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
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
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
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
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
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
man for doing that which it hath determined him to do to profess one thing and to intend another It destroyes the goodness of God making him to be an hater of mankind and to delight in the torments of his creatures whereas the very doggs licked the sores of Lazarus in pitty and commiseration of him It destroyes the Justice of God making him to punish the creatures for that which was his own act which they had no more power to shun than the fire hath power not to burn It destroyes the very power of God making him to be the true Author of all the defects and evills which are in the world These are the fruits of Impotence not of Omnipotence He who is the effective cause of sin either in himselfe or in the Creature is not Almighty There needs no other Devill in the world to raise jealousies and suspitions between God and his creatures or to poison mankind with an apprehension that God doth not love them but onely this opinion which was the office of the Serpent Gen. 3.5 Fourthly for the outward worship of God How shall a man praise God for his goodness who believes him to be a greater Tyrant than ever was in the world who creates millions to burn eternally without their fault to express his power How shall a man hear the Word of God with that reverence and devotion and faith which is requisite who believeth that God causeth his Gospel to be preached to the much greater part of Christians not with any intention that they should be converted and saved but meerly to harden their hearts and to make them inexcusable How shall a man receive the blessed Sacrament with comfort and confidence as a Seal of Gods love in Christ who believeth that so many millions are positively excluded from all fruit and benefit of the Passions of Christ before they had done either good or evill How shall he prepare himself with care and conscience who apprehendeth that Eating and Drinking unworthily is not the cause of damnation but because God would damn a man therefore he necessitates him to eat and drink unworthily How shall a man make a free vow to God without gross ridiculous hypocrisy who thinks he is able to perform nothing but as he is extrinsecally necessitated Fiftly for Repentance how shall a man condemn and accuse himself for his sins who thinks himself to be like a Watch which is wound up by God and that he can go neither longer nor shorter faster nor slower truer nor falser than he is ordered by God If God sets him right he goes right If God set him wrong he goes wrong How can a man be said to return into the right way who never was in any other way but that which God himself had chalked out for him What is his purpose to amend who is destitute of all power but as if a man should purpose to fly without wings or a begger who hath not a groat in his purse purpose to build Hospitalls We use to say admit one absurdity and a thousand will follow To maintain this unreasonable opinion of absolute necessity he is necessitated but it is hypothetically he might change his opinion if he would to deal with all antient Writers as the Goths did with the Romans who destroyed all their magnificent works that there might remain no monument of their greatness upon the face of the earth Therefore he will not leave so much as one of their opinions nor one of their definitions nay not one of their tearmes of Art standing Observe what a description he hath given us here of Repentance It is a glad returning into the right way after the grief of being out of the way It amazed me to find gladness to be the first word in the description of repentance His repentance is not that repentance nor his piety that piety nor his prayer that kind of prayer which the Church of God in all Ages hath acknowledged Fasting and Sackcloth and Ashes and Teares and Humi-cubations used to be companions of Repentance Joy may be a consequent of it not a part of it It is a returning but whose act is this returning Is it Gods alone or doth the penitent person concur also freely with the grace of God If it be Gods alone then it is his repentance not mans repentance what need the penitent person trouble himself about it God will take care of his own work The Scriptures teach us otherwise that God expects our concurrence Revel 3.19 Be zealous and repent behold I stand at the dore and knock If any man hear my voyce and open the dore I will come in to him It is a glad returning into the right way Why dare any more call that a wrong way which God himself hath determined He that willeth and doth that which God would have him to will and to do is never out of his right way It followes in his description after the grief c. It is true a man may grieve for that which is necessarily imposed upon him but he cannot grieve for it as a fault of his own if it never was in his power to shun it Suppose a Writing-master shall hold his Scholars hand in his and write with it the Scholars part is only to hold still his hand whether the Master write well or ill the Scholar hath no ground either of joy or sorrow as for himself no man will interpret it to be his act but his Masters It is no fault to be out of the right way if a man had not liberty to have kept himself in the way And so from Repentance he skipps quite over New obedience to come to Prayer which is the last Religious duty insisted upon by me here But according to his use without either answering or mentioning what I say Which would have shewed him plainely what kind of prayer I intend not contemplative prayer in generall as it includes thanksgiving but that most proper kind of prayer which we call Petition which used to be thus defined to be an act of Religion by which we desire of God something which we have not and hope that we shall obtain it by him Quite contrary to this T. H. tells us that prayer is not a cause nor a meanes of Gods blessing but only a signification that we expect it from him If he had told us onely that prayer is not a meritorious cause of Gods blessings as the poor man by begging an almes doth not deserve it I should have gone along with him But to tell us that it is not so much as a means to procure Gods blessing and yet with the same breath that God will not give his blessings but to those who pray who shall reconcile him to himself The Scriptures teach us otherwise Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my Name he will give it you John 16.23 Ask and it shall be given you seek and ye shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you
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