributa finitorum Upon this silly conceit he chargeth me for saying That God is not just but justice it self not eternal but eternity it self which he calleth unseemly words to be said of God And he thinketh he doth me a great courtesie in not adding blasphemous and atheistical But his bolts are so soon shot and his reasons are such vain imaginations and such drowsie phantasies that no sad man doth much regard them Thus he hath already destroyed the ubiquity the eternity and the simplicity of God I wish he had considered better with himself before he had desperately cast himself upon these rocks But paulo maiora canamus my next charge is That he destroyes the very being of God and leaves nothing in his place but an empty name For by taking away all incorporal substances he taketh away God himself The very name saith he of an incorporal substance is a contradiction And to say that an Angel or Spirit is an incorporeal substance is to say in effect that there is no Angel or Spirit at all By the same reason to say That God is an incorporal substance is to say there is no God at all Either God is incorporal or he is
shunned 1 Pet. 2. 14. No proper punishment but for sin Lam. 3. 39. 2 Sam. 12. 13. 14. 2 Cor. 4. 17. Matth. 25. 46. Ioh 37. 23. Lam. 3. 33. Psal. 107. 17. Gen. 9. 3. Prov. 12. 10. Why God did not make man impeccable Jude v. 6. Matth. 25. 41 46. Mar. 9. 44 45. Jud. v. 6 7. Punishments of the damned are eternall Gods prescience proveth infalliblity not necessity Resolution proveth election and liberty In the answer to the stating of the question What is necessary Chance is from accidentall concurrence not from ignorance Eccles. 4. 10. Prov. 22. 28. Jer. 18. 15. Ex Plutarchi Polit. ad Trajan Encheiridion c. 16. Math. 7. 6. Exact definitions not frequent What liberty is What is spontaneity What is necessity De interpret l. 1. c. ultimo Necessity of being and acting distinguished Tull. Necessity upon supposition what it is Mark 10. 27. Man is not a passive instrument as the sword in his hand Act. 17. 28. The instance in ambs ace hath lost T. H. his game T. H. his will is no more than the bias of a bowle See stateing of the question answer to Num. 1. St. Austiâ—… more to be credited than T. H De lib. Arbit l. 3. c. 3. To give liberty to two and limite to one is a contradiction According to T. H. his principles all perswasions are vvin We can blame no man justly A lame comparison T. H. maketh himself no better than a wooden toppe T. H his deep skill in Logick His silly definitions Medition liâ—…tle worth without making use of other mens experience Terms of art are unungrateful to rude persons 1 Top. c. 2. ss 2. Ans. to the stat quest fount of Argum. cast Num. 1 3. def Num. 3. Freedom to do if one will without freedom to will a vain distinction Num. 30. 14. Josh. 24. 15. 2 Sam. 24. 12. Deut. 30. 19. Bulla Caroli 4. Exercit. 307. And maketh T. H. a degree worse than the Stâ—…cks Aust. de civit deâ—… l. 5. c. 10. Apud Gellium Iudicium practicé practicum explained Plut. How the object is and how it is not the cause of seeing Num. 3. Spontaneity Ethic. l. 3. c. 2. Num. 3. Conformity signifieth agreeableness as well as likeness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what they are Eth. l. 3. c. 1 2. l. 3. c. 3 4. Phys. l. 2. c. 6. A true will may be changed Num. 8. Num. 25. Voluntarinesse doth not desend on the judgment of other Num. 33. Num. 8. Num. 8. Num. 26. 1 King 3. 11. Election of more than one Verse 5. Ver. 6 7 8 9. Ver. 10. Ver. 11. Ver. 13. Acts 5. 4. Was it not in thy power Explained Out of hatred to true liberty T. H. makes God hypocritical Gods secret and revealed will not contrary And why Fount of Arg. in fine Occulte virtue or influence Job 38 31. It is blasphemy to say that God is the cause of sinne Or to say that sin is efficaciously decreed by God 〈◊〉 no â—…d perâ—…ssion The difference between general and special influence 1 King 21. 9. Fountains of Argâ—…ments Iam. 4. 13 14. Num. 12. Rom. 11. 23. God may oblige himself Jam. 1. 17. God cannot do any unrighteous thing Tit. 1. 2. Num. 〈◊〉 19. 2 Tim. 2. 13. Hebr. 6. 10. Mich. 6. 2. Ezek. 18. 25. Gen. 18. 23 25. Iud. 7. Plut. Num. 10. It is just to afflict innocent persons for their own good Lib. de cive tit Imp. c. 6. n. 18. â—…n is properly irregularity God no cause of irregularity Laws may be unjust Impossibilities made bâ—… our selves may be justly imposed not impossibilities in them selves Acts 5. 29. 1 Pet. 2. 13 Proper punishment is ever vindictive in part Lam. 3. 39. Job 31. 11. Ezra 9. 13. Heb. 10. 28. Deut. 25. 2. 1 Pet. 2 4. Yet further of unjust laws L. 1. 14. Exod. 1. 17. Dan. 3. 18. Heb. 11. 23. 1 King 21. 2 King 6. 32. Dan. 6. 8. Mich. 6. 16. 2 K. 17 19. Isay 10. 1. The authority of the Scripture not dependent on the printer Ammon in lib. de Interpret Mr. R. H. T. H. a fit Catechist for disloial and unnatural persons Num 12. Mankind never without laws De cive c. i. Num 12. Never lawful for private men ordinarily to kill one another Numbers 35. Fount of Arg. Gen. 9. 6. Gen. 4. 10. 1 Sam. 19. 5. 2 King 24. 4. Prov. 28. Deut. 10. 11. Exod. 21. 14. Gen. 9. 6. Joh. 8. 44. T. H. Attorny General for the brute beasts Gen. 1. 28. Gen. 2. 19. Psal. 8. 6. Gen. 9. 3. Prov. 26. 5. Seen and unseen necessity Act. 27. 22. V. 30. If all things be absolutely necessary admonitions are all vaine A litter of absurdities What is morally good Isa. 5. 20. Exod. 1. 21 Rewards of bruits and men differ Rom. 1. 21. What it is to honour God Jam 2. 19. What are devils in his judgement God doth not hinder privately what he commands openly His opinion destroyeth the truth of God And his goodnesse Isa. 28. 21. Wisd. 1. 13. Ezek. 33. 11. Fount of Arg. And his justice And omnipotence making the cause of sinne Amos 3. 6. A right Hobbist cannot praise God Deut. 29. 29. Nor hear the Word or receive the Sacrament worthily Matth. 11. 12. Mat. 7. 11. Rom. 10. 14. Nor vowas he ought Nor repent of his misdeeds What repentance is 2 Cor. 7. 11. Joel 2. 12. Mans concurrence with Gods grace Act. 7. 51. Prov. 1. 24. Mark 1. 15. Rom. 11. 20. Rom. 2. 5. Rev. 3. 20. 1 Cor. 3. 9. 1 Cor. 15. 10. Confidence in praier and the efficacy of it Jam. 1. 6. 1 Tim. 2. 8. Mark 11. 24. Jam. 5. 15. Phil. 1. 19. Isay 38. 5. 1 King 8. 37. 2 Chron. 7. 12. Luk. 17. 13. 18. 2 Cor. 1. 11. T. H. Still mistaketh necessity upon supposition There is more in contingency than ignorance Def. Num. 3. stat of quest cast Num. 1. 3. c. Sin in the world before the civil law Job 4. 18. 2 Pet. 2. 4. Jude 6. Rom. 5. 12. Prov. 8. 15. Rom. 2. 14. 1â—… 15. To command impossibilities is unjust Yet further against his silly distinction free to do if he will not free to will Of monsters What is said to be in deo and what extra deum Exod. 3. 14. To will do in God the same thing He willeth not all he could will Luâ—… 3. 8. T. H. make the will to be compelled Arist. Eth. lib. 3. c. 1. 1 Sam. 28. 23. Est. 1. 8. 2 Cor. 12. 11. Motus primó primi and antipathies To search too boldly into the nature of God is a fault But the greater fault is negligence Rom. 1. 20. Exer c. 12. d. 2. T. H. his liberty omnipotence in shew in deed nothing He dare not refer himself to his own witnesses Terms of Art 1 Cor. 14. 19. A contradiction c. 17. d. 28. Matth. 15. 14. Election and compulsion inconsistent There are mixt actions Eth. l. 3.
c. 1. Rational will Eth. l. 3. c. 6 7 8. Passive obedience Act. 4. 19. Compulsion what it is Fear of hurt doth not abrogate a law Cap. 2. d. 18. C. 6. d. 13. Natural Agents act determinately Not voluntary Seal exerc 307. d. 3. T. H. maketh God the cause of sin Amos c. 3. 6. 2 Sam. 16. 10. 1 King 22. 23. 1 King 12. 15. Fount of Argu. Six witnesses for universal necessity answeted Cal. Instit. l. 2. c. 2. d. 4. Visit. Saxon. Cal. Instir. l. 2. c. 4. d. 7. Iudic. Theol. Lorit de lib. A rb Thes. 4. Mentall terms Metaphorical drawing Jam. 4. 8. Joh. 6. 44. Joh. 12. 32. Pro. 20. 5. Paradoxes what they are Whether a feather make a Diamant yeild Or a falling drop move the whole World Power of objects concerneth the moral Philosopher Eth. l. 3 c. 2. Still he seeketh to obtru de hypothetical necessity for absolute Num. 1. Num. 3. Hearing speaking all one with T. H. Eth. l. 3. c. 2. There are other motions than local Spirits moved as well as bodies Both bodies and spirits move themselves Quality infused by God Joel 2. Acts 2. 33. Rom. 5. 5. Tit. 3. 6. 1 Cor. 12. Num. 9. The understanding and will two powers of the reasonablesoul Mans willing is not like a falling stone Absolute necessity admitteth no contrary supposition A man may will contrary to the dictate of reason Rom. 7. 15. Ro. 14. 23. An erroneous conscience obligeth first to reform it then to follow it Reason is the true root of liberty Actions may be equally circumstantiated Passions often preâ—…ile aâ—…inst reaâ—… Jam. 1. 13. Man was created to be Lord of the creatures Psal. 8. 6. How the understanding giveth to objects their properweight Blasphmy in the abstract and in the concrete differ much Aman may know a truth certainly yet not know the manner The Doctrine of liberty an ancient truth Liberty to will more reconciliable with prescience than liberty to do How the will of God is the necessity of all things Dei Gen. ad lit l. 6. c. 15. Ibid. c. 17. De Civit. Dei c. 5. c. 10. What it is to permit only and to permit barely Eternity is no successive duration Why God is said to be justice it self c. Joh. 14. 6. Act. 17. 29. Prov. 8. 9. God is indivisible Joh. 4. 24. 1 Tim. 1. 17. God is eternity it self Exo. 3. 13. Num. 8. What a Judge judgeth to be indeliberate is impertinent And his assertion false Num. 35. A man cannot predeliberate perfectly of contingent events Num. 33. Num. 8. Endeavour is not of the essence of liberty Num. 29. There may be impediments before deliberation be done And liberty when it is ended Some undeliberated acts may be punishable Virtual deliberation Children not punishable with death Num. 8. He knoweth no reason but imagination The faculty of willing is the will Num. 20. Of concupiscence Jam. 1. 15. Of the intellectualâ—… and sensitive appetite Not the same thing His deliberation is no deliberation His liberty no true liberty His definition of liberty Analogical matter 〈◊〉 4. d. 7. By his definition a stone is free to ascend Beginning of motion from the mover The same faculty willeth or nilleth Other causes concur with the will Necessary causes do not allwaies act necessarily Two sorâ—…s of sufficiency Luk. 14. 28. 2 Cor. 2. 16. Isa. 5. 4. Our conceptions are not the touchstone of truth His grosse mistakes about eternity What is his deliberation Man is free to will or he is not free to do He maketh a stone as free to ascend as descend A Hawke saith he is free to flie when her wings are plucked Abegining of being acting His answer to some demands Free to do if he will yet not free to wil is against law and Logick Num. 3. Num. 3. A necessary effect requires all necessary causes Math. 10. 29. His instance of Ambs ace Num. 31 32. Num. 3. Num. 11. His other idstance of raining or not raining to morrow Deut 11. 14. Jer. 5. 24. Hos. 6. 3. Gods decree consideredactually and passively Num. 11. God knows all future possibilities Math. 11. 21. 1 Sam 23. 11. His argument to prove universal necessity answered Possible and impossible all one with T. H. Remote causes are not together with the effect Nor doth all time make one instant T. H. admitteth no absurdities but impossibilities Abuses do not flow essentially from good doctrines as from universal necessity Solid reasons work soonest upon solid judgements Three sorts of men The doctrine of liberty maketh no â—…man careless or thanklesse God hath no faculties Num. 24. Q. 1. Levi. c. 38. God is incomprehensible Rom. 1. â—…0 Psal. 119. Yet so far as we can we are obliged to search after him Act. 17. 24. To admit that God is infinite is enough to confute T. H. Tophet True Religion consisteth not in obedience to Princes Lev. c. 42. Lev. c. 17 18. Lev. c. 42. 1 Tim. 3. 14. Num. 14. 1. King 12. 30. 1 King 22. 52. â—…ev c. 22. Act. 4. 19. De Cive e. 3. Num. 29. 31. Lev. c. 29. c. 26. Leviath c. 34. De Cive c. 15. Num. 18. C. 31. Ibidem De cive c. 15. Dan. 3. 4. Dan. 6. 7. Math. 10. 33. 27. Hierome Epist. ad Chromat Ezek. 28. 3. Rom. 10. 10. De Cive c. 14. Active and passive obedience Lev. c. 20. Universal practise against him The just power of Priences 1 King 21. 9. Acts 4. 19. He confesseth that Ecclesiastical persons have a priviledg above himself De Cive c. 17. D R. C. P. I. S. Qu. p. 20. ibid. p. 340. Qu. p. 20. Qu. p. 80. Leviathan a meer phantasme Job 41. 1. Psal. 104. 25. T. H. The true Leviathan Job 41. 34. 1 Cor. 1. 27. Leviathan no Soveraign of the sea Nature dictates the existence and worship of God C. c. 15. s. 14. T. H. no friend to religion Cic. Har. Respons Orat. in P. Clod. C. c. 3. s. 8. Le. p. 54. Ci. c. 16. s. 1. Excuseth Atheisme Ci. c. 14. s. 19. Ci. c. 15. s. 7. Qu. p. 137. Ci. c. 15. s. 19. 1 Cor. 9 7. Rev. 4. 11. Destroyes Gods ubiquity Ci. c. 15. s. 14. Le. p. 11. His eternity Qu. p. 266. Le. p. 374. His simplâ—…city Qu. p. 267. Ci. c. 15. s. 14. Qu. p. 266. His existence Le. p. 214. Qu. p. 160 Joh. 4. 24. Le. p. 208. The Trinity Le. p. 268. Le. p. 21. Le. p. 271. Ci. c. 17. s. 5. 6. Le. p. 248. Le. p. 261. Le. p. 36. Le. p. 169. Le. p. 232. 1 Sam. 15. 1 King 13. 1 King 18. 2 Chr. 18. Jer. 38. Le. p. 250. Lev. p. 214. Lev. p. 227. Lev. p. 196. Lev. p. 361. Lev. p. 17. Lev. p. 169. Lev. p. 220. De Cive c. 17. s. 22. Le. p. 206. Ci. c. 17. 〈◊〉 26. Ci. c. 17. s. 21. Ci. c. 18. s. 1. Le. p. 205. Le. p. 283. Le. p. 284. Ci. c. 17. s. 18.
virtue and vice holinesse and sin are any thing more than empty names That there is any election in the World That admonitions and reprehensions and praises and dispraises and laws and consultations do signifie any thing That care and good endeavours are to be cherished That all motives to godlinesse and religious piety are to be maintained and I cannot fall in this cause There is no doubt but the best doctrines may be abused as the doctrine of Gods providence to idlenesse and his patience to procrastination and his mercy to presumption But such abuses do not flow necessarily and essentially from good doctrines as they do from universal necessity He telleth us how God dealeth with those whom he will bring to a blessed end and how he hardeneth others but he telleth us of nothing that is in mans power under God to doe either to prevent this hardening or to attain this blessed end He talketh of a mans examining his wayes but he teacheth withall that a man is either necessitated unresistibly to examine his wayes or otherwise it is impossible for him to examine them He mentioneth some who reason erroneously If I shall be saved I shall be saved whether I walk uprightly or no. But he teacheth also that they are necessitated to reason erroneously and to walk uprightly and that they cannot avoide it by all the endeavours which are in their power For according to his principles nothing at all is in their power either to do or to leave undone but onely to cry patience and shrug up their shoulders and even this also is determined antecedently and inevitably to their hands So he maketh man to be a meer footbal or tennis ball smitten to and fro by the second causes or a top lashed hither and thither If the watch be wound up by the Artist what have the wheels to do to be sollicitous about any thing but onely to follow the motion which it is impossible for them to resist When he first broached this opinion he did not foresee all those absurd consequences which did attend it which might easily happen to a man who buildeth more upon his own imaginations than other mens experience and being once ingaged he is resolved to wade through thick and thin so long as he is able Castigations of the Animadversions upon the Postscript Num. 38. WE are now come to his last Section which is as full of empty and unsignificant vaunts as any of the former True reall worth useth not to send forth so many bubbles of vain-glory The question is not whether persons once publickly ingaged in the defence of an opinion be more tenacious of their errours than those who have no such prejudice which his own example doth confirm sufficiently and no rational man can doubt of but whether solid substantial proofs do work sooner upon persons of wit and learning then upon those who are ignorant whose judgements are confused and unable to distinguish between feigned shews and real truths How should he who understandeth not the right state of the question be so likely to judge what reasons are convincing and what are not as he who doth understand it Or he who knoweth not the distinction between that necessity which is absolute and that which is onely upon supposition be a competent Judge whether all events be absolutely necessary He might even as well tell us that a blind man is more likely to hit the mark or judge rightly of colours then he that hath his sight He himself doth half confesse as much I confesse the more solid a mans wit is the better will solid reasons work upon him What is it then that disgusteth him It is the addition of that which I call learning that is to say much reading of other mens doctrines without weighing them with his own thoughts When did either I or any man else ever call that learning to read Authours without weiging them Such extravagant expressions become none but blunderers who are able to say nothing to the question when it is truely stated But I wonder what it is which he calleth learning Nothing but a phantastick opiniastratie joyned with a supercilious contempt of all other men that are wiser or learneder than himself making the private thoughts of ignorant persons to be the standard and publick seal of truth As the Scholler thinketh so the bell clinketh If there were nothing else this alone to except against them who should be both his Jurers and his Judges were enough to render him and all his Paradoxes suspected Let him remember who said Learning hath no enemy but ignorance If he had ever read those Authours whom he condemneth namely The Fathers and Doctours of the Church his presumption had been somewhat more tolerable though too high But to condemne them all before he ever read any of them requireth a propheticall light to which he is no pretender In the mean time he would have his Readers believe that what is done by him upon designe meerly to hide his own ignorance is done out of depth of Judgement Like the Fox in the Fable which having lost his tail by mischance perswaded all his fellows to cut of theirs as unprofitable burthens The Philosopher divided them into three ranks Some who knew good and were willing to teach others these he said were like Gods amongst men Others who though they knew not much yet were willing to learn these he said were like men among beasts And lastly some who knew not good and yet despised such as should teach them These he esteemed as beasts among men Whereas he talketh of such as requite those who endeavour to instruct them at their own intreaty with reviling terms although he dictate more willingly than dispute where no man may contradict him yet neither do I take him to be of the ranck of Instructers before he himself hath first learned nor is he able to bring so much as one instance of any reviling or so much as discourreous language throughout my defence If his back was galled before and that make him over-sensible and suspicious of an affront where none was intended who can help it But now he himself having shewed so much scorn and peâ—…lance in his Animadversions though I have abstained from all reviling terms yet I have tempered my stile so as to let him plainly see That he is not so much regarded not half so formidable an adversary as he vainly imagineth In the next place he setteth down eight conclusions which he dreameth that he hath proved in this Treatise It is good beating of a proud man Though he be thrown flat upon his back at every turn yet he hath the confidence to proclaim his own atchievements with a silver trumpet when they do not deserve to be piped upon an oaten reed I will make him a fair offer If he have proved any one of them or be able to prove any one of them I will yield him all the rest Besides the