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
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
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
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
CASTIGATIONS OF Mr. HOBBES HIS LAST ANIMADVERSIONS IN The case concerning LIBERTY and Universal NECESSITY Wherein all his Excepâ—…ions about that Controversie are fully satisfied By Iohn Bramhall D. D. and Bishop of Derry Prov. 12. 19. The lip of truth shall be established for ever but a lying tongue is but for a moment London Printed by E. T. for I. Crook 1657. An Answer to Mr. Hobs his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and first to his Epistle to the Reader CHristian Reader thou hast here the testimony of Mr. Hobs that the questions concerning Necessity Freedom and Chance are clearly discussed between him and me in that little volume which he hath lately published If they be it were strange whilest we agree not much better about the terms of the controversie than the builders of Babel did understand one anothers language A necessity upon supposition which admits a possibility of the contrary is mistaken for an absolute and true necessity A freedom from compulsion is confounded with a freedom from necessitation meer spontaneity usurpeth the place of true liberty no chance is acknowledged but what is made chance by our ignorance or nescience because we know not the right causes of it I desire to retein the proper terms of the Schools Mr. Hobs flies to the common conceptions of the vulgar a way seldom troden but by false Prophets and seditious Oratours He preferreth their terms as more intelligible I esteem them much more obscure and confused In such intricate questions vulgar brains are as uncapable of the things as of the terms But thus it behoved him to prevaricate that he might not seem to swim against an universal stream nor directly to oppose the generall current of the Christian World There was an odde phantastick person in our times one Thomas Leaver who would needs publish a Logick in our mothers tongue You need not doubt but that the publick good was pretended And because the received terms of art seemed to him too abstruce he translated them into English stiling a Subject an Inholder an Accident an Inbeer A Proposition a Shewsay an affirmative Proposition a Yeasav a negative proposition a Naysay the subject of the Proposition the Foreset the predicate the Backset the conversion the turning of the Foreset into the Backset and the Backset into the Foreset Let M. Hobs himself be judge whether the common Logical notions or this new gibrish were lesse intelligible Haec à se non multum abludit imago But Reader dost thou desire to see the question discussed clearly to thy satisfastion observe but Mr. Hobs his practicks and compare them with his principles and there needs no more He teacheth that all causes and all events are absolutely necessary yet if any man crosse him he frets and fumes and talkes his pleasure jussit quod splendida bilis Doth any man in his right wits use to be angry with causes that act necessarily He might as well be angry with the Sun because it doth not rise an hour sooner or with the Moon because it is not alwayes full for his pleasure he commands his servant to do thus to as much purpose if he be necessitated to do otherwise as Canutus commanded the waves of the Sea to flow no higher He punisheth him if he transgresse his commands with as much justice if he have no dominion over his own actions as Xeâ—…xes commanded so many stripes to be given to the Hâ—…llespont for breaking down his Bridge He exhorts him and reprehends him He might as well exhort the fire to burne or reprehend it for burning of his cloaths He is as timerous in a thunder or a storme as cautelous and deliberative in doubtful cases as if he believed that all things in the World were contingent and nothing necessary Sometimes he chideth himself how ill advised was I to do thus or so O that I had thought better upon it or had done otherwise Yet all this while he believeth that it was absolutely necessary for him to do what he did and impossible for him to have done otherwise Thus his own practise doth sufficiently confute his tenets He will tell us that he is timerous and solicitous because he knows not how the causes will determine To what purpose Whether their determination be known or unknown he cannot alter it with his endeavours He will tell us that deliberation must concur to the production of the effect Let it be so but if it do concur necessarily Why is he so solicitous and so much perplexed Let him sleep or wake take care or take no care the necessary causes must do their work Yet from our collision some light hath proceeded towards the elucidation of this question and much more might have arisen if Mr. Hobbes had been pleased to retain the ancient Schoole terms for want of which his discourse is still ambiguous and confused As here he tells thee That we both maintain that men are free to do as they will and to forbear as they will My charity leads me to take him in the best sense onely of free acts and then with dependence upon the first cause That man who knows not his idiotismes would think the cause was yeilded in these words whereas in truth they signifie nothing His meaning is He is as free to do and forbear as he is free to call back yesterday He may call until his heart ake but it will never come He saith A man is free to do if he will but he is not free to will if he will If he be not free to will then he is not free to do Without the concurrence of all necessary causes it is impossible that the effect should be produced But the concurrence of the will is necessary to the production of all free or voluntary acts And if the will be necessitated to nil as it may be then the act is impossible And then he saith no more in effect but this A man is free to do if he will that which is impossible for him to do By his doctrine all the powers and faculties of a man are as much necessitated and determinated to one by the natural influence of extrinsecal causes as the will And therefore upon his own grounds a man is as free to will as to do The points wherein he saith we disagree are set down loosely in like manner What our Tenets are the Reader shall know more truely and distinctly by comparing our writings together then by this false dimme light which he holds out unto him He is pleased if not ironically yet certainly more for his own glory than out of any respect to me to name me a learned Schoole-Divine An honour which I vouchsafe not to my self My life hath been too practical to attend so much to those speculative Studies It may be the Schoole-men have started many superfluous questions and some of dangerous conse quence But yet I say the weightier Ecclesiastical controversies will never be understood and
intuition with God And therefore as my present beholding of a man casting himself down headlong from some precipice whilest â—…e is in the act of casting himself down is not â—…he cause of his precipitation nor doth any way neccessitate him to precipitate himself yet upon supposition that I do see him precipitate himself it is necessarily that is infalâ—…ibly true that he doth precipitate himself but not necessarily true by any antecedent and extrinsecall determination of him to do that act nor so necessarily true as to exclude his freedom or liberty in the act Even so Gods knowledge of future contingents being a present intuition or beholding of them by reason of his infinite intellect doth not at all determine free Agents nor necessitate contingent events but onely infers an infallibility that is as we use to call it an hypotheticall necessity or a necessity upon supposition which doth consist with true liberty Much of this is confessed by Mr. Hobbes himself That the foreknowledge of God should be the cause of any thing cannot be truely said seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge dependeth on the existence of thing known and not they on it I desire to know whether God do his own works ad extra as the creation and destruction of the World freely or necessarily aâ—… whether he was necessitated to create the World precisely a such at time in such a manner Certainly God foreknoweth his own works as much as he foreknoweth the determinate acts of free Agents Yet his foreknowledge of his own works ad extra doth not necessitate himself If he say that God himself determineth his own acts ad extra so I say doth the free Agent also with this difference That God is infinite and independent upon any other but the free Agent is finite and dependent upon God both for his being and for his acting Then if Gods freedom in his own works ad extra doth not take away his prescience neither doth the liberty of free Agents take it away To his second inconvenience That it is impossible that that which is for known by God should not come to passe or come to passe otherwise than it is foreknown I answer That Gods foreknowledge is not such an act as T. H. imagineth that is an act that is expired or an act that is done and past but it is alwayes in doing an eternall act a present act a present intuition and consequently doth no more make the Agent unfree or the contrary event impossible untill it be actually produced than my knowing that such a man stabbed himself upon such a day made it then unpossible for him to have forborn stabbing of himself or my seeing a man eat in present made it unpossible for him before he did eat to have forborn eating God is the totall cause of all natures and essences but he is not the totall cause of all their acts and operations Neither did he create his Creatures to be idle but that they should each of them exercise such acts as are agreeable to their respective natures necessary Agents necessary Acts free Agents free Acts. And untill the free Agent have determined it self that is untill the last moment before production the contrary Act is not made unpossible and then only upon supposition He that precipated himself untill the very moment that he did precipitate himself might have withheld himself And if he had withheld himself then I had not seen him precipitate himself but withhold himself His frequent invectives against unsignificant words are but like the complaints of that old Belldam Harpaste in Seneca who still cried out against the darknesse of the room and desired to be brought into another chamber little believing that her own blindnesse was the true cause of it What Suares saith As I know neither what nor where so neither doth it concern either me or the cause His last assault against liberty in his fountains of Arguments is this Certainly to will is impossible without thinking on what a man willeth but it is in no mans election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on A man might well conjecture by this very reason that his fountain was very near drying up This Argument is levied rather against the memory or against the understanding than against the will and may serve as well against freedom to do as against freedom to will which is contrary to his principles It is as impossible to do without thinking on what a man doth as it is to will without thinking on what he willeth but it is in no mans election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on Therefore a man is not free to chuse what he will do I know not what this word to think signifies with him but I know what other Authours make it to signifie to use reason to understand to know and they define a thought to be the understanding actually imployed or busied about some object Hath not he spun us a fair thred He undertaketh to shew a defect in the will and he alleadeth a defect in the understanding Is a man therefore not free to go to his dinner because perhaps he thinks not on it just at dinner time Let the free Agent be free to will or nill and to chuse which part he will without necessitation or determination to one when he doth think on it and we shall not want true liberty An Answer to the Animadversions upon the Epistle to my Lord of Newcastle IT was no passion but a sad truth To call the opinion of fatall destiny blasphemous which maketh God to be directly the authour of sin which is a degree worse then Athisme and desperate which taketh away all care and solicitude and thrusts men headlong without fear or wit upon rocks and precipices and destructive which turneth all government divine and humane off from their hinges the practicall consequences whereof do utterly ruine all societies Neither am I guilty that I know of yet so much as of one uncivill word either against Mr. Hobbes his person or his parts He is over unequall and indulgent to himself who dare assume the boldnesse to introduce such insolent and paradoxicall opinions into the World and will not allow other men the liberty to wellcome them as they deserve I wish he himself in his Animadversions and his parasiticall publisher of his former treatise had observed the same temper and moderation particularly towards the lights of the Shools whom he slighteth and vilifieth every where as a company of pedantick dunses who understood not themselves yet held the World in awe under contribution by their â—…stian jargon untill a third Cato dropped down from Heaven to stand up for the vindication of Christian liberty from Scholastick tyranny and Stoicall necessity from naturall and morall liberty But this is certain if these poor despised Schoolmen were necessitated by antecedent and extrinsecall causes to speak such gibrish and non-sense and the Christian World to
receive it and applaud it they cannot be justly blamed And if that great assertour were necessitated in like manner he cannot justly be praised any more than we praise a Conduit for spouting out water when the cock is turned An answer to the Animadversions upon the Bishops Epistle to the Reader I Am well contented to believe that the Copy of T. H. his Treatise was surreptitiously gained from him Yet he acknowledgeth that he shewed it to two and if my intelligence out of France did not fail to many more I am well pleased to believe that he was not the authour of that lewde Epistle which was perfixed before it but rather some young braggadochio one of his disciples who wanted all other means to requite his Master for his new acquired light but servile flattery whom he stileth the great Authour the repairer of our breaches the Assertour of our reputation who hath performed more in a few sheets than is comprehended in all the voluminous Workes of the Priests and Ministers yea as if that expression were too modest in all the Libraries of the Priests Iesuites and Ministers or in the Catechismes and Confessions of a thousand Assemblies On the other side he belcheth out reproaches against the poor Clergy as if they were a pack of fooles and knaves For their folly he stickes not to stile the black-coates generally taken a sort of ignorant tinkars c. And for their knavery he saith they make the Scriptures which he setteth forth in as gracelesse a dresse as he can imagine the decoies of the people to advance themselves to promotions leisure and luxury And so he concludeth that this little Treatise of Mr. Hobbes will cast an eternal blemish on all the cornâ—…rd caps of the Priests and Iesuits and all the black and white caps of the Ministers Herein I cannot acquit Mr. Hobbes That being in London at the same time when this ridiculous Epistle was printed and published he did not for his own cause sooner or later procure it to be suppressed Concerning my self I can safely say That I was so far from intending my defence for the presse that since it was perfected and one onely Copy transcribed for the Marq. of Newcastle and himself it hath scarcely ever beheld the Sun Questions may be ventilated and truth cleared from mistakes privately between particular persons as well or better than publickly in print As touching my exceptions to his book de Cive he saith He did indeed intend to have answered them as finding them neither political nor Theological nor that I alledged any reasons by which they were to be justified The inference would have holden more strongly the contrary way that because they were neither Theological nor Political and destitute of reasons to support them they were fitter to be despised than to be answered But why did he then intend to answer them and thought himself so much concerned in it Surely he hath forgotten himself for there was never a one of those exceptions which was not backed with several reasons But concerning them and his Leviathan I shall be sparing to speak more in present Peradventure I may reserve two or three Chapters one to shew him his Theological errours another how destructive his Political errours are to all Societies a third of his contradictions out of all which if my leisure serve me I may chance to gather a posie and present it to him He chargeth me to say That there were two of our own Church answering his Leviathan It may be so but it is more than I know I said one of our own Church and one stranger In the conclusion of my Epistle to the reader I used this innocent form of valediction So God blesse us a form of all others most usual for shutting up our Epistles So God blesse us or So God blesse you or So I commit you to God or Commend you to the protection of the hig hest Majesty But it seemeth he misapprending it to be a prayer for protection or deliverance from his opinions stiles my well-meant prayer a Bouffonly abusing of the name of God tâ—… calumny How am I charged with Bouffonery and calumny and abusing of the holy name of God And all this for saying God blesse us Is this a fit man to reprehend others for uncivility Did he learn this high strain of curtesie at Malmsbury I confesse I do not dislike a little tooth-lesse jesting when the subject will bear it Ridiculum acri Fortius melius magnas plerumque secat res But I do not like jesting with edge-tooles nor jesting with God Almighty much lesse bouffonly abusing of the holy Name of God to calumny He need not fear any such reviling terms from me But if his cause meet now and then with an innocent jerk for it Sciat responsum non dictum esse He that knoweth not the way to the Sea must get a River to be his guid An answer to his Animadversions upon my Reply Num. 1. I Said I was diverted from reading his defence by businesse Hence he inferreth that the will is not free for nothing is free that can be diverted by any thing but it self I deny this Proposition and he will prove it at the Greek calends There is a great difference between diversion and determination Diversion is but an occasional suspension of the exercise of liberty but physical determination to one is a compulsion of the will so far as the will is capable of compulsion that is necessitation The will doth chuse its own diversion but there is no choice in necessitation And therefore necessitation to one is opposit to liberty but diversion is not nor moral efficacy Out of his very first words I had once resolved c. I urged two arguments against him Frst all resolution presupposeth deliberation So much is acknowledged by himself That to resolve is to will after deliberation he knoweth no difference between willing and electing But all deliberation of that which is inevitably determined without our selves as all events are determined according to his opinion is vain As it is vain for a condemned person to deliberate whether he should be executed it is vain for a man to deliberate whether he should grow in stature or whether he should breath The onely thing questionable in this argument is the truth of the assumption whether it be vain to deliberate of that which is already inevitably determined to which he answereth not one syllable in terminis but runs away with a false sent altogether wyde from the purpose A man saith he may deliberate of what he shall do whether the thing be possible or not in case he know not of the impossibility though he can not deliberate what another shall do to him And therefore my three instances are impertinent because the question is not what they shall do but what they shall suffer And here he vapoureth marvellously supposing that he hath me at an huge advantage Such are commonly all
his advantages much good may they do him First he erreth grossely in affirming that all deliberation is onely of what a man will do or not do And not at all of what a man will suffer or not suffer Deliberation is as well about evil to be eschewed as about good to be pursued Men deliberate equally of their doings and of their sufferings if they be not inevitably determined but if they be then neither of the one nor of the other A Martyr or a Confessor may deliberate what torments he will suffer for his Religion Many of those acts whereabout we do usually deliberate are mixt motions partly active and partly passive as all our senses Secondly it is a shame for him to distinguish between actions and sufferings in this cause when all the actions of all the free Agents in the World by his doctrine are meer sufferings A free Agent is but like a bullet rammed up into the barrel by the outward causes and fired off by the outward causes the will serves for no use but to be a touchhole and the poor Agent hath no more aime or understanding of what he doth than the arrow which is forced out of the bow towards the mark without any sense or concurrent in it self A condemned person may be reprieved and deliberate about that but the sentence of the causes produceth a necessity from eternity as he phraseth it never to be interrupted or altered Thirdly he erreth in this also That he affirmeth all my three instances to be onely of passions or sufferings Growing up in stature is a vegetative act Respiration is a sensitive act or an act of the moving and animal faculty Some question there hath been whether respiration were a natural motion or a voluntary motion or a mixt motion but all conclude that it is an act or motion which is performed whilst we sleep when we are uncapable of deliberation Lastly to say that a man may deliberate of a thing that is not possible if he know not of the impossibility will not advantage his cause the value of a rush for supposing an universal necessity of all events from eternity there can be no such case seeing all men know that upon this supposition all acts and events are either antecedently and absolutely necessary or antecedently and absolutely impossible boâ—… which are equally uncapable of deliberation So the impertinence will prove to be in 〈◊〉 answer not in my instances My second argument out of his own wordâ—… was this To resolve a mans self is to determine his own will and if a man determine his own will then he is free from outward necessity But T. H. confesseth that a man 〈◊〉 resolve himself I resolved once c. And 〈◊〉 further to resolve is to will after deliberation Now to will after deliberation is to elect but that he hateth the very term of electing or chusing as being utterly destructive to his new modeled fabrick of universal necessity And for that very reason he confounds and blunders together the natural sensitive and intellectual appetites Either the will determineth it self in its resolution or both will and deliberation and resolution are predetermined by a necessary fluxe of natural causes if the will determine it self in its resolution then we have true liberty to will or nill If both the will and the deliberation and the resolution be predetermined by outward causes then it is not the resolution of the will it self nor of the Agent but of the outward causes then it was as much determined that is to say resolved before the deliberation as after because the deliberation it self and the whole event of it particularly the last resolution was outwardly predetermined from eternity To this he answereth nothing but according to his usual manner he maketh three objections First No man can determine his own will for the will is an appetite and it is not in mans power to have an appetite when he will This argument would much better become the kitchin than the Schooles to argue from the lesser to the greater negatively which is against all rules of Logick Just thus A brute beast cannot make a Categorical Syllogisme thererefore a man cannot make one So here the sensitive appetite hath no dominion over its own acts therefore neither hath the rationall appetite any dominion over its own acts Yet this is the onely pillar that supporteth his main distinction which must uphold his Castle in the aire from tumbling down about his ears But be what it will be it hath been sufficiently answered allready His second oblection hath so little solidity in it that it is ridiculous Over whatsoever things there is dominion those things are not free but over a mans actions there is the dominion of his wil. What a medius terminus hath he light upon This which he urgeth against liberty is the very essence of liberty If a mans actions were under the dominion of another mans will or under the dominion of his extrinsecall causes then they were not free indeed but for a mans own actions to be in his own power or in the power or under the dominion of his own wil that is that which makes them free Thirdly he objects If a man determine himself the question will yet remain What determined him to determine himself If he speak properly in his own sense of physicall determination by outward causes he speaketh plain non-sense for if he was so determined by another then he did not determine himself But if he mean onely this What did concur with the will in the determination of it self I answer That a friend by perswasion might concur morally and the understanding by representing might concur intrinsecally but it hath been demonstrated to him over and over that neither of these concurrences is inconsistent with true liberty from necessitation and physicall determination to one Something I say afterwards which doth not please him which he calleth a talking to my self at random My aime in present is onely to answer his exceptions a little more punctually then he hath done mine not at all to call him to an account for his omissions that part I leave to the Readers own observation He telleth me plainly That I neither understand him nor what the word necessary signifieth if I think he holds no other necessity then that which is expressed in that old foolish rule what soever is when it is is necessarily so as it is If I understand him not I cannot help it I understand him as well as I can and wish that he understood himself a little better to make him speak more significantly Let us see where the fault lies that he is no better understood First he defineth what is necessary That is necessary which is impossible to be otherwise Whence he inferreth That Necessary Possible and Impossible have no signification in reference to the time past or time present but onely the time to come I think all men
will condescend to him thus far That possibility hath only referrence to the time to come But for necessity and impossibility he overshooteth himself beyond all aime If an house do actually burn in present it is necessary that is infallible that that house do burn in present and impossible that it do not burn If a man was slain yestarday it is necessary that he is slain to day and impossible that he should nor be slain His own definition doth sufficiently confute him That is necessary which is impossible to be otherwise but it is impossible that that which is doing in present or which was done yestarday should be otherwise How hang these things together Or this that he telleth us That his necessary is a necessary from all eternity which with him is an everlasting succession And yet he telleth us That necessary signifieth nothing in reference to the time past then how is it necessary from all eternity And here he thrusteth out for rotten a great many of old Scholastick terms as empty words As necessary when it is or absolutely and hypothecally necessary and sensus compositus divisus and the dominion of the will and the determining of its self I must put him in mind again of the good old woman in Seneca who complained of the darknesse of the room when the defect was in her own eye-sight I wonder not that he is out of love with distinctions more than I wonder why a bungling workman regards not a square or a plum But if he understood these distinctions a little better he would not trouble his reader with That which shall be shall be and a bundle of such like impertinencies He acknowledgeth That my Lord of Newcastle desire and my intreaty were enough to produce a will in him to write his answer If they were enough then he was not necessitated nor physically predetermined to write it We had no more power than to perswade no natural influence upon his will And so he was for us not onely free to write but free to will also But perhaps there were other imaginations of his own that contributed their part Let it be so yet that was no extrinsecall or absolute determination of his will And so far was our request from producing his consent as necessarily as the fire burneth that it did not it could not produce it at all by any naturall causall influence and efficacy The sufficiency and efficiency and productive power was in his will it self which he will not be brought to understand An Answer to his Animadversions upon the Reply Num. 2. HEre is nothing of moment to detain the Reader He saith Whosoever chanceth to read Suares his opuscula shall find the greatest part if not all that I have urged in this question Said I not truely Give Innovators line enough and they will confute themselves whosoever chanceth c. And why chanceth By his doctrine it was as necessary for him that readeth to read as it is for the fire to burn Doth the fire sometimes burn by chance He will say That where the certain causes are not known we attribute Events to Chance But he sticks still in the same mire without hope ever to be freed who knoweth the certain reason why the needle touched with the loadstone pointeth allwayes towards the North Doth it therefore point by chance How many thousands are ignorant of the true causes of Comets and Earthquakes and Eclipses Do they therefore attribute them to chance Chance never hath place but where the causes concur accidentally to produce some effect which might have been produced otherwise Though a man strive to expell these common notions with a fork yet now and then they will return And though I could not surprize him yet the truth can Thus Penelope like he hath undone that in the dark which he hath been weaving all this while in the light It were more ingenuous to say it was a slip of his pen. It is indifferent to me whether the greatest part of what I urge in this question or all that I urge or perhaps more than I urge be contained in Suares his Opuscula So the truth may prevaile I care not who have the honour of the atchievement But Suares understood himself better then to confound two such different questions namely that of the necessity or liberty of all Events naturall and civill which is our question with the concurrence of grace and free-will in morall and supernaturall acts which he saith is the subject of Suares his discourse in that place In all my life that I do remember I never read one line of Suares his Opuscula nor any of his works the sixteen years last past I wish he had been versed in his greater works as well as in his Opuscula that he might not be so averse from the Schools Ignoti nulla cupido Then he would have known the terms and arguments used in the Schools as well as others It is no blemish to make advantage of other mens pains and experience Dies diei eructat verbum nox nocti indicat scientiam But Mr. Hobbes trusting over much to his own particular abilities presumeth to stand upon his own bottom without any dread of Solomons ve solâ—… Wo to him that is alone when he falleth He scrupleth not to remove the ancient land-marks which his fathers had set nor to stumble from the ancient paths to walk in a way that was never cast up It were meer folly to expect either a known ground or a received term from him Other men are contented to learn to write after a Copy but he will be printed a Philosopher and a Divine of the first edition by himself and Icarus like find out a new way with his waxen winges which mortalls never knew though he perish in the attempt Such undigested phancies may please for a while during the distemper and green-sickness fit of this present age as maids infected with that malady preferre chalk or coles in a corner before healthfull food in their fathers house but when time hath cured their malady and experience opened their eyes they wil abominate their former errours and those who were their misleaders He had slighted whatsoever I produced as common and triviall having nothing new in it either from Scripture or reason which he had not often heard I replied onely that then I might expect a more mature answer and advised him under the similitude of Epictetus his sheep rather to shew his reading in his works than to glory of it And where I said that great recruits of reasons and authorities did offer themselves to me in this cause he threatneth before he have done with me to make it appear to be very bragging and nothing else Adding That it is not likely that Epictetus should take a metaphor from lamb and wooll because he was not acquainted with paying of tithes I could not suspect that a poor similitude out of Epictetus should make him
supposition And if the fire were a free Agent it were suffiâ—…ient to destroy the liberty thereof as to that act He saith That it seemeth I understand not what these words free and contingent mean because I put causes among those things that operate freely What doth the man mean Are not free Agents causes If they be not how do they act I understand these words free and contingent as they ought to be understood and as the World hath understood them for two thousand years As for his new nick-naming of free and contingent Agents I heed it not He hath shewed That this liberty whereof we treat is common to bruit beasts and inanimate creatures with man as well as he could shew it or can shew it or ever wil be able to shew it that is just as much as he hath shewed that the sea burneth If it were not for this confounding of terms and a company of trifling homonymies he would have nothing to say or do When a man saith he doth any thing freely many other concurrent Agents work necessarily As the man moveth the sword freely the sword woundeth necessarily A free Agent may have concurrent Agents but his instance in a sword is very impertinent which is but an instrument yea a passive instrument and though it have an aptitude in it self from the sharpnesse and weight thereof yet the determination of the action and the efficacy or causation ought to be ascribed to the principall Agent The sword did not wound but the man wounded with the sword Admit the sword may be said in some sense to concur actively to the cutting certainly it concurs onely passively to the motion But he would make us believe that the man is no more active than his sword and hath no more power to suspend or deny his concurrence then the sword because a man doth not move himself or at least not move himself originally I have heard of some who held an opinion that the soul of man was but like the winding up of a watch and when the string was run out the man dyed and there the soule determined But I had not thought before this that any man had made the body also to be like a Clock or a Jack or a Puppet in a play to have the originall of its motion from without itself so as to make a man in his animal motion to be as meer a passive instrument as the sword in his hand If by originally he do understand independently so as to suppose that a man hath his locomotive faculty from himself and not from God we all affirm That the originall of a mans locomotive faculty is from God in whom we live and move and have our being But if he understand originally not in relation to the faculty but to the act of moving as he must mean unlesse he mean nonsence then we affirm that a man doth move himself originally and desire not to tast of his paradoxicall knowledge of motion It is folly to dispute with such men and not rather to leave them to their own phantasticall Chimera's who deny all principles and rules of art whom an adversary cannot drive into greater absurdities than they do willingly plunge themselves into Thus they do on purpose put out the lights and leave men to fence in the dark and then it is all one whether a man have skill at his weapon or not That he would have contingency to depend upon our knowledge or rather our ignorance and not upon the accidentall concurrence of causes That he confoundeth free causes which have power to suspend or deny their concurrence with contingent causes which admit onely a possibility to concur or not concur rather out of impotence than power That he maketh free causes which are principall causes to be guided by inferiour and instrumentall causes as if a man should say That a man is guided by the sword in his hand and not the sword by the man deserves no other answer but contempt or pity that a man should so poyson his intellectuals and entangle himself in his own errours Such another mistake is his argument to prove that contingent causes could not have concurred otherwise then they did I know noâ—… whether more pedanticall or ridiculous For I conceive not saith he how when this runneth this way and that another they can be said to concur that is run together Wheresoever there are divided parties as in a Court or a Camp or a Corporation he who concurreth with one party doth thereby desert the other Concerning his instance of the necessity of casting ambs ace If he can shew that the caster was antecedently necessitated to cast so that he could not possibly have denied his concurrence and to cast so soon so that he could not possibly have suspended his concurrence and to cast just with so much force so that he could not possibly have used more force or lesse force and to cast into that table and that very individuall place it may be whilest he winked or looked another way I say if he can shew that all these contingent accidents were absolutely predetermined and that it was not at all in the Casters power to have done otherwise than he did then he hath brought contingency under the jurisdiction of fate But if he faile in any one of these as all men see that he must faile in all of these then I may have leave to tell him that his casting of ambs ace hath lost him his game But now Reader I desire thee to observe his answer and to see him plainly yield the cause Though the subject ambs ace be mean and contemptible yet it yieldeth thee light enough to see what notorious triflers these are Thus he saith The suspending of the casters concurrence or altering of his force and the lâ—…ke accidents serve not to take away the necessity of ambs ace otherwise then by making a necessity of deux ace or some other cast that shall be thrown This is ingenuously answered I ask no more of him He confesseth That the caster might have suspended his concurrence or have altered his force or the accidents might have fallen out otherwise than they did And that if these alterations had happened as they might have happened then there had been as great a necessity of deux ace or some other cast as there was of ambs ace where he saith That the alteration of the accidents serveth not to take away the necessity of ambs ace otherwise than by making a necessity of deux ace or some other cast he confesseth That by making a necessity of deux ace or some other cast they might serve to take away the necessity of ambs ace What is now become of his antecedent determination of all things to one from eternity and of the absolute impossibility that any Event should come to passe otherwise than it doth If this be all his necessity it is no more than a necessity upon supposition where the
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
chuse which is as much as to say vollo velle I will will Which phrase T. H. esteemeth an absurd speech But Julius Scaliger thought otherwise Dicimus vere ex omnium gentium consensu vollo velle The very words cum adjutorio Dei with the help of God might teach them that God is neither the total cause nor the determining cause of mans election Lastly this distinction maketh T. H. worse than the Stoicks themselves for the Soicks together with their Fate did also maintaine the freedom of the will And as we find in many Authors both theirs and ours did not subject the soul of man nor the will of man to the rigid dominion of destiny The Stoicks substracted some causes and subjected others to necessity And among those which they would not have to be under necessity they placed the will of man lest it should seem not to be free if it were subjected to necessity Chrysippus made two sorts of causes principal causes which did necessitate and compel all things except the will of man and adjuvant causes as objects which did onely excite and allure These said he do awaken the mind of man but being awakened it can move of it self which he setteth forth by the comparison of a wherlegigge and a roller cast down a steep place which have the beginning of their motion from without themselves but the progresse from their own form and volubility So T. H. is worse than a Stoick in this respect and extendeth fatal necessity further than they did I have done with this distinction for this time I say nothing of the bird but the egge is bad Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 7. IN these Animadversions there is nothing contained which is material either for necessity or against liberty but passion and animosity Where it is said that the will doth perpetually follow the last dictate of the understanding or the last judgement of right reason He excepteth that I am mistaken for the will followeth as well the judgement of an erroneous as of a true reasoning First his exception is improper it is the judgement of Reason not of reasoning Secondly it is impertinent the onely question here is whether the will do follow the last judgement of reason not whether the reason be right or not Thirdly it is false whilst the will doth follow the erroneous judgement of reason yet it followeth it as the judgement of right reason When the judgement of Reason is erroneous the will followeth it onely de facto but when it is right it followeth it both de facto and de jure His second exception is that I make the understanding to be an effect of the will Good words I said not the understanding but the act of the understanding that is the deliberation or judgement of the understanding which is so far truely said to proceed from the will because the will employeth the understanding to deliberate and judge How the understanding moveth the will and the will moveth the understanding mutually is a superfluous question seeing they do not differ really but rationally The understanding is the essence of the soul as it knoweth the will the same essence of the soul as it extendeth it self to enjoy the thing known Neither am I obliged to read Lectures It is sufficient to know that the will is moved to the specification of its act onely by the understanding or which is all one by the object known and represented But the will is moved and doth move the understanding to the exercise of its act by it self except onely in that motion which is called motus primó primus that is the motion of the will towards the last end which it is not in the power of the will to will or not to will as its other motions are but requireth the excitation of the first cause The will moveth both the understanding and it selfe effectively The understanding moveth the will objectively by making those things to be actually known which were onely potentially intelligible As the light of the Sun maketh those things actually visible which before did lie hid in darknesse If he will not understand those things which all old Divines and Philosophers do assent unto chusing rather to be a blind leader of the blind than a follower of them who see nor the command of the will nor the difference between natural and moral efficacy If he understand not what is the judgement of the understanding practically practical he must learn and not adventure to censure before he knows what he censures What he is not able to confute he should not dare to sleight I do not justifie all the questions nor all the expressions of all Schoolemen But this I will say There is often more profound sense and learning in one of these obscure phrases which he censureth as jargon and unintelligible than in own of his whole Treatises And particularly in this which he sleighteth more than any of the rest in a domineering manner that is The judgement of the understanding practically practical A country man saith he will ackowledge there is judgement in men but will as soon say the judgement of the judgement as the judgement of the understanding Then shall country men be Judges of terms of Art who understand not any one terme of any Art much lesse the things intended by those termes and the faculties of the soul with their proper acts But such a sily Judge is fittest for T. H. I will not cite a Schoole-man but contain my selfe within the bounds of Philosophy Philosophers do define the understanding by its subject proper acts and objects to be a faculty of the soul understanding knowing and judging things intelligible If to judge of its object be the proper act of the understanding then there must needs be a judgement of the understanding Every sense judgeth of its proper object as the sight of colours the hearing of sounds Shall we grant judgement to the senses and deny judgement to the understanding Now this judgement is either contemplative or practical Contemplative is when the understanding aimeth onely at knowledge what is true and what is false without thought of any external action Practical judgement is when the understanding doth not onely judge what is true and what is false but also what is good and what is evil what is to be pursued and what is to be shunned So we have the practical judgement of the understanding Yet further when the understanding hath given such a practical judgement it is not necessary that the will shall follow it but it may suspend its consent and not elect It may put the understanding upon a new deliberation and require a new judgement In this case the judgement of the understanding is practical because it intends not meerly contemplation what is true and what is false but also action what is to be pursued and what is to be shunned But yet it is
Sophister I had allmost said saving the rigorous acception of the word as it was used afterwards an Athenian Sycophant Conformity signifies not onely such a likenesse of feature as he imagineth but also a convenience accommodation and agreeablenesse So the savoury meat which Rebeckah made for her husband was conform to his appetite So Daniel and his fellows conformed their appetites to their pulse and water Thus Tully saith Ego me comformo ad ejus voluntatem I conform my self to his will Where there is an agreeablenesse there is a conformity as to conform ones self to another mans humour or to his councel or to his commands He resolveth to have no more to do with spontaneity I thought that it had not been himself but the causes that resolved him without his own will But whether it be himself or the causes I think if he hold his resolution and include liberty therein for company it will not be much amisse for him Here he readeth us a profound Lecture what the common people on whose arbitration dependeth the signification of words in common use among the Latines and Greeks did call all actions and motions whereof they did perceive no cause spontaneous and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And in the conclusion of his Lecture according to his custom he forgeteth not himself The Bishop understanding nothing of this might if it pleased him have called it Iargon What pitty is it that he hath not his Gnatho about him to ease him of this trouble of stroaking his own head Here is a Lecture able to make all the Blacksmiths and Watchmakers in a City gape and wonder to see their workmanship so highly advanced Thus he vapoureth still when he lights upon the blind side of an equivocall word For my part I not onely might have called it but do still call it meer Iargon and no better To passe by peccadillo's First he telleth us How the common people did call all actions spontaneous and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. How doth he know what the common people called them The books which we have are the books of Scholars not of the common people Secondly he saith That the signification of all words dependeth upon the arbitration of the common people Surely he meaneth onely at Athens where it is observed That wise men did speak and fools did judge But neither at Athens nor at any other place were the common people either the perfecters or arbitrators of language who neither speak regularly nor properly much lesse in words that are borrowed from learned languages Thirdly he supposeth that these words liberty necessity and spontaneity are words in common use which in truth are terms of art There is as much difference between that liberty and necessity which ordinary people speak and the liberty and necessity intended in this question whereof we are agreed as there is between the pointing out of a man with ones finger and a logicall demonstration or between an habit in a Tailers shop and an habit in Logick or Ethicks Fourthly He confoundeth spontaneity and chance comprehending them both under the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I confesse that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Poets and Oratours is a word of very ambiguous signification sometimes signifieing a necessary sometimes a voluntary or spontaneous sometimes a casuall sometimes an artificiall Agent or Event Such equivocall words are his delight But as they are terms of art all these words are exactly distinguished and defined and limitted to their proper and certain signification That which is voluntary or spontaneous is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as we see plainly in Aristotle That which is freely elected is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that which is by chance is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he may see in the places cited in the margent where all these words are exactly distinguished and defined Fifthly He saith the Latines and Greeks did call all actions and motions whereof they did perceive no cause 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which according to Aristotle and other Philosophers doth signifie things done by chance And in his reason whereof they did perceive no cause He is mistaken on hoth sides For first the causes of many things are apparent which yet are said to be done by chance as when a tile falleth down accidentally from an house breaketh a mans head And on the other side many things whereof the causes were not known as the ebbing and flowing of the sea were not said to be done by chance I shall not need for the present to make any further inquiry into his extravagant interpretations of words which he maketh gratis upon his own head and authority and which no man admitteth but himself Rectum est Index sui obliqui Sixthly he saith Not every appetite but the last is esteemed the will when men do judge of the regularity or irregularity of one anothers actions I do acknowledge that de non apparentibus non existentibus eadem est ratio If it do not appear outwardly to be his will man cannot judge of it as his will But if it did appear to be his will first or last though he change it over and over it was his will and is judged by God to have been his will and may be justly judged so by man so far as it did appear to have been his will by his words and actions If he mean his last will and testament that indeed taketh place and not the former yet the former will was truly his will untill it was revoked But of this and of his deliberation I shall have cause to speak more hereafter I come now to his contradictions His first contradiction is this All voluntary acts are deliberate Some voluntary acts are not deliberate The former part of his contradiction is proved out of these words Voluntary presupposes some precedent deliberation that is to to say some consideration and meditation of what is likely to follow both upon the doing and abstaining from the action deliberated of The second part is proved as plainly When a man hath time to deliberate but deliberates not because never any thing appeared that could make him doubt of the consequence the action follows his opinions of the goodnesse or harm of it These actions I call voluntary c. because these actions that follow immediately the last appetitite are voluntary And here where there is one onely apppetite that one is the last To this he answereth Voluntary presupposes deliberation when the judgement whether the action be voluntary or not is not in the Actor but in the Iudge who regardeth not the will of the Actor when there is nothing to be accused in the action of deliberate malice yet knoweth that though there be but one appetite the same is truely will for the time and the action if it follow a voluntary action To which term doth he answer Of what term doth he distinguish Some
shew such another grant for the Lions to devour men When God said Whoso sheddeth mans blood by man shall his blood be shed for in the Image of God made he man Was it intended onely that his blood should be preserved for the Lions or do not their teeth deface Gods Image as much as mans weapons But the Lion had liberty to eat man long before He is mistaken the creatures did beare a more awful respect to the Image of God in man before his fall But mans rebellion to God was punished with their rebellion of the creatures to him He saith it was impossible for most men to have Gods license to use the creatures for their sustenance Why so as if all the world were not then comprised in the family of Noah Or as if the Commandments and dispensations of God were not then delivered from father to son by tradition as they were long after by writing He asketh how I would have been offended if he should have spoken of man as Pliny doth Then whom there is no living creature more wretched or more proud Not half so much as now Pliny taxeth onely the faults of men he vilifieth not their humane nature Most wretched What is that but an argument of the immortality of the soul God would never have created the most noble of his creatures for the most wretched being Or more proud that is then some men Corruptio optimi pessima The best things being corrupted turn the worst But he acknowledgeth two advantages which man hath above other creatures his tongue and his hand Is it possible that any man who believeth that he hath an immortal soul or that reason and understanding are any thing but empty names should so far forget himself and his thankfulnesse to God as to prefer his tongue and his hands before an immortal soul and reason Then we may well change the definition of a man which those old dunses the Philosophers left us Man is a reasonable creature into this new one Man is a prating thing with two hands How much more was the humane nature beholden to Tully an Heathen who said That man differed from other creatures in reason and speech Or to Ovid who stileth man Sanctius his animal mentâ—…sque capacius altae If he have no better luck in defending his Leviathan he will have no great cause to boast of his making men examples And now it seemeth he hath played his masterprise For in the rest of his Animadversions in this Section we find a low ebbe of matter Concerning consultations he saith nothing but this That my writing was caused physically antecedently extrinsecally by his answer In good time By which I see right well that he understandeth not what a physical cause is Did he think his answer was so Mathematical to compel or necessitate me to write No I confesse I determined my self And his answer was but a slender occasion which would have had little weight with me but for a wiser mans advice to prevent his over-weening opinion of his own abilities And then followeth his old dish of twice sodden colewortes about free and necessary and contingent and free to do if he will which we have had often enough already His distinction between seen and unseen necessity deserveth more consideration The meaning is that seen necessity doth take away consultation but unseen necessity doth not take away consultation or humane indeavours Unseen necessity is of two sorts either it is altogether unseen and unknown either what it is or that it is Such a necessity doth not take away consultation or humane endeavours Suppose an office were privately disposed yet he who knoweth nothing of the disposition of it may be as solicitous and industrious to obtain it as though it were not disposed at all But the necessity which he laboureth to introduce is no such unseen unknown necessity For though he know not what the causes have determined particularly or what the necessity is yet he believeth that he knoweth in general that the causes are determined from eternity and that there is an absolute necessity The second sort of unseen necessity is that which is unseen in particular what it is but it is not unknown in general that it is And this kind of unseen necessity doth take away all consultation and endeavours and the use of means as much as if it were seen in particular As supposing that the Cardinals have elected a Pope in private but the declaration of the person who is elected is kept secret Here is a necessity the Papacy is full and this necessity is unseen in particular whilest no man knoweth who it is Yet for as much as it is known that it is it taketh away all indeavours and consultations as much as if the Pope were publickly enthroned Or suppose a Jury have given in a privy veredict no man knoweth what it is until the next Court-day yet it is known generally that the Jurers are agreed and the veredict is given in Here is an unseen necessity Yet he who should use any further consultations or make further applications in the case were a fool So though the particular determination of the causes be not known to us what it is yet if we know that the causes are particularly determined from eternity we know that no consultation or endeavour of ours can alter them But it may be further objected that though they cannot alter them yet they may help to accomplish them It was necessary that all who sailed with St. Paul should be saved from shipwrack Yet St. Paul told them that except the shipmen did abide in the ship they could not be saved So though the event be necessarily determined yet consultation or the like means may be necessary to the determination of it I answer the question is not whether the means be necessary to the end for that is agreed upon by all parties But the question is to whom the ordering of the means which are necessary to the production of the event doth properly belong whether to the first cause or to the free Agent If it belong to the free Agent under God as we say it doth then it concerneth him to use consultations and all good endeavours as requisite means to obtain the desired end But if the disposition of the means belong soly and wholly to God as he saith it doth and if God have ordered all means as well as ends and events particularly and precisely then it were not onely a thanklesse and superfluous office to consult what were the fittest means to obtain an end when God hath determined what must be the onely means and no other but also a saucinesse and a kind of tempting of God for a man to intrude himself into the execution of God Almighties decrees whereas he ought rather to cast away all care and all thought on his part and resign himself up wholly to the disposition of the second causes which act nothing but by
know that this shall turn to my salvation thorough your prayers Hannah prayed and the Lord granted her request We see the like in Achab in Zachary in Cornelius and many others Hezekias prayed and the Lord said I have heard thy prayer I have seen thy teares Behold I will adde unto thy dayes fifteen years Nothing can be plainer than Solomons prayer at the dedication of the Temple If there be famine in the land if there be pestilence c. If their enemy besiege them in their Cities whatsoever plague whatsoever sicknesses there be what prayer or supplication soever be made by any man or by all thy people Israel c. and spread forth his hands toward this house heare thou in Heaven thy dwelling Place and forgive and do c. To all which God himself condescended and promised to do accordingly His reason to the contrary That no creature living can work any effect upon God is most true but neither pertinent to his purpose nor understood by himself It is all one as to the efficacy of prayer if it work upon us as though it had wrought upon God himself if it render us more capable of his mercies as if it rendered him more merciful Though the Sword and the Crown hang immovable yet prayer translateth us from one capacity to another from being under the sword to be under the Crown Lastly he telleth us in great sadnesse That though our prayers to man be distinguished from our thanks it is not necessary it should be so in our prayers and thanks to God Almighty Prayers and thanksgiving are our acts not Gods acts and have their distinction from us not from God Prayer respects the time to come thanksgiving the time past Prayer is for that we want thanksgiving for that we have All the ten Lepers prayed Jesus Master have mercy on us but onely one of them returned to give God thanks S. Paul distinguisheth prayer and thanksgiving even in respect of God By granting the prayers of his people God putteth an obligation upon them to give thanks He might as well have said that Faith Hope and Charity are the same thing He passeth over the rest of this Chapter in silence I think him much the wiser for so doing If he had done so by the rest likewise it had been as much credit for his cause Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 16. HEere are three things questionable in this Section First whether he who maketh all things make all things necessary to be or whether it be a contradiction of me to my self to say so First this is certain there can be no formal contradiction where there is but one proposition but here is but one proposition Secondly here is no implicite contradiction First because there is a vast difference between making all things necessary to be and making all things to be necessary Agents The most free or contingent Agents in the World when they are are necessarily such as they are that is necessary to be But they are not necessarily necessary Agents And yet he is still harping upon this string to prove such a necessity as no man did ever deny Thirdly I told him that this which he contends for here is but a necessity of supposition As supposing a garment to be made of the French fashion when it is made it is necessarily of the French faction But it was not necessary before it was made that it should be made of the French fashion nor of any other fashion for it might not have been made at all He excepteth That the burning of the fire is no otherwise necessary then upon supposition That is supposing fuell be cast upon the fire the fire doth burn it necessarily But herein he is altogether mistaken For that onely is called necessary upon supposition where the thing supposed is or was in some sort in the power of the free Agent either to do it or to leave it undone indifferently But it is never in the power of the fire to burn or not to burn indifferently He who did strike the fire out of the flint may be said to be a necessary cause of the burning that proceeded from thence upon supposition because it was in his power either to strike fire or not to strike fire And he who puts more fuell to the fire may be said to be a necessary cause of the continuance of the fire upon supposition because it was in his choice to put to more fuell or not But the fire it self cannot chuse but burne whilest it is fire and therefore it is a necessary cause of burning absolutely and not upon supposition What unseen necessity doth prejudice liberty and what doth not I have shewed formerly How mean an esteem soever he hath of the Tailor either he or his meanest apprentise have more sense than himself in this cause The Tailor knows that there was no necessity from eternity that he should be a Tailor or that that man for whom he made the garment should be his customer and much lesse yet of what fashion he should make it But he is still fumbling to no purpose upon that old foolish rule as he pleased once to call it Whatsoever is when it is is necessarily so as it is The second question is Whether there be any Agents in the World which are truly free or truly contingent Agents according to his grounds And it is easily demonstrated that there are not Because he maintaineth that all Agents are necessary and that those Agents which we call free Agents and contingent Agents do act as necessarily as those Agents which we see and know to be necessary Agents And that the reason why we stile them free Agents and contingent Agents is because we do not know whether they work necessarily or not He hath told us hitherto that all Agents act necessarily otherwise there could not be an universal necessity Now he telleth us that there be sundry Agents which we know not whether they work necessarily or not If we do not know whether they work necessarily or not then we do not know whether there be universal necessity or not But we may well passe by such little mistakes in him That which I deduce from hence is this That the formal reason of liberty and contingency according to his opinion doth consist in our ignorance or nescience and then it hath no reall being in the nature of things Hitherto the world hath esteemed nothing more than liberty Mankind hath been ready to fight for nothing sooner than liberty Now if after all this there be no such thing as liberty in the world they have contended all this while for a shadow It is but too apparent what horrible disorders there are in the world and how many times right is troden under foot by might and how the worst of men do flourish and prosper in this world whilest poor Hieremy is in the Dungeon or writing bookes of lamentation If
aut faciendum quod cognoscit the understanding extended to injoy or do that which it knoweth it must needs be that the more reason the lesse passion the lesse reluctance and consequently the more liberty He saith When we mark not the force that moves us we think that it is not causes but liberty that produceth the action I rendred him thus The ignornnce of the true causes and their power is the reason that we ascribe the effect to liberty Where lieth the fault that which he calleth force and strength I call power and for that which moves us I say causes as he himself doth exexpresse himself in the same place Where I say the will causeth he saith the man chuseth As if there were any difference between these two the eye seeth and the man seeth This and a confounding of voluntas with volitio the faculty of willing with the act of willing and a young suckling contradiction which he hath found out That the will hath power to refuse what he willeth that is before it have willed it not after is the substance of this Animadversion which deserve no other answer but that a man should change his risibility into actual laughter I produced two reasons to prove that true liberty is a freedom not only from compulsion but from necessity The former drawn from the nature of election or the act of the will which is allwayes inter plura the later which I called a new Argument because it had not formerly been touched in this Treatise taken from the nature of the faculty of the will or of the soul as it willeth which is not capable of any other compulsion but necessitation And if it be physically necessitated it is thereby acquitted from all guilt and the fault transferred upon those causes that did necessitate it This argument indeed began with a distinction but proceeded to a demonstration which was reduced by me into form in my defence to which he hath given no shew of satisfaction either in his first answer or in these Animadversions except it be a concedo omnia or a granting of the conclusion The same ground which doth warrant the names of Tyrant Praemunire Sunday Monday Tuesday that is Use Quem penes arbitrium est vis norma loquendi doth likewise justifie these generally received terms of the Elicite and Imperate Acts of the will there being scarcely one Authour who hath written upon this subject in Latine that doth not use them and approve them In the councel of Dort which he himself mentioneth he may find this truth positively maintained that voluntas elicit actum suum Where he may likewise find what morall perswasives or motives are if he have a desire to learn Allthough he be convicted that it followeth from his principles That God is the cause of all sin in the world yet he is loath to say so much for that is an unseemly phrase to say that God is the cause of sin because it soundeth so like a saying that God sinneth yea it is even as like it as one egge is like another or rather it is not like it for it is the very same Nullum simile est idem He that is the determining cause of sin in others sinneth himself It is as well against the eternall law that is the rule of justice which is in God himself to make another to sin as to sin Yet though he will not avow such an unseemly phrase That God is the cause of sin Yet he doth indeavour to prove it by four texts of holy Scripture which are alltogether impertiuent to his purpose The first is that of the Prophet Amos Shall there be evill in a City and the Lord hath not done it But that is clearly understood of the evill of punishment not of the evill of sin To the three other places That the Lord said unto Shimei curse David and that the Lord put a lying spirit into the mouth of Ahabs Prophets And that of Rehoboams not hearkning to the people the Reader may find a satisfactory answer formerly But because he seemeth to ground much upon those words which are added to the last place for the cause was from the Lord conceiving some singular virtue to lie in them and an ovation at least to be due unto himself I will not say least the Bishop exclaim against me applauding himself like the flie upon the Cart-wheel See what a dust I do raise I will take the liberty to tell him further That there is nothing of any cause of sin in the text but of a cause of Jeroboams advancement as he might have perceived plainly by the words immediately following The cause was from the Lord that he might perform his saying which the Lord spake by Ahijah the Shilonite unto Ieroboam the son of Nebat Which saying was this I will rent the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and will give ten tribes to thee So he hath produced an evil effect of punishment for an evil effect of sin and a cause of advancement for a cause of sin and a permitting or ordering or disposing of sin for a necessitating or determining to sin Yet he produceth six witnesses to prove that liberty is not opposed to necessity but to compulsion Luther Zanchy Bucer Calvin Moulin and the Synod of Dort First Reader I desire thee to judge of the partiality of this man who rejecteth all humane authority in this cause as he hath reason for it were an easie thing to overwhelme and smother him and his cause with testimonies of Councels Fathers Doctours of all Ages and Communions and all sorts of Classick Authours and yet to seek for protection under the authority of a few Neoterick Writers A double weight and a double measure are an abomination Aut haec illis sunt habenda aut illa cum his amittenda sunt Harum duarum conditionum nunc utram malis vide If he will reap the benefit of humane authority he must undergoe the inconvenience also Why may he use the testimony of Calvine against me in this cause and I may not make use of the testimonies of all the Ancients Greek and Latine against him whom Calvine himself confesseth to have been for liberty against necessiry Semper apud Latinos liberi arbitrii nomen extitit Graecos vero non puduit multo arrogantius usurpare vocabulum siquidem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dixerunt acsi potest as suiipsius penes hominem fuisset But I am able to give him that advantage in this cause Secondly a man may see by his citing of these testimonies that he hath taken them up upon trust without ever perusing them in the Authours themselves I demand therefore whether he will be tried by his own witnesses in this case in difference between him and me that is concerning universal necessity in natural civil and external actions by reason of a necessary connextion of second causes and a natural determination of
in his thighes Yet he tells us boldly That no man can understand that the understanding maketh any alteration of weight or lightnesse in the object or that reason layes objects upon the understanding What poor trifling is this in a thing so plain and obvious to every mans capacity There can be no desire of that which is not known in some sort Nothing can be willed but that which is apprehended to be good either by reason or sense and that according to the degree of apprehension Place a man in a darke roome and all the rarest objects in the World besides him he seeth them not he distinguisheth them not he willeth them not But bring in a light and he seeth them and distinguisheth them and willeth them according to their distinct worths That which light is to visible objects making those things to be actually seen which were onely potentially visible that is the understanding to all intelligible objects without which they are neither known nor willed Wherefore men define the understanding to be A faculty of the reasonable soul understanding knowing and judging all intelligible things The understanding then doth not alter the weight of objects no more than the light doth change the colours which without the help of the light did lie hid in the darke But the light makes the colours to be actually seene So doth the understanding make the latent value of intelligible objects to be apprehended and consequently maketh them to be desired and willed according to their distinct degrees of goodnesse This judgement which no man ever denyed to intelligible creatures is the weighing of objects or attributing their just weight to them and the trying of them as it were by the Balance and by the Touchstone This is not the laying of objects upon the understanding The understanding is not the patient but the judge but this is the representing of the goodnesse or badnesse of objects to the will or to the free Agent willing which relatively to the will giveth them all their weight and efficacy There may be difference between these two Propositions Repentance is not voluntary and by consequence proceedeth from causes And Repentance proceedeth from causes and by consequence is not voluntary if his consequence were well intelligible as it is not All acts both voluntary and involuntary doe proceed from causes He chargeth me to have chopt in these words And therefore The truth is his words were and by consequence which I expressed thus and therefore Therefore and by consequence are the very same thing neither more nor lesse Is not this a doughty exception But the other is his greater errour That Repentance is not voluntary No Schooleman ever said that the faculty of the will was voluntary but that the Agent was a voluntary Agent and the act a voluntary act Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 24. HE accuseth me of charging him witly Blasphemy and Atheisme If he be wronged in that kind it is he who wrongeth himself by his suspicion Sprâ—…ta exolescunt si irascare agnita videntur I accused him not either of Blasphemy or Atheisme in the Concrete One may say a mans opinions are Blasphemous and Atheisticall in the Abstract without charging the person with formall Atheisme or blasphemy The reason is evident because it may be that through prejudice he doth not see the consequences which other men whose eyes are not blinded with that mist do see and if he did see them would abhor them as well as they For this reason he who chargeth one with speaking or writing implicite contradictions or things inconsistent one with another doth not presently accuse him of lying although one part of a contradiction must needs be false because it may be the force of the consequence is not evident to him A man may know a truth certainly and yet not know the formal reason or the manner of it so certainly I know that I see and I judge probably how I see yet the manner how I see whether by sending out beams or by receiving in the species is not so evident as â—…he thing it self that I do see They who do not agree about the manner of vision do all agree about the truth of vision Every man knoweth certainly that he can cast a stone up into the air but the manner how the stone is moved after it is seperated from the hand whether it be by some force or form or quality impressed into the stone by the caster or by the air if it be by the air whether it be by the pulsion of the air following or by the cession of the former air is obscure enough and not one of a thousand who knoweth the certainty of the thing knoweth the manner how it cometh to passe If this be true in natural actions how much more in the actions of God who is an infinite being and not comprehensible by the finite wit of man The water can rise no higher than the fountains head A looking-glasse can represent the body because there is some proportion between bodies but it cannot represent the soul because there is no proportion between that which is material and that which is immaterial This is the reason why we can in some sort apprehend what shall be after the end of the World because the soul is eternal that way but if we do but think of what was before the beginning of the World we are as it were presently swallowed up into an Abysse because the soul is not eternal that way So I know that there is true liberty from necessity both by Divine Revelation and by reason and by experience I know likewise that God knoweth all events from eternity the difficulty is not about the thing but about the manner how God doth certainly know things free or contingent which are to come in respect of us seeing they are neither determined in the event it self nor in the causes thereof The not knowing of the manner which may be incomprehensible to us doth not at all diminish the certain truth of the thing Yet even for the manner sundry wayes are proposed to satisfie the curiosities rather than the consciences of men Of which this is one way which I mentioned It were a great madnesse to reject a certain truth because there may be some remote difficulty about the manner and yet a greater madnesse for avoiding a needlesse scruple to destroy all the attributes of God which is by consequence to deny God himself His proof of necessity drawn from Gods eternall knowledge of all events hath been sufficiently discussed and satisfied over and over I pleaded that my doctrine of liberty is an ancient truth generally received His opinion of universall necessity an upstart Paradox and all who own it may be written in a ring So I am an old possessor he is but a new pretender He answereth That he is in possession of a truth derived to him from the light of reason And it is
given him a reasonable soul may as well seek for a necessary cause of the Egyptian Pyramides among the Crocodiles of Nilus This distinction of a mans time is an act of dominion done on purpose to maintain his domion over his actions against the encroachments of sensual delights He saith here upon the by That he knoweth no action that proceedeth from the liberty of mans will And again A mans will is something but the liberty of his will is nothing Yet he hath often told us That a man is free to do if he will and not to do if he will If no action proceed from the liberty of the will then how is a man free to do if he will Before he told us He is free to do a thing that may do it if he have the will to do it and may forbear it if be have the will to forbear it If the liberty of the will be nothing then this supposition If he have the will is nothing but an impossibility And here to all that I have said formerly against that frivolous distinction I shall adde an undoubted rule both in law and Logick A conditional proposition having an impossible condition annexed to it is equipollent to a simple negative He who is free to write if he will if it be impossible for him to will is not free to write at all no more than he is free to will But this Castle in the aire hath been beaten down often enough about his ears Where I say that contingent actions do proceed from the indetermination or contingent concurrence of natural causes my intention was not to exclude contingent determination but necessary determination according to an antecdent necessity which he hath been so far from proving unanswerably that he hath as good as yeilded the cause in his case of Ames ace by making the necessity to be onely upon supposition Concerning mixt actions partly free and partly necessary he saith That for proof of them I instance in a tile falling from an house which breaketh a mans head How often must I tell him that I am not now proving but answering that which he produceth He may find proofes enough to content him or rather to discontent him in twelve Sections together from the fifth to the eighteenth And upon the by thoroughout the whole book He who proveth that election is alwayes inter plura and cannot consist with antecedent determination to one proveth that that man who did elect or chuse to walk in that street at that very time when the stone fell though he knew not of it was not antecedently necessitated to walke there And if any one of all those causes which concur to the production of an effect be not antecedently necessary then the effect is not antecedently necessary for no effect can exceed the virtue of its cause He saith I should have proved that such contingent actions are not antecedently necessary by a concurrence of natural causes though a little before I granted they are First he doth me wrong I never granted it either before or after It is a foule fault in him to mistake himself or his adversary so often Secondly it is altogether improper and impertinent to our present controversie Let him remember what he himself said If they the instances of casting ambs ace and raining to morrow be impertinent to his opinion of the liberty of mans will he doth impertinently to meddle with them Not so neither by his leave Though I refuse to prove them formally or write Volumes about them yet I do not refuse to answer any thing which he doth or can produce Such is his argument which followeth immediately Whatsoever is produced by concurrence of natural causes was antecedently determined in the cause of such concurrence though contingent concurrence He addeth That though I perceive it not concurrence and contingent concurrence are all one It may be in his Dialect which differs from the received Dialect of all Schollars but not in the Dialect of wiser and learneder men To his argument pardoning his confounding of natural and voluntary causes I answer That if he speak of the immediate adaequate cause as it is a cause in act without doubt he saith truth Causa proxima in actu posita impossible est non sâ—…qui effectum But he told us of a necessary connexion of all causes from eternity and if he make not this good he saith nothing If he intend it in this sense I deny his assertion That whatsoever is produced by concurrence of natural causes was antecedently determined from eternity As for instance that the generation of a monster which nature or the Agent never intended was necessary from eternity or necessary before the contingence was determined Concerning the individual actions of brute beasts that they should be necessitated to every act they do from eternity As the bee for example how often she shall hum in a day and how often she shall flie abroad to gather thyme and whither and how many flowers precisely she must suck and no more and such like acts I had reason to say I see no ground for it Yet the least of all these acts is known to God and subject to his disposition He telleth us That he hath pointed out the ground in the former discourse If he have it is as the blind Senator of whom I told him formerly pointed the wrong way All his intimations have received their answers But whereas I made an objection to my self Are not two sparrows sould for a farthing and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your father He doth not deale clearly to urge mine own objection and conceale my answer He doth not say which your father casteth not down or which your father doth not necessitate to fall but without your father That is without your fathers knowledge without his protection without the influence of his power or which is exemted from your fathers disposition The last sort of actions are the natural actions of inanimate creatures which have not the least pretence to liberty or so much as spontaneity and therefore were declined by me as impertinent to this question Out of my words concerning these he argueth thus If there be a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning then there is no doubt but that all things happen necessarily But there is a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning First I deny his consequence and by it he who is so busie to take other mens heights in Logick wherein he never medled yet but he was baffelled may have his own height taken by them that are so disposed There is scarce a freshman in the University but could have taught him the difference between causa efficiens physica and voluntaria the one acting by necessity of nature the other freely according to deliberation The former cannot defer nor moderate its act nor act opposite actions indifferently but the later
can So though a necessary connexion of all natural causes were supposed yet it inferreth not a necessary connexion of all voluntary causes Secondly I deny his assumption that there is a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning for proof whereof he produceth nothing nor is able to produce any thing All he saith he alledgeth out of me That it deserveth further examination And from thence according to his wild roving imaginations he draweth consequences from the staff to the corner that have not the least grain of salt or weight in them As these Hitherto he knows not whether it be true or no. And consequently all his arguments hitherto have been of no effect nor hath he shewed any thing to prove that elective actions are not necessitated Thus his pen runneth over without time or reason He that would learn to build Castles in the air had best be his Apprentise The truth is I was not willing to go out of mine own profession and therefore desired to hold my self to the question of liberty without medling with contingency But yet with the same reservation that the Romans had in their Military Discipline nec sequi nec fugere not to seek other questions nor yet to thuâ—… them if they were put upon me And now we are come to his two famous instances of casting ambs ace and raining or not raining to morrow I said that I had already answered what he produceth to prove all sufficient causes to be necessary causes Now saith he It seemeth that distrusting his former answer he answereth again O memory he did not urge them in that place neither did I answer them at all in that place But though he had urged them and I answered them there yet he repeating them or enforcing them here would he not have me to answer him It is true that in another Section upon the by he hath been gravelled about his ambs ace and therefore he treadeth tenderly still upon that foot He saith I bring no other argument to prove the cast thrown not to be necessarily thrown but this that the caster did not deliberate By his leave it is not truly said I shewed undeniably that the necessity upon which he buildeth is onely hypothetical I enumerated all the causes which were or could be recited to make the necessity As the dice the positure of the casters hand the measure of the force the positure of the table c. And shewed clearly that there was not the least grain of antecedent necessity in any of them which he is not able to answer and therefore he doth well to be silent But if I had urged nothing else This alone had been sufficient to prove the caster a free Agent from his own principles A free Agent saith he is he that hath not done deliberating He who never began to deliberate hath not done deliberating There can be no necessity imaginable why the caster should throw these dice rather than those other or cast into this table rather than that or use so much force and no more but the casters will or meer chance The caster never deliberated nor so much as thought of any one of these things And therefore it is undeniably apparent that there was no necessity of casting ambs ace but onely upon supposition which is far enough from antecedent necessity But he pleadeth further That from our ignorance of the particular causes that concurring make the necessity I infer that there was no such necessity at all which is that indeed which hath deceived me and all other men in this question Whose fault was it then first to make this an instance and then to plead ignorance Before he was bold to reckon up all the causes of the antecedent necessity of this cast and now when he is convinced that it is but a necessity upon suppositon he is fain to plead ignorance He who will not suffer the Loadstone to enjoy its attractive virtue without finding a reason for it in a fiddle-string as Scoggin sought for the Hare under the leades as well where she was not as where she was is glad to plead ignorance about the necessary causes of ambs ace Whereas my reasons did evince not onely that the causes are unknown but that there are no such causes antecedently necessitating that cast Thus If any causes did necessitate ambs ace antecedently it was either the caster but he thought not of it or the dice but they are square no more inclinable to one cast than another or the positure of the table but the caster might have thrown into the other table or the positure of the hand but that was by chance or the measure of the force but that might have been either more or lesse or all of these together But to an effect antecedently necessary all the causes must be antecedently determined where not so much as one of them is antecedently determined there is no pretence of antecedent necessity Or it is some other cause that he can name but he pleadeth ignorance Yet I confesse the deceit lieth here but it is on the other side in the ignorant mistaking of an hypothetical necessity for absolute antecedent necessity And here according to the advice of the Poet Nec deus inter sit nisi dignus vindice nodus Inciderit He calleth in the fore knowledge of God to his aid as he doth alwayes when he findeth himself at a losse but to no purpose He himself hath told us That it cannot be truly said that the foreknowledge of God should be a cause of any thing seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge dependeth on the existence of the thing known God seeth not future contingents in an antecedent certainty which they have in their causes but in the events themselves to which Gods infinite knowledge doth extend it self In order of time one thing is before another one thing is after another and accordingly God knoweth them in themselves to be one before another But his knowledge is no beginning no expiring act Nothing is past nothing is to come but all things present to his knowledge even those things which are future with the manner of their futurition His casting ambs ace hath been unfortunate to him he will speed no better with his shower of rain In the enterance to my answer and as it were the stating of the cause I shewed that rain was more contingent in our Climate than in many other parts of the World where it is almost as necessary as the seasons of the year I do not find so much weight in his discourse as to occasionme to alter one word for which I could have produced authours enough if I had thought it needful but I alledged onely the Scriptures mentioning the former and the later rain And even this is objected to me as a defect or piece of ignorance I thought saith he he had known it by experience of some Travellers but I see he onely
himself and all mankind If he did ground his opinions upon any other authority than his own dreams If he did interpret Scripture according to the perpetual tradition of the Catholick Church and not according to his private distemperd phantasies If his discourse were as full of deep reasons as it is of supercilious confidence so that a man might gain either knowledge or reputation by him a great volume would be well bestowed upon him Digna res esset ubi quis nervos intenderet suos But to what purpose is it to draw the coard of contention with such a man in such a cause where it is impiety to doubt much more to dispute Quid cum illis agas qui neque jus neque bonum aut â—…quum sciunt Melius pejus profit obsit nihil vident nisi quod lubet For mine own part as long as God shall furnish me with ability and opportunity I will endeavour to bestow my vacant hours upon a better subject conducing more to the advancement of primitive Piety and the re-union of Christendome by disabusing the hood-winked World then this doth tend to the increase of Atheisme and destruction of ancient truth unlesse the importunity of T. H. or some other divert me to look to my own defence I desire thy Christian prayers that God who hath put this good desire into my mind by his preventing grace will help me by his assisting grace to bring the same to good effect The Preface HItherto I have made use onely of a buckler to guard my self from Mr. Hobbes his assaults What passed between him and me in private had been buried in perpetual silence if his flattering Disciples not without his own fault whether it were connivance or neglect is not material to me had not published it to the World to my prejudice And now having carved out mine own satisfaction I thought to have desisted here as not esteeming him to be a fit adversary who denieth all common principles but rather to be like a pillar of smoake breaking out of the top of some narrow chimny and spreading it self abroad like a cloud as if it threatned to take possession of the whole Region of the air darkening the skie and seeming to pierce the heavens And after all this when it hath offended the eyes a little for the present the first puffe of wind or a few minutes do altogether disperse it I never nourished within my breast the least thought of answering his Leviathan as having seen a great part of it answered before ever I read it and having moreover received it from good hands that a Roman Catholick was about it but being braved by the authour in print as giving me a title for my answer Behemoth against Leviathan And at other times being so solicitous for me what I would say to such a passage in my answer to his Leviathan imagining his silly cavils to be irrefragable demonstrations I will take the liberty by his good leave to throw on two or three spadefulls of earth towards the final interrement of his pernicious principles and other mushrome errours And truly when I ponder seriously the horrid consequences of them I do not wonder so much at his mistaken exception to my civil form of valediction So God blesse us miscalling it A buffonly abusing of the Name of God to calumny He conceived me amisse that because in times less scrupulous and more conscientious men used to blesse themselves after this form at the naming of the devil therefore I did intend it as a prayer for the deliverance of all good Christians from him and his blasphemous opinions I do believe there never was any Authour Sacred or Profane Ancient or Moderne Christian Iew Mahumetan or Pagan that hath inveighed so frequently and so bitterly against all feined phantasmes with their first devisers maintainers and receivers as T. H. hath done excluding out of the nature of things the souls of Men Angels Devils and all incorporeal Substances as fictions phantasmes and groundlesse contradictions Many men fear the meaning of it is not good that God himself must be gone for company as being an incorporeal substance except men will vouchsafe by God to understand nature So much T H. himself seemeth to intimate This concourse of causes whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes may well be called in respect they were all set and ordered by the eternal cause of all things God Almighty the Decree of God If Gods eternal Decree be nothing else but the concourse of natural causes then Almighty God is nothing else but nature And if there be no spirits or incorporeal substances he must be either nature or nothing T. H. defieth the Schooles and therefore he knoweth no difference between immanent and emanant or transient Actions but confoundeth the eternal Decrees of God before all time with the execution of them in time which had been a foule fault in a Schooleman And yet his Leviathan or mortal God is a meer phantasme of his own devising neither flesh nor fish but a confusion of a man and a whale engendered in his own brain not unlike Dagon the Idol of the Philistims a mixture of a god and a man and a fish The true literall Leviathan is the Whale-fish Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook whom God hath made to take his pastime in the great and wide sea And for a metaphorical Leviathan I know none so proper to personate that huge body as T. H. himself The Levia than doth not take his pastime in the deep with so much freedom nor behave himself with so much height and insolence as T. H. doth in the Schooles nor domineer over the lesser fishes with so much scorn and contempt as he doth over all other authours censuring branding contemning proscribing whatsoever is contrary to his humour bustling and bearing down before him whatsoever cometh in his way creating truth and falshood by the breath of his mouth by his sole authority without other reason A second Pythagoras at least There have been self conceited persons in all Ages but none that could ever King it like him over all the children of pride Ruit agit rapit tundit prosternit Yet is not his Leviathan such an absolute Soveraign of the Sea as he imagineth God hath chosen the weak things of this world to confound the mighty The little mouse stealeth up thorough the Elephants trunke to eat his brains making him die desperately mad The Indian rat creepeth into the belly of the gaping Crocodile and knaweth his bowels asunder The great Leviathan hath his adversaries the sword-fish which pierceth his belly beneath and the thrasher-fish which beateth his head above and whensoever these two unite their forces together against him they destroy him But this is the least part of his Leviathans sufferings Our Greenland fishers have found out a new art to draw