which is good But hatred there signifies Comparative hatred or a less degree of love or at the most a negation of love As Gen. 29.31 When the Lord saw that Leah was hated we may not conclude thence that Jacob hated his Wife The precedent verse doth fully expound the sense ver 30. Jacob loved Rachel more then Leah So Mat. 6.24 No man can serve two Masters for either he will hate the one and love the other So Luke 14.26 If any Man hate not his Father and Mother c. he cannot be my Disciple St. Mathew tells us the sense of it Math. 10.37 He that loveth Father or Mother more then me is not worthy of me Secondly those words ver 15. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy do prove no more but this that the preferring of Jacob before Esau and of the Christians before the Jews was not a debt from God either to the one or to the other but a work of mercy And what of this All men confess that Gods mercies do exceed mans deserts but Gods punishments do never exceed mans misdeeds As we see in the Parable of the Labourers Matth. 20. Friend I do thee no wrong did not I agree with thee for a penny Is it not lawfull for me to do with mine own as I will Is thy eye evill because I am good Acts of Mercy are free but acts of Justice are due That which follows ver 17. comes something nearer the cause The Scripture saith unto Pharoah for this same purpose I have raised thee up that is I have made thee a King or I have preserved thee that I might shew my power in thee But this particle that doth not alwaies signifie the main end of an action but sometimes onely a consequent of it As Matth. 2.15 He departed into Egypt that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet out of Egypt have I called my Son without doubt Josephs aim or end of his journey was not to fulfill prophesies but to save the life of the Child Yet because the fulfilling of the prophecy was a consequent of Josephs journy he saith That it might be fulfilled So here I have raised thee up that I might shew my power Again though it should be granted that this particle that did denote the intention of God to destroy Pharaoh in the Red Sea yet it was not the Antecedent intention of God which evermore respects the good and benefit of the creature but Gods consequent intention upon the praevision of Pharaohs obstinacy that since he would not glorifie God in obeying his word he should glorifie God undergoing his judgements Hitherto we find no aeternal punishments nor no temporal punishment without just deserts It follows ver 18. whom he will he hardneth Indeed hardness of heart is the greatest judgement that Gods lays upon a sinner in this use worse then all the Plagues of Egypt But how doth God harden the heart not by a naturall influence of any evill act or habit into the will nor by inducing the will with perswasive motives to obstinacy and rebellion for God tempteth no man but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and intised Jam. 1.13 Then God is said to harden the heart three wayes First negatively and not positively not by imparting wickedness but by not imparting grace as the Sun descending to the tropick of Capricorne it is said with us to be the cause of Winter that is not by imparting cold but by not imparting heat It is an act of mercy in God to give his grace freely but to detein it is no act of injustice So the Apostle opposeth hardning to shewing of mercy To harden is as much as not to shew mercy Secondly God is said to harden the heart occasionally and not causally by doing good which incorrigible sinners make an occasion of growing worse and worse and doing evill as a Master by often correcting of an untoward Scholar doth accidentally and occasionally harden his heart and render him more obdurate insomuch as he growes even to despise the Rod. Or as an indulgent parent by his patience and gentleness doth incourage an obstinate son to become more rebellious So whether we look upon Gods frequent judgments upon Pharaoh or Gods iterated favours in removing and withdrawing those judgments upon Pharaohs request both of them in their severall kinds were occasions of hardning Pharaohs heart the one making him more presumptuous the other more desperately rebellious So that which was good in it was Gods that which was evill was Pharaohs God gave the occasion but Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration This is cleerly confirmed Gen. 8.15 When Pharaoh saw that there was respite he hardned his heart And Gen. 9.34 When Pharaoh saw that the Rain and the Hail and the Thunders were ceased he sinned yet more and hardned his heart he and his servants So Psal 105.25 He turned their hearts so that they hated his people and dealt subtilly with them That is God blessed the Children of Israel whereupon the Egyptians did take occasion to hate them as is plain Exod. 1. ver 7 8 9 10. So God hardened Pharaohs heart and Pharaoh hardened his own heart God hardened it by not shewing mercy to Pharaoh as he did to Nebuchadnezzar who was as great a sinner as he or God hardned it occasionally but still Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration by determining his own will to evill and confirming himself in his obstinacy So are all presumptuous sinners Psal 95.8 Harden not your hearts as in the provocation as in the day of temptation in the wilderness Thirdly God is said to harden the heart permissively but not operatively nor effectively as he who only le ts loose a Greyhound out of the slip is said to hound him at the Hare Will you see plainly what St. Paul intends by hardning Read ver 22. What if God willing to shew his wrath and to make his power known that is by a consequent will which in order of nature followes the provision of sin indured with much long suffering the vessells of wrath fitted to destruction And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessells of mercy c. There is much difference between induring and impelling or inciting the vessells of wrath He saith of the vessells of mercy that God prepared them unto glory But of the vessells of wrath he saith only that they were fitted to destruction that is not by God but by themselves St. Paul saith that God doth endure the vessells of wrath with much long suffering T. H. saith that God wills and effects by the second causes all their actions good and bad that he necessitateth them and determineth them irresistibly to do those acts which he condemneth as evill and for which he punisheth them If doing willingly and enduring If much long suffering and necessitating imply not a contrariety one to another reddat
free to make it either of the Italian Spanish or French fashion indifferently But after it is made it is necessary that it be of that fashion whereof he hath made it that is by a necessity of supposition But this doth neither hinder the cause from being a free cause nor the effect from being a free effect but the one did produce freely and the other was freely produced So the contradiction is vanished In the second part of his answer he grants that there are some free Agents and some contingent Agents and that perhaps the beauty of the world doth require it but like a shrewd Cow which after she hath given her milk casts it down with her foot in the conclusion he tells us that nevertheless they are all necessary This part of his answer is a meer Logomachy as a great part of the controversies in the world are or a contention about words What is the meaning of necessary and free and contingent actions I have shewed before what free and necessary do properly signifie but he misrecites it He saith I make all Agents which want deliberation to be necessary but I acknowledge that many of them are contingent Neither do I approove his definition of contingents though he say I concur with him that they are such agents as work we know not how For according to this description many necessary actions should be contingent and many contingent actions should be necessary The Loadstone draweth Iron the Jet chaff we know not how and yet the effect is necessary and so it is in all Sympathies and Antipathies or occult qualities Again a man walking in the streets a Tile falls down from an house and breaks his head We know all the causes we know how this came to pass The man walked that way the pin failed the Tile fell just when he was under it And yet this is a contingent effect The man might not have walked that way and then the Tile had not fallen upon him Neither yet do I understand here in this place by contingents such events as happen besides the scope or intention of the Agents as when a man digging to make a grave finds a Treasure though the word be sometimes so taken But by contingents I understand all things which may be done and may not be done may happen or may not happen by reason of the in determination or accidentall concurrence of the causes And those same things which are absolutely Incontingent and yet Hypothetically necessary As supposing the Passenger did walk just that way just at that time and that the pin did fail just then and the Tile fall it was necessary that it should fall upon the Passengers head The same defence will keep out his shower of rain But we shall meet with his shower of rain again Numb 34. Whither I refer the further explication of this point Numb 17. J. D. argument 5 FIftly take away liberty and you take away the very nature of evill and the formall reason of sin If the hand of the Painter were the law of painting or the hand of the Writer the law of writing whatsoever the one did write or the other paint must infallibly be good Seeing therefore that the first cause is the rule and Law of goodness if it do necessitate the will or the person to evill either by it self immediatly or mediatly by necessary flux of second causes it will no longer be evill The essence of sin consists in this that one commit that which he might a void If there be no liberty to produce sin there is no such thing as sin in the world Therefore it appeares both from Scripture and reason that there is true Liberty T. H. TO the fift Argument from reason which is that if liberty be taken away the nature and formall reason of sin is taken away I answer by denying the consequence The nature of sin consisteth in this that the action done proceed from our will and be against the Law A Judge in judging whether it be sin or not which is done against the Law looks at no higher cause of the action then the will of the doer Now when I say the action was necessary I do not say it was done against the will of the doer but with his will and so necessarily because mans will that is every act of the will and purpose of man had a sufficient and therefore a necessary cause and consequently every voluntary action was necessitated An action therefore may be voluntary and a sin and nevertheless be necessary And because God may afflict by right derived from his Omnipotency though sin were not And the example of punishment on voluntary sinners is the cause that produceth Justice and maketh sin less frequent For God to punish such sinners as I have shewed before is no injustice And thus you have my answer to his objections both out of Scripture and reason J. D. SCis tu simulare cupressum quid hoc It was shrewd counsail which Alcibiades gave to Themistocles when he was busy about his accounts to the State that he should rather study how to make no accounts So it seemes T. H. thinks it a more compendious way to baulk an argument then to satisfie it And if he can produce a Rowland against an Oliver if he can urge a reason against a reason he thinks he hath quitted himself fairely But it will not serve his turn And that he may not complain of misunderstanding it as those who have a politick deafness to hear nothing but what liketh them I will first reduce mine argument into form and then weigh what he saith in answer or rather in opposition to it That opinion which takes away the formall reason of sin and by consequence sin it self is not to be approoved this is cleer because both Reason and Religion Nature and Scripture do proove and the whole world confesseth that there is sin But this opinion of the necessity of all things by reason of a conflux of second causes ordered and determined by the first cause doth take away the very formall reason of sin This is prooved thus That which makes sin it self to be good and just and lawfull takes away the formall cause and distroyes the essence of sin for if sin be good and just and lawfull it is no more evill it is no sin no anomy But this opinion of the necessity of all things makes sin to be very good and just and lawfull for nothing can flow essentially by way of Physicall determination from the first cause which is the Law and Rule of Goodness and Justice but that which is good and just and lawfull but this opinion makes sin to proceed essentially by way of Physicall determination from the first cause as appeares in T. H. his whole discourse Neither is it materiall at all whether it proceed immediatly from the first cause or mediately so as it be by a necessary flux of second and determinate causes which
from the speciall influence of any outward determining causes And so it is onely a necessity upon supposition Concerning Medaeas choise the strength of the argument doth not lye either in the fact of Medaea which is but a fiction or in the authority of the Poet who writes things rather to be admired than believed but in the experience of all men who find it to be true in themselves That sometimes reason doth shew unto a man the exorbitancy of his passion that what he desires is but a pleasant good that what he loseth by such a choise is an honest good That that which is honest is to be preferred before that which is pleasant yet the will pursues that which is pleasant and neglects that which is honest St. Paul saith as much in earnest as is feined of Medaea That he approoved not that which he did and that he did that which he hated Rom. 7.15 The Roman Story is mistaken There was no bribe in the case but affection Whereas I urge that those things which are neerer to the senses do moove more powerfully he layes hold on it and without answering to that for which I produced it infers That the sense of present good is more immediate to the action than the foresight of evill consequents Which is true but it is not absolutely true by any antecedent necessity Let a man do what he may do and what he ought to do and sensitive objects will lose that power which they have by his own fault and neglect Antecedent or indeliberate concupiscence doth sometimes but rarely surprise a man and render the action not free But consequent and deliberated concupiscence which proceeds from the rationall will doth render the action more free not less free and introduceth onely a necessity upon supposition Lastly he saith that a mans mourning more for the loss of his Child than for his sin makes nothing to the last dictate of the understanding Yes very much Reason dictates that a sin committed is a greater evill than the loss of a child and ought more to be lamented for yet we see daily how affection prevailes against the dictate of reason That which he inferrs from hence that sorrow for sin is not voluntary and by consequence that repentance proceedeth from causes is true as to the latter part of it but not in his sense The causes from whence repentance doth proceed are Gods grace preventing and mans will concurring God prevents freely man concurs freely Those inferiour Agents which sometimes do concur as subordinate to the grace of God do not cannot determine the will naturally And therefore the former part of his inference that sorrow for sin is not voluntary is untrue and altogether groundless That is much more truly and much more properly said to be voluntary which proceeds from judgment and from the rationall will than that which proceeds from passion and from the sensitive will One of the main grounds of all T. H. his errours in this question is that he acknowledgeth no efficacy but that which is naturall Hence is this wild consequence Repentance hath causes and therefore it is not voluntary Free effects have free causes necessary effects necessary causes voluntary effects have sometimes free sometimes necessary causes Numb 24. J. D. FIftly and lastly the Divine labours to find out a way how liberty may consist with the prescience and decrees of God But of this I had not very long since occasion to write a full discourse in answer to a Treatise against the prescience of things contingent I shall for the present only repeat these two things First we ought not to desert a certain truth because we are not able to comprehend the certain manner God should be but a poor God if we were able perfectly to comprehend all his Actions and Attributes Secondly in my poor judgment which I ever do ever shall submit to better the readiest way to reconcile Contingence and Liberty with the decrees and prescience of God and most remote from the altercations of these times is to subject future cōtingents to the aspects of God according to that presentiallity which they have in eternity Not that things future which are not yet existent coexistent with God but because the infinite knowledge of God incircling all times in the point of eternity doth attain to their future Being from whence proceeds their objective and intelligible Being The main impediment which keeps men from subscribing to this way is because they conceive eternity to be an everlasting succession and not one indivisible point But if they consider that whatsoever is in God is God That there are no accidents in him for that which is infinitely perfect cannot be further perfected That as God is not wise but Wisedom it self not just but Justice it self so he is not eternall but Eternity it self They must needs conclude that therefore this eternity is indivisible because God is indivisible and therefore not successive but altogether an infinite point comprehending all times within it self T. H. THE last part of this discourse conteineth his opinion about reconciling Liberty with the Prescience and Decrees of God otherwise than some Divines have done against whom he had formerly written a Treatise out of which he only repeateth two things One is that we ought not to desert a certain truth for not being able to comprehend the certain manner of it And I say the same as for example that he ought not to desert this certain truth That there are certain and necessary causes which make every man to will what he willeth though he do not yet conceive in what manner the will of man is caused And yet I think the manner of it is not very hard to conceive seeing that we see daily that praise dispraise reward punishment good and evill sequells of mens actions retained in memory do frame and make us to the election of whatsoever it be that we elect And that the memory of such things proceeds from the senses And sense from the operation of the objects of sense which are externall to us and governed onely by God Almighty And by consequence all actions even of free and voluntary Agents are necessary The other thing he repeateth is that the best way to reconcile Contingency and Liberty with the prescience and decrees of God is to subject future contingents to the aspect of God The same is also my opinion but contrary to what he hath all this while laboured to prove For hitherto he held liberty and necessity that is to say liberty and the decrees of God irreconcilable unless the aspect of God which word appeareth now the first time in this discourse signifie somewhat els besides Gods will and decree which I cannot understand But he adds that we must subject them according to that presentiality which they have in eternity which he sayes cannot be done by them that conceive eternity to be an everlasting succession but onely by them that conceive
themselves to load the Horses back with so much weight as the least of all his feathers doth amount unto But we shall meet with his Horse load of feathers again Num. 23. These things being thus briefly touched he proceeds to his answer My argument was this If any of these or all of these causes formerly recited do take away true liberty that is still intended from necessity then Adam before his fall had no true liberty But Adam before his fall had true liberty He mis-recites the argument and denies the consequence which is so clearly proved that no man living can doubt of it Because Adam was subjected to all the same causes as well as we the same decree the same praescience the same influences the same concourse of causes the same efficacy of objects the same dictates of reason But it is onely a mistake for it appears plainly by his following discourse that he intended to deny not the consequence but the Assumption For he makes Adam to have had no liberty from necessity before his fall yea he proceeds so far as to affirm that all humane wills his and ours and each propension of our wills even during our deliberation are as much necessitated as any thing else whatsoever that we have no more power to forbear those actions which we do then the fire hath power not to burn Though I honour T. H. for his person and for his learning yet I must confess ingenuously I hate this Doctrin from my heart And I beleeve both I have reason so to do and all others who shall seriously ponder the horrid consequences which flow from it It destroyes liberty and dishonours the nature of man It makes the second causes and outward objects to be the Rackets and Men to be but the Tennis-Balls of destiny It makes the first cause that is God Almighty to be the introducer of all evill and sin into the world as much as Man yea more then Man by as much as the motion of the Watch is more from the Artificer who did make it and wind it up then either from the spring or the wheels or the thred if God by his speciall influence into the second causes did necessitate them to operate as they did And if they being thus determined did necessitate Adam inevitably irresistibly not by an accidentall but by an essentiall subordination of causes to whatsoever he did Then one of these two absurdities must needs follow either that Adam did not sin and that there is no such thing as sin in the world because it proceeds naturally necessarily and essentially from God Or that God is more guilty of it and more the cause of evill than man because man is extrinsecally inevitably determined but so is not God And in causes essentially subordinate the cause of the cause is always the cause of the effect What Tyrant did ever impose Lawes that were impossible for those to keep upon whom they were imposed and punish them for breaking those Lawes which he himself had necessitated them to break which it was no more in their power not to break then it is in the power of the fire not to burn Excuse me if I hate this doctrine with a perfect hatred which is so dishonorable both to God and man which makes men to blaspheme of necessity to steal of necessity to be hanged of necessity and to be damned of necessity And therefore I must say and say again Quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulis odi It were better to be an Atheist to believe no God or to be a Manichee to believe two Gods a God of good and a God of evill or with the Heathens to believe thirty thousand Gods than thus to charge the true God to be the proper cause and the true Author of all the sins and evills which are in the world Numb 12. J. D. argument 5 FIftly if there be no liberty there shall be no day of Doom no last Judgment no rewards nor punishments after death A man can never make himself a criminall if he be not left at liberty to commit a crime No man can be justly punished for doing that which was not in his power to shun To take away liberty hazards heaven but undoubtedly it leaves no hell T. H. THE Arguments of greatest consequence are the third and fift and fall both into one Namely If there be a necessity of all events that it will follow that praise and reprehension reward and punishment are all vain and unjust And that if God should openly forbid and secretly necessitate the same action punishing men for what they could not avoid there would be no belief among them of heaven or hell To oppose hereunto I must borrow an answer from St. Paul Rom. 9. ver 11. from the 11. verse of the Chapter to the 18. is laid down the very same objection in these words When they meaning Esau and Jacob were yet unborn and had done neither good nor evill That the purpose of God according to election not by works but by him that calleth might remain firm it was said to her viz. to Rebekah that the elder shall serve the younger And what then shall we say is there iniustice with God God forbid It is not therefore in him that willeth nor in him that runneth but in God that sheweth mercy For the Scripture saith to Pharaoh I have stirred thee up that I I may shew my power in thee and that my Name may be set forth in all the earth Therefore whom God willeth he hath mercy or and whom he willeth he hardeneth Thus you see the case put by St. Paul is the same with that of J. D. and the same objection in these words following Thou wilt ask me then why will God yet complain for who hath resisted his will To this therefore the Apostle answers not by denying it was Gods will or that the decree of God concerning Esau was not before he had sinned or that Esau was not necessitated to do what he did but thus Who art thou O Man that interrogatest God shall the work say to the workman why hast thou made me thus Hath not the Potter power over the clay of the same stuff to make one vessell to honour another to dishonour According therefore to this answer of St. Paul I answer J D's objection and say The power of God alone without other help is sufficient Justification of any action he doth That which men make among themselves here by pacts and Covenants and call by the name of Justice and according whereunto men are counted and tearmed rightly just and unjust is not that by which God Almighties actions are to be measured or called just no more than his counsailes are to be measured by human wisedom That which he does is made just by his doing Just I say in him not always just in us by the Examples for a man that shall command a thing openly and plot secretly the hinderance of the
same if he punish him he so commanded for not doing it is unjust So also his counsailes they be therefore not in vain because they be his whether we see the use of them or not When God afflicted Job he did object no sin to him but justified that afflicting him by telling him of his power Hast thou sayes God an arm like mine Where wast thou when I layd the foundations of the earth and the like So our Saviour concerning the man that was born blind said it was not for his sin nor his parents sin but that the power of God might be shewn in him Beasts are subject to death and torment yet they cannot sin It was Gods will it should be so Power irresistible justifieth all actions really and properly in whomsoever it be found Less power does not And because such power is in God only he must needs be just in all his actions And we that not comprehending his Counsailes call him to the Bar commit injustice in it I am not ignorant of the usuall reply to this answer by distinguishing between will and permission As that God Almighty does indeed permit sin sometimes And that he also foreknoweth that the sin he permitteth shall be committed but does not will it nor necessitate it I know also they distinguish the action from the sin of the action saying God Almighty does indeed cause the action whatsoever action it be but not the sinfulness or irregularity of it that is the discordance between the Action and the Law Such distinctions as these dazell my understanding I find no difference between the will to have a thing done and the permission to do it when he that permitteth it can hinder it and knowes it will be done unless he hinder it Nor find I any difference between an action that is against the Law and the sin of that action As for example between the killing of Uriah and the sin of David in killing Uriah Nor when one is cause both of the action and of the Law how another can be cause of the disagreement between them no more than how one man making a longer and shorter garment another can make the inequallity that is between them This I know God cannot sin because his doing a thing makes it just and consequenly no sin And because whatsoever can sin is subject to anothers Law which God is not And therefore 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 dishonour to him Howsoever if such or other distinctions can make it clear that St. Paul did not think Esaus or Pharaohs actions proceed from the will and purpose of God or that proceeding from his will could not therefore without injustice be blamed or punished I will as soon as I understand them turn unto J. D's opinion For I now hold nothing in all this question between us but what seemeth to me not obscurely but most expresly said in this place by Saint Paul And thus much in answer to his places of Scripture J. D. T. H. thinks to kill two birds with one stone and satisfies two Arguments with one answer whereas in truth he satisfieth neither First for my third reason Though all he say here were as true as an Oracle Though punishment were an act of dominion not of Justice in God yet this is no sufficient cause why God should deny his own Act or why he should chide or expostulate with men why they did that which he himself did necessitate them to do and whereof he was the actor more than they they being but as the stone but he the hand that threw it Notwithstanding any thing which is pleaded here this Stoicall opinion doth stick hypocrisy and dissimulation close to God who is the Truth it self And to my fift Argument which he chargeth and relateth amiss as by comparing mine with his may appear His chiefest answer is to oppose a difficult place of St. Paul Rom. 9.11 Hath he never heard that to propose a doubt is not to answer an Argument Nec bene respondet qui litem lite resolvit But I will not pay him in his own coin Wherefore to this place alledged by him I answer The case is not the same The question moved there is how God did keep his promise made to Abraham to be the God of him and of his seed if the Jewes who were the legitimate progeny of Abraham were deserted To which the Apostle answers ver 6. 7 8. That that promise was not made to the carnall seed of Abraham that is the Jewes but to his spirituall Sons which were the Heirs of his Faith that is to the beleeving Christians which answer he explicateth first by the Allegory of Isaack and Ishmael and after in the place cited of Esau and of Jacob. Yet neither doth he speak there so much of their persons as of their posterities And though some words may be accommodated to Gods praedestination which are there uttered yet it is not the scope of that text to treat of the reprobation of any man to hell-fire All the posterity of Esau were not eternally reprobated as holy Job and many others But this question which is now agitated between us is quite of another nature how a man can be a criminal who doth nothing but that which he is extrinsecally necessitated to do or how God in Justice can punish a man with aeternall torments for doing that which it was never in his power to leave undone That he who did impresite the motion in the heart of man should punish man who did onely receive the impression from him So his answer looks another way But because he grounds so much upon this text that if it can be cleared he is ready to change his opinion I will examin all those passages which may seem to favour his cause First these words ver 11. being not yet borne neither having done any good or evill upon which the whole weight of his argument doth depend have no reference at all to those words ver 13. Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated for those words were first uttered by the Prophet Malachy many ages after Jacob and Esau were dead Mal. 1.2 and intended of the posterity of Esau who were not redeemed from captivity as the Israelites were But they are referred to those other words ver 12. The elder shall serve the younger which indeed were spoken before Jacob or Esau were Born Gen. 5.23 And though those words of Malachy had been used of Jacob and Esau before they were Born yet it had advantaged his cause nothing for hatred in that text doth not signify any reprobation to the flames of hell much less the execution of that decree or the actuall imposition of punishment nor any act contrary to love God saw all that he made and it was very good Goodness it self cannot hate that
mihi minam Diogenes Let him that taught me Logick give me my money again But T. H. saith that this distinction between the operative and permissive Will of God And that other between the action and the irregularity do dazell his understanding Though he can find no difference between these two yet others do St. Paul himself did Act. 13.18 About the time of 40. yeares suffered he their manners in the Wilderness And Act. 14.16 Who intimes past suffered all Nations to walk in their own wayes T. H. would make suffering to be inciting their manners to be Gods manners their wayes to be Gods wayes And Act. 17.30 The times of this ignorance God winked at It was never heard that one was said to wink or connive at that which was his own act And 1 Cor. 10.13 God is faithfull who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able To tempt is the Devills act therefore he is called the Tempter God tempts no man to sin but he suffers them to be tempted And so suffers that he could hinder Sathan if he would But by T. H. his doctrine To tempt to sin and to suffer one to be tempted to sin when it is in his power to hinder it is all one And so he transforms God I write it with horrour into the Devill and makes tempting to be Gods own work and the Devill to be but his instrument And in that noted place Rom. 2.4 Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thy self wrath against the day of wrath and revealation of the righteous judgment of God Here are as many convincing Arguments in this one text against the opinion of T. H. almost as there are words Here we learn that God is rich in goodness and will not punish his creatures for that which is his own act Secondly that he suffers and forbeares sinners long and doth not snatch them away by sudden death as they deserve Thirdly that the reason of Gods forbearance is to bring men to repentance Fourthly that hardness of heart and impenitency is not casually from God but from our selves Fiftly that it is not the insufficient proposall of the means of their conversion on Gods part which is the cause of mens perdition but their own contempt and despising of these means Sixtly that punishment is not an act of absolute dominion but an act of righteous Judgment whereby God renders to every man according to his own deeds wrath to them and only to them who treasure up wrath unto themselves and eternall life to those who continue patiently in well-doing If they deserve such punishment who onely neglect the goodness and long suffering of God what do they who utterly deny it and make Gods doing and his suffering to be all one I do beseech T. H. to consider what a degree of wilfulness it is out of one obscure text wholly misunderstood to contradict the clear current of the whole Scripture Of the same mind with St. Paul was St. Peter 1 Pet. 3.22 The long suffering of God waited once in the dayes of Noah And 2 Pet. 3.15 Account that the long suffering of the Lord is salvation This is the name God gives himself Exod. 34.6 The Lord the Lord God mercifull and gracious long suffering c. Yet I do acknowledge that which T. H. saith to be commonly true That he who doth permit any thing to be done which it is in his power to hinder knowing that if he do not hinder it it will be done doth in some sort will it I say in some sort that is either by an antecedent will or by a consequent will either by an operative will or by a permissive will or he is willing to let it be done but not willing to do it Sometimes an antecedent engagement doth cause a man to suffer that to be done which otherwise he would not suffer So Darius suffered Daniel to be cast into the Lions den to make good his rash decree So Herod suffered John Baptist to be beheaded to make good his rash oath How much more may the immutable rule of justice in God and his fidelity in keeping his word draw from him the punishment of obstinate sinners though antecedently he willeth their conversion He loveth all his Creatures well but his own Justice better Again sometimes a man suffereth that to be done which he doth not will directly in it self but indirectly for some other end or for the producing of some great good As a man willeth that a putrid member be cut off from his body to save the life of the whole Or as a Judge being desirous to save a malefactors life and having power to repreive him doth yet condemn him for example sake that by the death of one he may save the lives of many Marvell not then if God suffer some creatures to take such courses as tend to their own ruine so long as their sufferings do make for the greater manifestation of his glory and for the greater benefit of his faithfull servants This is a most certain truth that God would not suffer evill to be in the world unless he knew how to draw good out of evill Yet this ought not to be so understood as if we made any priority or posteriority of time in the acts of God but onely of nature Nor do we make the antecedent and consequent will to be contrary one to another because the one respects man pure and uncorrupted the other respects him as he is lapsed The objects are the same but considered after a diverse manner Nor yet do we make these wills to be distinct in God for they are the same with the divine essence which is one But the distinction is in order to the objects or things willed Nor lastly do we make this permission to be a naked or a meer permission God causeth all good permitteth all evill disposeth all things both good and evill T. H. demands how God should be the cause of the action and yet not be the cause of the irregularity of the action I answer because he concurres to the doing of evill by a generall but not by a speciall influence As the Earth gives nourishment to all kinds of plants as well to Hemlock as to Wheat but the reason why the one yields food to our sustenance the other poison to our destruction is not from the generall nourishment of the earth but from the speciall quality of the root Even so the generall power to act is from God In him we live and move and have our being This is good But the specification and determination of this generall power to the doing of any evill is from our selves and proceeds from the free will of man This is bad And to speak properly the free will of man is not the efficient cause of sin as the root
without himself he wills freely not necessarily Whatsoever cause acts or works necessarily doth act or work all that it can do or all that is in its power But it is evident that God doth not all things without himself which he can do or which he hath power to do He could have raised up children unto Abraham of the very stones which were upon the banks of Jordan Luk. 3.8 but he did not He could have sent twelve Legions of Angells to the succour of Christ but he did not Matth. 26.53 God can make T. H. live the years of Methuselah but it is not necessary that he shall do so nor probable that he will do so The productive power of God is infinite but the whole created world is finite And therefore God might still produce more if it pleased him But this it is when men go on in a confused way and will admit no distinctions If T. H. had considered the difference between a necessary being and a necessary cause or between those actions of God which are imminent within himself and the transient works of God which are extrinsecall without himself he would never have proposed such an evident error for a manifest truth Qui pauca considerat facile pronuntiat Numb 19. J. D. THirdly they distinguish between liberty from compulsion and liberty from necessitation The Will say they is free from compulsion but not free from necessitation And this they fortifie with two reasons First because it is granted by all Divines that hypotheticall necessity or necessity upon a supposition may consist with liberty Secondly because God and the good Angells do good necessarily and yet are more free than we To the first reason I confess that necessity upon a supposition may sometimes consist with true liberty as when it signifies onely an infallible certitude of the understanding in that which it knowes to be or that it shall be But if the supposition be not in the Agents power nor depend upon any thing that is in his power If there be an exteriour antecedent cause which doth necessitate the effect to call this free is to be mad with reason To the second reason I confess that God and the good Angells are more free than we are that is intensively in the degree of freedom but not extensively in the latitude of the object according to a liberty of exercise but not of specification A liberty of exercise that is to doe or not to do may consist well with a necessity of specification or a determination to the doing of good But a liberty of exercise and a necessity of exercise A liberty of specification and a necessity of specification are not compatible nor can consist together He that is antecedently necessitated to do evill is not free to do good So this instance is nothing at all to the purpose T. H. BUt the distinction of free into free from compulsion and free from necessitation I acknowledge for to be free from compulsion is to do a thing so as terrour be not the cause of his will to do it for a man is then onely said to be compelled when fear makes him willing to it as when a man willingly throwes his goods into the Sea to save himself or submitts to his enemy for fear of being killed Thus all men that do any thing from love or revenge or lust are free from compulsion and yet their actions may be as necessary as those which are done upon compulsion for sometimes other passions work as forcibly as fear But free from necessitation I say nothing can be And 't is that which he undertook to disproove This distinction he sayes useth to be fortified by two reasons but they are not mine The first he sayes is That it is granted by all Divines that an hypotheticall necessity or necessity upon supposition may stand with liberty That you may understand this I will give you an example of hypotheticall necessity If I shall live I shall eat this is an hypotheticall necessity Indeed it is a necessary proposition that is to say it is necessary that that proposition should be true whensoever uttered but t is not the necessity of the thing nor is it therefore necessary that the man shall live or that the man shall eat I do not use to fortifie my distinctions with such reasons Let him confute them as he will it contents me But I would have your Lordship take notice hereby how an easy and plain thing but withall false may be with the grave usage of such tearmes as hypotheticall necessity and necessity upon supposition and such like tearmes of Schoolemen obscur'd and made to seem profound learning The second reason that may confirm the distinction of free from compulsion and free from necessitation he sayes is that God and good Angells do good necessarily and yet are more free than we The reason though I had no need of yet I think it so far forth good as it is true that God and good Angells do good necessarily and yet are free but because I find not in the Articles of our faith nor in the Decrees of our Church set down in what manner I am to conceive God and good Angells to work by necessity or in what sense they work freely I suspend my sentence in that point and am content that there may be a freedom from compulsion and yet no freedom from necessitation as hath been prooved in that that a man may be necessitated to some actions without threats and without fear of danger But how he can avoid the consisting together of freedom and necessity supposing God and good Angells are freer than men and yet do good necessarily that we must now examin I confess saith he that God and good Angells are more free than we that is intensively in degree of freedom not extensively in the latitude of the object according to a liberty of exercise not of specification Again we have here two distinctions that are no distinctions but made to seem so by tearmes invented by I know not whom to cover ignorance and blind the understanding of the Reader For it cannot be conceived that there is any liberty greater than for a man to do what he will and to forbear what he will One heat may be more intensive than another but not one liberty than another He that can do what he will hath all liberty possibly and he that cannot has none at all Also liberty as he sayes the Schooles call it of exercise which is as I have said before a liberty to do or not to do cannot be without a liberty which they call of specification that is to say a liberty to do or not to do this or that in particular for how can a man conceive that he has liberty to do any thing that hath not liberty to do this or that or somewhat in particular If a man be forbidden in Lent to eat this and that and every other particular kind of flesh
plainly acknowledged by T. H. Numb 11. That fore-knowledge is knowledge and knowledge depends on the existence of the things known and not they on it To conclude the prescience of God doth not make things more necessary than the production of the things themselves But if the Agents were free Agents the production of the things doth not make the events to be absolutely necessary but onely upon supposition that the causes were so determined Gods prescience prooveth a necessity of infallibility but not of antecedent extrinsecall determination to one If any event should not come to pass God did never foreknow that it would come to pass For every knowledge necessarily presupposeth its object Numb 37. T. H. THis is all thath hath come into my mind touching this question since I last considered it And I humbly beseech your Lordship to communicate it onely to J. D. And so praying God to prosper your Lordship in all your designes I take leave and am my most Noble and obliging Lord Your most humble servant T. H. J. D. HE is very carefull to have this discourse kept secret as appeares in this Section and in the 14. and 15. Sections If his answer had been kept private I had saved the labour of a Reply But hearing that it was communicated I thought my self obliged to vindicate both the truth and my self I do not blame him to be cautious for in truth this assertion is of desperate consequence and destructive to piety policy and morality If he had desired to have kept it secret the way had been to have kept it secret himself It will not suffice to say as Numb 14. that Truth is Truth This the common plea of all men Neither is it sufficient for him to say as Numb 15. That it was desired by me long before that he had discovered his opinion by word of mouth And my desire was to let some of my noble friends see the weakness of his grounds and the pernicious consequences of that opinion But if he think that this ventilation of the question between us two may do hurt truly I hope not The edge of his discourse is so abated that it cannot easily hurt any rationall man who is not too much possessed with prejudice Numb 38. T. H. POstscript Arguments seldom work on men of wit and learning when they have once ingaged themselves in a contrary opinion If any thing do it it is the shewing of them the causes of their errours which is this Pious men attribute to God Almighty for honour sake whatsoever they see is honourable in the world as seeing hearing willing knowing Justice Wisedom c. But deny him such poor things as eyes ears brains and other organs without which we wormes neither have nor can conceive such faculties to be and so far they do well But when they dispute of Gods actions Philosophically then they consider them again as if he had such faculties and in that manner as we have them this is not well and thence it is they fall into so many difficulties We ought not to dispute of Gods Nature he is no fit subject of our Philosophy True Religion consisteth in obedience to Christ's Lieutenants and in giving God such honour both in attributes and actions as they in their severall Lieutenancies shall ordain J. D. THough Sophisticall captions do seldom work on men of wit and learning because by constant use they have their senses exercised to discern both good and evill Heb. 5.14 Yet solide and substantiall reasons work sooner upon them than upon weaker judgments The more exact the balance is the sooner it discovers the reall weight that is put into it Especially if the proofs be proposed without passion or opposition Let Sophisters and seditious Oratours apply themselves to the many headed multitude because they despaire of success with men of wit and learning Those whose gold is true are not afraid to have it tryed by the touch Since the former way hath not succeeded T. H. hath another to shew as the causes of our errours which he hopes will proove more succesfull When he sees he can do no good by sight he seeks to circumvent us under colour of curtesy Fistula dulce canit volucrem dum decipit auceps As they who behold themselves in a glass take the right hand for the left and the left for the right T. H. knowes the comparison so we take our own errours to be truths and other mens truths to be errours If we be in an errour in this it is such an errour as we sucked from nature it self such an errour as is confirmed in us by reason and experience such an errour as God himself in his sacred Word hath revealed such an errour as the Fathers and Doctors of the Church of all ages have delivered Such an errour wherein we have the concurrence of all the best Philosophers both Natural and Moral such an errour as bringeth to God the glory of Justice and Wisedom Goodness and Truth such an errour as renders men more devout more pious more industrious more humble more penitent for their sins Would he have us resign up all these advantages to dance blindfold after his pipe No he persuades us too much to our loss But let us see what is the imaginary cause of an imaginary errour Forsooth because we attribute to God whatsoever is honourable in the world as seeing hearing willing knowing Justice Wisedom but deny him such poor things as eyes ears brains and so far he saith we do well He hath reason for since we are not able to conceive of God as he is the readiest way we have is by remooving all that imperfection from God which is in the creatures So we call him Infinite Immortall Independent Or by attribubuting to him all those perfections which are in the creatures after a most eminent manner so we call him Best Greatest most Wise most Just most Holy But saith he When they dispute of Gods actions Philosophically then they consider them again as if he had such faculties and in the manner as we have them And is this the cause of our errour That were strange indeed for they who dispute Philosophically of God do neither ascribe faculties to to him in that manner that we have them Nor yet do they attribute any proper faculties at all to God Gods Understanding and his Will is his very Essence which for the eminency of its infinite perfection doth perform all those things alone in a most transcendent manner which reasonable creatures do perform imperfectly by distinct faculties Thus to dispute of God with modesty and reverence and to clear the Deity from the imputation of tyranny in justice and dissimulation which none do throw upon God with more presumption than those who are the Patrons of absolute necessity is both comely and Christian It is not the desire to discover the originall of a supposed errour which drawes them ordinarily into these exclamations against those who dispute of the Deity For some of themselves dare anatomise God and publish his Eternall Decrees with as much confidence as if they had been all their lives of his cabinet councell But it is for fear lest those pernicious consequences which flow from that doctrine essentially and reflect in so high a degree upon the supreme goodness should be laid open to the view of the world Just as the Turks do first establish a false religion of their own devising and then forbid all men upon pain of death to dispute upon religion Or as the Priests of Molech the Abhomination of the Ammonites did make a noise with their timbrells all the while the poor Infants were passing through the fire in Tophet to keep their pitifull cries from the eares of their Parents So they make a noise with their declamations against those who dare dispute of the nature of God that is who dare set forth his Justice and his goodness and his truth and his Philanthropy onely to deaf the ears and dim the eyes of the Christian world least they should hear the lamentable ejulations and howlings or see that ruefull spectacle of millions of souls tormented for evermore in the flames of the true Tophet that is Hell onely for that which according to T. H. his doctrine was never in their power to shun but which they were ordered and inevitably necessitated to do Onely to express the omnipotence and dominion and to satisfie the pleasure of him who is in truth the Father of all mercies and the God of all consolation This is life eternall saith our Saviour to know the onely true God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent Joh. 17.3 Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to visite the fatherless and widowes in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world saith St. James Jam. 1.27 Fear God and keep his Commandements for this is the whole duty of man saith Salomon Eccles 12.13 But T. H. hath found out a more compendious way to heaven True Religion saith he consisteth in obedience to Christs Lieutenants and giving God such honour both in attributes and actions as they in their severall Lieutenances shall ordain That is to say be of the Religion of every Christian Country where you come To make the Civill Magistrate to be Christs Lieutenant upon earth for matters of Religion And to make him to be Supreme Judge in all controversies whom all must obey is a doctrine so strange and such an uncouth phrase to Christian eares that I should have missed his meaning but that I consulted with his Book De Cive c. 15. Sect. 16. and c. 17. Sect. 28. What if the Magistrate shall be no Christian himself What if he shall command contrary to the Law of God or Nature Must we obey him rather than God Act. 14.19 Is the Civill Magistrate become now the onely ground and pillar of Truth I demand then why T. H. is of a different mind from his soveraign and from the Lawes of the Land concerning the attributes of God and his Decrees This is a new Paradox and concerns not this question of liberty and necessity Wherefore I forbear to prosecute it further and so conclude my reply with the words of the Christian Poet Caesaris jussum est ore Galieni Princeps quod colit ut colemus omnes Aeternum colemus Principem dierum Factorem Dominumque Galieni FINIS
as for a man to consult and ponder with himself whether he should draw in his Breath or whether he should increase in stature Secondly to resolve implies a mans dominion over his own actions and his actuall determination of himself but he who holds an absolute necessity of all things hath quitted this dominion over himself and which is worse hath quitted it to the second extrinsecal causes in which he makes all his actions to be determined one may as well call again Yesterday as resolve or newly determine that which is determined to his hand already I have perused this treatise weighed T. H. his answers considered his reasons and conclude that he hath missed and misled the question that the answers are evasions that his Arguments are parologisms that the opinion of absolute and universall necessity is but a result of some groundless and ill chosen principles and that the defect is not in himself but that his cause will admit no better defence and therefore by his favour I am resolved to adhere to my first opinion perhaps another man reading this discourse with other eyes judgeth it to be pertinent and well founded How comes this to pass the treatise is the same the exteriour causes are the same yet the resolution is contrary Do the second causes play fast and loose do they necessitate me to condemn and necessitate him to maintain what is it then the difference must be in our selves either in our intellectuals because the one sees clearer then the other or in our affections which betray our understandings and produce an implicite adhaerence in the one more than in the other Howsoever it be the difference is in our selves The outward causes alone do not chain me to the one resolution nor him to the other resolution But T. H. may say that our severall and respective deliberations and affections are in part the causes of our contrary resolutions and do concur with the outward causes to make up one totall and adaequate cause to the necessary production of this effect If it be so he hath spun a fair thred to make all this stir for such a necessity as no man ever denied or doubted of when all the causes have actually determined themselves then the effect is in being for though there be a priority in nature between the cause and the effect yet they are together in time And the old rule is whatsoever is when it is is necessarily so as it is This is no absolute necessity but onely upon supposition that a man hath determined his own liberty When we question whether all occurrences be necessary we do not question whether they be necessary when they are nor whether they be necessary in sensu composito after we have resolved and finally determined what to do but whether they were necessary before they were determined by our selves by or in the praecedent causes before our selves or in the exteriour causes without ourselves It is not inconsistent with true liberty to determine it self but it is inconsistent with true liberty to be determined by another without it self T. H. saith further that upon your Lordships desire and mine he was contented to begin with this discourse of liberty and necessity that is to change his former resolution If the chain of necessity be no stronger but that it may be snapped so easily in sunder if his will was no otherwise determined from without himself but onely by the signification of your Lordships desire and my modest intreaty then we may safely conclude that humane affairs are not alwaies governed by absolute necessity that a man is Lord of his own actions if not in chief yet in mean subordinate to the Lord Paramount of Heaven and Earth and that all things are not so absolutely determined in the outward and precedent causes but that fair intreaties and morall perswasions may work upon a good nature so far as to prevent that which otherwise had been and to produce that which otherwise had not been He that can reconcile this with an Antecedent Necessity of all things and a Physicall or naturall determination of all causes shall be great Apollo to me Whereas T. H. saith that he had never uttered his opinion of this question I suppose he intends in writing my conversation with him hath not been frequent yet I remember well that when this question was agitated between us two in your Lordships Chamber by your command he did then declare himself in words both for the absolute necessity of all events and for the ground of this necessity the Flux or concatenation of the second causes Numb 2. T. H. ANd first I assure your Lordship I find in it no new Argument neither from Scripture nor from reason that I have not often heard before which is as much as to say that I am not surprised J. D. THough I be so unhappy that I can present no novelty to T. H. yet I have this comfort that if he be not surprised then in reason I may expect a more mature answer from him and where he failes I may ascribe it to the weakness of his cause not to want of preparation But in this case I like Epictetus his Counsell well that the Sheep should not brag how much they have eaten or what an excellent pasture they do go in but shew it in their Lamb and VVool. Apposite answers and down right Arguments advantage a cause To tell what we have heard or seen is to no purpose when a respondent leaves many things untouched as if they were too hot for his Fingers and declines the weight of other things and alters the true state of the question it is a shrewd sign either that he hath not weighed all things maturely or else that he maintains a desperate cause Numb 3. T. H. THe Praeface is an handsome one but it appears even in that that he hath mistaken the question for whereas he saies thus If I be free to write this discourse I have obteined the cause I deny that to be true for 't is not enough to his freedom of writing that he had not written it unless he would himself if he will obtein the cause he must prove that before he writ it it was not necessary he should write it afterward It may be he thinks it all one to say I was free to write it and it was not necessary I should write it But I think otherwise for he is free to do a thing that may do it if he have the will to do it and may forbear if he have the will to forbear And yet if there be a necessity that he shall have the will to do it the action is necessarily to follow And if there be a necessity that he shall have the will to forbear the forbearing also will be necessary The question therefore is not whether a man be a free agent that is to say whether he can write or forbear speak or be silent according to his
or Common-wealths sometimes the people sometimes the Common Councell have power to name so many persons for such an office and the Supreme Magistrate or Senate or lesser Councell respectively to choose one of those And all this is done with that caution and secrecy by billetts or other means that no man knowes which way any man gave his vote or with whom to be offended If it were necessarily and inevitably predetermined that this individuall person and no other shall and must be chosen what needed all this circuit and caution to do that which is not possible to be done otherwise which one may do as well as a thousand and for doing of which no rationall man can be offended if the Electors were necessarily predetermined to elect this man and no other And though T. H. was pleased to passe by my University instance yet I may not untill I see what he is able to say unto it The Junior of the Mess in Cambridge divides the meat into foure parts The Senior chooseth first then the second and third in their order The Junior is determined to one and hath no choise left unless it be to choose whether he will take that part which the rest have refused or none at all It may be this part is more agreable to his mind than any of the others would have been but for all that he cannot be said to choose it because he is determined to this one Even such a liberty of election is that which is established by T. H. Or rather much worse in two respects The Junior hath yet a liberty of contradiction left to choose whether he will take that part or not take any part but he who is precisely predetermined to the choise of this object hath no liberty to refuse it Secondly the Junior by dividing carefully may preserve to himself an equall share but he who is wholly determined by extrinsecall causes is left altogether to the mercy and disposition of another Thirdly I proove it by the texts alledged Numb 30.13 If a wife make a vow it is left to her husbands choise either to establish it or make it void But if it be predetermined that he shall establish it it is not in his power to make it void If it be predetermined that he shall make it void it is not in his power to establish it And howsoever it be determined yet being determined it is not in his power indifferently either to establish it or to make it void at his pleasure So Joshua 24.15 Choose you this day whom ye will serve But I and my house will serve the Lord. It is too late to choose that this day which was determined otherwise yesterday whom ye will serve whether the gods whom your fathers served or the gods of the Amorites Where there is an election of this or that these gods or those gods there must needs be either an indifferency to both objects or at least a possibility of either I and my house will serve the Lord. If he were extrinsecally predetermined he should not say I will serve but I must serve And 2 Sam. 24.12 I offer thee three things choose thee which of them I shall do How doth God offer three things to Davids choise if he had predetermined him to one of the three by a concourse of necessary extrinsecall causes If a soveraign Prince should descend so far as to offer a delinquent his choice whether he would be fined or imprisoned or banished and had under hand signed the sentence of his banishment what were it els but plain drollery or mockery This is the argument which in T. H. his opinion looks another way If it do it is as the Parthians used to fight flying His reason followes next to be considered Numb 7. T. H. FOr if there come into the husbands mind greater good by establishing than abrogating such a vow the establishing will follow necessarily And if the evill that will follow thereon in the husbands opinion outweigh the good the contrary must needs follow And yet in this following of ones hopes and feares consisteth the nature of election So that a man may both choose this and cannot but choose this And consequently choosing and necessity are joyned together J. D. THere is nothing said with more shew of reason in this cause by the patrons of necessity and adversaries of true liberty than this That the will doth perpetually and infallibly follow the last dictate of the understanding or the last judgment of right reason And in this and this onely I confess T. H. hath good seconds Yet the common and approved opinion is contrary And justly For First this very act of the understanding is an effect of the will and a testimony of its power and liberty It is the will which affecting some particular good doth ingage and command the understanding to consult and deliberate what means are convenient for atteining that end And though the will it self be blind yet its object is good in generall which is the end of all human actions Therefore it belongs to the will as to the Generall of an Army to moove the other powers of the soul to their acts and among the rest the understanding also by applying it and reducing its power into act So as whatsoever obligation the understanding doth put upon the will is by the consent of the will and derived from the power of the will which was not necessitated to moove the understanding to consult So the will is the Lady and Mistris of human actions the understanding is her trusty counseller which gives no advise but when it is required by the will And if the first consultation or deliberation be not sufficient the will may moove a review and require the understanding to inform it self better and take advise of others from whence many times the judgment of the understanding doth receive alteration Secondly for the manner how the understanding doth determine the will it is not naturally but morally The will is mooved by the understanding not as by an efficient having a causall influence into the effect but only by proposing and representing the object And therefore as it were ridiculous to say that the object of the sight is the cause of seeing so it is to say that the proposing of the object by the understanding to the will is the cause of willing and therefore the understanding hath no place in that concourse of causes which according to T. H. do necessitate the will Thirdly the judgment of the understanding is not alwayes practicè practicum nor of such a nature in it self as to oblige and determine the will to one Sometimes the understanding proposeth two or three means equally available to the altering of one and the same end Sometimes it dictateth that this or that particular good is eligible or fit to be chosen but not that it is necessarily eligible or that it must be chosen It may judge this or that to
this They who may do and might have done many things which they leave undone and who leave undone many things which they might do are not necessitated nor precisely and antecently determined to do what they do But we might do many things which we do not and we do many things which we might leave undone as appeares evidently by the texts alledged Therefore we are not antecedently and precisely determined nor necessitated to do all things which he do What is here of election in this Argument To what proposition to what tearm doth T. H. apply his answer He neither affirmes nor denieth nor distinguisheth of any thing contained in my argument Here I must be bold to call upon him for a more pertinent answer Numb 10. J. D. argument 3 THirdly if there be no true liberty but all things come to pass by inevitable necessity then what are all those interrogations and objurgations and reprehensions and expostulations which we find so frequently in holy Scriptures be it spoken with all due respect but feined and hypocriticall exaggerations Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded that thou shouldest not eat Gen. 3.11 And ver 13. he saith to Eve Why hast thou done this And to Cain Why art thou wroth and why is thy countenance cast down And why will ye dy O house of Israel Doth God command openly not to eat and yet secretly by himself or by the second causes necessitate him to eat Doth he reprehend him for doing that which he hath antecedently determined that he must doe Doth he propose things under impossible conditions Or were not this plain mockery and derision Doth a loving Master chide his servant because he doth not come at his call and yet knowes that the poor servant is chained and fettered so as he cannot moove by the Masters own order without the servants default or consent They who talk here of a twofold will of God secret and revealed and the one opposite to the other understand not what they say These two wills concerne severall persons The secret will of God is what he will do himself The revealed will of God is what he would have us to do It may be the secret will of God to take away the life of the Father yet it is Gods revealed will that his Son should wish his life and pray for his life Here is no contradiction where the Agents are distinct But for the same person to command one thing and yet to necessitate him that is commanded to do another thing To chide a man for doing that which he hath determined inevitably and irresistibly that he must do This were I am afraid to utter what they are not afraid to assert the highest dissimulation Gods chiding prooves mans liberty T. H. TO the third and fift arguments I shall make but one answer J. D. CErtainly distinct Arguments as the third and fift are the one drawn from the truth of God the other drawn from the Justice of God the one from his objurgations and reprehensions the other from his Judgments after life did require distinct answers But the plain truth is that neither here nor in his answer to the fift Argument nor in this whole Treatise is there one word of solution or satisfaction to this Argument or to any part of it All that looks like an answer is contained Numb 12. That which he does is made just by his doing Just I say in him not alwayes just in us by the example for a man that shall command a thing openly and plot secretly the hinderance of the same if he punish him whom he commanded so for not doing it is unjust I dare no insist upon it I hope his meaning is not so bad as the words intimate and as I apprehend That is to impute falshood to him that is Truth it self and to justifie feining and dissimulation in God as he doth tyranny by the infiniteness of his power and the absoluteness of his dominion And therefort by his leave I must once again tender him a new summons for a full and clear Answer to this Argument also He tells us that he was not surprised Whether he were or not is more than I know But this I see plainly that either he is not provided or that his cause admits no choise of answers The Jews dealt ingenuously when they met with a difficult knot which they could not untie to put it upon Elias Elias will answer it when he comes Numb 11. J. D. argument 4 FOurthly if either the decree of God or the foreledge of God or the influence of the Stars or the concatenation of causes or the physicall or morall efficacy of objects or the last dictate of the understanding do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty For he was subjected to the same decrees the same praescience the same constellations the same causes the same objects the same dictates of the understanding But quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulus odi The greatest opposers of our liberty are as earnest maintainers of the liberty of Adam Therefore none of these supposed impediments take away true liberty T. H. THe fourth Argument is to this effect If the decree of God or his foreknowledge or the influence of the Stars or the concatenation of causes or the physicall or morall efficacy of causes or the last dictate of the understanding or whatsoever it be do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty Quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulus odi That which I say necessitateth and determinateth every action that be may no longer doubt of my meaning is the sum of all those things which being now existent conduce and concurre to the production of that action hereafter whereof if any one thing now were wanting the effect could not be produced This concourse of causes whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes may well be called in respect they were all set and ordered by the eternall cause of all things God Almighty the decree of God But that the fore-knowledge of God should be a cause of any thing cannot be truly said seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge depends on the existence of the things known and not they on it The influence of the Stars is but a small part of the whole cause consisting of the concourse of all Agents Nor doth the concourse of all causes make one simple chain or concatenation but an innumerable number of chains joyned together not in all parts but in the first link God Almighty and consequently the whole cause of an event does not alwaies depend upon one single chain but on many together Naturall efficacy of objects does determine voluntary Agents and necessitates the will and consequently the action but for morall efficacy I understand not what he means by it The last dictate of the judgement concerning the good or bad that
Covenant of works with mankind in Adam and therefore he punisheth not man contrary to his own Covenant but for the transgression of his duty And Divine Justice is not measured by Omnipotence or by irresistible power but by Gods will God can do many things according to his absolute power which he doth not He could raise up children to Abraham of stones but he never did so It is a rule in Theology that God cannot do any thing which argues any wickedness or imperfection as God cannot deny himself 2 Tim. 2.13 He cannot lie Tit. 1.2 These and the like are fruits of impotence not of power So God cannot destroy the righteous with the wicked Gen. 18.25 He could not destroy Sodome whilst Lot was in it Gen. 19.22 not for want of dominion or power but because it was not agreeable to his Justice nor to that Law which himself had constituted The Apostle saith Heb. 6.10 God is not unrighteous to forget your work As it is a good consequence to say this is from God therefore it is righteous so is this also This thing is unrighteous therefore it cannot proceed from God We see how all Creatures by instinct of nature do love their young as the Hen her Chickens how they will expose themselves to death for them And yet all these are but shadowes of that love which is in God towards his Creatures How impious is it then to conceive that God did creat so many millions of souls to be tormented eternally in hell without any fault of theirs except such as he himself did necessitate them unto meerly to shew his dominion and because his power is irresistible The same privilege which T. H. appropriates here to power absolutely irresistible a friend of his in his book de Cive cap. 6. pag. 70. ascribes to power respectively irresistible or to Soveraign Magistrates whose power he makes to be as absolute as a mans power is over himself not to be limitted by any thing but only by their strength The greatest propugners of Soveraign power think it enough for Princes to challenge an immunity from coercive power but acknowledge that the Law hath a directive power over them But T. H. will have no limits but their strength Whatsoever they do by power they do justly But saith he God objected no sin to Job but justified his afflicting him by his power First this is an Argument from authority negatively that is to say worth nothing Secondly the afflictions of Job were no vindicatory punishments to take vengeance of his sins whereof we dispute but probatory chastisements to make triall of his graces Thirdly Job was not so pure but that God might justly have laid greater punishments upon him then those afflictions which he suffered Witness his impatience even to the cursing of the day of his nativity Job 3.3 Indeed God said to Job where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth Job 38.4 that is how canst thou judge of the things that were done before thou wast born or comprehend the secret causes of my judgments And Job 42.9 Hast thou an arm like God As if he should say why art thou impatient doest thou think thy self able to strive with God But that God should punish Job without desert here is not a word Concerning the blind man mentioned John 9. his blindness was rather a blessing to him than a punishment being the means to raise his Soul illuminated and to bring him to see the face of God in Jesus Christ The sight of the body is common to us with Ants and Flies but the sight of the soul with the blessed Angells We read of some who have put out their bodily eyes because they thought they were an impediment to the eye of the Soul Again neither he nor his parents were innocent being conceived and born in sin and iniquity Psal 51.5 And in many things we offend all Jam. 3.2 But our Saviours meaning is evident by the Disciples question ver 2. They had not so sinned that he should be born blind Or they were not more grievous sinners than other men to deserve an exemplary judgment more than they but this corporall blindness befell him principally by the extraordinary providence of God for the manifestation of his own glory in restoring him to his sight So his instance halts on both sides neither was this a punishment nor the blind man free from sin His third instance of the death and torments of beasts is of no more weight then the two former The death of brute beasts is not a punishment of sin but a debt of nature And though they be often slaughtered for the use of man yet there is a vast difference between those light and momentary pangs and the unsufferable and endless pains of hell between the meer depriving of a creature of temporall life and the subjecting of it to eternall death I know the Philosophicall speculations of some who affirme that entity is better than non-entity that it is better to be miserable and suffer the torments of the damned than to be annihilated and cease to be altogether This entity which they speak of is a Metaphysicall entity abstracted from the matter which is better than non-entity in respect of some goodness not morall nor naturall but transcendentall which accompanies every being But in the concrete it is far otherwise where that of our Saviour often takes place Matth. 26.24 Woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed It had been good for that man that he had not been born I add that there is an Analogicall Justice and Mercy due even to the brute beasts Thou shalt not mussle the mouth of the Oxe that treadeth out the corn And a just man is mercifull to his beast But his greatest errour is that which I touched before to make Justice to be the proper result of Power Power doth not measure and regulate Justice but Justice measures regulates Power The will of God and the Eternall Law which is in God himself is properly the rule and measure of Justice As all goodness whether Naturall or Morall is a participation of divine goodness and all created Rectitude is but a participation of divine rectitude so all Lawes are but participations of the eternall Law from whence they derive their power The rule of Justice then is the same both in God and us but it is in God as in him that doth regulate and measure in us as in those who are regulated and measured As the will of God is immutable alwayes willing what is just and right and good So his justice likewise is immutable And that individuall action which is justly punished as sinfull in us cannot possibly proceed from the speciall influence and determinative power of a just cause See then how grossely T. H. doth understand that old and true principle that the Will of God is the rule of Justice as if by willing things in themselves unjust he did render them
just by reason of his absolute dominion and irresistible power As fire doth assimilate other things to it self and convert them into the nature of fire This were to make the eternall Law a Lesbian rule Sin is defined to be that which is done or said or thought contrary to the eternall Law But by this doctrine nothing is done nor said nor thought contrary to the will of God St. Anselm said most truly then the will of man is good and just and right when he wills that which God would have him to will but according to this doctrine every man alwayes wills that which God would have him to will If this be true we need not pray Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven T. H. hath devised a new kind of heaven upon earth The worst is it is an heaven without Justice Justice is a constant and perpetuall act of the will to give every one his own But to inflict punishment for those things which the Judge himself did determine and necessitate to be done is not to give every one his own right punitive Justice is a relation of equallity and proportion between the demerit and the punishment But supposing this opinion of absolute and universall necessity there is no demerit in the world we use to say that right springs from Law and fact as in this Syllogism Every thief ought to be punished there 's the Law But such an one is a thief there 's the fact therefore he ought to be punished there 's the right But this opinion of T. H. grounds the right to be punished neither upon Law nor upon Fact but upon the irresistible power of God Yea it overturneth as much as in it lies all Law First the eternall Law which is the ordination of divine Wisdom by which all Creatures are directed to that end which is convenient for them That is not to necessitate them to eternall flames Then the Law participated which is the ordination of right reason instituted for the common good to shew unto man what he ought to do and what he ought not to do To what purpose is it to shew the right way to him who is drawn and haled a contrary way by Adamantine bonds of inevitable necessity Lastly howsoever T. H. cries out that God cannot sin yet in truth he makes him to be the principall and most proper cause of all sin For he makes him to be the cause not onely of the Law and of the action but even of the irregularity it self and the difference between the action and the Law wherein the very essence of sin doth consist He makes God to determin Davids will and necessitate him to kill Uriah In causes physically and essentially subordinate the cause of the cause is evermore the cause of the effect These are those deadly fruits which spring from the poisonous root of the absolute necessity of all things which T. H. seeing and that neither the sins of Esau nor Pharaoh nor any wicked person do proceed from the operative but from the permissive will of God And that punishment is an act of justice not of dominion onely I hope that according to his promise he will change his opinion Numb 13. J. D. Proofs of Liberty drawn from reason argument 1 THe first argument is Herculeum or Baculinum drawn from that pleasant passage between Zeno and his man The servant had committed some pettilarceny and the master was cudgelling him well for it The servant thinks to creep under his masters blind-side and pleades for himself That the necessity of destiny did compell him to steal The master answers the same necessity of destiny compells me to beat thee He that denies liberty is fitter to be refuted with rodds than with arguments untill he confess that it is free for him that beates him either to continue striking or to give over that is to have true liberty T. H. OF the Arguments from reason the first is that which he saith is drawn from Zenos beating of his man which is therefore called Argumentum baculinum that is to say a wooden Argument The story is this Zeno held that all actions were necessary His man therefore being for some fault beaten excused himself upon the necessity of it To avoid this excuse his master pleaded likewise the necessity of beating him So that not he that mainteined but he that derided the necessity of things was beaten contrary to that he would infer And the argument was rather withdrawn than drawn from the story J. D. WHether the argument be withdrawn from the story or the answer withdrawn from the argument let the Reader judge T. H. mistakes the scope of the reason the strength whereof doth not lie neither in the authority of Zeno a rigid Stoick which is not worth a button in this cause Nor in the servants being an adversary to Stoicall necessity for it appeares not out of the story that the servant did deride necessity but rather that he pleaded it in good earnest for his own justification Now in the success of the fray we were told even now that no power doth justifie an action but onely that which is irresistible Such was not Zenos And therefore it advantageth neither of their causes neither that of Zeno nor this of T. H. What if the servant had taken the staff out of his masters hand and beaten him soundly would not the same argument have served the man as well as it did the master that the necessity of destiny did compell him to strike again Had not Zeno smarted justly for his Paradox And might not the spectators well have taken up the Judges Apothegm concerning the dispute between Corax and his Schollar An ill egg of an ill bird But the strength of this argument lies partly in the ignorance of Zeno that great Champion of necessity and the beggarliness of his cause which admitted no defence but with a cudgell No man saith the servant ought to be beaten for doing that which he is compelled inevitably to do but I am compelled inevitably to steal The major is so evident that it cannot be denied If a strong man shall take a weak mans hand perforce and do violence with it to a third person he whose hand is forced is innocent and he only culpable who compelled him The minor was Zenos own doctrine what answer made the great patron of destiny to his servant very learnedly he denied the conclusion and cudgelled his servant telling him in effect that though there was no reason why he should be beaten yet there was a necessity why he must be beaten And partly in the evident absurdity of such an opinion which deserves not to be confuted with reasons but with rods There are four things said the Philosoher which ought not to be called into question First such things whereof it is wickedness to doubt as whether the soul be immortall whether there be a God such an one should not be confuted with reasons
deny that it makes consultations to be in vain 't is the consultation that causeth a man and necessitateth him to choose to do one thing rather than another So that unless a man say that cause to be in vain which necessitateth the effect he cannot infer the superfluousness of consultation out of the necessity of the election proceeding from it But it seemes he reasons thus If I must needs do this rather than that then I shall do this rather than that though I consult not at all which is a false proposition a falfe consequence and no better than this If I shall live till to morrow I shall live till to morrow though I run my self through with a sword to day If there be a necessity that an action shall be done or that any effect shall be brought to pass it does not therefore follow that there is nothing necessarily required as a means to bring it to pass And therefore when it is determined that one thing shall be chosen before another 't is determined also for what cause it shall be chosen which cause for the most part is deliberation or consultation And therefore consultation is not in vain and indeed the less in vain by how much the election is more necessitated The same answer is to be given to the third supposed inconveniency Namely that admonitions are in vain for admonitions are parts of consultations The Admonitor being a Counsailer for the time to him that is admonished The fourth pretended inconveniency is that praise and dispraise reward and punishment will be in vain To which I answer that for praise and dispraise they depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised or dispraised For what is it els to praise but to say a thing is good Good I say for me or for some body els or for the State and Commonwealth And what is it to say an action is good but to say it is as I would wish or as another would have it or according to the will of the State that is to say according to Law Does J. D. think that no action can please me or him or the Commonwealth that should proceed from necessity Things may be therefore necessary and yet prayseworthy as also necessary and yet dispraised and neither of both in vain because praise and dispraise and likewise reward and punishment do by example make and conform the will to good or evill It was a very great praise in my opinion that Velleius Paterculus gives Cato where he sayes he was good by nature Et quia aliter esse non potuit The fift and sixt inconvenience that Councells Arts Arms Books Instruments Study Medicines and the like would be superfluous the same answer serves that to the former That is to say that this consequence if the effect shall necessarily come to pass then it shall come to pass without its cause is a false one And those things named Councells Arts Arms c. are the causes of those effects J. D. NOthing is more familiar with T. H. than to decline an argument But I will put it into form for him The first inconvenience is thus pressed Those Lawes are unjust and Tyrannicall which do prescribe things absolutely impossible in themselves to be done and punish men for not doing of them But supposing T. H. his opinion of the necessity of all things to be true all Lawes do prescribe absolute impossibilities to be done and punish men for not doing of them The former proposition is so clear that it cannot be denied Just Lawes are the Ordinances of right reason but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not the Ordinances of right reason Just Lawes are instituted for the publick good but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not instituted for the publick good Just Laws do shew unto a man what is to be done and what is to be shunned But those Lawes which prescribe impossibilities do not direct a man what he is to do and what he is to shun The Minor is as evident for if his opinion be true all actions all transgressions are determined antecedently inevitably to be done by a naturall and necessary flux of extrinsecall causes Yea even the will of man and the reason it self is thus determined And therefore whatsoever Laws do prescribe any thing to be done which is not done or to be left undone which is done do prescribe absolute impossibilities and punish men for not doing of impossibilities In all his answer there is not one word to this argument but only to the conclusion He saith that not the necessity but the will to break the Law makes the action unjust I ask what makes the will to break the Law is it not his necessity What getts he by this A perverse will causeth injustice and necessity causeth a perverse will He saith the Law regardeth the will but not the precedent causes of action To what proposition to what tearm is this answer he neither denies nor distinguisheth First the question here is not what makes actions to be injust but what makes Lawes to be unjust So his answer is impertinent It is likewise untrue for First that will which the Law regards is not such a will as T. H. imagineth It is a free will not a determined necessitated will a rationall will not a brutish will Secondly the Law doth look upon precedent causes as well as the voluntariness of the action If a child before he be seven years old or have the use of reason in some childish quarrell do willingly stab another whereof we have seen experience yet the Law looks not upon it as an act of murther because there wanted a power to deliberate and consequently true liberty Man-slaughter may be as voluntary as murther and commonly more voluntary because being done in hot blood there is the less reluctation yet the Law considers that the former is done out of some sudden passion without serious deliberation and the other out of prepensed malice and desire of revenge and therefore condemnes murther as more wilfull and more punishable than man-slaughter He saith that no Law can possibly be unjust And I say that this is to deny the conclusion which deserves no reply But to give him satisfaction I will follow him in this also If he intended no more but that unjust Lawes are not Genuine Lawes nor bind to active obedience because they are not the ordinations of right reason nor instituted for the common good nor prescribe that which ought to be done he said truly but nothing at all to his purpose But if he intend as he doth that there are no Lawes de facto which are the ordinances of reason erring instituted for the common hurt and prescribing that which ought not to be done he is much mistaken Pharaohs Law to drown the Male Children of the Israelites Exod. 1.22 Nebuchadnezzars Law that whosoever did not fall down and worship the golden image which he
had set up should be cast into the fiery furnace Dan. 3. â—… Darius his Law that whosoever should ask a Petition of any God or man for thirty dayes save of the King should be cast into the Den of Lions Dan. 6.7 Ahashuerosh his Law to destroy the Jewish Nation root branch Esther 3.13 The Pharisees Law that whosoever confessed Christ should be excommunicated John 9.22 were all unjust Lawes The ground of this errour is as great an errour it self Such an art he hath learned of repacking Paradoxes which is this That every man makes by his consent the Law which he is bound to keep If this were true it would preserve them if not from being unjust yet from being injurious But it is not true The positive Law of God conteined in the old and new Testament The Law of Nature written in our hearts by the Finger of God The Lawes of Conquerors who come in by the power of the Sword The Lawes of our Ancestors which were made before we were born do all oblige us to the observation of them yet to none of all these did we give our actuall consent Over and above all these exceptions he builds upon a wrong foundation that all Magistrates at first were elective The first Governors were Fathers of Families And when those petty Princes could not afford competent protection and security to their subjects many of them did resign their severall and respective interests into the hands of one joint Father of the Country And though his ground had been true that all first Legislators were elective which is false yet his superstructure fails for it was done in hope and trust that they would make just Laws If Magistrates abuse this trust and deceive the hopes of the people by making Tyrranicall Lawes yet it is without their consent A precedent trust doth not justifie the subsequent errours and abuses of a Trustee He who is duely elected a Legislator may exercise his Legislative power unduely The peoples implicite consent doth not render the Tyrannicall Lawes of their Legislators to be just But his chiefest answer is that an action forbidden though it proceed from necessary causes yet if it were done willingly it may be justly punished which according to his custome he prooves by an instance A man necessitated to steal by the strength of temptation yet if he steal willingly is justly put to death Here are two things and both of them untrue First he failes in his assertion Indeed we suffer justly for those necessities which we our selves have contracted by our own fault but not for extrinsecall antecedent necessities which were imposed upon us without our fault If that Law do not oblige to punishment which is not intimated because the subject is invincibly ignorant of it How much less that Law which prescribes absolute impossibilities unless perhaps invincible necessity be not as strong a plea as invincible ignorance That which he addes if it were done willingly though it be of great moment if it be rightly understood yet in his sense that is if a mans will be not in his own disposition and if his willing do not come upon him according to his will nor according to any thing els in his power it weighs not half so much as the least feather in all his horse-load For if that Law be unjust and tyrannicall which commands a man to do that which is impossible for him to do then that Law is likewise unjust and tyrannicall which commands him to will that which is impossible for him to will Secondly his instance supposeth an untruth and is a plain begging of the question No man is extrinsecally antecedently and irresistibly necessitated by temptation to steal The Devill may sollicite us but he cannot necessitate us He hath a faculty of perswading but not a power of compelling Nos ignem habemus spiritus flammam ciet as Nazianzen He blowes the coles but the fire is our own Mordet duntaxat sese in fauces illius objicientem as St. Austin he bites not untill we thrust our selves into his mouth He may propose he may suggest but he cannot moove the will effectively Resist the Devill and he will flie from you Jam. 4.7 By faith we are able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked Eph. 6.16 And if Sathan who can both propose the object and choose out the fittest times and places to worke upon our frailties and can suggest reasons yet cannot necessitate the will which is most certain then much less can outward objects do it alone They have no naturall efficacy to determine the will Well may they be occasions but they cannot be causes of evill The sensitive appetite may engender a proclivity to steal but not a necessity to steal And if it should produce a kind of necessity yet it is but Moral not Natural Hypothetical not Absolute Coexistent not Antecedent from our selves nor extrinsecall This necessity or rather proclivity was free in its causes we our selves by our own negligence in not opposing our passions when we should and might have freely given it a kind of dominion over us Admit that some sudden passions may and do extraordinarily surprise us And therefore we say motus primo primi the first motions are not always in our power neither are they free yet this is but very rarely and it is our own fault that they do surprise us Neither doth the Law punish the first motion to theft but the advised act of stealing The intention makes the thief But of this more largely numb 25. He pleades moreover that the Law is a cause of justice that it frames the wills of men to justice and that the punishment of one doth conduce to the preservation of many All this is most true of a just Law justly executed But this is no god-a-mercy to T. H. his opinion of absolute necessity If all actions and all events be predetermined Naturaly Necessarily Extrinsecally how should the Law frame men morally to good actions He leaves nothing for the Law to do but either that which is done already or that which is impossible to be done If a man be chained to every individual act which he doth and from every act which he doth not by indissolvible bonds of inevitable necessity how should the Law either deterre him or frame him If a dog be chained fast to a post the sight of a rod cannot draw him from it Make a thousand Lawes that the fire shall not burn yet it will burn And whatsoever men do according to T. H. they do it as necessarily as the fire burneth Hang up a thousand Theeves and if a man be determined inevitably to steal he must steal notwithstanding He addes that the sufferings imposed by the Law upon delinquents respect not the evill act past but the good to come and that the putting of a delinquent to death by the Magistrate for any crime whatsoever cannot be justified before God except there be a real intention to
benefit others by his example The truth is the punishing of delinquents by Law respecteth both the evill act past and the good to come The ground of it is the evill act past the scope or end of it is the good to come The end without the ground cannot justifie the act A bad intention may make a good action bad but a good intention cannot make a bad action good It is not lawfull to do evill that good may come of it nor to punish an innocent person for the admonition of others that is to fall into a certain crime for fear of an uncertain Again though there were no other end of penalties inflicted neither probatory nor castigatory nor exemplary but only vindicatory to satisfie the Law out of a zeal of Justice by giving to every one his own yet the action is just and warrantable Killing as it is considered in it self without all undue circumstances was never prohibited to the lawfull Magistrate who is the Vicegerent or Lieutenant of God from whom he derives his power of life and death T. H. hath one plea more As a drowning man catcheth at every Bulrush so he layes hold on every pretence to save a desperate cause But first it is worth our observation to see how oft he changeth shapes in this one particular First he told us that it was the irresistible power of God that justifies all his actions though he command one thing openly and plot another thing secretly though he be the cause not only of the action but also of the irregularity though he both give man power to act and determine this power to evill as well as good though he punish the Creatures for doing that which he himself did necessitate them to do But being pressed with reason that this is tyrannical first to necessitate a man to do his will and then to punish him for doing of it he leaves this pretence in the plain field and flies to a second That therefore a man is justly punished for that which he was necessitated to do because the act was voluntary on his part This hath more shew of reason than the former if he did make the will of man to be in his own disposition but maintaining that the will is irresistibly determined to will whatsoever it doth will the injustice and absurdity is the same First to necessitate a man to will and then to punish him for willing The dog onely bites the stone which is thrown at him with a strange hand but they make the first cause to punish the instrument for that which is his own proper act Wherefore not being satisfied with this he casts it off and flies to his third shift Men are not punished saith he therefore because their theft proceeded from election that is because it was willingly done for to Elect and Will saith he are both one Is not this to blow hot and cold with the same breath but because it was noxious and contrary to mens preservation Thus far he saith true that every creature by the instinct of nature seeks to preserve it self cast water into a dusty place and it contracts it self into little globes that is to preserve it self And those who are noxious in the eye of the Law are justly punished by them to whom the execution of the Law is committed but the Law accounts no persons noxious but those who are noxious by their own fault It punisheth not a thorn for pricking because it is the nature of the thorn and it can do no otherwise nor a child before it have the use of reason If one should take mine hand perforce and give another a box on the ear with it my hand is noxious but the Law punisheth the other who is faulty And therefore he hath reason to propose the question how it is just to kill one man to amend another if he who killed did nothing but what he was necessitated to do He might as well demand how it is lawfull to murther a company of innocent Infants to make a bath of their lukewarm blood for curing the Leprosy It had been a more rational way first to have demonstrated that it is so and then to have questioned why it is so His assertion it self is but a dream and the reason which he gives of it why it is so is a dream of a dream The sum of it is this That where there is no Law there no killing or any thing els can be unjust that before the constitution of Common-wealths every man had power to kill another if he conceived him to be hurtfull to him that at the constitution of Commonwealths particular men lay down this right in part and in part reserve it to themselves as in case of theft or murther That the right which the Commonwealth hath to put a malefactor to death is not created by the Law but remaineth from the first right of Nature which every man hath to preserve himself that the killing of men in this case is as the killing of beasts in order to our own preservavation This may well be called stringing of Paradoxes But first there never was any such time when mankind was without Governors and Lawes and Societies Paternall Government was in the world from the beginning and the Law of Nature There might be sometimes a root of such Barbarous Theevish Brigants in some rocks or desarts or odd corners of the world but it was an abuse and a degeneration from the nature of man who is a politicall creature This savage opinion reflects too much upon the honour of mankind Secondly there never was a time when it was lawfull ordinarily for private men to kill one another for their own preservation If God would have had men live like wild beasts as Lions Bears or Tygers he would have armed them with hornes or tusks or talons or pricks but of all creatures man is born most naked without any weapon to defend himself because God had provided a better means of security for him that is the Magistrate Thirdly that right which private men have to preserve themselves though it be with the killing of another when they are set upon to be murdered or robbed is not a remainder or a reserve of some greater power which they have resigned but a privilege which God hath given them in case of extreme danger and invincible necessity that when they cannot possibly have recourse to the ordinary remedy that is the Magistrate every man becomes a Magistrate to himself Fourthly nothing can give that which it never had The people whilest they were a dispersed rabble which in some odd cases might happen to be never had juftly the power of life and death and therefore they could not give it by their election All that they do is to prepare the matter but it is God Almighty that infuseth the soul of power Fiftly and lastly I am sorry to hear a man of reason and parts to compare the murthering of men with
Matth. 7.7 St. Paul tells the Corinthians 2 Cor. 1.11 that he was helped by their prayers that 's not all that the gift was bestowed upon him by their means So prayer is a means And St. James saith cap. 5.16 The effectuall fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much If it be effectuall then it is a cause To shew this efficacy of prayer our Saviour useth the comparison of a Father towards his Child of a Neighbour towards his Neighbour yea of an unjust Judge to shame those who think that God hath not more compassion than a wicked man This was signified by Jacobs wrestling and prevailing with God Prayer is like the Tradesmans tools wherewithall he gets his living for himself and his family But saith he Gods will is unchangeable What then He might as well use this against study Physick and all second causes as against Prayer He shewes even in this how little they attribute to the endeavours of men There is a great difference between these two mutare voluntatem to change the will which God never doth in whom there is not the least shadow of turning by change His will to love and hate was the same from eternity which it now is and ever shall be His love and hatred are immovable but we are removed Non tellus cymbam tellurem cymba reliquit And velle mutationem to will a change which God often doth To change the will argues a change in the Agent but to will a change only argues a change in the object It is no inconstancy in a man to love or to hate as the object is changed Praesta mihi omnia eadem idem sum Prayer works not upon God but us It renders not him more propitious in himself but us more capable of mercy He saith this That God doth not bless us except we pray is a motive to prayer Why talks he of motives who acknowledgeth no liberty nor admitts any cause but absolutely necessary He saith Prayer is the gift of God no less than the blessing which we pray for and conteined in the same decree with the blessing It is true the spirit of prayer is the gift of God will he conclude from thence that the good imployment of one talent or of one gift of God may not procure another Our Saviour teacheth us otherwise Come thou good and faithfull servant thou hast been faithfull in little I will make thee ruler over much Too much light is an enemy to the light and too much Law is an enemy to Justice I could wish we wrangled less about Gods Decrees untill we understood them better But saith he Thanksgiving is no cause of the blessing past and prayer is but a thanksgiving He might even as well tell me that when a beggar craves an almes and when he gives thanks for it it is all one Every thanksgiving is a kind of prayer but every prayer and namely Petition is not a thanks-giving In the last place he urgeth that in our prayers we are bound to submit our wills to Gods Will who ever made any doubt of this we must submit to the Preceptive will of God or his Commandments we must submit to the effective Will of God when he declares his good pleasure by the event or otherwise But we deny and deny again either that God wills things ad extra without himself necessarily or that it is his pleasure that all second causes should act necessarily at all times which is the question and that which he allegeth to the contrary comes not neer it Numb 16. J. D. argument 4 FOurthly the order beauty and perfection of the world doth require that in the Universe should be Agents of all sorts some necessary somefree some contingent He that shall make either all things necessary guided by destiny or all things free governed by election or all things contingent happening by chance doth overthrow the beauty and the perfection of the world T. H. THE fourth Argument from reason is this The Order Beauty and Perfection of the world requireth that in the Vniverse should be Agents of all sorts some necessary some free some contingent He that shall make all things necessary or all things free or all things contingent doth overthrow the beauty and perfection of the world In which Argument I observe first a contradiction For seeing he that maketh any thing in that he maketh it he maketh it to be necessary it followeth that he that maketh all things maketh all things necessary to be As if a workman make a garment the garment must necessarily be So if God make every thing every thing must necessarily be Perhaps the beauty of the world requireth though we know it not that some Agents should work without deliberation which he calls necessary Agents And some Agents with deliberation and those both he and I call free Agents And that some Agents should work and we not know how And them effects we both call contingent But this hinders not but that he that electeth may have his election necessarily determined to one by former causes And that which is contingent and imputed to Fortune be nevertheless necessary and depend on precedent necessary causes For by contingent men do not mean that which hath no cause but which hath not for cause any thing which we perceive As for example when a Travailer meets with a shower the journey had a cause and the rain had a cause sufficient enough to produce it but because the journey caused not the rain nor the rain the journey we say they were contingent one to another And thus you see though there be three sorts of events Necessary Contingent and Free yet they may be all necessary without the destruction of the beauty or perfection of the Univers J. D. THE first thing he observes in mine Argument is contradiction as he calls it but in truth it is but a deception of the sight As one candle sometimes seems to be two or a rod in the water shewes to be two rods Quicquid recipitur recipitur ad modum recipient is But what is this contradiction Because I say he who maketh all things doth not make them necessary What a contradiction and but one proposition That were strange I say God hath not made all Agents necessary he saith God hath made all Agents necessary Here is a contradiction indeed but it is between him and me not between me and my self But yet though it be not a formall contradiction yet perhaps it may imply a contradiction in adjecto Wherefore to clear the matter and dispell the mist which he hath raised It is true that every thing when it is made it is necessary that it be made so as it is that is by a necessity of infallibility or supposition supposing that it be so made but this is not that absolute antecedent necessity whereof the question is between him and me As to use his own instance Before the Garment be made the Tailor is
cause if any one cause much more the first in the whole series or subordination of causes be necessary it determines the rest and without doubt makes the effect necessary Necessity or Liberty is not to be esteemed from one cause but from all the causes joyned together If one link in a chain be fast it fastens all the rest Secondly I would have them tell me whether the second causes be predetermined by the first cause or not If it be determined then the effect is necessary even in respect of the second causes If the second cause be not determined how is the effect determined the second cause remaining undetermined Nothing can give that to another which it hath not it self But say they nevertheless the power or faculty remaineth free True but not in order to the act if it be once determined It is free in sensu diviso but not in sensu composito when a man holds a bird fast in his hand is she therefore free to flie where she will because she hath wings Or a man imprisoned or fettered is he therefore free to walk where he will because he hath feet and a low motive faculty Judge without prejudice what a miserable subterfuge is this which many men confide so much in T. H. Certain distinctions which he supposing may be brought to his arguments are by him remooved HE saith a man may perhaps answer that the necessity of things held by him is not a Stoicall necessity but a Christian necessity c. but this distinction I have not used nor indeed have ever heard before Nor do I think any man could make Stoical and Christian two kinds of necessities though they may be two kinds of doctrin Nor have I drawn my answer to his arguments from the authority of any Sect but from the nature of the things themselves But here I must take notice of certain words of his in this place as making against his own Tenet where all the causes saith he being joyned together and subordinate one to another do make but one totall cause If any one cause much more the first in the whole series of subordination of causes be necessary it determines the rest and without doubt maketh the effect necessary For that which I call the necessary cause of any effect is the joyning together of all causes subordinate to the first into one totall cause If any one of those saith he especially the first produce its effect necessarily then all the rest are determined and the effect also necessary Now it is manifest that the first cause is a necessary cause of all the effects that are next and immediat to it and therefore by his own reason all effects are necessary Nor is that distinction of necessary in respect of the first cause and necessary in respect of second causes mine It does as he well noteth imply a contradiction J. D. BEcause T. H. disavowes these two distinctions I have joyned them together in one paragraph He likes not the distinction of necessity or destiny into Stoicall and Christian no more do I. We agree in the conclusion but our motives are diverse My reason is because I acknowledge no such necessity either as the one or as the other and because I conceive that those Christian writers who do justly detest the naked destiny of the Stoicks as fearing to fall into those gross absurdities and pernicious consequences which flow from thence do yet privily though perhaps unwittingly under another form of expression introduce it again at the back-dore after they had openly cast it out at the fore-dore But T. H. rusheth boldly without distinctions which he accounts but Jargon and without foresight upon the grossest destiny of all others that is that of the Stoicks He confesseth that they may be two kinds of doctrine May be Nay they are without all peradventure And he himself is the first who beares the name of a Christian that I have read that hath raised this sleeping Ghost out of its grave and set it out in its true colours But yet he likes not the names of Stoicall and Christian destiny I do not blame him though he would not willingly be accounted a Stoick To admit the thing and quarrell about the name is to make our selves ridiculous Why might not I first call that kind of destiny which is maintained by Christians Christian destiny and that other maintained by Stoicks Stoicall destiny But I am not the inventer of the tearme If he had been as carefull in reading other mens opinions as he is confident in setting down his own he might have found not only the thing but the name it self often used But if the name of fatum Christianum do offend him Let him call it with Lipsius fatum verum who divides destiny into four kinds 1. Mathematicall or Astrologicall destiny 2. Naturall destiny 3. Stoicall or violent destiny and 4. true destiny which he calls ordinarily nostrum our destiny that is of Christians and fatum pium that is godly destiny and defines it just as T. H. doth his destiny to be a series or order of causes depending upon the divine Counsail de const l. 1. cap. 17.18 19. Though he be more cautelous than T. H. to decline those rocks which some others have made shipwrack upon Yet the Divines thought he came too neer them as appeares by his Epistle to the Reader in a later Edition And by that note in the margent of his twentieth Chapter Whatsoever I dispute here I submit to the judgment of the wise and being admonished I will convert it One may convince me of error but not of obstinacy So fearfull was he to overshoot himself and yet he maintained both true liberty and true contingency T. H. saith he hath not sucked his answer from any Sect And I say so much the worse It is better to be the disciple of an old Sect than the ringleader of a new Concerning the other destinction of liberty in respect of the first cause and liberty in respect of the second causes though he will not see that which it concerned him to answer like those old Damiae which could put out their eyes when they list As namely that the faculty of willing when it is determined in order to the act which is all the freedom that he acknowledgeth is but like the freedom of a bird when she is first in a mans hand c. Yet he hath espied another thing wherein I contradict my self because I affirm that if any one cause in the whole series of causes much more the first cause be necessary it determineth the rest But saith he it is manifest that the first cause is a necessary cause of all the effects that are next I am glad yet it is not I who contradict my self but it is one of his manifest truths which I contradict That the first cause is a necessary cause of all effects which I say is a manifest falshood Those things which God wills
how can he be understood to have a liberty to eat flesh more than he that hath no license at all You may by this again see the vanity of distinctions used in the Schooles And I do not doubt but that the imposing of them by authority of Doctours in the Church hath been a great cause that men have laboured though by sedition and evill courses to shake them off for nothing is more apt to beget hatred than the tyrannising over mans reason and understanding especially when it is done not by the Scripture but by pretense of learning and more judgment than that of other men J. D. HE who will speak with some of our great undertakers about the grounds of learning had need either to speak by an Interpreter or to learn a new Language I dare not call it Jargon or Canting lately devised not to set forth the truth but to conceal falshood He must learn a new Liberty a new Necessity a new Contingency a new Sufficiency a new Spontaneity a new kind of Deliberation a new kind of Election a new Eternity a new Compulsion and in conclusion a new Nothing This proposition the will is free may be understood in two senses Either that the will is not compelled or that the will is not alwayes necessitated for if it be ordinarily or at any time free from necessitation my assertion is true that there is freedom from necessity The former sense that the will is not compelled is acknowledged by all the world as a truth undeniable Voluntas non cogitur For if the will may be compelled then it may both will and not will the same thing at the same time under the same notion but this implies a contradiction Yet this Author like the good woman whom her husband sought up the stream when she was drowned upon pretense that when she was living she used to go contrary courses to all other people he holds that true compulsion and fear may make a man will that which he doth not will that is in his sense may compell the will As when a man willingly throwes his goods into the Sea to save himself or submits to his enemy for fear of being killed I answer that T. H. mistakes sundry wayes in this discourse First he erreth in this to think that actions proceeding from fear are properly compulsory actions which in truth are not only voluntary but free actions neither compelled nor so much as Physically necessitated Another man at the same time in the same Ship in the same storm may choose and the same individuall man otherwise advised might choose not to throw his goods overboard It is the man himself who chooseth freely this means to preserve his life It is true that if he were not in such a condition or if he were freed from the grounds of his present fears he would not choose neither the casting of his goods into the Sea nor the submitting to his enemy But considering the present exigence of his affaires reason dictates to him that of two inconveniences the less is to be chosen as a comparative good Neither doth he will this course as the end or direct object of his desires but as the means to attaine his end And what Fear doth in these cases Love Hope Hatred c. may do in other cases that is may occasion a man to elect those means to obtain his willed end which otherwise he would not elect As Jacob to serve seven years more rather than not to enjoy his beloved Rachel The Merchant to hazard himself upon the rough Seas in hope of profit Passions may be so violent that they may necessitate the will that is when they prevent deliberations but this is rarely and then the will is not free But they never properly compell it That which is compelled is against the will and that which is against the will is not willed Secondly T. H. erres in this also where he saith that a man is then onely said to be compelled when fear makes him willing to an action As if force were not more prevalent with a man then fear we must know therefore that this word compelled is taken two wayes sometimes improperly that is when a man is mooved or occasioned by threats or fear or any passion to do that which he would not have done if that threats or that passion had not been Sometimes it is taken properly when we do any thing against our own inclination mooved by an externall cause the will not consenting nor concurring but resisting as much as it can As in a Rape or when a Christian is drawn or carried by violence to the Idolls Temple Or as in the case of St. Peter John 21.18 Another shall guide thee and carry thee whither thou wouldst not This is that compulsion which is understood when we say the will may be letted or changed or necessitated or that the imperate actions of the will that is the actions of the inferiour faculties which are ordinarily moved by the will may be compelled but that the immanent actions of the will that is to will to choose cannot be compelled because it is the nature of an action properly compelled to be done by an extrinsecall cause without the concurrence of the will Thirdly the question is not whether all the actions of a man be free but whether they be ordinarily free Suppose some passions are so suddaine and violent that they surprise a man and betray the succours of the soul and prevent deliberation as we see in some motus primo primi or antipathies how some men will run upon the most dangerous objects upon the first view of a loathed creature without any power to contain themselves Such actions as these as they are not ordinary so they are not free because there is no deliberation nor election But where deliberation and election are as when a man throwes his goods over-board to save the Ship or submitts to his enemy to save his life there is alwayes true liberty Though T. H. slight the two reasons which I produce in favour of his cause yet they who urged them deserved not to be slighted unless it were because they were School-men The former reason is thus framed A necessity of supposition may consist with true liberty but that necessity which flowes from the naturall and extrinsecall determination of the will is a necessity of supposition To this my answer is in effect That a necessity of supposition is of two kinds sometimes the thing supposed is in the power of the Agent to do or not to do As for a Romish Priest to vow continence upon supposition that he be a Romish Priest is necessary but because it was in his power to be a Priest or not to be a Priest therefore his vow is a free act So supposing a man to have taken Physick it is necessary that he keep at home yet because it was in his power to take a Medicine or not to take it therefore
for help and did what he could to defend himself but all would not serve The servant is innocent if he was to be tried before a Court of Areopagites Or suppose the Ruffians did not take it from him by force but drew their swords and threatned to kill him except he delivered it himself no wise man will conceive that it was either the Masters intention or the servants duty to hazard his life or his limbes for saving of such a trifling sum But on the other side suppose this servant passing by some Cabaret or Tennis-court where his Camerads were drinking or playing should stay with them and drink or play away his mony and afterwards plead as T. H. doth here that he was overcome by the meer strength of temptation I trow neither T. H. nor any man els would admit of this excuse but punish him for it because neither was he necessitated by the temptation and what strength it had was by his own fault in respect of that vitious habit which he had contracted of drinking or gaming Jam. 1 14. Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and entised Disordered passions of anger hatred lust if they be consequent as the case is here put by T. H. and flow from deliberation and election they do not only not diminish the fault but they aggravate it and render it much greater He talks much of the motives to do and the motives to forbear how they work upon and determine a man as if a reasonable man were no more than a Tennis-ball to be tossed to and fro by the Racketts of the second causes As if the will had no power to moove it self but were meerly passive like an artificiall Popingay remooved hither and thither by the bolts of the Archers who shoot on this side and on that What are motives but reasons or discourses framed by the understanding and freely mooved by the will What are the will and the understanding but faculties of the same soul and what is liberty but a power resulting from them both To say that the will is determined by these motives is as much as to say that the Agent is determined by himself If there be no necessitation before the judgment of right reason doth dictate to the will then there is no antecedent no extrinsecall necessitation at all All the world knowes that when the Agent is determined by himself then the effect is determined likewise in its cause But if he determined himself freely then the effect is free Motives determine not naturally but morally which kind of determination may consist with true liberty But if T. H. his opinion were true that the will were naturally determined by the Physicall and speciall influence of extrinsecall causes not onely motives were vain but reason it self and deliberation were vain No saith he they are not vain because they are the means Yes if the means be superfluous they are vain what needed such a circuit of deliberation to advise what is fit to be done when it is already determined extrinsecally what must be done He saith that the ignorance of the true causes and their power is the reason why we ascribe the effect to liberty but when we seriously consider the causes of things we acknowledge a necessity No such thing but just the contrary The more we consider and the cleerer we understand the greater is the liberty and the more the knowledge of our own liberty The less we consider and the more incapable that the understanding is the lesser is the liberty and the knowledge of it And where there is no consideration nor use of reason there is no liberty at all there is neither morall good nor evill Some men by reason that their exteriour senses are not totally bound have a trick to walk in their sleep Suppose such an one in that case should cast himself down a pair of staires or from a bridge and break his neck or drown himself it were a mad Jury that would find this man accessary to his own death Why because it was not freely done he had not then the use of reason Lastly he tells us that the will doth choose of necessity as well as the fire burnes of necessity If he intend no more but this that election is the proper and naturall act of the will as burning is of the fire or that the elective power is as necessarily in a man as visibility he speaks truly but most impertinently For the question is not now of the elective power in actu primo whether it be an essentiall faculty of the soul but whether the act of electing this or that particular object be free undetermined by any antecedent and extrinsecall causes But if he intend it in this other sense that as the fire hath no power to suspend its burning nor to distinguish between those combustible matters which are put unto it but burnes that which is put unto it necessarily if it be combustible So the will hath no power to refuse that which it wills nor to suspend its own appetite He erres grossely The will hath power either to will or nill or to suspend that is neither to will nor nill the same object Yet even the burning of the fire if it be considered as it is invested with all particular circumstances is not otherwise so necessary an action as T. H. imagineth Two things are required to make an effect necessary First that it be produced by a necessary cause such as fire is Secondly that it be necessarily produced Protagoras an Atheist began his Book thus Concerning the gods I have nothing to say whether they be or they be not for which his Book was condemned by the Athenians to be burned The fire was a necessary agent but the sentence or the application of the fire to the Book was a free act and therefore the burning of his Book was free Much more the rationall will is free which is both a voluntary agent and acts voluntarily My second reason against this distinction of Liberty from Compulsion but not from necessitation is new and demonstrates cleerly that to necessitate the will by a Physicall necessity is to compell the will so far as the will is capable of Compulsion and that he who doth necessitate the will to evill after that manner is the true cause of evill and ought rather to be blamed than the will it self But T. H. for all he saith he is not surprised can be contented upon better advise to steal by all this in silence And to hide this tergiversation from the eyes of the Reader he makes an empty shew of braving against that famous and most necessary distinction between the elicite and imperate acts of the will first because the termes are improper secondly because they are obscure What Triviall and Grammaticall objections are these to be used against the universall currant of Divines and Philosophers Verborum ut nummorum It is in words as
not truly empty and that the aire is a true body I might give an hundred such like instances He who leaves the conduct of his understanding to follow vulgar notions shall plunge himself into a thousand errours like him who leaves a certaine guide to follow an ignis fatuus or a Will with the wispe So his proposition is false His reason That matter of fact is not verified by other mens Arguments but by every mans own sense and memory is likewise maimed on both sides whether we hear such words or not is matter of fact and sense is the proper judge of it But what these words do or ought truely to signifie is not to be judged by sense but by reason Secondly reason may and doth oftentimes correct sense even about its proper object Sense tells us that the Sun is no bigger than a good Ball but reason demonstrates that it is many times greater than the whole Globe of the earth As to his instance How can it be proved that to love a thing and to think it good is all one to a man that doth not make his own meaning by these words I confess it cannot be proved for it is not true Beauty and likeness and love do conciliate love as much as goodness cos amoris amor Love is a passion of the will but to judge of goodness is an act of the understanding A Father may love an ungracious Childe and yet not esteem him good A man loves his own house better than another mans yet he cannot but esteem many others better than his own His other instance How can it be proved that eternity is not nunc stans to a man that sayes these words by custom and never considers how he can conceive the thing it self in his minde is just like the former not to be proved by reason but by fancie which is the way he takes And it is not unlike the counsel which one gave to a Novice about the choise of his wise to advice with the Bels as he fancied so they founded either take her or leave her Then for his assumption it is as defective as his proposition That by these words spontaneity c. men do understand as he conceives No rational man doth conceive a spontaneous action and an indeliberate action to be all one every indeliberate action is not spontaneous The fire considers not whether it should burn yet the burning of it is not spontaneous Neither is every spontaneous action indeliberate a man may deliberate what he will eat and yet eat it spontaneously Neither doth deliberation properly signifie the considering of the good and evil sequels of an action to come But the considering whether this be a good and fit means or the best and fittest means for obtaining such an end The Physician doth not deliberate whether he should cure his Patient but by what means he should cure him Deliberation is of the means not of the end Much less doth any man conceive with T. H. that deliberation is an imagination or an act of fancy not of reason common to men of discretion with mad men and natural fools and children and bruit beasts Thirdly neither doth any understanding man conceive or can conceive either that the will is an act of our deliberation the understanding and the will are two distinct faculties or that onely the last appetite is to be called our will So no man should be able to say this is my will because he knows not whether he shall persevere in it or not Concerning the fourth point we agree that he is a free Agent that can do if he will and forbear if he will But I wonder how this dropped from his pen what is now become of his absolute necessity of all things If a man be free to do and to forbear any thing will he make himself guilty of the non-sence of the School-men and run with them into contradictions for company It may be he will say he can do if he will and forbear if he will but he cannot will if he will This will not serve his turn for if the cause of a free action that is the will to be determined then the effect or the action it self is likewise determined a determined cause cannot produce an undetermined effect either the Agent can will and forbear to will or else he cannot do and forbear to do But we differ wholy about the fifth point He who conceives liberty aright conceives both a liberty in the subject to will or not to will and a liberty to the object to will this or that and a liberty from impediments T. H. by a new way of his own cuts off the liberty of the subject as if a stone was free to ascend or descend because it hath no outward impediment And the liberty towards the object as if the Needle touched with the Load-stone were free to point either towards the North or towards the South because there is not a Barrecado in its way to hinder it yea he cuts off the liberty from inward impediments also As if an Hawk were at liberty to fly when her wings are plucked but not when they are tied And so he makes liberty from extrinsecal impediments to be compleat liberty so he ascribes liberty to bruit beasts and liberty to Rivers and by consequence makes Beasts and Rivers to be capeable of sin and punishment Assuredly Xerxes who caused the Hellespont to be beaten with so many stripes was of this opinion Lastly T. H. his reason that it is custom or want of ability or negligence which makes a man conceive otherwise is but a begging of that which he should prove Other men consider as seriously as himself with as much judgement as himself with less prejudice than himself and yet they can apprehend no such sense of these words would he have other men feign that they see fiery Dragons in the Air because he affirms confidently that he sees them and wonders why others are so blinde as not to see them The reason for the sixth point is like the former a phantastical or imaginative reason How can a man imagine any thing to begin without a cause or if it should begin without a cause why it should begin at this time rather than at that time He saith truely nothing can begin without a cause that is to be but it may begin to act of it self without any other cause Nothing can begin without a cause but many things may begin and do begin without necessary causes A free cause may as wel choose his time when he will begin as a necessary cause be determined extrinsically when it must begin And although free effects cannot be foretold because they are not certainly predetermined in their causes yet when the free causes do determine themselves they are of as great certainty as the other As when I see a Bell ringing I can conceive the cause of it as well why it rings now as I know the
interposition of the earth to be the cause of the Eclipse of the Moon Or the most certain occurrent in the nature of things And now that I have answered T. H. his Arguments drawn from the private conceptions of men concerning the sense of words I desire him seriously without prejudice to examine himself and those natural notions which he findes in himself not of words but of things these are from nature those are by imposition whether he doth not finde by experience that he doth many things which he might have left undone if he would and omits many things which he might have done if he would whether he doth not somethings out of meer animosity and will without either regard to the direction of right reason or serious respect of what is honest or profitable onely to shew that he will have a dominion over his own actions as we see ordinarily in Children and wise men finde at some times in themselves by experience And I apprehend this very defence of necessity against liberty to be partly of that kinde Whether he is not angry with those who draw him from his study or cross him in his desires if they be necessitated to do it why should he be angry with them any more than he is angry with a sharp winter or a rainy day that keeps him at home against his antecedent will whether he doth not sometime blame himself and say O what a fool was I to do thus and thus or wish to himself O that I had been wise or O that I had not done such an act If he have no dominion over his actions if he be irresistibly necessitated to all things what he doth he might as well wish O that I had not breathed or blame himself for growing old O what a fool was I to grow old Numb 34. T. H. FOr the seventh point that all events have necessary causes it is there proved in that they have sufficient causes Further Let us in this place also suppose any event never so casuall as for example the throwing Ambs-ace upon a paire of Dice and see if it must not have been necessary before it was thrown for seeing it was thrown it had a beginning and consequently a sufficient cause to produce it consisting partly in the Dice partly in the outward things as the posture of the parties hand the measure of force applied by the caster The posture of the parts of the Table and the like In summe there was nothing wanting that was necessarily requisite to the producing of that particular cast and consequently that cast was necessarily thrown For if it had not been thrown there had wanted somewhat requisite to the throwing of it and so the cause had not been sufficient In the like manner it may be proved that every other accident how contingent soever it seeme or how voluntary soever it be is produced necessarily which is that J. D. disputes against The same also may be proved in this manner Let the case be put for example of the weather T is necessary that to morrow it shall rain or not rain If therefore it be not necessary it shall rain it is necessary it shall not rain Otherwise it is not necessary that the proposition It shall rain or it shall not rain should be true I know there are some that say it may necessarily be true that one of the two shall come to pass but not singly that it shall rain or it shall not rain Which is as much as to say One of them is necessary yet neither of them is necessary And therefore to seeme to avoid that absurdity they make a distinction that neither of them is true determinatè but indeterminatè Which distinction either signifies no more than this One of them is true but we know not which and so the necessity remains though we know it not Or if the meaning of the distinction be not that it has no meaning And they might as well have said One of them is true Tytyrice but neither of them Tupatulice J. D. HIs former proof that all sufficient causes are necessary causes is answered before Numb 31. And his two instances of casting Ambs-ace raining to morrow are altogether impertinent to the question now agitated between us for two reasons First our present controversie is concerning free actions which proceed from the liberty of mans will both his instances are of contingent actions which proceed from the indetermination or contingent concurrence of natural causes First that there are free actions which proceed meerly from election without any outward necessitation is a truth so evident as that there is a Sun in the Heavens and he that doubteth of it may as well doubt whether there be a shell without the Nut or a stone within the Olive A man proportions his time each day and allots so much to his Devotions so much to his Study so much to his Diet so much to his Recreations so much to necessary or civil visits so much to his rest he who will seek for I know not what causes of all this without himself except that good God who hath given him a reasonable Soul may as well seek for a cause of the Egyptian Pyramides among the Crocodiles of Nilus Secondly for mixt actions which proceed from the concurrence of free and natural Agents though they be not free yet they are not necessary as to keep my former instance a man walking through a street of a Citie to do his occasions a Tile falls from an House and breaks his head the breaking of his head was not necessary for he did freely choose to go that way without any necessitation neither was it free for he did not deliberate of that accident therefore it was contingent and by undoubted consequence there are contingent actions in the World which are not free Most certainly by the concurrence of free causes as God the good and bad Angels and men with natural Agents sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident many events happen which otherwise had never hapned many effects are produced which otherwise had never been produced And admitting such things to be contingent not necessary all their consequent effects not onely immediate but mediate must likewise be contingent that is to say such as do not proceed from a continued connexion and succession of necessary causes which is directly contrary to T. H. his opinion Thirdly for the actions of bruit beasts though they be not free though they have not the use of reason to restrain their appetites from that which is sensitively good by the consideration of what is rationaly good or what is honest and though their fancies be determined by nature to some kindes of work yet to think that every individual action of theirs and each animal motion of theirs even to the least murmure or gesture is bound by the chain of unalterable necessity to the extrinsecal causes or objects I see no ground for it Christ saith one
of these Sparrows doth not fall to the ground without your Heavenly Father that is without an influence of power from him or exempted frō his disposition he doth not say which your heavenly Father casteth not down Lastly for the natural actions of inanimate Creatures wherein there is not the least concurrence of any free or voluntary Agents the questiō is yet more doubtfull for many things are called cōtingent in respect of us because we know not the cause of them which really in themselves are not contingent but necessary Also many things are contingent in respect of one single cause either actually hindred or in possibility to be hindred which are necessary in respect of the joynt concurrence of all collateral causes But whether there be a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning so as they must all have concurred as they have done in the same degree of power have been deficient as they have beē in all events whatsoever would require a further examination if it were pertinent to this question of liberty but it is not It is sufficient to my purpose to have shewed that all elective actions are free from absolute necessity And moreover that the concurrence of voluntary and free Agents with natural causes both upon purpose and accidentally hath helped them to produce many effects which otherwise they had not produced and hindred them from producing many effects which otherwise they had produced And that if this inintervention of voluntary and free Agents had been more frequent than it hath been as without doubt it might have been many natural events had been otherwise than they are And therefore he might have spared his instances of casting Ambs-ace and raining to morrow And first for his casting Ambs-ace If it be thrown by a fair Gamester with indifferent Dice it is a mixt action the casting of the Dice is free but the casting of Ambs-ace is contingent a man may deliberate whether he will cast the Dice or not but it were folly to deliberate whether he will cast Ambs-ace or not because it is not in his power unless he be a cheater that can cogge the Dice or the Dice be false Dice then the contingency or the degree of contingency ceaseth accordingly as the Caster hath more or less cunning or as the figure or making of the Dice doth incline them to Ambs-ace more than to another cast or necessitate them to this cast and no other Howsoever so far as the cast is free or contingent so far it is not necessary And where necessity begins there liberty and contingency do cease to be Likewise his other instance of raining or not raining to morrow is not of a free elective act nor alwayes of a contingent act In some Countries as they have their nati venti their certain winds at set seasons so they have their certain and set rains The Aethiopian rains are supposed to be the cause of the certain inundation of Nilus In some eastern Countries they have rain onely twice a year and those constant which the Scriptures call the former and the later rain In such places not onely the causes do act determinately and necessarily but also the determination or necessity of the event is foreknown to the inhabitants In our Climate the natural causes coelestial and sublunary do not produce rain so necessarily at set times neither can we say so certainly and infallibly it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow Neverthelesse it may so happen that the causes are so disposed and determined even in our climate that this proposition it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow may be necessary in it self and the Prognosticks or tokens may be such in the sky in our own bodies in the creatures animate and inanimate as weather-glasses c. that it may become probably true to us that it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow But ordinarily it is a contingent proposition to us whether it be contingent also in it self that is whether the concurrence of the causes were absolutely necessary whether the vapours or matter of the rain may not yet be dispersed or otherwise consumed or driven beyond our coast is a speculation which no way concerns this question So we see one reason why his two instances are altogether impertinent because they are of actions which are not free nor elective nor such as proceed from the liberty of mans will Secondly our dispute is about absolute necessity his proofs extend onely to Hypothetical necessity Our question is whether the concurrence and determination of the causes were necessary before they did concur or were determined He proves that the effect is necessary after the causes have concurred and are determined The freest actions of God or man are necessary by such a necessity of supposition And the most contingent events that are as I have shewed plainly Numb 3. where his instance of Ambs-ace is more fully answered So his proof looks another way from his proposition His proposition is that the casting of Ambs-ace was necessary before it was thrown His proof is that it was necessary when it was thrown examine all his causes over and over and they will not afford him one grain of antecedent necessity The first cause is in the Dice True if they be false Dice there may be something in it but then his contingency is destroyed If they be square Dice they have no more inclination to Ambs-ace than to Cinque and Quater or any other cast His second cause is the posture of the parties hand But what necessity was there that he should put his hand into such a posture None at all The third cause is the measure of the force applied by the caster Now for the credit of his cause let him but name I will not say a convincing reason nor so much as a probable reason but even any pretence of reason how the Caster was necessitated from without himself to apply just so much force and neither more or lesse If he cannot his cause is desperate and he may hold his peace for ever his last cause is the posture of the Table But tell us in good earnest what necessity there was why the Caster must throw into that Table rather than the other or that the Dice must fall just upon that part of the Table before the cast was thrown He that makes these to be necessary causes I do not wonder if he make all effects necessary effects If any one of these causes be contingent it is sufficient to render the cast contingent and now that they are all so contingent yet he will needs have the effect to be necessary And so it is when the cast is thrown but not before the cast was thrown which he undertook to prove who can blame him for being so angry with the School-men and their distinctions of necessity into absolute and hypothetical seeing they touch
his freehold so nearly But though his instance of raining to morrow be impertinent as being no free action yet because he triumphs so much in his argument I will not stick to go a little out of my way to meet a friend For I confess the validity of the reason had been the same if he had made it of a free action as thus Either I shall finish this reply to morrow or I shall not finish this reply to morrow is a necessary proposition But because he shall not complain of any disadvantage in the alteration of his terms I will for once adventure upon his shower of rain And first I readily admit his major that this proposition either it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow is necessarily true for of two contradictory propositions the one must of necessity be true because no third can be given But his minor that it could not be necessarily true except one of the Members were necessarily true is most false And so is his proof likewise That if neither the one nor the other of the Members be necessarily true it cannot be affirmed that either the one or the other is true A conjunct proposition may have both parts false and yet the proposition be true as if the Sun shine it is day is a true proposition at midnight And T. H. confesseth as much Numb 19. If I shall live I shall eat is a necessary proposition that is to say it is necessary that that proposition should be true whensoever uttered But it is not the necessity of the thing nor is it therefore necessary that the man shall live or that the man shall eat And so T. H. proceeds I do not use to fortifie my distinctions with such reasons But it seemeth he hath forgotten himself and is contented with such poor fortifications And though both parts of a disjunctive proposition cannot be false because if it be a right disjunction the Members are repugnant whereof one part is infallibly true yet vary put the proposition a little to abate the edge of the disjunctions and you shall finde that which T. H. saith to be true that it is not the necessity of the thing which makes the proposition to be true As for example vary it thus I know that either it will rain to morrow or that it will not rain to morrow is a true proposition But it is not true that I know it will rain to morrow neither is it true that I know it will not rain to morrow wherefore the certain truth of the proposition doth not prove that either of the Members is determinately true in present Truth is a conformity of the understanding to the thing known whereof speech is an interpreter If the understanding agree not with the thing it is an errour if the words agree not with the understanding it is a lie Now the thing known is known either in it self or in its causes If it be known in it self as it is then we expresse our apprehension of it in words of the present tence as the Sun is risen If it be known in its cause we expresse our selves in words of the future tense as to morrow will be an Eclipse of the Moon But if we neither know it in its self nor in its causes then there may be a foundation of truth but there is no such determinate truth of it that we can reduce it into a true proposition we cannot say it doth rain to morrow or it doth not rain to morrow That were not onely false but absurd we cannot positively say it will rain to morrow because we do not know it in its causes either how they are determined or that they are determined wherefore the certitude and evidence of the disjunctive proposition is neither founded upon that which will be actually to morrow for it is granted that we do not know that Nor yet upon the determination of the causes for then we would not say indifferently either it will rain or it will not rain but positively it will rain or positively it will not rain But it is grounded upon an undeniable principle that of two contradictory propositions the one must necessarily be true And therefore to say either this or that will infallibly be but it is not yet determined whether this or that shall be is no such senselesse assertion that it deserved a Tytyrice Tupatulice but an evident truth which no man that hath his eyes in his head can doubt of If all this will not satisfie him I will give one of his own kinde of proofs that is an instance That which necessitates all things according to T. H. is the decree of God or that order which is set to all things by the eternal cause Numb 11. Now God himself who made this necessitating decree was not subjected to it in the making thereof neither was there any former order to oblige the first cause necessarily to make such a decree therefore this decree being an act ad extra was freely made by God without any necessitation Yet nevertheless this disjunctive proposition is necessarily true Either God did make such a decree or he did not make such a decree Again though T. H. his opinion were true that all events are necessary and that the whole Christian world are deceived who believe that some events are free from necessity yet he will not deny but if it had been the good pleasure of God he might have made some causes free from necessity seeing that it neither argues any imperfection nor implies any contradiction Supposing therefore that God had made some second causes free from any such antecedent determination to one yet the former disjunction would be necessarily true Either this free undetermined cause will act after this manner or it will not act after this manner Wherefore the necessary truth of such a disjunctive proposition doth not prove that either of the members of the disjunction singly considered is determinately true in present but onely that the one of them will be determinately true to morrow T. H. THe last thing in which also consisteth the whole controversy Namely that there is no such thing as an Agent which when all things requisite to action are present can nevertheless forbeare to produce it or which is all one that there is no such thing as freedom from necessity is easily inferd from that which hath been before alledged For if it be an Agent it can work And if it work there is nothing wanting of what is requisite to produce the action and consequently the cause of the action is sufficients And if sufficient then also necessary as hath been proved before J. D. I Wonder that T. H. should confess that the whole weight of this controversy doth rest upon this proposition That there is no such thing as an Agent which when all things requisite to action are present can nevertheless forbear to act And yet bring nothing but such poor Bull-rushes
to support it If it be an Agent saith he it can work what of this A posse ad esse non valet argumentum from can work to will work is a weak inference And from will work to doth work upon absolute necessity is another gross inconsequence He proceeds thus If it work there is nothing wanting of what is requisite to produce the action True there wants nothing to produce that which is produced but there may want much to produce that which was intended One horse may pull his heart out and yet not draw the Coach whither it should be if he want the help or concurrence of his fellowes And consequently saith he the cause of the action is sufficient Yes sufficient to do what it doth though perhaps with much prejudice to it self but not alwayes sufficient to do what it should do or what it would do As he that begets a Monster should beget a man and would beget a man if he could The last link of his argument follows And if sufficient then also necessary stay there by his leave there is no necessary connexion between sufficiency and efficiency otherwise God himself should not be All-sufficient Thus his Argument is vanished But I will deal more favourably with him and grant him all that which he labours so much in vain to prove That every effect in the world hath sufficient causes Yea more that supposing the determination of the free and contingent causes every effect in the world is necessary But all this will not advantage his cause the black of a bean for still it amounts but to an hypotheticall necessity and differs as much from that absolute necessity which he maintains as a Gentleman who travailes for his pleasure differs from a banished man or a free Subject from a slave Numb 36. T. H. AND thus you see how the inconveniences which he objecteth must follow upon the holding of necessity are avoided and the necessity it self demonstratively prooved To which I could add if I thought it good Logick the inconveniency of denying necessity as that it distroyes both the Decrees and Prescience of God Almighty for whatsoever God hath purposed to bring to pass by man as an instrument or foreseeth shall come to passe A man if he have Liberty such as he affirmeth from necessitation might frustrate and make not to come to pass And God should either not foreknow it and not Decree it or he should foreknow such things shall be as shall never be and decree that which shall never come to pass J. D. THus he hath laboured in vain to satisfie my reasons and to proove his own assertion But for demonstration there is nothing like it among his Arguments Now he saith he could add other Arguments if he thought it good Logick There is no impediment in Logick why a man may not press his Adversary with those absurdities which flow from his opinion Argumentum ducens ad impossibile or ad absurdum is a good form of reasoning But there is another reason of his forbearance though he be loth to express it Haeret lateri laethalis arundo The Arguments drawn from the attributes of God do stick so close in the sides of his cause that he hath no mind to treate of that subject By the way take notice of his own confession that he could add other reasons if he thought it good Logick If it were predetermined in the outward causes that he must make this very defence and no other how could it be in his power to add or substract any thing Just as if a blind-man should say in earnest I could see if I had mine eyes Truth often breaks out whilest men seek to smother it But let us view his Argument If a man have liberty from necessitation he may frustrate the Decrees of God and make his prescience false First for the Decrees of God This is his Decree that man should be a free Agent If he did consider God as a most simple Act without priority or posteriority of time or any composition He would not conceive of his Decrees as of the Lawes of the Medes and Persians long since enacted and passed before we were born but as coexistent with our selves and with the acts which we do by vertue of those Decrees Decrees and Attributes are but notions to help the weakness of our understanding to conceive of God The Decrees of God are God himself and therefore justly said to be before the foundation of the world was laid And yet coexistent with our selves because of the Infinite and Eternall being of God The summe is this The Decree of God or God himself Eternally constitutes or ordaines all effects which come to to pass in time according to the distinct natures or capacities of his creatures An Eternall Ordination is neither past nor to come but alwaies present So free actions do proceed as well from the Eternall Decree of God as necessary and from that order which he hath set in the world As the Decree of God is Eternall so is his Knowledge And therefore to speak truly and properly there is neither fore-knowledge nor after-knowledge in him The Knowledge of God comprehends all times in a point by reason of the eminence vertue of its infinite perfection And yet I confess that this is called fore-knowledge in respect of us But this fore-knowledge doth produce no absolute necessity Things are not therefore because they are fore-known but therfore they are fore-known because they shall come to pass If any thing should come to pass otherwise than it doth yet Gods knowledge could not be irritated by it for then he did not know that it should come to pass as now it doth Because every knowledge of vision necessarily presupposeth its object God did know that Judas should betray Christ but Judas was not necessitated to be a traitor by Gods knowledge If Judas had not betrayed Christ then God had not fore-known that Judas should betray him The case is this A watch-man standing on the steeples-top as it is the use in Germany gives notice to them below who see no such things that company are coming and how many His prediction is most certain for he sees them What a vain collection were it for one below to say what if they do not come then a certaine prediction may fail It may be urged that there is a difference between these two cases In this case the coming is present to the Watch-man but that which God fore-knowes is future God knowes what shall be The Watch-man onely knowes what is I answer that this makes no difference at all in the case by reason of that disparity which is between Gods knowledge and ours As that coming is present to the Watchman which is future to them who are below So all those things which are future to us are present to God because his Infinite and Eternall knowledge doth reach to the future being of all Agents and events Thus much is