of an Incorporeal God to any end of it distinctly known Wherefore the Stoicks long before you supposing God to be a kind of Fire and the Soul to be a subtil Body held also the opinion of Irresistible Fate And Plutarch and Stobaeus take notice of both Opinions together as I find them cited by Lipsius in his Manuduction to that Philosophy Upon which occasion a worthy and learned person hath in his Discourse at the Funeral of Bishop Hall deservedly call'd you the New Stoick If then there be nothing more divine in Man than Matter and Motion he does as necessarily chuse or refuse as Fire ascends or a Stone is pressed towards the Earth Mr. Hobbes It is no more necessary that Fire should burn than that a man or other creature whose Limbs be moved by Fancy should have Election that is Liberty to do what he hath a fancy to do though it be not in his Will or Power to choose his fancy or to choose his Election and Will Good and evil sequels of Mens Actions retained in Memory do frame and make us to the Election of whatsoever it be that we elect and the memory of such things proceeds from the Senses and Sense from the operation of the Objects of sense which are external to us and govern'd only by God Almighty and by consequence all actions even of free and voluntary Agents are necessary Stud. Were Man such a piece of Mechanism as has been forged by your untoward invention much of the Cause would be granted to you and yet not this that the Memory of good or evil Sequels of Mens Actions do frame us unto Every election because there are too many whom no examples of Punishment will deterr from such evil manners as they see daily producing bitter effects But seeing it has been prov'd that there is in Man an Immaterial Soul it follows thence that the Motions from the Object continued to the Brain and Heart can only solicite and not force the Assent of that Incorporeal Being which giveth them passage or resisteth them and determineth them at its pleasure in divers cases Neither can outward force any more restrain this Spiritual mind than Xerxes could properly fetter the Hellespont There is then left me but little work in oppugning your Opinion about Liberty and Necessity seeing the foundation of your belief of Fate is the Corporeity of the Universe It is also to be considered that a Person of great fame and place hath already contended with you so very much to your disadvantage that it seems not worth the while for any Man henceforth to enter the lists And of this I will not make my self the Judg but repeat the opinion of a Learned Man who was wont to declare his mind in Controversies with unbyassed freedom It is known every where said that Elegant Writer with what Piety and acumen the last Lord Primate of all Ireland wrote against the Manichean Doctrine of fatal Necessity which a late witty Man had pretended to adorn with a new vizor but this excellent person wash'd off the Cerusse and the Meritricious Paintings rarely well asserted the Oeconomy of the Divine Providence and having once more triumph'd over his Adversary Plenus Victoriarum Trophaearum be took himself to the more agreeable attendance upon Sacred Offices Mr. Hobbes This luxuriant Pen-man boasts of Trophies and the Bishop himself of old talk'd of clearing the coast by Distinctions and dividing his forces into two squadrons one of places of Scripture the other of Reasons And I say notwithstanding to continue in the military allusion begun by them that in my Books not only his squadrons of Arguments but also his reserve of Distinctions are defeated Stud. I perceive you intend to make good the Character now given of you of being a witty Man although according to the Principles of your own Philosophy it redoundeth not much to your reputation For Wit depending upon a tenuity and agility of spirits there seemeth wanting in a very witty Man that fixation of parts which is required to Prudence Touching your Antagonist there is no doubt and it appeareth by your fretting and sprawling that you have felt the smart of that Opposition which he hath made against you But so far as I can remember for I have not had for some years any writing of his in my possession he hath not level'd his men in force against that place wherein you seem to me most capable of being wounded and wherein your chief strength seemeth to lay that is to say the Materiality of the whole Sphaere of Nature In relation to which I am apt to be perswaded that in this Controversie about Fate you by a daring consequence do charge the most holy God with all the iniquities committed in the World For all Effects arising from Motion and all Motion being derived from the first immoveable Mover all subordinate Causes and Effects will owe themselves in a chain-like dependance to the supreme Original Cause Mr. Hobbes The concourse of all causes maketh not one simple chain or concatenation but an innumerable number of Chains joyned together not in all parts but in the first link God Almighty That which I say necessitateth and determineth every action is the sum of all things which being now existent conduce and concur to the production of that Action hereafter whereof if any one thing now were wanting the effect could not be produced This concourse of Causes whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former Causes may well be called in respect they were all set and ordered by the eternal Cause of all things God Almighty The Decree of God Every act of mans will and every desire and inclination proceedeth from some cause and that from another cause in a continual Chain whose first link is in the hand of God the Cause of all Causes and therefore the voluntary Actions of Men proceed from Necessity Stud. Impute not that with falshood and dishonour to God which is caused by Man's unconstrained Will the only Mother which conceiveth and bringeth forth Sin not withstanding that Objects may incline and Examples may entice and opportunities may invite and evil Angels may tempt and Constitution may encline and God permitteth Let no Man therefore say when he is tempted he is tempted of God for every Man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed Mr. Hobbes 'T is Blasphemy to say God can sin but to say that God can so order the World as a sin may be necessarily caused thereby in a Man I do not see how it is any dishonnour to Him Stud. These Answers should not have proceeded from a Man who professeth himself a Christian of no mean degree They come I was ready to say as unexpectedly as if they had dropped out of the Heavens but that they have relation to a lower place If we brand
Science For it is with the mysteries of our Religion as with wholesome Pills for the sick which swallowed whole have the virtue to cure but chewed are for the most part cast up again without effect Stud. The danger in my opinion ariseth not from the mastication of the Physic but from the indisposed Stomach and Palate of the Patient to whose health Religion conduceth more when it is relished by an uninfected Judgment in the particular accounts of it than when it is taken in the lump by an implicit faith which is a way agreeable not to grown men but to children in understanding whom we cannot satisfie and must not distast But because you seem not willing to intrude further into this mystery of the God-head considered in its self and persons which yet as you would make it is no more a mystery than if his Majesty should be called one Sovereign with three persons being represented by three successive Lord Lieutenants of Ireland let us descend to the consideration of the Godhead in its outward works in which perhaps we may have surer footing seeing Phylosophers unassisted by Revelation have discoursed much upon Our third Head the Creation of the World Mr. Hobbes The questions about the magnitude of the World whether it be finite or infinite or concerning its duration whether it had a beginning or be eternal are not to be determined by Phylosophers Whatsoever we know that are men we learn it from our phantasms and of infinite whether magnitude or time there is no phantasm at all so that it is impossible either for a man or any other creature to have any conception of infinite Stud. You prove not here that a man can have no conception but only that he can have no image of an infinite Cause whereas it ha's been already shewn may hereafter be evâ—â—ced from the immateriality of Mans Soul that all conceptionâ— and Ideas are not phantasms or arise not from them But whilst you plead the difficulty of conceiving an eternal being in reference to the Creation you elsewhere admit of an Idea difficult enough for you can feign in your mind that a point may swell to a great figure such as that of Man and this you say is the only Ideâ— which we have at the naming of Creator and that such a figure may again contract it self into the narrowness of a point hereby you admit of a natural phantasm of Creation out of nothing as also of re-annihilation for all the supposed points besides that first which is just commensurate to so much space can neither arise out of that one nor shrink into it and whereaâ— you add that you cannot comprehend in your mind how this may poâ—â—ibly be done in nature of which before you pranted a phantasm which ariseth from real impulse if all be Body it is as much as if you had said you can and you cannot comprehend it And I cannot but here admire it in a man who pretends to a consistency with himself that you should allow the above said phantasm and yet reprehend it as principle void of sense and which a man at the first hearing whether Geometrician or not Geometriciam must abhorr the which notwithstanding the learned Lord Bacon did embrace that the same Body without adding to it or taking from it is sometimes greater and sometimes lesse But to return to the conception of an eternal Cause though it be not possible to have an Image of God yet it is easie by the help of Reason from the Images of things we see to climb by degrees above the visible World to the eternal Creator of it Curiosity or love of the knowledge of Causes doe's draw a man as you will grant from consideration of the effect to seek the Cause and again the cause of that Cause till of necessity he must come to this thought at last that there is some cause whereof there is no former cause but is Eternal and is called God Mr. Hobbes Though a man may from some effect proceed to the immediate cause thereof and from that to a more remote Cause and so ascend continually by right ratiocination from cause to Cause yet he will not be able to proceed eternally but wearied will at last give over without knowing whether it were possible for him to proceed to an end or not Stud. We are not as you imagine wearied in this assent of our Reason upon the several roundles of second causes to that which is eternal for we passe not through every single cause and effect but like those who search their pedigree no further than their great great Grand-Father yet say they at first sprung from Adam we view some more immediate causes and effects and consider that there is the like reason of dependency in the rest and thence as it were leap forward unto the top of this Iacob's Ladder and arrive aâ— the acknowledgment of an eternal immovable Mover Mr. Hobbes Though from this that nothing can move it self it may rightly be inferred that there was some first eternal Movent yet 〈◊〉 can never be inferred though some use to make such inference that that Movent was eternally immoveable but rather eternally moved for as it is true that nothing is moved by it self so is aâ— true also that nothing is moved but by that which is already moved Stud. Here you proceed not with such consistence and scrupulous ratiocination as becometh a Phylosopher for if nothing be moved by it self then to say an eternal Mover is moved is to say that that Eternal is not Eternal for there is something presupposed to give it motion and another thing foregoing and causing that motion and so on in infinitum Yet you acknowledge in your Book a first Power of all Powers but at the present your reasoning is connected with your beloved notion oâ— a corporeal Universe For Matter can never move but by that which is moved and so forward not to an eternal Cause but in an endless Circle which yet in some part must have had a beginning for here the question will return how came the sluggish Matter which cannot help it self to have motion at first imparted to it if there were not an eternal incorporeal self-moving mind wherefore you are again involved in the condemnation of the Epicureans of whom Cicero in his first De Finibus ha's left this pertinent observation There being two things to be inquired after in the nature of things the one what the Matter is out of which every thing is made the other what is the force or motion which doth every thing the Epicureans have reasoned concerning Matter but the efficient Power is a part of Phylosophy which they have left untilled So little of Reason in this Article of the Creation is on the side of some men who would monopolize that honorable name Mr. Hobbes Natural Reason is not so much concerned in this question because so
creature And likewise of Man God made him of the dust of the Earth and breathed in his face the breath of life Et factus est homo in animam viventem that is And man was made a living creature And after Noah came out of the Ark God saith He will no more smite Omnem animam viventem that is Every living creature And Deut. 12.23 Eat not the blood for the blood is the soul that is the Life From which places if by Soul were meant a substance incorporeal with an existence separated from the body it might aswell be inferred of any other living Creatures as of Man Stud. To argue from one sense of an equivocal word to the universal acceptance of it becomes not a man of ordinary parts Nephesh Soul as well as Ruach Spirit is a word of various signification in the Old Testament and in many places it denotes will lust or pleasure We read in the Psalmes this phrase To bind his Princes Benaphscho according to his soul or at his pleasure And again Deliver me not Benephesch unto the soul or will of mine Enemies When the word is improperly attributed to God in Scripture this usually is the sense of it You would now esteem me absurd enough if I went about to infer from hence either that the essence of the Soul consisteth in Will and Pleasure or that the Deity had a Soul that is Life that is Motion The Soul being the spring of bodily life in man it might by an easie Metonymie be used as in the recited places in expressing Life In that place where the Blood is call'd the Soul or Life it was not the design of Moses to set forth Philosophically the inward essence of a Beast but to let the people understand that the blood of a Beast which was sprinkled upon the Altar being an embleme of the life of Man forfeited through disobedience and an instrument in expiation they should abstain out of reverence to that Mystery from a rude quaffing and devouring of it But what answer have you in readiness to those places where the Scripture speaks distinctly of Body and Soul Mr. Hobbes Body and Soul is no more than Body and Life or Body alive In those places of the New Testament where it is said that any man shall be cast body and soul into hell-fire it is no more than body and life that is to say they shall be cast alive into the perpetual fire of Gehenna Stud. Your Gloss is extreamly wide of the unwrested meaning of the holy Text. For our Saviour counselleth his Apostles not to fear them that can kill the body but are not able to kill the soul making a manifest distinction thereby betwixt the Soul and the Life of the Body for if the Soul were nothing but the Life of the body it were in the power of every man to kill our Souls unto whose sword and malice our lives lay do open And thus you see instead of removing truth which in me you call a prejudice you have laid a stumbling block in the way an occasion of falling into error But let us leave the explication of Scripture in which you are for the greater part unhappy and attempt the explication of the exalted mechanism of Living Man wherein you have laboured so many years and concerning which you have raised the expectations of many Mr. Hobbes The cause of Sense is the external body or object which presseth the organ proper to each sense either immediately as in the Tast and Touch or mediately as in Seeing Hearing and Smelling which pressure by the mediation of nerves and other strings and membranes of the body continued inwards to the brain and heart causeth there a resistance or counter-pressure or endeavour of the heart to deliver it self which endeavour because outward seemeth to be some matter without and the seeming or fancy is that which men call Sense Stud. You do not here at all surprize me as if some new Philosophy for the main not heard of in former ages had to your immortal renown been first discover'd by you For it has been said of old that All variety in bodies ariseth from motion and that Sensation is a perception of that manner in which impressing bodies affect us For Aristotle hath recited an ancient saying of Philosophers who holding that Phantaâ—ms were not the things themselves but only in our Senses express'd their opinion by asserting that there was no blackness without Sight nor without Taste And Des-cartes in his Meteors published in French together with his Method Dioptriques and Geometry as soon as I was born explained the nature of Colours light and vision otherwise than by intentional Species and told us that by cold and heat are to understood perceptions occasioned by the less or more vehement touch of little bodies upon the capillaments of the nerves which serve in our organs to that purpose Yet I am not tir'd in hearing such Hypotheses repeated or varied please then to proceed and if it liketh you particularly in the explication of the nature of Vision wherein the Doctrine of Phantasms is most concern'd Mr. Hobbes In every great agitation or concussion of the brain as it happeneth from a stroke especially if the stroke be upon the Eye whereby the Optick-nerve suffereth any great violence there appeareth before the Eyes a certain light which light is nothing without but an apparition only all that is real being the concussion of motion of the parts of that nerve from which experience we may conclude that apparition of light is really nothing but motion within and image and colour is but an apparition to us of that motion agitation or alteration which the object worketh in the brain or spirits or some internal substance in the head Stud. This exposition of Light by the crouding of the parts though it be not wholly to be rejected yet may it I think be rendred suspicious for a time by that which deserves at least the name of a puzzling Objection Let us then suppose unto our selves such a circumference as is surrounded with Eyes for in every point of enlightned space and at all times there may be Vision I say then that the part in the Center being equally crouded on all sides no motion or pressure can be thence conveighed Diametrically from Eye to Eye which is against the Hypothesis mention'd This Scruple concerneth also the Philosophy of Des-cartes against whose Globuli in Vision there hath likewise of late been this Exception made They have been supposed in a right line to move after the manner of Jack-wheels the one from East to West moving the next from West to East from whence it has been concluded that the motion being thus disturbed the knowledg of the Object cannot distinctly be attained to by the endeavour of the last Globulus But to on it what he himself hath written concerning the Collateral Globuli I observe that the Globuli are so
meerly because he apprehends it to be more blessed to give than to receive and not to be rid of the pang of compassion or to obtain praise or other reward By such Motives the Mind is often prevail'd upon without the force of Corporeal Motion being wooed and not pressed unavoidably into Consent Of these Motives that of Fear may seem to have Meâ—hanick force because that Passion is often stirred up by the horror of Objects disturbing the natural course of the Blood But it will be granted by your self that the very passion of Fear doth not compell but incline the Will For you acknowledg that Fear and Liberty are consistent as when a Man throweth his Goods into the Sea for fear the Ship should sink he doth it nevertheless very willingly and may refuse to do it if he will It is therefore the action of one that was free Seeing then the Incorporeal Soul of Man is induced by perswasion and not compelled by Natural Motion you may as soon convince me that every sufficient Man as we are wont to call a wealthy person is therefore a dispenser of his Goods and a liberal Man as that the immaterial Soul is forthwith compell'd to act when all things are present which are needful to the producing of the effect and all impediments are removed Mr. Hobbes To say that an Agent in such Circumstances can nevertheless not produce the effect implies a contradiction and is non-sense being as much as to say the Cause may be sufficient that is to say necessary and yet the effect shall not follow That all Events have necessary Causes hath been proved already in that they have sufficient Causes Further let us in this place also suppose any Event never so casual as the throwing for example Ames-Ace upon a pair of Dice and see if it must not have been necessary before 't was thrown For seeing it was thrown it had a beginning and consequently a sufficient cause to produce it consisting partly in the Dice partly in outward things as the posture of the parts of the hand the measure of force applied by the Caster the posture of the parts of the Table and the like In sum there was nothing wanting which was necessarily requisite to the producing of that particular Cast consequently the Cast was necessarily thrown for if it had not been thrown there had wanted somewhat requisite to the throwing of it and so the cause had not been sufficient Stud. Here you make instance in an Event resulting from Circumstances of Bodies and from Physical motion in relation to which I have already granted that a sufficient is an efficient Cause and declar'd the reason of it and how it toucheth not the present business But by this last Answer I begin to understand that you obtrude a Sophism upon me instead of a real Argument For whilst you say that sufficient is the same which necessary and that if the Cast had not been thrown there was something wanting you include in your sufficient Cause when you speak of Man the very act of Volition besides all the furniture prepared for that act And then your meaning amounts to this that when there is each thing needful and no impediment and also a Will to act the effect followeth But here you beg the Question which is this Whether all things requisite to action being present the will and act of Volition excepted the Soul hath not a power to forbear that Act and whilst you suppose a removal of impediments and the presence of all things necessary and the act of the Will also and then say the Cause is sufficient and efficient too you say no more than that a Man produceth necessarily an effect whilst he produceth it which indeed is a truth for he cannot act and not act at the same time but in the present Controversie it is an egregious Impertinence For the Necessity which you speak of is not in the Will it self or in the Effect but in that consequence which the mind createth by supposing that the Will complieth with the means and that whilst it chuseth it cannot but chuse Wherefore this fallacy is like to theirs who say the Will is necessarily determin'd by the last act of the Understanding meaning because it is the last they suppose the last act and that the Will closeth with the Understanding and then they say it followeth upon necessity which is no more than to affirm that there is nothing later than the last And if I am not impos'd upon by my memory you somewhere argue that the Will is the last appetite in deliberating and that therefore though we say in common Discourse A man had once a will to do a thing that nevertheles he forbears to do yet that is not properly a will because the action depends not of it but of the laâ—t inclination or appetite You suppose the Will to be the last Inclination and that thereâ—ore the Action depends upon it because it is the last and then you call it sufficient and necessary when you have made it to be such not in its own nature but by the supposition framed in your own brain And thus you have made a great noise and kackling about Sufficient and Efficient whilst there is nothing here said by you which is not as insipid as the white of an Egg. But of that Necessity which is said to compell the Will of Man enough let â—s consider that Law which obligeth it though not by force to action yet upon default to punishment And that we may proceed in order let our beginning be made at Our Seventh Head The Law of Nature that inward Law in relation to which each Man is a Magistrate to himself erecting a Tribunal in his own Breast Mr. Hobbes There is right and also a Law of Nature The Right of Nature is the Liberty each Man hath to use his own power as he will himself for the preservation of his own nature that is to say of his own life and consequently of doing any thing which in his own judgment and reason he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto The Law of Nature is a precept or general Rule found out by Reason by which a Man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life or taketh away the means of preserving the same and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be lest preserved the sum of the Right of the right of Nature is by all means we can to defend our selves This is the first foundation of Natural Right Stud. The distinction betwixt the Right and the Law of Nature is with good reason to be admitted But you ought not to challenge it to your self seeing it is expressly noted by divers ancient Authors and in particular by Laurentius Valla That which you add seemeth as false as the other is ancient For the right dictate of Natural Reason obliging Man not yet suppos'd a