can So though a necessary connexion of all natural causes were supposed yet it inferreth not a necessary connexion of all voluntary causes Secondly I deny his assumption that there is a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning for proof whereof he produceth nothing nor is able to produce any thing All he saith he alledgeth out of me That it deserveth further examination And from thence according to his wild roving imaginations he draweth consequences from the staff to the corner that have not the least grain of salt or weight in them As these Hitherto he knows not whether it be true or no. And consequently all his arguments hitherto have been of no effect nor hath he shewed any thing to prove that elective actions are not necessitated Thus his pen runneth over without time or reason He that would learn to build Castles in the air had best be his Apprentise The truth is I was not willing to go out of mine own profession and therefore desired to hold my self to the question of liberty without medling with contingency But yet with the same reservation that the Romans had in their Military Discipline nec sequi nec fugere not to seek other questions nor yet to thuâ—… them if they were put upon me And now we are come to his two famous instances of casting ambs ace and raining or not raining to morrow I said that I had already answered what he produceth to prove all sufficient causes to be necessary causes Now saith he It seemeth that distrusting his former answer he answereth again O memory he did not urge them in that place neither did I answer them at all in that place But though he had urged them and I answered them there yet he repeating them or enforcing them here would he not have me to answer him It is true that in another Section upon the by he hath been gravelled about his ambs ace and therefore he treadeth tenderly still upon that foot He saith I bring no other argument to prove the cast thrown not to be necessarily thrown but this that the caster did not deliberate By his leave it is not truly said I shewed undeniably that the necessity upon which he buildeth is onely hypothetical I enumerated all the causes which were or could be recited to make the necessity As the dice the positure of the casters hand the measure of the force the positure of the table c. And shewed clearly that there was not the least grain of antecedent necessity in any of them which he is not able to answer and therefore he doth well to be silent But if I had urged nothing else This alone had been sufficient to prove the caster a free Agent from his own principles A free Agent saith he is he that hath not done deliberating He who never began to deliberate hath not done deliberating There can be no necessity imaginable why the caster should throw these dice rather than those other or cast into this table rather than that or use so much force and no more but the casters will or meer chance The caster never deliberated nor so much as thought of any one of these things And therefore it is undeniably apparent that there was no necessity of casting ambs ace but onely upon supposition which is far enough from antecedent necessity But he pleadeth further That from our ignorance of the particular causes that concurring make the necessity I infer that there was no such necessity at all which is that indeed which hath deceived me and all other men in this question Whose fault was it then first to make this an instance and then to plead ignorance Before he was bold to reckon up all the causes of the antecedent necessity of this cast and now when he is convinced that it is but a necessity upon suppositon he is fain to plead ignorance He who will not suffer the Loadstone to enjoy its attractive virtue without finding a reason for it in a fiddle-string as Scoggin sought for the Hare under the leades as well where she was not as where she was is glad to plead ignorance about the necessary causes of ambs ace Whereas my reasons did evince not onely that the causes are unknown but that there are no such causes antecedently necessitating that cast Thus If any causes did necessitate ambs ace antecedently it was either the caster but he thought not of it or the dice but they are square no more inclinable to one cast than another or the positure of the table but the caster might have thrown into the other table or the positure of the hand but that was by chance or the measure of the force but that might have been either more or lesse or all of these together But to an effect antecedently necessary all the causes must be antecedently determined where not so much as one of them is antecedently determined there is no pretence of antecedent necessity Or it is some other cause that he can name but he pleadeth ignorance Yet I confesse the deceit lieth here but it is on the other side in the ignorant mistaking of an hypothetical necessity for absolute antecedent necessity And here according to the advice of the Poet Nec deus inter sit nisi dignus vindice nodus Inciderit He calleth in the fore knowledge of God to his aid as he doth alwayes when he findeth himself at a losse but to no purpose He himself hath told us That it cannot be truly said that the foreknowledge of God should be a cause of any thing seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge dependeth on the existence of the thing known God seeth not future contingents in an antecedent certainty which they have in their causes but in the events themselves to which Gods infinite knowledge doth extend it self In order of time one thing is before another one thing is after another and accordingly God knoweth them in themselves to be one before another But his knowledge is no beginning no expiring act Nothing is past nothing is to come but all things present to his knowledge even those things which are future with the manner of their futurition His casting ambs ace hath been unfortunate to him he will speed no better with his shower of rain In the enterance to my answer and as it were the stating of the cause I shewed that rain was more contingent in our Climate than in many other parts of the World where it is almost as necessary as the seasons of the year I do not find so much weight in his discourse as to occasionme to alter one word for which I could have produced authours enough if I had thought it needful but I alledged onely the Scriptures mentioning the former and the later rain And even this is objected to me as a defect or piece of ignorance I thought saith he he had known it by experience of some Travellers but I see he onely
intuition with God And therefore as my present beholding of a man casting himself down headlong from some precipice whilest â—…e is in the act of casting himself down is not â—…he cause of his precipitation nor doth any way neccessitate him to precipitate himself yet upon supposition that I do see him precipitate himself it is necessarily that is infalâ—…ibly true that he doth precipitate himself but not necessarily true by any antecedent and extrinsecall determination of him to do that act nor so necessarily true as to exclude his freedom or liberty in the act Even so Gods knowledge of future contingents being a present intuition or beholding of them by reason of his infinite intellect doth not at all determine free Agents nor necessitate contingent events but onely infers an infallibility that is as we use to call it an hypotheticall necessity or a necessity upon supposition which doth consist with true liberty Much of this is confessed by Mr. Hobbes himself That the foreknowledge of God should be the cause of any thing cannot be truely said seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge dependeth on the existence of thing known and not they on it I desire to know whether God do his own works ad extra as the creation and destruction of the World freely or necessarily aâ—… whether he was necessitated to create the World precisely a such at time in such a manner Certainly God foreknoweth his own works as much as he foreknoweth the determinate acts of free Agents Yet his foreknowledge of his own works ad extra doth not necessitate himself If he say that God himself determineth his own acts ad extra so I say doth the free Agent also with this difference That God is infinite and independent upon any other but the free Agent is finite and dependent upon God both for his being and for his acting Then if Gods freedom in his own works ad extra doth not take away his prescience neither doth the liberty of free Agents take it away To his second inconvenience That it is impossible that that which is for known by God should not come to passe or come to passe otherwise than it is foreknown I answer That Gods foreknowledge is not such an act as T. H. imagineth that is an act that is expired or an act that is done and past but it is alwayes in doing an eternall act a present act a present intuition and consequently doth no more make the Agent unfree or the contrary event impossible untill it be actually produced than my knowing that such a man stabbed himself upon such a day made it then unpossible for him to have forborn stabbing of himself or my seeing a man eat in present made it unpossible for him before he did eat to have forborn eating God is the totall cause of all natures and essences but he is not the totall cause of all their acts and operations Neither did he create his Creatures to be idle but that they should each of them exercise such acts as are agreeable to their respective natures necessary Agents necessary Acts free Agents free Acts. And untill the free Agent have determined it self that is untill the last moment before production the contrary Act is not made unpossible and then only upon supposition He that precipated himself untill the very moment that he did precipitate himself might have withheld himself And if he had withheld himself then I had not seen him precipitate himself but withhold himself His frequent invectives against unsignificant words are but like the complaints of that old Belldam Harpaste in Seneca who still cried out against the darknesse of the room and desired to be brought into another chamber little believing that her own blindnesse was the true cause of it What Suares saith As I know neither what nor where so neither doth it concern either me or the cause His last assault against liberty in his fountains of Arguments is this Certainly to will is impossible without thinking on what a man willeth but it is in no mans election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on A man might well conjecture by this very reason that his fountain was very near drying up This Argument is levied rather against the memory or against the understanding than against the will and may serve as well against freedom to do as against freedom to will which is contrary to his principles It is as impossible to do without thinking on what a man doth as it is to will without thinking on what he willeth but it is in no mans election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on Therefore a man is not free to chuse what he will do I know not what this word to think signifies with him but I know what other Authours make it to signifie to use reason to understand to know and they define a thought to be the understanding actually imployed or busied about some object Hath not he spun us a fair thred He undertaketh to shew a defect in the will and he alleadeth a defect in the understanding Is a man therefore not free to go to his dinner because perhaps he thinks not on it just at dinner time Let the free Agent be free to will or nill and to chuse which part he will without necessitation or determination to one when he doth think on it and we shall not want true liberty An Answer to the Animadversions upon the Epistle to my Lord of Newcastle IT was no passion but a sad truth To call the opinion of fatall destiny blasphemous which maketh God to be directly the authour of sin which is a degree worse then Athisme and desperate which taketh away all care and solicitude and thrusts men headlong without fear or wit upon rocks and precipices and destructive which turneth all government divine and humane off from their hinges the practicall consequences whereof do utterly ruine all societies Neither am I guilty that I know of yet so much as of one uncivill word either against Mr. Hobbes his person or his parts He is over unequall and indulgent to himself who dare assume the boldnesse to introduce such insolent and paradoxicall opinions into the World and will not allow other men the liberty to wellcome them as they deserve I wish he himself in his Animadversions and his parasiticall publisher of his former treatise had observed the same temper and moderation particularly towards the lights of the Shools whom he slighteth and vilifieth every where as a company of pedantick dunses who understood not themselves yet held the World in awe under contribution by their â—…stian jargon untill a third Cato dropped down from Heaven to stand up for the vindication of Christian liberty from Scholastick tyranny and Stoicall necessity from naturall and morall liberty But this is certain if these poor despised Schoolmen were necessitated by antecedent and extrinsecall causes to speak such gibrish and non-sense and the Christian World to
his advantages much good may they do him First he erreth grossely in affirming that all deliberation is onely of what a man will do or not do And not at all of what a man will suffer or not suffer Deliberation is as well about evil to be eschewed as about good to be pursued Men deliberate equally of their doings and of their sufferings if they be not inevitably determined but if they be then neither of the one nor of the other A Martyr or a Confessor may deliberate what torments he will suffer for his Religion Many of those acts whereabout we do usually deliberate are mixt motions partly active and partly passive as all our senses Secondly it is a shame for him to distinguish between actions and sufferings in this cause when all the actions of all the free Agents in the World by his doctrine are meer sufferings A free Agent is but like a bullet rammed up into the barrel by the outward causes and fired off by the outward causes the will serves for no use but to be a touchhole and the poor Agent hath no more aime or understanding of what he doth than the arrow which is forced out of the bow towards the mark without any sense or concurrent in it self A condemned person may be reprieved and deliberate about that but the sentence of the causes produceth a necessity from eternity as he phraseth it never to be interrupted or altered Thirdly he erreth in this also That he affirmeth all my three instances to be onely of passions or sufferings Growing up in stature is a vegetative act Respiration is a sensitive act or an act of the moving and animal faculty Some question there hath been whether respiration were a natural motion or a voluntary motion or a mixt motion but all conclude that it is an act or motion which is performed whilst we sleep when we are uncapable of deliberation Lastly to say that a man may deliberate of a thing that is not possible if he know not of the impossibility will not advantage his cause the value of a rush for supposing an universal necessity of all events from eternity there can be no such case seeing all men know that upon this supposition all acts and events are either antecedently and absolutely necessary or antecedently and absolutely impossible boâ—… which are equally uncapable of deliberation So the impertinence will prove to be in 〈◊〉 answer not in my instances My second argument out of his own wordâ—… was this To resolve a mans self is to determine his own will and if a man determine his own will then he is free from outward necessity But T. H. confesseth that a man 〈◊〉 resolve himself I resolved once c. And 〈◊〉 further to resolve is to will after deliberation Now to will after deliberation is to elect but that he hateth the very term of electing or chusing as being utterly destructive to his new modeled fabrick of universal necessity And for that very reason he confounds and blunders together the natural sensitive and intellectual appetites Either the will determineth it self in its resolution or both will and deliberation and resolution are predetermined by a necessary fluxe of natural causes if the will determine it self in its resolution then we have true liberty to will or nill If both the will and the deliberation and the resolution be predetermined by outward causes then it is not the resolution of the will it self nor of the Agent but of the outward causes then it was as much determined that is to say resolved before the deliberation as after because the deliberation it self and the whole event of it particularly the last resolution was outwardly predetermined from eternity To this he answereth nothing but according to his usual manner he maketh three objections First No man can determine his own will for the will is an appetite and it is not in mans power to have an appetite when he will This argument would much better become the kitchin than the Schooles to argue from the lesser to the greater negatively which is against all rules of Logick Just thus A brute beast cannot make a Categorical Syllogisme thererefore a man cannot make one So here the sensitive appetite hath no dominion over its own acts therefore neither hath the rationall appetite any dominion over its own acts Yet this is the onely pillar that supporteth his main distinction which must uphold his Castle in the aire from tumbling down about his ears But be what it will be it hath been sufficiently answered allready His second oblection hath so little solidity in it that it is ridiculous Over whatsoever things there is dominion those things are not free but over a mans actions there is the dominion of his wil. What a medius terminus hath he light upon This which he urgeth against liberty is the very essence of liberty If a mans actions were under the dominion of another mans will or under the dominion of his extrinsecall causes then they were not free indeed but for a mans own actions to be in his own power or in the power or under the dominion of his own wil that is that which makes them free Thirdly he objects If a man determine himself the question will yet remain What determined him to determine himself If he speak properly in his own sense of physicall determination by outward causes he speaketh plain non-sense for if he was so determined by another then he did not determine himself But if he mean onely this What did concur with the will in the determination of it self I answer That a friend by perswasion might concur morally and the understanding by representing might concur intrinsecally but it hath been demonstrated to him over and over that neither of these concurrences is inconsistent with true liberty from necessitation and physicall determination to one Something I say afterwards which doth not please him which he calleth a talking to my self at random My aime in present is onely to answer his exceptions a little more punctually then he hath done mine not at all to call him to an account for his omissions that part I leave to the Readers own observation He telleth me plainly That I neither understand him nor what the word necessary signifieth if I think he holds no other necessity then that which is expressed in that old foolish rule what soever is when it is is necessarily so as it is If I understand him not I cannot help it I understand him as well as I can and wish that he understood himself a little better to make him speak more significantly Let us see where the fault lies that he is no better understood First he defineth what is necessary That is necessary which is impossible to be otherwise Whence he inferreth That Necessary Possible and Impossible have no signification in reference to the time past or time present but onely the time to come I think all men
not practically practical because it takes not effect by reason of the dissent of the will But whensoever the will shall give its free assent to the practical judgement of the understanding and the sentence of reason is approved by the acceptation of the will then the judgement of the understanding becomes practically practical Then the election is made which Philosophers do therefore call a consultative appetition Not that the will can elect contrary to the judgement of reason but that the will may suspend its consent and require a new deliberation and a new judgement and give consent to the later So we have this seeming piece of non-sense judicium intellectus practice practicum not onely translated but explained in English consonantly to the most received opinions of Classical Authours If he have any thing to say against it let him bring arguments not reproaches And remember how Memnon gave a railing souldier a good blow with his Lance saying I hired thee to fight and not to raile The absurdity which he imputeth to me in natural Philosophy That it is ridiculous to say that the object of the sight is the cause of seeing which maketh him sorry that he had the ill fortune to be ingaged with me in a dispute of this kind is altogether impertinent and groundlesse The cause of seeing is either the cause of the exercise of seeing or the cause of the specification of the act of seeing The object is the cause of the specification why we see this or that and not the cause of the exercise He that should affirm that the object doth not concurre in the causation of sight especially going upon those grounds that I do that the manner of vision is not by sending out beames from the eye to the object but by receiving the species from the object to the eye was in an errour indeed For in sending out the species there is action and in the reception of them passion But he that should affirm that the object is the cause of the exercise of sight or that it is that which maketh that which is facultate espectabile to be actu aspectabile or that it is that which judgeth of the colour or light or to come home to the scope of the place that the object doth necessitate or determine the faculty of sight or the sensitive soul to the exercise of seeing were in a greater errour Among many answers which I gave to that objection that the dictate of the understanding doth determine the will this was one That supposing it did determine it yet it was not naturally but morally not as an efficient by physical influence into the will but by proposing and representing the object which is not my single opinion but the received judgement of the best Schoole-men And in this sense and this sense onely I said truely that the understanding doth no more by proposing the object determine and necessitate the will to will than the object of sight doth determine and necessitate the sensitive soul to the actual exercise of seeing whereas all men know that the sensitive Agent notwithstanding any efficacy that is in the object may shut his eyes or turn his face another way So that which I said was both true and pertinent to the question But his exception is altogether impertinent and if it be understood according to the proper sense and scope of the place untrue And this is the onely Philosophical notion which hitherto I have found in his Animadversions Castigations of his Animadversions Num. 8. WHosoever desireth to be secure from T. H. his arguments may hold himself close to the question where he will find no great cause of fear All his contention is about terms Whatsoever there was in this Section which came home to the principal question is omitted and nothing minded but the meaning or signification of voluntary and spontaneous acts c. which were well enough understood before by all Scholars until he arose up like another Davus in the Comedy to trouble all things So he acts his part like those fond Musicians who spent so much time in tuning of their Instruments that there was none left to spare for their musick Which are free which are voluntary or spontaneous and which are necessary Agents I have set down at large whither to prevent further trouble I refer the Reader And am ready to make it good by the joynt testimonies of an hundred Classick Authours that this hath been the common and current language of Scholars for many Ages If he could produce but one Authour Stoick or Christian before himself who in the ventilation of this question did ever define liberty as he doth it were some satisfaction Zeno one of the fairest flowers in the Stoicks Garland used to boast that he sometimes wanted opinions but never wanted arguments He is not so lucky never wanting opinions ever wanting proofes Hitherto we have found no demonstrations either from the cause or from the effect few topical arguments or authorities that are pertinent to the question except it be of country men and common people with one comparison But to come to the Animadversions themselves He chargeth me or rather the Schoole-men for bringing in this strange word Spontaneous meerely to shift off the difficulty of maintaining our Tenet of free-will If spontaneous and voluntary be the same thing as we affirm and use them both indifferently I would gladly know how the one can be a subterfuge more than the other or why we may not use a word that is equipollent to his own word But to cure him of his suspition I answer That the same thing and the same terme of spontaneous both in Greek and Latine in the same sense that we take it as it is distinguished from free and just as we define it was used by Philosophers a thousand years before either I or any Schoole-men were borne as we find in Aristotle That is spontaneous or voluntary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whose beginning is in it self with knowledge of the end or knowing every thing wherein the action doth consist And the same Authour in the very next Chapter makes the very same difference between that which is voluntary and that which is free or eligible that we do His second exception is against these words Spontaneity consists in a conformity of the appetite either intellectual or sensitive to the object which words saith he do signifie that spontaneity is a conformity or likeness of the appetite to the object which to him soundeth as if I had said that the appetite is like the object which is as proper as if I had said that the hunger is like the meat And then he concludes triumphantly If this be his meaning as it is the meaning of the words he is a very fine Philosopher All his Philosophy consists in words If there had been an impropriety in the phrase as there is none this exception had been below an Athenian
aut faciendum quod cognoscit the understanding extended to injoy or do that which it knoweth it must needs be that the more reason the lesse passion the lesse reluctance and consequently the more liberty He saith When we mark not the force that moves us we think that it is not causes but liberty that produceth the action I rendred him thus The ignornnce of the true causes and their power is the reason that we ascribe the effect to liberty Where lieth the fault that which he calleth force and strength I call power and for that which moves us I say causes as he himself doth exexpresse himself in the same place Where I say the will causeth he saith the man chuseth As if there were any difference between these two the eye seeth and the man seeth This and a confounding of voluntas with volitio the faculty of willing with the act of willing and a young suckling contradiction which he hath found out That the will hath power to refuse what he willeth that is before it have willed it not after is the substance of this Animadversion which deserve no other answer but that a man should change his risibility into actual laughter I produced two reasons to prove that true liberty is a freedom not only from compulsion but from necessity The former drawn from the nature of election or the act of the will which is allwayes inter plura the later which I called a new Argument because it had not formerly been touched in this Treatise taken from the nature of the faculty of the will or of the soul as it willeth which is not capable of any other compulsion but necessitation And if it be physically necessitated it is thereby acquitted from all guilt and the fault transferred upon those causes that did necessitate it This argument indeed began with a distinction but proceeded to a demonstration which was reduced by me into form in my defence to which he hath given no shew of satisfaction either in his first answer or in these Animadversions except it be a concedo omnia or a granting of the conclusion The same ground which doth warrant the names of Tyrant Praemunire Sunday Monday Tuesday that is Use Quem penes arbitrium est vis norma loquendi doth likewise justifie these generally received terms of the Elicite and Imperate Acts of the will there being scarcely one Authour who hath written upon this subject in Latine that doth not use them and approve them In the councel of Dort which he himself mentioneth he may find this truth positively maintained that voluntas elicit actum suum Where he may likewise find what morall perswasives or motives are if he have a desire to learn Allthough he be convicted that it followeth from his principles That God is the cause of all sin in the world yet he is loath to say so much for that is an unseemly phrase to say that God is the cause of sin because it soundeth so like a saying that God sinneth yea it is even as like it as one egge is like another or rather it is not like it for it is the very same Nullum simile est idem He that is the determining cause of sin in others sinneth himself It is as well against the eternall law that is the rule of justice which is in God himself to make another to sin as to sin Yet though he will not avow such an unseemly phrase That God is the cause of sin Yet he doth indeavour to prove it by four texts of holy Scripture which are alltogether impertiuent to his purpose The first is that of the Prophet Amos Shall there be evill in a City and the Lord hath not done it But that is clearly understood of the evill of punishment not of the evill of sin To the three other places That the Lord said unto Shimei curse David and that the Lord put a lying spirit into the mouth of Ahabs Prophets And that of Rehoboams not hearkning to the people the Reader may find a satisfactory answer formerly But because he seemeth to ground much upon those words which are added to the last place for the cause was from the Lord conceiving some singular virtue to lie in them and an ovation at least to be due unto himself I will not say least the Bishop exclaim against me applauding himself like the flie upon the Cart-wheel See what a dust I do raise I will take the liberty to tell him further That there is nothing of any cause of sin in the text but of a cause of Jeroboams advancement as he might have perceived plainly by the words immediately following The cause was from the Lord that he might perform his saying which the Lord spake by Ahijah the Shilonite unto Ieroboam the son of Nebat Which saying was this I will rent the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and will give ten tribes to thee So he hath produced an evil effect of punishment for an evil effect of sin and a cause of advancement for a cause of sin and a permitting or ordering or disposing of sin for a necessitating or determining to sin Yet he produceth six witnesses to prove that liberty is not opposed to necessity but to compulsion Luther Zanchy Bucer Calvin Moulin and the Synod of Dort First Reader I desire thee to judge of the partiality of this man who rejecteth all humane authority in this cause as he hath reason for it were an easie thing to overwhelme and smother him and his cause with testimonies of Councels Fathers Doctours of all Ages and Communions and all sorts of Classick Authours and yet to seek for protection under the authority of a few Neoterick Writers A double weight and a double measure are an abomination Aut haec illis sunt habenda aut illa cum his amittenda sunt Harum duarum conditionum nunc utram malis vide If he will reap the benefit of humane authority he must undergoe the inconvenience also Why may he use the testimony of Calvine against me in this cause and I may not make use of the testimonies of all the Ancients Greek and Latine against him whom Calvine himself confesseth to have been for liberty against necessiry Semper apud Latinos liberi arbitrii nomen extitit Graecos vero non puduit multo arrogantius usurpare vocabulum siquidem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dixerunt acsi potest as suiipsius penes hominem fuisset But I am able to give him that advantage in this cause Secondly a man may see by his citing of these testimonies that he hath taken them up upon trust without ever perusing them in the Authours themselves I demand therefore whether he will be tried by his own witnesses in this case in difference between him and me that is concerning universal necessity in natural civil and external actions by reason of a necessary connextion of second causes and a natural determination of
as himself that accused the Church of England ofâ—… Arminianisme for holding those truths which they ever professed before Arminius was born If Arminius were alive Mr. Hobbes out of conscience ought to ask him forgivenesse Let him speak for himself De libero hominis arbitrio ita sentio c In statu vero lapsus c This is my sentence of free will That man fallen can neither think nor will nor do that which is truly good of himself and from himself But that it is needfull that he be regenerated and renewed in his understanding will affections and all his powers from God in Christ by the Holy Ghost to understand esteem consider will and do aright that which is truely good It was not the speculative doctrine of Arminius but the seditious tenets of Mr. Hobbes and such like which opened a large window to our troubles How is it possible to pack up more errours together in so narrow a compasse If I were worthy to advise Mr. Hobbes he should neveâ—… have more to do with these old Philosopheâ—… except it were to weed them for some obsâ—…lete opinions Chrysippus used to say He sometimes wanted opinions but never wanted arguments but to stand upon his own bottom and make himself both Party Jurer and Judge in his own cause Concerning the stating of the question THe righ stating of the question is commonly the mid way to the determination of the difference and he himself confesseth that I have done that more than once saving that he thinketh I have done it over cautiously with as much caution as I would draw up a lease Abundant caution was never thought hurtfull until now Doth not the truth require as much regard as a lease On the other side I accuse him to have stated it too carelessely loosly and confusedly He saith He understands not these words the contversion of a sinner concerns not the question I do really believe him But in concluding That whatsoever he doth not understand is unintelligible he doth but abuse himself and his readers Let him study better what is the different power of the will in naturall or civill actions which is the subject of our discourse and morall or supernaturall acts which concernes not this question and the necessiâ—…y of adding these words will clearly appear to him Such another pitifull piece is his other exception against these words without their own concurrence which he saith are unsignificant unlesse I mean that the events themselves should concur to their own production Either these words were unsignificant or he was blind or worse than blind when he transcribed them My words were these Whether all Agents and all Events be predetermined He fraudulently leaves out these words all Agents and makes me to state the question thus Whether all Events be predetermined without their own concurrence Whereas those words without their own concurrence had no reference at all to all Events but to all Agents which words he hath omitted The state of the question being agreed upon it were vanity and meer beating of the air in me to weary my self and the reader with the serious examination of all his extravagant and impertinent fancies As this Whether there be a morall efficacy which is not naturall which is so far from being the question between us that no man makes any question of it except one who hath got a blow upon his head with a mill-saile Naturall causes produce their effects by a true reall influence which implies an absolute determination to one as a father begets a son or fire produceth fire Morall causes have no naturall influence into the effect but move or induce some other cause without themselves to produce it As when a Preacher perswadeth his hearers to give almes here is no absolute necessitation of his hearers nor any thing that is opposite to true liberty Such another question is that which followes Whether the object of the sight be the cause of seeing meaning if he mean aright the subjective cause Or how the understanding doth propose the object to the will which though it be blind as Philosophers agree yet not so blind as he that will not see but is ready to follow the good advice of the intellect I may not desert that which is generally approved to satisfie the phantastick humour of a single conceited person No man would take exceptions at these phrases the will willeth the understanding understandeth the former term expressing the faculty the later the elicite act but one who is resolved to pick quarrels with the whole World To permit a thing willingly to be done by another that is evil not for the evils sake which is permitted but for that goods sake which is to be drawn out of it is not to will it positively nor to determine it to evil by a natural influence which whosoever do maintaine do undeniably make God the authour of sin Between positive willing and nilling there is a meane of abnegation that is not to will That the will doth determine it self is a truth not to be doubted of what different degrees of aide or assistance the will doth stand in need of in different Acts natural moral supernatural where a general assistance is sufficent and where a special assistance is necessary is altogether impertinent to this present controversie or to the right stating of this question In the last place he repeateth his old distinction between a mans freedom to do those things which are in his power if he will and the freedom to will what he will which he illustrateth for similitudes prove nothing by a comparison drawn from the natural appetite to the rational appetite Will is appetite but it is one question Whether he be free to eate that hath an appetite And another question whether he be free to have an appetite In the former he saith He agreeth with me That a man is free to do what he will In the later he saith He dissents from me That a man is not free to will And as if he had uttered some profound mystery he addeth in a triumphing manner That if I have not been able to distinguish between thâ—…se two questions I have not done well to meddle with either And if I have understood them to bring arguments to prove that a man is free to do if he will is to deale uningenuously and fraudulently with my readers Yet let us have good words Homini homino quid praestat What difference is there between man and man That so many wits before Mr. Hobbes in all Ages should beate their brains about this question all their lives long and never meet with this distinction which strikes the question dead What should hinder him from crying out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have found it I have found it But stay a little the second thoughts are wiser and the more I look upon this distinction the lesse I like it It seemeth like the
logge in the fable which terrified the poor Frogs with the noise it made at the first falling of it into the water but afterwards they insulted over it and took their turns to leap upon it Some take it to be pure nonsense Whether a man be free in such things as be within his power That is whether he be free wherein he is free or that be within his power which is in his power I have formerly shewed and shall demonmonstrate further as there is occasion that this distinction is contradictory and destructive to his own grounds according to which all the other powers and faculties of a man are determined to one by an extrinsecal fluxe of natural causes equally with the will And therefore a man is no more necessitated to will or chuse what he will do than to do what he wills Secondly I have shewed that this distinction is vain and unuseful and doth not hold off so much as one blow from Mr. Hobâ—…es and his bleeding cause All those grosse absurdities which do necessarily follow the inevitable determinations of all actions and events by extrinsecal causes do fall much more heavily and insupportably upon the extrinsecal determination of the will So he stickes deeper by means of this distinction in the same mire All the ground of justice that he can find in punishments is this That though mens actions be necessary yet they do them willingly Now if the will be irresistibly determined to all its individial acts then there is no more justice to punish a man for willing necessarily than for doing necessarily Thirdly I have shewed already in part that this distinction is contrary to the sense of the whole World who take the will to be much more free than the performance Which may be thus enlarged Though a man were thrust into the deepest dungeon in Europe yet in despite of all the second causes he may will his own liberty Let the causes heap a conglomeration of diseases upon a man more than Herod had yet he may will his own health Though a man be withheld from his friend by Seas and Mountains yet he may will his presence He that hath not so much as a cracked groat towards the payment of his debts may yet will the satisfaction of his Creditors And though some of these may seem but pendulous wishes of impossibilities and not so compatibile with a serious deliberation yet they do plainly shew the freedom of the will In great things said the Poet it is sufficient to have willed that is to have done what is in our power So we say God accepteth the will that which we can for the deed that which we cannot If there be first a willing mind it is accepted according to that a man hath that is to will And not according to that he hath not that is to perform And yet more plainly To will is present with me but how to perform that which is good that find I not Yet saith T. H. A man is free to do what he willes but not to will what he will do To come yet a little nearer to T. H. For since he refuseth all humane authority I must stick to Scripture It is called a mans own will and his own voluntary will If it be determined irresistibly by outward causes it is rather their own will than his own will Nay to let him see that the very name of free-will it self is not such a stranger in Scripture as he imagineth it is called a mans own free will How often do we read in the books of Moses Ezra and the Psalms of free-will offerings This free-will is opposed not onely to compulsion but also to necessity not of necessity but willingly And is inconsistent with all extrinsecal determination to one with which election of this or that indifferently is incompatible Is not the whole land before thee said Abraham to Lot If thou wilt take the left hand then I will go to the right or if thou depart to the right hand then I will go to the left God said to David I offer thee three things chuse one of them And to Solomon Because thou hast asked this thing and hast not asked long life or riches And Herod to his daughter Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt And Pilate to the Jews Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you And St. Paul unto the Corinthians What will ye shall I come unto you with a rod or in love Both were in their choice Yet T. H. doth tell us That all these were free to do this or that indifferently if they would but not free to will To chuse and to elect is of all others the most proper Act of the will But all these were free to chuse and elect this or that indifferently or else all this were meer mockery And therefore they were free to will The Scripture koweth no extrinsecal determiners of the will but iâ—…self So it is said of Eli's sons Give flesh to roast for the Priest for he will not have sodden flesh of thee but raw And if thou wilt not give it I will take it by force Sic volo sic jubeo stat pro ratione voluntas Here was more will than necessity So it is said of the rich man in the Gospel What shall I do This I will do I will pull down my barnes and build greater and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods And I will say to my soul take thine ease eat drink and be merry Both his purse and person were under the command of his wâ—…ll So St. Iames saith Go to now ye that say to day or tomorrow we will go into such a City and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain whereas ye know not what shall be to morrow c. for that ye ought to say if the Lord will we shall live and do this or that The defect was not in their will to resolve but in their power to perform So T. H. his necessity was their liberty and their liberty was his necessity Lastly the Scriptures teach us that it is in the power of a man to chuse his own will for the future All that thou commandest us we will do And whithersoever thou sendest us we will go As we hearkened unto Moses in all things so will we hearken unto thee So saith St. Paul What I do that I will do And in another place I do rejoyce and I will rejoyce And they that will be rich When Christ inquired of his Disciples Will ye also go away According to T. H. his principles he should have said Must ye also go away We have viewed his distinction but we have not answered his comparison Will is an appetite And it is one question whether he be free to eat that hath an appetite And another Whether he be free to have an appetite Comparisons are but a poor kind
the calling of God that is to determine it self by the power of grace To 1 Cor. 4. 7. I answer whether we understand the text of saving grace or of graces freely given both waies it is the grace of God that makes the discrimination But all the debate is of the manner how it is made whether morally by perswasion or physically by determination of the will to one and destroying the liberty of it Of which this text is silent The next place 1 Cor. 12. 6. is understood of those miraculous graces freely given such as the gift of tongues of healing of prophecying c. and if it were understood of saving grace yet it did not at all exclude our cooperation The same Apostle who teacheth us that it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure in the same place exhorteth us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling God worketh in us both the will and the deed not by physicall determination of the will not by destroying the nature of his Creature but sweetly morally by illumination perswasion and inspiration We are said to be the workmanship of God created in Christ Iesus unto good works 2 Eph. 10. because without Christ we can do nothing No man can have the actuall will to believe and to be converted but by the preventing grace of God Our indeavous are in vain except he help them and none at all except he excite them Gods calling and illumination and inspiration is not in our power and we are brought by his grace as it were for nothing to a new being in Christ in which respect a regenerated Christian is called a new Creature Metaphors do not hold in all things when David praied Create in me a new heart O Lord his meaning was not that his heart should be annihilated and a new substance crated but to have his heart purged and cleansed The main body of his forces is dispersed yet his reserve remains untouched Even all the places that make God the Giver of all graces and wherein men are said to be dead in sin for by all these saith he it is manifest That although a man may live holily if he will yet to will is the work of God and not eligible by man Let him reduce his argument into what form he will there is more in the conclusion than in the premises namely these words and not illigible by man Who ever argued from the position of the principall cause to the removall of all second Agents and means It is most true That all grace is from God but it is most false that God hath not given man a will to receive it freely This is plain boyes play to jump over the backs of all second causes As all grace is from God so the elective power to assent to the motions of grace is from God likewise To shew him the weaknesse of his consequence he argueth thus All light is from the sun therefore though a man may see if he will open his eyes yet to open his eyes is the work of God and not eligible by man It is usuall iâ—… Scripture to call an habituall sinner a dead man but it is a weak argument which is drawn from a metaphor beyond the scope of him that useth it And if it be insisted upon too much involves men in palpable contradictions as not to step aside from the same metaphor This thy brother was dead and is alive again and was lost and is found If he was but lost then he was not absolutely dead If he was absolutely dead then he was more than lost So in another place Awakâ—… thou that sleepest and arise from the dead To sleep and to be dead are inconsistent but sleep is an image of death So is idlenesse Hic situs est Vaccia Here lieth Vaccia was written upon an idle persons door So is old age He considered not his own body now dead nor the deadnesse of Sarahs womb So is habituall sin And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins In some wheresover there is no appearance of life as in the trees in winter there is an image of death To leave Metaphors this death in sinne is not a naturall but a spiritual death and therefore no utter extinction of the naturall powers and faculties of a man Such are the understanding and the will which though they were much weakened by the fall of Adam yet they were not they are not utterly extinct either by originall or actuall sin but being excited and as it were enlived by preventing grace they may and do become subservienâ—… to grace the understanding being illuminated by those raies of heavenly light and the will enabled to consent as freely to the motions of grace in supernaturall acts as it did formerly to the dictates of reason in naturall and civill acts So every way T. H. is gone First the will is able and free without preventing grace to determine it self in naturall and civill acts which is enough to prove my intention against the universall necessity of all Events Secondly the will being excited and assisted by grace hath power to put in practise its naturall freedom in suprernatural acts as to consent to the motions of grace and to reject the suggestions of the flesh the devill without any physical determination of it self without it self Even as the dead body of Abraham the dead womb of Sarah being as it were new quickened by God did truely beget Isaac so even in the act of conversion it self the will is free from physicall determination That Physicall determation of all causes and events whatsoever to one by an outward flux of naturall causes which T. H. maintains doth as much necessitate all the actions of free Agents as their wills or more because volition is an inward immediate act of the will but all other acts of a free Agent are externall and mediate acts of the will over which the will hath not so absolute a dominion as over the volition whence it followeth irrefragably That if there be no freedom to will much lesse is there a freedom to do He saith a man may live holily if he will but to will is the work of God and not eligible by man Can a man then live holily without the grace of God Or is not an holy life the work of God as much as a sanctified will If he can not shew this let him never mention this vain destinction any more of freedom to do without freedom to will May not a man be so bold to put him himself in mind of that Iargon which he objected to the Schoolmen unlesse perhaps he thinks nonsense is more intelligible in English than in Latin Hitherto I have traced T. H. his steps though he be wandred quite out of the lists or rather in plain terms fled away from his cause to take sanctuary under the sacred
doth by reason of an antecedent extrinsecal and inevitable determination to one I say of being or of acting because there is a double necessity in essendo in operando and both considerable in this cause That which is necessarily may act freely as God Almighty without himself And that which is freely or contingently as fire kindled by the help of a tinderbox or by the stumbling of an horse upon the pavement of a street may act and burn necessarily Here he may see if he please how necessity and will or spontaneity may meet together because that which is antecedently and extrinsecally determined to one may agree well enough with my appetite or the appetite of another But necessity and liberty can never meet together because that which is antecedently and extrinsecally determined to one cannot possibly be free that is undetermined to one nor capable of election which must be inter plura nor a fit subject for deliberation He urgeth that seeing I say necessity and spontaneity may meet together he may say that necessity and will may stand together He doth but betray his own ignorance and intolerable boldnesse to censure all the World for that which he never read nor understood We all say in like manner That necessity and will may stand together for will and spontaneity aâ—…e the same thing But necessity and liberty can never stand together If he will shut his eyes against the light he may stumble as often as he pleaseth He saith He doth not fear that it will be thought too hot for his fingers to shew the vanity of such words as these Intellectual appetite Conformity of the appetite to the object Rational will Elective power of the rational will Reason is the root of liberty Reason representeth to the will Reader behold once more the unparalelled presumption of this man Words and terms are not by nature but by imposition And who are fit to impose terms of Art but Artists who understand the Art Thus were all these terms imposed Again verborum ut nummorum words are as money is The most current is the best This was the current language of all Schooles of learning which we learned from our Tutours and Professours But a private man starteth up not bred in the Schooles who opposeth his own authority to the authority of the whole World and cryes down the current coin that is the generally received terms of Art Where is his commission What is his reason Because he doth not understand them he guesseth that they did not understand themselves Is his private understanding which is filled up to the brime with prejudice and presumption fit to be the publick standard and seal of other mens capacities They who will understand Schoole-terms must learn and study them which he never did Those things that are excellent and rare are alwayes difficult He who shall affirm that all the famous Divines and Philosophers in the World for so many succeeding Ages did speak nonsense deserveth to be contemned His respect to weak capacities must not serve his turn Nullae sunt occultiores insidiae quam hae quae latent in simulatione officii If he could shew any authour before himself wherein these terms were not used or wherein his new terms were used it were something There is no Art in the World which hath not proper terms which none understand but they who understand that Art But cui bono If we should be so mad to quit all received Schoole-terms and distinctions and lose all the advantage which we might reap by the labours and experience of so many great wits What advantage would this be to him None at all at long running Whatsoever be the terms the state of the question must be the same And those very reasons which convince him now in the old language of the Schooles would convince him likewise in the new language which he desireth to introduce after it was formed and generally understood All the benefit that he could make of it would be onely a little time between the suppression of the one and the introduction of the other wherein he might jugle and play hocus pocus under the cloak of harmonymies and ambiguous expressions And that is the reason why he is so great a friend to definitions and so great an enemy to distinctions Whereas I affirmed that necessity of supposition may consist with true liberty he objecteth That all necessity is upon supposition as the fire burneth necessarily upon supposition that the ordinary course of nature be not hindered by God for the fire burnt not the three children in the furnace And upon supposition that fewell be put unto it His supposition if the ordinary course of nature be not hindred is impertinent and destructive to his own grounds For though it be true that those things which are impossible to the second causes as to make a Camel go thorough the eye of a needle are all possible with God Yet upon his opinion that all things are necessary from eternity God hath tied his own hands and nothing is possible to God which is not absolutely necessary and impossible to be otherwise His other instance of putting fewell to the fire is a necessary supposition to the continuance or duration of the fire but not to the acting or burning of the fire So long as there is fire it doth and must burn When all requisites to action are present the will is still free to chuse or refuse When all things requisite to action are present to the fire it cannot chuse but burn and cannot do otherwise Thirdly I answer That there is a twofold necessity upon supposition the one a necessity upon an antecedent extrinsecall supposition This cannot consist with liberty because it implieth an antecedent determination and the thing supposed was never in the power of the Agent The other is a necessity upon a consequent supposition where the thing supposed is in the power of the free Agent or depends upon something or supposeth something that is in his power this is very well consistent with true liberty As for example If T. H. do run then it is necessary that he moves This necessity is no impediment at all to liberty because the thing supposed that is to run or not to run is in the power of the free Agent If a mans will be determined antecedently by extrinsecall causes to chuse such a woman for his wife and her will to chuse him for her husband then it is necessary that they elect one another This necessity is upon an antecedent supposition and is utterly destructive to liberty because the determination of the extrinsecall causes is not in the power of the free Agent Lastly T. H. his two instances of the fire are alltogether impertinent For first The fire is a naturall necessary Agent and therefore no supposition antecedent or consequent can make it free Secondly Godâ—… hindering the ordinary course of nature is an antecedent
supposition And if the fire were a free Agent it were suffiâ—…ient to destroy the liberty thereof as to that act He saith That it seemeth I understand not what these words free and contingent mean because I put causes among those things that operate freely What doth the man mean Are not free Agents causes If they be not how do they act I understand these words free and contingent as they ought to be understood and as the World hath understood them for two thousand years As for his new nick-naming of free and contingent Agents I heed it not He hath shewed That this liberty whereof we treat is common to bruit beasts and inanimate creatures with man as well as he could shew it or can shew it or ever wil be able to shew it that is just as much as he hath shewed that the sea burneth If it were not for this confounding of terms and a company of trifling homonymies he would have nothing to say or do When a man saith he doth any thing freely many other concurrent Agents work necessarily As the man moveth the sword freely the sword woundeth necessarily A free Agent may have concurrent Agents but his instance in a sword is very impertinent which is but an instrument yea a passive instrument and though it have an aptitude in it self from the sharpnesse and weight thereof yet the determination of the action and the efficacy or causation ought to be ascribed to the principall Agent The sword did not wound but the man wounded with the sword Admit the sword may be said in some sense to concur actively to the cutting certainly it concurs onely passively to the motion But he would make us believe that the man is no more active than his sword and hath no more power to suspend or deny his concurrence then the sword because a man doth not move himself or at least not move himself originally I have heard of some who held an opinion that the soul of man was but like the winding up of a watch and when the string was run out the man dyed and there the soule determined But I had not thought before this that any man had made the body also to be like a Clock or a Jack or a Puppet in a play to have the originall of its motion from without itself so as to make a man in his animal motion to be as meer a passive instrument as the sword in his hand If by originally he do understand independently so as to suppose that a man hath his locomotive faculty from himself and not from God we all affirm That the originall of a mans locomotive faculty is from God in whom we live and move and have our being But if he understand originally not in relation to the faculty but to the act of moving as he must mean unlesse he mean nonsence then we affirm that a man doth move himself originally and desire not to tast of his paradoxicall knowledge of motion It is folly to dispute with such men and not rather to leave them to their own phantasticall Chimera's who deny all principles and rules of art whom an adversary cannot drive into greater absurdities than they do willingly plunge themselves into Thus they do on purpose put out the lights and leave men to fence in the dark and then it is all one whether a man have skill at his weapon or not That he would have contingency to depend upon our knowledge or rather our ignorance and not upon the accidentall concurrence of causes That he confoundeth free causes which have power to suspend or deny their concurrence with contingent causes which admit onely a possibility to concur or not concur rather out of impotence than power That he maketh free causes which are principall causes to be guided by inferiour and instrumentall causes as if a man should say That a man is guided by the sword in his hand and not the sword by the man deserves no other answer but contempt or pity that a man should so poyson his intellectuals and entangle himself in his own errours Such another mistake is his argument to prove that contingent causes could not have concurred otherwise then they did I know noâ—… whether more pedanticall or ridiculous For I conceive not saith he how when this runneth this way and that another they can be said to concur that is run together Wheresoever there are divided parties as in a Court or a Camp or a Corporation he who concurreth with one party doth thereby desert the other Concerning his instance of the necessity of casting ambs ace If he can shew that the caster was antecedently necessitated to cast so that he could not possibly have denied his concurrence and to cast so soon so that he could not possibly have suspended his concurrence and to cast just with so much force so that he could not possibly have used more force or lesse force and to cast into that table and that very individuall place it may be whilest he winked or looked another way I say if he can shew that all these contingent accidents were absolutely predetermined and that it was not at all in the Casters power to have done otherwise than he did then he hath brought contingency under the jurisdiction of fate But if he faile in any one of these as all men see that he must faile in all of these then I may have leave to tell him that his casting of ambs ace hath lost him his game But now Reader I desire thee to observe his answer and to see him plainly yield the cause Though the subject ambs ace be mean and contemptible yet it yieldeth thee light enough to see what notorious triflers these are Thus he saith The suspending of the casters concurrence or altering of his force and the lâ—…ke accidents serve not to take away the necessity of ambs ace otherwise then by making a necessity of deux ace or some other cast that shall be thrown This is ingenuously answered I ask no more of him He confesseth That the caster might have suspended his concurrence or have altered his force or the accidents might have fallen out otherwise than they did And that if these alterations had happened as they might have happened then there had been as great a necessity of deux ace or some other cast as there was of ambs ace where he saith That the alteration of the accidents serveth not to take away the necessity of ambs ace otherwise than by making a necessity of deux ace or some other cast he confesseth That by making a necessity of deux ace or some other cast they might serve to take away the necessity of ambs ace What is now become of his antecedent determination of all things to one from eternity and of the absolute impossibility that any Event should come to passe otherwise than it doth If this be all his necessity it is no more than a necessity upon supposition where the
is impossible I argued thus If a man be free to act he is much more free to will because quod efficit tale illud magis est tale To which he answereth with an ignorant jeere As if he should say if I make him angry then I am more angry Pardon me I will free him from this feare I see nothing in him that should move a man to anger but rather to pity That Canon holdeth onely in causis perse such causes as by nature or the intention of the free Agent are properly ordained to produce that effect such as his outward causes are supposed by him to be in the determination of the will And therefore my instance was proper Not in causis per accidens where the effect is not produced naturally or intentionally but accidentally as in his ridiculous instance My last argument which he vouchsafeth to take notice of was this If the will be determined then the writing is determined And then he ought not to say he may write but he must write His answer is It followeth that he must write but it followeth not that I ought to say he must write unlesse he would have me say more than I know as he himself doth What poor crotchets are these unworthy of a man that hath any thing of reality in him as if my argument did regard the saying of it and not the thing it self If it follow precisely that he must write then he hath no freedom in utramque partem either to write or not to write then he is no more free to do than to will both which are contrary to his assertion I demanded if a mans will be determined without his will Why we do ask him whether he will do such a thing or not His answer is because we desire to know But he wholly mistaketh the scope of the question The emphasis lieth not in the word we but in the word his how it is his will For if his will be determined by natural causes without his will then it is the will of the causes rather than his own will I demanded further why we do represent reasons to men why we do intreate them He answereth Because we think to make them have the will they have not So he teacheth us First that the will is determined by a necessary influence of natural causes and then prateth of changing the will by advice and moral perswasions Let him advise the clock to strike sooner or later than it is determined by the weight of the plumb and motion of the wheeles Let him disswade the Plants from growing and see how much it availeth He saith the will doth will as necessarily as the fire burneth Then let him intreat the fire to leave burning at his request But thus it falleth out with them who cannot or will not dishinguish between natural and moral efficacy I asked then why do we blame free Agents since no man blameth fire for burning Cities nor accuseth poison for destroying men First he returneth an answer We blame them because they do not please us Why may a man blame every thing that doth not please his humour Then I do not wonder why T. H. is so apt to blame others without cause So the Schollar may blame his Master for correcting him deservedly for his good So he who hath a vitious stomack may blame healthful food So a Lethargical person may blame his best friend for endeavouring to save his life And now having shot his bolt he begins to examine the case Whether blaming be any more than saying the thing blamed is ill or imperfect Yes moral blame is much more It is an imputation of a fault If a man be born blind or with one eye we do not blame him for it But if a man have lost his sight by his intemperance we blame him justly He inquireth May not we say a lame horse is lame Yes but you cannot blame the horse for it if he was lamed by another without his own fault May not a man say one is a fool or a knave saith he if he be so though he could not help it If he made himself a sot we may blame him though if he be a stark sot we lose our labour But if he were born a natural idiot it were both injurious and ridiculous to blame him for it Where did he learn that a man may be a knave and cannot help it Or that knavery is imposed inevitably upon a man without his own fault If a man put fire to his neighbours house it is the fault of the man not of the fire He hath confessed formerly that a man ought not to be punished but for crimes The reason is the very same that he should not be blamed for doing that which he could not possibly leave undone no more than a servant whom his Master hath chained to a pillar ought to be blamed for not waiting at his elbow No chaine is stronger than the chaine of fatal Destiny is supposed to be That piece of eloquence which he thinks I borrowed from Tully was in truth taken immediately out of St. Austine who applieth it most properly to this case now in question He urgeth That a man might as well say that no man halteth which can not chuse but halt as say That no man sinneth in those things which he cannot shun for what is sin but halting This is not the first time that he hath contradicted himself Before he told us that there can be no punishment but for crimes that might have been left undone Now he telleth us that a man may sin who cannot chuse but sin Then sin is not a punishable crime He might even as well say that there is no such thing as sin in the World Or if there be that God is the authour of it Reader whosoever thou art if thou reverence God eschew such doctrines His comparison of halting is frivolous and impertinent Halting is not against the eternal rule of Gods justice as sinning is Neither doth a man chuse his halting freely as he doth his sinning In the conclusion of his Animadversions upon Num. 3. there is nothing that is new but that he is pleased to play with a wooden toppe He calleth my argument from Zenos cudgelling of his man a wooden argument Let him chuse whether I shall call his a wooden or a boyish comparison I did never meet with a more unfortunate instancer than he is He should produce an instance of natural Agents and he produceth an instance of voluntary Agents Such are the boyes that whip his wooden toppe He should produce an instance of a natural determination so he affirmeth that the will is determined and he produceth an instance of a violent determination for such is the motion of his toppe I hope he doth not mean that the will is compelled if he do he may string it up with the rest of his contradictions Hath not he brought his hogs to a faire market
when God hath created him a free man a noble creature to make himself like a wooden toppe Deserveth not he to be moved as the toppe is with a whip until he confesse his errour and acknowledge his own liberty If this wooden toppe should chance to hit T. H. on the shinnes I desire to know whom he would accuse The toppe That were as mad a part as it is in the dog to run after the stone and bite it never looking at the man who did throw it What then should he accuse the boyes that whipped the toppe No that were equally ludibrious seeing the boyes are as much necessitated and to use his own phrase as much lasht to what they do by the causes as the toppe is by the boyes So he may sit down patiently and at last think upon his liberty which he had abandoned and if the causes will give him leave get a plantin leafe to heale his broken shinne Such an unruly thing as this toppe which he fancieth is he himself sometimes dictating errours sometimes writing paradoxes sometimes justling out Metaphysicks sometimes wounding the Mathematicks And in a word troubling the World and disordering all things Logick Philosophy Theology with his extravagant conceits And yet he is offended that men will go about to keep possession of their ancient Principles against his upstart innovations and is ready to implead them with that quarrelsome Roman because they would not receive his weapon fairly with their whole bodies It were a much more Christian contemplation to elevate his thoughts from this wooden toppe to the organical body of a man wherein he may find God an hundred times from the external form or figure of the one which affords it onely an aptitude to move and turn to the internall and substantiall form of the other which is the subordinate beginning of animal motion from the turning of his toppe which is so swift that it prevents the discovery of the sharpest eye-sight and seemeth to stand stock still to the eternity of God where motion and rest do meet together or all motion is swallowed up into rest Lastly from these boyes who hold the toppe up by their continued lashings to the infinite power of an Almighty God who is both the procreating and conserving cause of all our life being and motion and to magnifie him for his wonderful workes wherein he hath manifested to the World his own power and wisdom An answer to his Animadversions upon Num. 4. THese Animadversions will produce no great trouble either to me or the Reader I did demonstrate in this Section the difference between liberty of exercise or contradiction and liberty of specification or contrariety He onely takes notice of it and calls it Jargon and so without one word more shaketh hands and withdraweth himself I said it was a rule in art that homonymous words or words of a double or doubtful signification ought first to be distinguished that Disputants may understand one another rightly and not beat the aire to no purpose I shewed out of the Scriptures that the word liberty or freedom was such an ambiguous word and shewed further what this liberty is whereof we dispute A liberty from necessitation or determination to one by extrinsecal causes He confesseth that this is the question adding That he understandeth not how such a liberty can be Then what remained but to go to our proofes Yet here he raiseth a storm of words upon the by and foameth out his own disgrace He denieth that there is any such rule of Art I am sure saith he not in the art of reason which men call Logick And all Logicians are sure of the contrary who give not onely one but many such rules in treating of simple terms of complex terms of fallacies They teach that an ambiguous term before it be distinguished signifieth nothing That it cannot be placed in any predicament That it cannot be defined nor divided And they give this general Rule Distinctio vocis ambiguae prima sit in omni rerum consideratione Either this man never read one word of Logick in his life or it is most strange how pride hath defaced all Logicall notions out of his mind He telleth us that the signification of an ambiguous word may be rendered perspicuous by a definition But Logicians teach us better that it cannot be defined before it be distinguished How should a man define he knoweth not what Suppose I should aske him the definition of a degree Can he or any man define a degree before they know what degree is to be defined whether a degree in the Heavens or a degree in the Schooles or a degree of Consanguinity or a degree of Comparison He may as well define a crabbe before he know whether it be a crab-fish or a crabbe-fruit The difinition and the thing defined are the same thing But ambiguous words have several significations which cannot be of the same thing His definition of liberty is this Liberty is the absence of external impediments to motion Before I have done I shall make him out of love with his definitions Liberty is an absence If liberty be an absence then liberty is nothing for an absence is nothing in the nature of things but a meer privation An absence of impediments Impediments may take away the liberty of execution not the liberty of election There may be true liberty where there are impediments and there may be no impediments yet without liberty An absence of outward impediments And why of outward impediments may not inward impediments withhold a man from acting freely as well as outward May not a fit of sicknesse keep a man at home as well as a shower of rain A man may be free and act freely notwithstanding impediments Many impediments are vincible A man may go out of his house though there be a great logge laid at his door Lastly an absence of impediments to motions Election is the most proper intrinsecall act of liberty which may be without locall motion I durst not stile my poor description by the name of a definition Yet it set down the right nature of liberty and shewed what was the difference between us His definition hath nothing to do with liberty and cometh not near our question by twenty furlongs Our controversie is Whether the will be antecedently determined by extrinsecall causes we have nothing to do with impediments of motion But to let him see the vanity of his definitions I will demonstrate out of them That the most necessary Agents are free Agents and the most free Agents necessary Agents that the will is free and necessity is liberty First when a stone falleth from a steeple to the ground or when a fire burneth there is an absence of all externall impediments to motion yet by his own confession these are not free nor so much as voluntary but naturall necessary actions The stone falleth necessarily not freely The fire burneth necessarily not freely So his
chuse which is as much as to say vollo velle I will will Which phrase T. H. esteemeth an absurd speech But Julius Scaliger thought otherwise Dicimus vere ex omnium gentium consensu vollo velle The very words cum adjutorio Dei with the help of God might teach them that God is neither the total cause nor the determining cause of mans election Lastly this distinction maketh T. H. worse than the Stoicks themselves for the Soicks together with their Fate did also maintaine the freedom of the will And as we find in many Authors both theirs and ours did not subject the soul of man nor the will of man to the rigid dominion of destiny The Stoicks substracted some causes and subjected others to necessity And among those which they would not have to be under necessity they placed the will of man lest it should seem not to be free if it were subjected to necessity Chrysippus made two sorts of causes principal causes which did necessitate and compel all things except the will of man and adjuvant causes as objects which did onely excite and allure These said he do awaken the mind of man but being awakened it can move of it self which he setteth forth by the comparison of a wherlegigge and a roller cast down a steep place which have the beginning of their motion from without themselves but the progresse from their own form and volubility So T. H. is worse than a Stoick in this respect and extendeth fatal necessity further than they did I have done with this distinction for this time I say nothing of the bird but the egge is bad Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 7. IN these Animadversions there is nothing contained which is material either for necessity or against liberty but passion and animosity Where it is said that the will doth perpetually follow the last dictate of the understanding or the last judgement of right reason He excepteth that I am mistaken for the will followeth as well the judgement of an erroneous as of a true reasoning First his exception is improper it is the judgement of Reason not of reasoning Secondly it is impertinent the onely question here is whether the will do follow the last judgement of reason not whether the reason be right or not Thirdly it is false whilst the will doth follow the erroneous judgement of reason yet it followeth it as the judgement of right reason When the judgement of Reason is erroneous the will followeth it onely de facto but when it is right it followeth it both de facto and de jure His second exception is that I make the understanding to be an effect of the will Good words I said not the understanding but the act of the understanding that is the deliberation or judgement of the understanding which is so far truely said to proceed from the will because the will employeth the understanding to deliberate and judge How the understanding moveth the will and the will moveth the understanding mutually is a superfluous question seeing they do not differ really but rationally The understanding is the essence of the soul as it knoweth the will the same essence of the soul as it extendeth it self to enjoy the thing known Neither am I obliged to read Lectures It is sufficient to know that the will is moved to the specification of its act onely by the understanding or which is all one by the object known and represented But the will is moved and doth move the understanding to the exercise of its act by it self except onely in that motion which is called motus primó primus that is the motion of the will towards the last end which it is not in the power of the will to will or not to will as its other motions are but requireth the excitation of the first cause The will moveth both the understanding and it selfe effectively The understanding moveth the will objectively by making those things to be actually known which were onely potentially intelligible As the light of the Sun maketh those things actually visible which before did lie hid in darknesse If he will not understand those things which all old Divines and Philosophers do assent unto chusing rather to be a blind leader of the blind than a follower of them who see nor the command of the will nor the difference between natural and moral efficacy If he understand not what is the judgement of the understanding practically practical he must learn and not adventure to censure before he knows what he censures What he is not able to confute he should not dare to sleight I do not justifie all the questions nor all the expressions of all Schoolemen But this I will say There is often more profound sense and learning in one of these obscure phrases which he censureth as jargon and unintelligible than in own of his whole Treatises And particularly in this which he sleighteth more than any of the rest in a domineering manner that is The judgement of the understanding practically practical A country man saith he will ackowledge there is judgement in men but will as soon say the judgement of the judgement as the judgement of the understanding Then shall country men be Judges of terms of Art who understand not any one terme of any Art much lesse the things intended by those termes and the faculties of the soul with their proper acts But such a sily Judge is fittest for T. H. I will not cite a Schoole-man but contain my selfe within the bounds of Philosophy Philosophers do define the understanding by its subject proper acts and objects to be a faculty of the soul understanding knowing and judging things intelligible If to judge of its object be the proper act of the understanding then there must needs be a judgement of the understanding Every sense judgeth of its proper object as the sight of colours the hearing of sounds Shall we grant judgement to the senses and deny judgement to the understanding Now this judgement is either contemplative or practical Contemplative is when the understanding aimeth onely at knowledge what is true and what is false without thought of any external action Practical judgement is when the understanding doth not onely judge what is true and what is false but also what is good and what is evil what is to be pursued and what is to be shunned So we have the practical judgement of the understanding Yet further when the understanding hath given such a practical judgement it is not necessary that the will shall follow it but it may suspend its consent and not elect It may put the understanding upon a new deliberation and require a new judgement In this case the judgement of the understanding is practical because it intends not meerly contemplation what is true and what is false but also action what is to be pursued and what is to be shunned But yet it is
by special influence did necessitate the second causes to operate as they did and if they being thus determined did necessitate man inevitably unresistably by an essential subordination of causes to do whatsoever he did then one of these two absurdities must follow either That there is no such thing as sin in the World or That God is more guilty of it than man as the motion of the watch is more from the Artificer who makes it and winds it up than from the watch it self To this he answereth onely this That my consequence is no stronger then if out of this That a man is lame necessarily one should inferre That either he is not lame or that his lamenesse proceeded necessarily from the will of God And is it possible that he doth not see that this inference followeth clearly and necessarily from his principles If he doth not I will help his eye-sight All actions and accidents and events whatsoever do proceed from the will of God as the principal cause determining them to do what they are by a naturall necessary subordination of causes This is the principle I assume that which no man can deny But the lamenesse of this man whom he mentioneth is an accident or event Therefore this lamenesse upon his principles is from the will of God c. Castigations upon the Animadversions Num. 12. IN this Section he behaveth himself as the Hound by Nilus drinketh and runneth as if he were afraid to make any stay quite omitting the whole contexture and frame of my discourse onely catching here and there at some phrase or odd ends of broken sentences The authority of St. Paul was formerly his Palladium the fate of his opinion of Fate or his seven-fold shield which he bore up against all assailants And now to desert it as the Oestredge doth her egges in the sand and leave it to the judgement of the Reader to think of the same as he pleaseth seemeth strange That man usually is in some great distresse who quitteth his buckler I desire but the judicious Reader upon the By to compare my former defence with his trifling exceptions and I do not fear his veredict He saith it is blasphemy to say that God can sin so it is blasphemy also to say that God is the authour or cause of any sinne This he himself saith at least implicitly and this he cannot but say so long as he maintaineth an universal antecedent necessity of all things flowing from God by a necessary flux of second causes He who teacheth that all men are determined to sin antecedently without their own concurrence irresistibly beyond their own power to prevent it and efficaciously to the production of sinne He who teacheth that it is the antecedent will of God that men should sinne and must sinne He who maketh God to be not onely the cause of the act and of the law but likewise of the irregularity or deviation and of that very anomy wherein the being of sin so far as sin hath a being doth consist maketh God to be the principall cause and authour of sin But T. H. doth all this He saith it is no blasphemy to say that God hath so ordered the World that sin may necessarily be committed That is true in a right sense if he understand onely a necessity of infallability upon Gods presence or a necessity of supposition upon Gods permission But what trifling minsing of the matter is this Let him cough out and shew us the bottom of his opinion which he cannot deny that God hath so ordered the World that sin must of necessity be committed and inevitably be committed that it is beyond the power of man to help it or hinder it and that by vertue of Gods omnipotent will and eternall decree This is that which we abominate Yet he telleth us That it cannot be said that God is the authour of sin because not he that necessitateth an action but he who doth command or warrant it is the authour First I take that for granted which he admitteth that by his opinion God necessitateth men to sinfull actions which is a blasphemy as well as the other Secondly his later part of his assertion is most false That he onely who commandeth or warranteth sin is the authour of it He who acteth sin he who necessitateth to sin he who first bringes sin into the World is much more the authour of it than the bare commander of it They make God to be the proper and predominate cause of sin by an essential subordination of the sin of man to the will of God and in essential subordinates allwayes the cause of the cause is the cause of the effect If there had never been any positive commandment or law given yet sin had still been sin as being contrary to the eternall law of justice in God himself If an Heathen Prince should command a Christian to sacrifice to Idols or Devils and he should do it not the commander onely but he who commits the idolatry is the cause of the sin His instance in the Act of the Israelites robbing the Egyptians of their Jewels is impertinent For it was no robbery nor sin God who is the Lord Paramount of Heaven and Earth having first justly transfered the right from the Egyptians to the Israelites and in probability to make them some competent satisfaction for all that work and drudgery which they had done for the Egyptians without payment This is certain if God necessitate the Agent to sin either the act necessitated is no sin or God is the principall cause of it Let him chuse whether of these two absurdities this Scylla or that Charybdis he will fall into The reason which he gives of Gods objurgations to convince men that their wills were not in their own power but in Gods power is senselesse and much rather proveth the contrary that because they were chidden therefore their wills were in their own power And if their wills had not been in their own power most certainly God would not have reprehended them for that which was not their own fault He saith That by interpreting hardening to be a permission of God I attribute no more to God in such actions then I might attribute to any of Pharaohs servants the not perswading their master c. As if Pharaohs servants had the same power over their master that God Allmighty had to hinder him and stop him in his evill courses As if Pharaohs servants were able to give or withhold grace as if Pharoahs servants had divine power to draw good out of evill and dispose of sin to the advancement of Gods glory and the good of his Church As if an humble petition or perswasion of a servant and a physicall determination of the will by a necessary flux of naturall causes were the same thing He who seeth a water break over its banks and suffers it to run out of its due channel that he may draw it by furrows into
shew such another grant for the Lions to devour men When God said Whoso sheddeth mans blood by man shall his blood be shed for in the Image of God made he man Was it intended onely that his blood should be preserved for the Lions or do not their teeth deface Gods Image as much as mans weapons But the Lion had liberty to eat man long before He is mistaken the creatures did beare a more awful respect to the Image of God in man before his fall But mans rebellion to God was punished with their rebellion of the creatures to him He saith it was impossible for most men to have Gods license to use the creatures for their sustenance Why so as if all the world were not then comprised in the family of Noah Or as if the Commandments and dispensations of God were not then delivered from father to son by tradition as they were long after by writing He asketh how I would have been offended if he should have spoken of man as Pliny doth Then whom there is no living creature more wretched or more proud Not half so much as now Pliny taxeth onely the faults of men he vilifieth not their humane nature Most wretched What is that but an argument of the immortality of the soul God would never have created the most noble of his creatures for the most wretched being Or more proud that is then some men Corruptio optimi pessima The best things being corrupted turn the worst But he acknowledgeth two advantages which man hath above other creatures his tongue and his hand Is it possible that any man who believeth that he hath an immortal soul or that reason and understanding are any thing but empty names should so far forget himself and his thankfulnesse to God as to prefer his tongue and his hands before an immortal soul and reason Then we may well change the definition of a man which those old dunses the Philosophers left us Man is a reasonable creature into this new one Man is a prating thing with two hands How much more was the humane nature beholden to Tully an Heathen who said That man differed from other creatures in reason and speech Or to Ovid who stileth man Sanctius his animal mentâ—…sque capacius altae If he have no better luck in defending his Leviathan he will have no great cause to boast of his making men examples And now it seemeth he hath played his masterprise For in the rest of his Animadversions in this Section we find a low ebbe of matter Concerning consultations he saith nothing but this That my writing was caused physically antecedently extrinsecally by his answer In good time By which I see right well that he understandeth not what a physical cause is Did he think his answer was so Mathematical to compel or necessitate me to write No I confesse I determined my self And his answer was but a slender occasion which would have had little weight with me but for a wiser mans advice to prevent his over-weening opinion of his own abilities And then followeth his old dish of twice sodden colewortes about free and necessary and contingent and free to do if he will which we have had often enough already His distinction between seen and unseen necessity deserveth more consideration The meaning is that seen necessity doth take away consultation but unseen necessity doth not take away consultation or humane indeavours Unseen necessity is of two sorts either it is altogether unseen and unknown either what it is or that it is Such a necessity doth not take away consultation or humane endeavours Suppose an office were privately disposed yet he who knoweth nothing of the disposition of it may be as solicitous and industrious to obtain it as though it were not disposed at all But the necessity which he laboureth to introduce is no such unseen unknown necessity For though he know not what the causes have determined particularly or what the necessity is yet he believeth that he knoweth in general that the causes are determined from eternity and that there is an absolute necessity The second sort of unseen necessity is that which is unseen in particular what it is but it is not unknown in general that it is And this kind of unseen necessity doth take away all consultation and endeavours and the use of means as much as if it were seen in particular As supposing that the Cardinals have elected a Pope in private but the declaration of the person who is elected is kept secret Here is a necessity the Papacy is full and this necessity is unseen in particular whilest no man knoweth who it is Yet for as much as it is known that it is it taketh away all indeavours and consultations as much as if the Pope were publickly enthroned Or suppose a Jury have given in a privy veredict no man knoweth what it is until the next Court-day yet it is known generally that the Jurers are agreed and the veredict is given in Here is an unseen necessity Yet he who should use any further consultations or make further applications in the case were a fool So though the particular determination of the causes be not known to us what it is yet if we know that the causes are particularly determined from eternity we know that no consultation or endeavour of ours can alter them But it may be further objected that though they cannot alter them yet they may help to accomplish them It was necessary that all who sailed with St. Paul should be saved from shipwrack Yet St. Paul told them that except the shipmen did abide in the ship they could not be saved So though the event be necessarily determined yet consultation or the like means may be necessary to the determination of it I answer the question is not whether the means be necessary to the end for that is agreed upon by all parties But the question is to whom the ordering of the means which are necessary to the production of the event doth properly belong whether to the first cause or to the free Agent If it belong to the free Agent under God as we say it doth then it concerneth him to use consultations and all good endeavours as requisite means to obtain the desired end But if the disposition of the means belong soly and wholly to God as he saith it doth and if God have ordered all means as well as ends and events particularly and precisely then it were not onely a thanklesse and superfluous office to consult what were the fittest means to obtain an end when God hath determined what must be the onely means and no other but also a saucinesse and a kind of tempting of God for a man to intrude himself into the execution of God Almighties decrees whereas he ought rather to cast away all care and all thought on his part and resign himself up wholly to the disposition of the second causes which act nothing but by
there be true liberty in the world we know well whereunto to impute all these disorders but if there be no true liberty in the world free from antecedent necessitation then they all fall directly upon God Almighty and his Providence The last question is concerning his definition of contingent That they are such Agents as work we know not how Against which I gave him two exceptions in my defence One was this Many Agents work we know not how as the Loadstone draweth iron the Jet chaff and yet they are known and acknowledged to be necessary and not contingent Agents Secondly many Agents do work we know how as a stone falling down from an house upon a mans head and yet we do not account it a necessary but a contingent event by reason of the accidental concurrence of the causes I have given him other instances in other parts of this Treatise And if need be he may have twenty more And yet though his definition was shewed formerly to halt down-right on both sides yet he good man is patient and never taketh the least notice of it But onely denyeth the consequence and over-looketh the proofes His objection about the indetermination of the causes That indetermination doth nothing because it maketh the event equal to happen and not to happen is but a flash without any one grain of solidity For by indetermination in that place is clearly understood not to be predetermined to one by extrinsecal causes but to be left free to its own intrinsecal determination this way or that way indifferently So the first words By reason of the indetermination have referrence to free Agents and free Events And the other words Or accidentall concurrence of the causes have referrence to casuall Events And both together referendo sigul◅ singulis do include all contingents as the word is commonly and largely taken by old Philosophers Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 17. REader I do not wonder now and then to see T. H. sink under the weight of an absurdity in this cause A back of steel were not able to bear all those unsupportable consequences which flow from this opinion of fatall destiny But why he should delight to multiplle needlesse absurdities I do not know Allmost every Section produceth some new monster In this seventeenth Section I demonstrated clearly that this opinion of universal necessity doth take away the nature of sinne That which he saith in answer thereunto is that which followeth First it is true he who taketh away the liberty of doing according to the will taketh away the nature of sinne but he that denieth the liberty to will doth not so This answer hath been sufficiently taken away already both in the defence and in these Castigations Inevitable and unresistible necessity doth as much acquit the will from sin as the action Again whereas I urged That whatsoever proceedeth essentially by way of physicall determination from the first cause is good and just and lawfull he opposeth That I might as well have concluded that what soever man hath been made by God is a good and just man So I might What should hinder me to conclude that every man and every creature created by God is good qua talis as it is created by God but being but a creature it is not immutably good as God himself is If he be not of the same opinion he must seek for companions among those old Hereticks the Manichees or Marcionites So he cometh to his main answer Sin is not a thing really made Those things which at first were actions were not then sins though actions of the same nature with those which were afterwards sins Nor was then the will to any thing a sin though it were a will to the same thing which in willing now we should sin Actions became then sins first when the Commandemens came c. There can no action be made sin but by the law Therefore this opinion though it derive actions essentially from God it derives not sins essentially from him but relatively and by the Cōmandement The first thing I observe in him is a contradiction to himself Now he maketh the anomy or the irregularity and repugnance to the law to be the sinne before he conceiveth the action it self to be the sin Doth not the Bishop think God to be the cause of all actions And are not sins of commission actions Is murther no action And doth not God himself say there is no evil in the City which I have not done And was not murther one of those evills c. I am of opinion that the distinction of causes into efficient and deficient is Bohu and signifieth nothing This might have been pardoned to him But his second slip is worse That the World was I know not how long without sin I did demonstrate That upon his grounds all sins are essentially from God and consequently are lawfull and just He answereth That the actions were from God but the actions were not sins at the first untill there was a law What is this to the purpose It is not materiall when sin did enter into the World early or late so as when it did enter it were essentially from God which it must needs be upon his grounds that both the murther and the law against murther are from God And as it doth not help his cause at all so it is most false What actions were there in the World before the sinne of the Angell He charged the Angels with folly And if God spared not the Angels that sinned but cast them down to hell and the Angels which kept not their first estate What were those first actions that were before the sinne of Adam By one man sinne entred into the World and death by sinne Thirdly he erreth most grossely in supposing that the World at first was lawlesse The World was never without the eternall law that is the rule of justice in God himself and that which giveth force to all other laws as the Divine Wisdom saith By me Kings raign and Princes decree justice And sinne is defined to be that which is acted said or thought against the eternall law But to let this passe for the present because it is transcendentally a law How was the World ever without the law of nature which is most properly a law the law that cannot lie not mortal from mortal man not dead or written in the paper without life but incorruptible written in the heart of man by the finger of God himself Let him learn sounder doctrine from St. Paul For when the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law these having not the law are a law unto themselves which shew the work of the law written in their hearts their consciences also bearing witnesse and their thoughts the mean while accusing or excusing one another I passe by those Commandements of God which were delivered by tradition from hand to
the will If he will not he doth not deserve to have so much as one of his testimonies looked upon Thirdly I answer That supposing but not granting that all his testimonies were true as he citeth them yet none of them will advantage his cause at all Luther his first witnesse disclaimed it and recanted what he had said And the necessity which he speaketh of is onely a necessity of immutability And the Synod of Dort speaketh onely of a necessity of infillability both which do imply no more than a consequent hypothetical necessity which we also maintain Zanchy Bucer Calvine Moulin speak of a necessity of sinning in respect of our original corruption This concerneth not the liberty of the will whether it be free or not free but the power of free-will whether it can without grace avoid sinne and determine it self to morall or supernaturall good which is nothing to the question between him and me And for an essay what he may expect from his witnesses Calvine who is the least disfavourable to him of them all saith no more but this Deum quoties viam facere vult suae providentiae etiam in rebus externis homiuum voluntates flectere versare nec ita liberam esse ipsorum electionem quin ejus libertati Dei arbitrium dominetur That God not allwayes but as often as he will make way for his providence even in external things doth bow and turn the wills of men neither is their election so free but that the good pleasure of God hath a dominion over their liberty Calvine did know no universal determination of all externall acts by God but onely in some extraordinary cases He acknowledged that the will of man was free to elect in external things but not so free as to be exempt from the dominion of God which two things none of us doth deny So we may conclude from Calvine That God doth not ordinarily necessitate external events that is as much as to say there is no universal necessity He will yet have lesse cause to please himself with the Councell of Dort when he shall see what was said there by our British Divines and approved by the Synod That God made our wills and endowed them with liberty That he leavs to every thing its proper manner and motion in the production of Acts and to the wills of men to act after their native manner freely That in vain are punishments threatned to Malefactors by the laws of men if no man could leave undone that which he doth They ask who in his right wits will say that David could not but have committed adultery or after that could not but have murthered Uriah They condemne his opinion positively as an errour Hominem non posse plus boni facere quam facit nec pluus mali omittere quam omittit That a man cannot do more good or leave more evill undone than he doth Still he is about his old quarrel concerning the Elicite and Imperate acts of the will not against the thing for it is as clear as the day-light that there is a ground in nature for such a distinction and that externall Agents have not so much power over the will of man to make him chuse what they think fit as over the locomotive faculty and other members to make a man move them at their pleasure But all his contention is still about the words Imperate or commanded Acts As if saith he the faculties could speak one to another I answered him that there were mentall terms as well as vocall by which the soule being willing may expresse it self to the locomotive or other inferiour faculties As the Angells do understand one another not by speech but as we behold one another in a glasse Here he is out again quite mistaking the plain and obvious sense of my words shewing that in his long and profound meditations he did never meet with this subject And telling us That by mentall speech I understand onely an Idea of the sound and of the letters whereof the word is made And charging me most untruely to say That when Tarquin commanded his son by striking off the tops of Poppies he did it by mentall terms This I said truly That howsoever a Superiour doth intimate his commands to his Inferiour whether it be by vocall terms as ordinarily or by mentall terms as it is among the Angels or by signes as it was between Tarquin and his sonnes it is still a command And in this case of the souls imploying the Inferiour faculties it is without dispute But I never said that the striking off the tops of the Poppies with his rod was mentall language or the terms of his mind It seemeth he hath never heard of mentall terms or mentall prayer The conceptions of the mind are the naturall representations of things Words are Signes or Symbols of the inward conceptions of the mind by imposition What way soever the inward conceptions are intimated it is the same that speech is in effect 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an instrument or means of Communication As a signe is an intimation to a Traveller where he may find an harbour He saith No drawing can be imagined but of bodies and whatsoever is drawn out is drawn out of one place into another He knoweth no drawing but drawing of wire or drawing of water or drawing of Carres St. James saith Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you and no man can come unto me except my father draw him and if I be lifted up from the earth I will draw all men unto me In all these drawings here is no drawing out of one place into another A fair object draws mens eyes A good Oratour draweth them by the ears There is metaphorical drawing Take but one place more Counsel in the heart of a man is like deep water but a man of understanding will draw it out Castigations of the A nimadversions Num. 21. A Paradox is a private opinion of one man or a few factious men assumed or maintained sometimes out of errour of judgement but commonly out of pride and vain glorious affectation of singularity contrary to the common and received opinion of other men Such Paradoxes were the Stoical opnions Stoicks were fruitfull in producing Paradoxes That all sins are equal and that a wise man is all things a good King a good Captain a good Cobler I hope he will be better advised than to condemne all those of ignorance who out of civility stiled those new fangled opinions Stoicall Paradoxes rather than Stoical errours He saith Christiaen religion was once a Paradox Never A Paradox is a private opinion contrary to the common opinion Points of faith are more than opinions Faith is a certain assent grounded upon the truth and authority of the revealer Opinion is a certain assent grounded upon the probable conjectures of reason We do not use to call Turkish Heathenish or Heretical errours by the
advantage and that it is not without cause men use improper language when they mean to keep their errours from being detected to let him see that this is the sense of all men and that this assertion will advantage his cause nothing I am contented to answer his Animadversions upon this subject in the same phrase that he proposeth them He pleadeth that the election of the free Agent doth necessarily follow his last judgement and therefore his election is not free My first answer to this is that determination which he maintaineth and which taketh away freedom and liberty is extrinsecal and antecedent But the determination of the Agents election by his judgement is intrinsecall made by himself and concomitant being together in time with the election To this now he replyeth That the will and the last dictate of the understanding are produced in the same instant but the necessity of them both was antecedent before they were produced At when a stone is falling the necessity of touching the earth is antecedent to the touch it self unlesse it be hindered by some contrary external motion and then the stop is as necessary as the proceeding would have been To this I give three clear solutions First That his instance of the stone is altogether impertinent the stone is a naturall Agent the man is a voluntary Agent Natural Agents act necessarily and determinately Voluntary Agents act freely and undeterminately The stone is determined to its motion downwards intrinsecally by its own nature that is by the weight or gravity of it but he maketh the will of the free Agent to be determined extrinsecally by causes without himself Secondly There is not the like necessary or determinate connexion between the will and its antecedent causes as is between the stone falling and its touching the ground It was in the power of the man to deliberate or not deliberate to elect or not elect but it is not in the power of the stone to fall or not to fall So the motion of the stone was determined to one antecedently in its causes but the elective will of man is not determined to one antecedently in its causes until the man determine himself by his choice Thirdly Though the stone be not such a free undetermined Agent as the man is and therefore this concerneth not liberty yet he himself confesseth that casually it may be hindred from touching the ground unlesse it be hindred by some contrary externall motion So the stones touching of the ground is necessary onely upon supposition unlesse it be hindred But that necessity which he maintaineth is a necessity antecedent which cannot possible be otherwise But there is this difference between the man and the stone That the thing supposed to deliberate or not deliberate is in the power of the man but the thing supposed to be hindred or not hindred is not in the power of the stone He pleadeth further That supposing the stone be hindred then the stop is necessary So still there is necessity Nay by his favour if the event be necessary to fall out this way upon one supposition and necessary to fall out another way upon a contrary supposition then there is no absolute or antecedent necessity at all for absolute necessity admitteth no such contrary suppositions absolute or antecedent necessity being that which cannot possibly be otherwise My second answer was negative That the free Agent in electing doth not alwayes chuse what is best or most convenient in his judgement He affirmeth that I say this is but a probable opinion nay I said it was probable at the least and if he presse me further I say it is but too evident Otherwise there should be no sin against conscience for what is conscience but the practical judgement or dictate of reason concerning things to be done or to be shunned here and now with these or those circumstances And such a man is truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 condemned by himself A man who hath two dishes of meat set before him the one more agreeable to his health the other more pleasing to his palate may and many times doth chuse the later and the worse his judgement at the same time disallowing it Saint Paul confesseth that he had done that which he allowed not He saith it is impossible for a man to will any thing which appeareth not first in his understanding to be good for him That is very true but it cometh not home If he would speak to the purpose he should say It is impossible for a man to will any thing which appeareth not in his understanding to be best for him But this is false As suppose one thing appear to a man to be honest that is one good Another thing appeareth to be delightfull that is another good Every man knoweth in his own judgement and conscience That that which is honestly good is better than that which is delightfully good yet men often chuse pleasure before honesty their conscience at the same time accusing them for it I said a man is bound to follow his conscience as the last practicall dictate of reason There is no doubt of it The Scripture is plain He ihat doubteth is damned if he eat because he eateth not of faith for whatsoever is not of faith that is to say is not done upon a firm resolution that it is lawful is sin Reason is as plain all circumstances must concur to make an action good but one single defect doth make it evil The approbation of conscience is required to every good action and the want thereof maketh it sinful not simply in it self but to that person at that time He excepteth That a man ought not to follow the dictate of his understanding when it is erroneous That is most true with this limitation Wherein it is erroneous or as it is erroneous But there is an expedient for this in Case-divinity which I easily beleive he did never meet with He who hath an erroneous conscience is doubly obliged first to reform it and then to follow it The dictates of right reason ought ever to be followed and erroneous reason ought ever to be reformed and made right reason I said that reason was the true root of liberty That is plain The object of the will is good either reall or apparent And a man cannot will any thing as good but that which he judgeth in his understanding to be good Nothing can affect that which it doth not know And therefore reason must of necessity be the root of Liberty This he taketh to be contradictory to what I say here That actions and objects may be so equally circumstantiated or the case so intricate that reason cannot give a positive sentence but leaves the election to liberty or chance How then saith he can a man leave that to liberty when his reason can give no sentence And if by chance I mean that which hath no causes I destroy Providence
act or the man may will or suspend his acts Scaliger saith that volo velle is a proper speech I will will and received by the common consent of all nations If he had any thing of moment to insert into his Animadversions he would not make use of such Leptologies Canting is not chargable upon him who useth common and known terms of art but upon him who deviseth new terms as Canters do which die with their inventers He asketh How can he that willeth at the same time suspend his will Rather why doth he insert into his demand at the same time It is enough to liberty if he that willeth could have suspended his will All this answer of mine to his second argument was illustrated by the instance of the election of a Pope to which he opposeth nothing but It may be and it doth not follow and I would be glad to know by what arguments he can prove that the election was not necessitated I have done it sufficiently all over in this Treatise I am now answering to what he produceth not proving If he have any thing to demand let him go to the Cardinals and inquire of them whether they be such fools to keep such a deal of needlesse stir if they were atecedently necessitated to chuse one certain man Pope and no other Castigations of the Animadversion Num. 31. and Num. 32. I Joyne these two Sections together because they concern one and the same thing namely Whether every sufficient cause do necessarily effect whatsoever it is sufficient for Or which is the same in effect Whether a free Agent when all things are present which are needful to produce an effect can neverthelesse not produce it Which question may be understood two wayes either inclusively or exclusively either including and comprehending the will of the Agent under the notion of sufficiency and among things requisite to the producing of the effect so as the cause is not reputed to be sufficient except it have both ability and will to produce the effect and so as both requisite power and requisite will do concur and then there is no question but the effect will infallibly follow Posita causa ponitur effectus or else it may be understood exclusively not comprehending the will under the notion of sufficiency or not reckoning it among the necessary requisites to the production of the effect so as the Agent is supposed to have power and ability to produce the effect but no will And then it is as infallibly true on the other side that the effect cannot be produced Thus far this question is a meer Logomachy or contention about words without any reall difference And T. H. doth but abuse his Readers to keep a jangling and a stir about nothing But in truth the water stopeth not here If he should speak to the purpose he should leave these shallows If the will of the free Agent be included under the notion of sufficiency and comprehended among those things which are requisite to the production of the effect so as both sufficient ability and sufficient wil are required to the making a sufficient cause Then it cometh to be considered in the second place whether the will in things external be under God in the power and disposition of the free Agent himself which is the common opinion of all men who understand themselves And then the production of the effect is onely necessary hypothetically or upon supposition that the free Agent is willing Or else Whether the will of the free Agent be not in his own power and disposition but determined antecedently by extrinsecal causes which is the paradoxical opinion of T. H. and then the production of the the effect is absolutely and antecedently necessary So still the question is where it was and all his bustling about sufficiency and efficiency and deficiency is but labour in vain If he would have spoken any thing at all to the purpose he should have attempted to prove that every sufficient cause excluding the will that is every cause which hath sufficient power and ability doth necessaryly produce whatsoever it is able to produce though the Agent be unwilling to produce it or that the will of the Agent is not in his own power and disposition We expect proofs not words But this he could not do for he himself in this very Treatise hath several times distinguished between liberty and power telling us that a sick man hath liberty to go but wanteth power And that a man who is bound hath power to go but wanteth liberty If he that is bound hath power to go then he hath sufficient power to go for unsufficient power cannot produce the effect And so by his own confession an Agent may have sufficient power and yet cannot necessarily nor yet possibly produce the effect I urged That God is sufficient to produce many Worlds but he doth not produce them therefore a sufficient cause dorh not necessarily produce all those effects which it is sufficient to produce He answereth That the meaning is that God is sufficient to produce them if he will Doth he not see that it followeth inevitably from hence That there may be a sufficient cause without will Doth he not see likewise from hence plainly that for those things which are within the power of man he is sufficient also to produce them if he will So still he would obtrude a necessity of supposition If a man will for an absolute necessity That which is but necessary conditionally If a man will is not necessary absolutely And he confesseth that without this supposition If he will a man is not sufficient to produce any voluntary action I added other instances as this That the passion of Christ is a sufficient ransom for all mankind and so is acknowledged by all Christians yet all mankind shall not be saved by virtue of his passion therefore there may be a sufficient cause without production of the effect This is the language of holy Scripture Which of you intending to build a Tower sitteth not down first and counteth the cost whether he have sufficient to finish it That is as our Saviour expoundeth himself in the next verse whether he be able to finish it So St. Paul saith Who is sufficient for these things that is Who is able for these things When God saith What could I have done more for my vineyard that I have not done God had given them sufficient means and could have given them more if they had been more capable but because they were wanting to themselves these sufficient means were not efficacious I looked for grapes saith God How could God look for grapes if he had not given them sufficient means to bring forth grapes yet these sufficient means were not efficacious These things being premised do answer whatsoever he saith as this The Bishop thinks two Horses may be sufficient to draw a Coach though they will not draw c. I say they
to this subject which we are about it is most impertinent and improper He himself as partial as he is cannot think that this liberty is any thing to that moral liberty which renders a man capable of reward or punishment any more that a Taylors measure is to the measure of motion I said and say again That nothing can begin to be without a cause and that nothing can cause it self Yet I say many things do begin to act of themselves This he saith is to contradict my self because I make the action to begin without a cause This is not the first time that he hath noted this for a contradiction I shall sooner salve the contradiction than he save his credit As if the Agent and the Action were the same thing Or as if the Agent was not the cause of the Action Or as if there were any consequence in this The Agent cannot begin to be of himself therefore he cannot begin to act of himself Or he cannot cause himself therefore he cannot cause his action Nothing can cause it self but that which is caused by one thing may cause another Whereas he addeth That it hath been proved formerly that every sufficient cause is a necessary cause and that is but Iargon to say free causes determine themselves it is but a puffe of his vain glorious humour He hath made nothing to appear but his own ignorance and mistakes In the later end of this Section I made bold to make some serious demands to Mr. Hobs which did not at all reflect upon him in particular but at those natural notions which are common to all mankind The first demand was Whether he doth not find by experience that he doth many things which he might have left undone if he would c. He answereth Yet if he would but he maketh it impossible for him to have had any other will So he doth as good as tell us that he might have done them upon an impossible condition or supposition as he himself might have flown over sea if he had had a paire of wings This is a contradiction indeed implied first to say he might have done otherwise and then to adde an impossible condition which makes his proposition negative I am sure it is not fairly done to avoide the scope and meaning of the demand The second question was Whether he do not some things out of meer animosity and will without regard to the direction of right reason c. He answereth This question was in vain unlesse I thought my self his confessor No it is enough I desire not to intrude into his secrets My third demand as he saith was Whether he writ not this defence of necessity against liberty onely to shew that he will have a dominion over his own actions He answereth No but to shew that he had no dominion over his will and this at my request My request was That what he did upon this subject should rather be in writing than by word of mouth It seemeth that I had the dominion over his will So might I come to be questioned for all his Paradoxes The truth is This was no distinct question but a Corollary of the second question My third demand was Whether he be not angry with those who draw him from his study or crosse him in his desires and why he is angry with them if they be necessitated to do what they do any more than he is angry with a sharp winter c. This is wholly omitted by him The last demand was Whether he do not sometimes blame himself and say O what a fool was I to do thus or thus Or with to himself O that I had been wise and why he doth this if he were irresistibly necessitated to do all things that he doth He might as well have wished O that I had not breathed or O what a fool was I to grow old To this he answereth nothing but subtle questions and full of Episcopal gravity And that he thinks in this question I will appear the greater fool supposing that I meant to put the fool upon him which I professe my self to be innocent of as he might have found by these words inserted among the questions Which wise men find in themseves sometimes Though I jest sometimes with his cause or his arguments I do not meddle with his person further than to condemne his vain-glorious presumption to arrogate so much to himself Though I have not half so great an opinion of him as he hath of himself yet I wish his humilility were answerable to his wit Thus of four questions he hath quite omitted one neglected another refused to answer a third and answered the fourth contrary to the scope of the question Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 34. HIs bragging humour will not leave him he still forgetteth Epictetus his sheep He saith When I shall have read over his Animadversions Num. 31. I will think otherwise whatsoever I will confesse Male ominatis parcito verbis I should sooner turn Manichee and make two Gods one of good the other of evil than to make the true God to be the cause of all evill But there is no danger either of the one or of the other I have read over his Animadversions Num. 31. I have weighed them and I professe I find nothing in them worthy of a Divine or a Philosopher or an ingenious person who made a sad inquisition after truth nor any thing that doth approach within a German mile of the cause in controversie And so I leave him to the Castigations That his two instances of casting ambs ace and raining to morrow are impertinent appeareth by these two reasons First the question is of free actions these two instannes are of contingent actions Secondly the question is of antecedent necessity these instances are of an hypothetical necessity And though I used the beauty of the World as a Medium to prove liberty wherein contingency is involved yet this doth not warrant him to give over the principal question and to start and pursue new questions at his pleasure But let him be of good comfort be they pertinent or impertinent they shall not be neglected Because I would not blonder as he doth I distinguished actions into four sorts First The actions of free Agents Secondly The actions of free and natural Agents mixed Thirdly The actions of bruit beasts Fourthly The actions of natural inanimate causes Of these four sorts the first onely concerneth the question and he according to his custom quite omitteth it yet it was of more moment and weight than all he saith in this Section put together A man proportioneth his time each day and allotteth so much to his devotions so much to his study so much to his dyet so much to his recreations so much to necessary or civil visit so much to his rest He that will seek for I know not what necessary causes of all this without himself except that good God who hath
sin yet it ought to be numbred among the sins of imprudence or ignorance He addeth that an Atheist is punished not as a Subject is punished by his King because he did not observe laws but as an enemy by an enemy because he would not accept laws His reason is because the Atheist never submitted his will to the will of God whom he never thought to be And he concludeth that mans obligation to obey God proceedeth from his weaknesse Manifestum est obligationem ad prestandum ipsi Deo obedientiam incumbere hominibus propter imbecilitatem First it is impossible that should be a sin of meer ignorance or imprudence which is dirictly contrary to the light of natural reason The laws of nature need no new promulgation being imprinted naturally by God in the heart of man The law of nature was written in our hearts by the finger of God without our assent or rather the law of nature is the assent it self Then if nature dictate to us that there is a God and that this God is to be worshipped in such and such manner it is not possible that Atheisme should be a sin of meer ignorance Secondly a rebellious Subject is still a Subject de jure though not de facto by right though not by deed And so the most cursed Atheist that is ought by right to be the Subject of God and ought to be punished not as a just enemy but as a disloyal traytour Which is confessed by himself This fourth sin that is of those who do not by word and deed confesse one God the supreme King of Kings in the natural kingdom of God is the crime of high treason for it is a denial of divine power or Atheisme Then an Atheist is a traitour to God and punishable as a disloial Subject not as an enemy Lastly it is an absurd and dishonourable assertion to make our obedience to God to depend upon our weaknesse because we cannot help it and not upon our gratitude because we owe our being and preservation to him Who planteth a vineyard and eateth not of the fruit thereof Or who feedeth a flock and eateth not of the milk of the flock And again Thou art worthy O Lord to receive glory and honour and power for thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure they are and were created But it were much better or at least not so ill to be a downright Atheist than to make God to be such a thing as he doth and at last thrust him into the devils office to be the cause of all sinne For T. H. his god is not the God of Christians nor of any rational men Our God is every where and seeing he hath no parts he must be wholly here and wholly there and wholly every where So nature it self dictateth It cannot be said honourably of God that he is in a place for nothing is in a place but that which hath proper bounds of its greatness But T. H. his God is not wholly every where No man can conceive that any thing is all in this place and all in another place at the same time for none of these things ever have or can be incident to sense So far well if by conceiving he mean comprehending But then follows That these are absurd speeches taken upon credit without any signification at all from deceived Philosophers and deceived or deceiving School-men Thus he denyeth the ubiquity of God A circumscriptive a definitive and a repletive being in a place is some heathen language to him Our God is immutable without any shadow of turning by change to whom all things are present nothing past nothing to come But T. H. his god is measured by time losing something that is past and acquiring something that doth come every minute That is as much as to say That our God is infinite and his god is finite for unto that which is actually infinite nothing can be added neither time nor parts Hear himself Nor do I understand what derogation it can be to the divine perfection to attribute to it potentiality that is in English power so little doth he understand what potentiality is and successive duration And he chargeth it upon us as a fault that will not have eternity to be an endlesse succession of time How successive duration and an endlesse succession of time in God Then God is finite then God is elder to day than he was yesterday Away with blasphemies Before he destroyed the ubiquity of God and now he destroyeth his eternity Our God is a perfect pure simple indivisible infinite essence free from all composition of matter and form of substance and accidents All matter is finite and he who acteth by his infinite essence needeth neither organs nor faculties nor accidents to render him more compleat But T. H. his god is a divisible god a compounded god that hath matter and qualities or accidents Hear himself I argue thus The divine substance is indivisible but eternity is the divine substance The Major is evident because God is Actus simplicissimus The minor is confessed by all men that whatsoever is attributed to God is God Now listen to his answer The Major is so far from being evident that Actus simplicissimus signifieth nothing The Minor is said by some men thought by no man whatsoever is thought is understood The Major was this The divine substance is indivisible Is this far from being evident Either it is indivisible or divisible If it be not indivisible then it is divisible then it is materiate then it is corporeal then it hath parts then it is finite by his own confession Habere partes aut esse totum aliquid sunt uttributa finitorum Upon this silly conceit he chargeth me for saying That God is not just but justice it self not eternal but eternity it self which he calleth unseemly words to be said of God And he thinketh he doth me a great courtesie in not adding blasphemous and atheistical But his bolts are so soon shot and his reasons are such vain imaginations and such drowsie phantasies that no sad man doth much regard them Thus he hath already destroyed the ubiquity the eternity and the simplicity of God I wish he had considered better with himself before he had desperately cast himself upon these rocks But paulo maiora canamus my next charge is That he destroyes the very being of God and leaves nothing in his place but an empty name For by taking away all incorporal substances he taketh away God himself The very name saith he of an incorporal substance is a contradiction And to say that an Angel or Spirit is an incorporeal substance is to say in effect that there is no Angel or Spirit at all By the same reason to say That God is an incorporal substance is to say there is no God at all Either God is incorporal or he is
finite and consists of parts and consequently is no God This That there is no incorporal spirit is that main root of Atheisme from which so many lesser branches are daily sprouting up When they have taken away all incorporal spirits what do they leave God himself to be He who is the fountain of all being from whom and in whom all creatures have their being must needs have a real being of his own And what real being can God have among bodies and accidents for they have left nothing else in the universe Then T. H. may move the same question of God which he did of devils I would gladly know in what classis of entities the Bishop ranketh God Infinite being and participated being are not of the same nature Yet to speak according to humane apprehension apprehension and comprehension differ much T. H. confesseth that natural reason doth dictate to us that God is infinite yet natural reason cannot comprehend the infinitenesse of God I place him among incorporeal substances or spirits because he hath been pleased to place himself in that rank God is a spirit Of which place T. H. giveth his opinion that it is unintelligible and all others of the same nature and fall not under humane understanding They who deny all incorporeal substances can understand nothing by God but either nature not naturam naturantem that is a real authour of nature but naturam naturatam that is the orderly concourse of natural causes as T. H. seemeth to intimate or a fiction of the brain without real being cherished for advantage and politick ends as a profitable error howsoever dignified with the glorious title of the eternal causes of all things We have seen what his principles are concerning the Deity they are full as bad or worse concerning the Trinity Hear himself A person is he that is represented as often as he is represented And therefore God who has been represented that is personated thrice may properly enough be said to be three Persons though neither the word Person nor Trinity be ascribed to him in the Bible And a little after to concludethe doctrine of the Trinity as far as can be gathered directly from the Scripture is in substance this that the God who is alwayes one and the same was he person represented by Moses the person represented by his Son incarnate and the person represented by the Apostles As represented by the Apostles the holy spirit by which they spake is God As represented by his son that was God and Man the Son is that God As represented by Moses and the High Priests the Father that is to say the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ is that God From whence we may gather the reason why those names Father Son and Holy Ghost in the signification of the Godhead are never used in the Old Testament For they are persons that is they have their names from representing which could not be till diverse men had represented Gods person in ruling or in directing under him Who is so bold as blind Bayard The emblime of a little boy attempting to lade all the water out of the sea with a Coccleshel doth fit T. H. as exactly as if it had been shaped for him who thinketh to measure the profound and inscrutable mysteries of religion by his own silly shallow conceits What is now become of the great adorable mysterie of the blessed undivided Trinity it is shrunk into nothing Upon his grounds there was a time when there was no Trinity And we must blot these words out of our Creed The Father eternal the Son eternal the Holy Ghost eternal And these other words out of our Bibles Let us make man after our image Unlesse we mean that this was a consultation of God with Moses and the Apostles What is now become of the eternal generation of the Son of God if this Sonship did not begin until about four thousand years after the creation were expired Upon these grounds every King hath as many persons as there be Justices of Peace and petty Constables in his kingdom Upon this account God Almighty hath as many persons as there have been Soveraign Princes in the World since Adam According to this reckoning each one of us like so many Gerious may have as many persons as we please to make procurations Such bold presumption requireth another manner of confutation Concerning God the Son forgetting what he had said elsewhere where he calleth him God and man and the Son of God incarnate he doubteth not to say that the word hypostatical is canting As if the same person could be both God and man without a personal that is an hypostatical union of the two natures of God and man He alloweth every man who is commanded by his lawful Soveraign to deny Christ with his tongue before men He deposeth Christ from his true kingly office making his kingdom not to commence or begin before the day of judgement And the regiment wherewith Christ governeth his faithful in this life is not properly a kingdom but a pastoral office or a right to teach And a little after Christ had not kingly authority committed to him by his Father in this World but onely consiliary and doctrinall He taketh away his Priestly or propitiatory office And although this act of our redemption be not alwayes in Scripture called a Sacrifice and oblation but sometimes a price yet by price we are not to understand any thing by the value whereof he could claim right to a pardon for us from his offended father but that price which God the Father was pleased in mercy to demand And again Not that the death of one man though without sin can satisfie for the offences of all men in the rigour of iustice but in the mercy of God that ordained such Sacrifices for sin as he was pleased in mercy to accept He knoweth no difference between one who is meer man and one who was both God and man between a Levitical Sacrifice and the all-sufficient Sacrifice of the Crosse between the blood of a Calf and the precious blood of the Son of God And touching the Prophetical Office of Christ I do much doubt whether he do believe in earnest that there is any such thing as prophecy in the World He maketh very little difference between a Prophet and a mad-man and a demoniack And if there were nothing else saith he that bewrayed their madnesse yet that very arrogating such inspiration to themselves is argument enough He maketh the pretence of inspiration in any man to be and alwayes to have been an opinion pernicious to peace and tending to the dissolution of all civil government He subjecteth all Prophetical Revelations from God to the sole pleasure and censure of the Soveraign Prince either to authorize them or to exauctorate them So as two Prophets prophesying the same thing at the same time in the dominions of two different Princes
shunned 1 Pet. 2. 14. No proper punishment but for sin Lam. 3. 39. 2 Sam. 12. 13. 14. 2 Cor. 4. 17. Matth. 25. 46. Ioh 37. 23. Lam. 3. 33. Psal. 107. 17. Gen. 9. 3. Prov. 12. 10. Why God did not make man impeccable Jude v. 6. Matth. 25. 41 46. Mar. 9. 44 45. Jud. v. 6 7. Punishments of the damned are eternall Gods prescience proveth infalliblity not necessity Resolution proveth election and liberty In the answer to the stating of the question What is necessary Chance is from accidentall concurrence not from ignorance Eccles. 4. 10. Prov. 22. 28. Jer. 18. 15. Ex Plutarchi Polit. ad Trajan Encheiridion c. 16. Math. 7. 6. Exact definitions not frequent What liberty is What is spontaneity What is necessity De interpret l. 1. c. ultimo Necessity of being and acting distinguished Tull. Necessity upon supposition what it is Mark 10. 27. Man is not a passive instrument as the sword in his hand Act. 17. 28. The instance in ambs ace hath lost T. H. his game T. H. his will is no more than the bias of a bowle See stateing of the question answer to Num. 1. St. Austiâ—… more to be credited than T. H De lib. Arbit l. 3. c. 3. To give liberty to two and limite to one is a contradiction According to T. H. his principles all perswasions are vvin We can blame no man justly A lame comparison T. H. maketh himself no better than a wooden toppe T. H his deep skill in Logick His silly definitions Medition liâ—…tle worth without making use of other mens experience Terms of art are unungrateful to rude persons 1 Top. c. 2. ss 2. Ans. to the stat quest fount of Argum. cast Num. 1 3. def Num. 3. Freedom to do if one will without freedom to will a vain distinction Num. 30. 14. Josh. 24. 15. 2 Sam. 24. 12. Deut. 30. 19. Bulla Caroli 4. Exercit. 307. And maketh T. H. a degree worse than the Stâ—…cks Aust. de civit deâ—… l. 5. c. 10. Apud Gellium Iudicium practicé practicum explained Plut. How the object is and how it is not the cause of seeing Num. 3. Spontaneity Ethic. l. 3. c. 2. Num. 3. Conformity signifieth agreeableness as well as likeness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what they are Eth. l. 3. c. 1 2. l. 3. c. 3 4. Phys. l. 2. c. 6. A true will may be changed Num. 8. Num. 25. Voluntarinesse doth not desend on the judgment of other Num. 33. Num. 8. Num. 8. Num. 26. 1 King 3. 11. Election of more than one Verse 5. Ver. 6 7 8 9. Ver. 10. Ver. 11. Ver. 13. Acts 5. 4. Was it not in thy power Explained Out of hatred to true liberty T. H. makes God hypocritical Gods secret and revealed will not contrary And why Fount of Arg. in fine Occulte virtue or influence Job 38 31. It is blasphemy to say that God is the cause of sinne Or to say that sin is efficaciously decreed by God 〈◊〉 no â—…d perâ—…ssion The difference between general and special influence 1 King 21. 9. Fountains of Argâ—…ments Iam. 4. 13 14. Num. 12. Rom. 11. 23. God may oblige himself Jam. 1. 17. God cannot do any unrighteous thing Tit. 1. 2. Num. 〈◊〉 19. 2 Tim. 2. 13. Hebr. 6. 10. Mich. 6. 2. Ezek. 18. 25. Gen. 18. 23 25. Iud. 7. Plut. Num. 10. It is just to afflict innocent persons for their own good Lib. de cive tit Imp. c. 6. n. 18. â—…n is properly irregularity God no cause of irregularity Laws may be unjust Impossibilities made bâ—… our selves may be justly imposed not impossibilities in them selves Acts 5. 29. 1 Pet. 2. 13 Proper punishment is ever vindictive in part Lam. 3. 39. Job 31. 11. Ezra 9. 13. Heb. 10. 28. Deut. 25. 2. 1 Pet. 2 4. Yet further of unjust laws L. 1. 14. Exod. 1. 17. Dan. 3. 18. Heb. 11. 23. 1 King 21. 2 King 6. 32. Dan. 6. 8. Mich. 6. 16. 2 K. 17 19. Isay 10. 1. The authority of the Scripture not dependent on the printer Ammon in lib. de Interpret Mr. R. H. T. H. a fit Catechist for disloial and unnatural persons Num 12. Mankind never without laws De cive c. i. Num 12. Never lawful for private men ordinarily to kill one another Numbers 35. Fount of Arg. Gen. 9. 6. Gen. 4. 10. 1 Sam. 19. 5. 2 King 24. 4. Prov. 28. Deut. 10. 11. Exod. 21. 14. Gen. 9. 6. Joh. 8. 44. T. H. Attorny General for the brute beasts Gen. 1. 28. Gen. 2. 19. Psal. 8. 6. Gen. 9. 3. Prov. 26. 5. Seen and unseen necessity Act. 27. 22. V. 30. If all things be absolutely necessary admonitions are all vaine A litter of absurdities What is morally good Isa. 5. 20. Exod. 1. 21 Rewards of bruits and men differ Rom. 1. 21. What it is to honour God Jam 2. 19. What are devils in his judgement God doth not hinder privately what he commands openly His opinion destroyeth the truth of God And his goodnesse Isa. 28. 21. Wisd. 1. 13. Ezek. 33. 11. Fount of Arg. And his justice And omnipotence making the cause of sinne Amos 3. 6. A right Hobbist cannot praise God Deut. 29. 29. Nor hear the Word or receive the Sacrament worthily Matth. 11. 12. Mat. 7. 11. Rom. 10. 14. Nor vowas he ought Nor repent of his misdeeds What repentance is 2 Cor. 7. 11. Joel 2. 12. Mans concurrence with Gods grace Act. 7. 51. Prov. 1. 24. Mark 1. 15. Rom. 11. 20. Rom. 2. 5. Rev. 3. 20. 1 Cor. 3. 9. 1 Cor. 15. 10. Confidence in praier and the efficacy of it Jam. 1. 6. 1 Tim. 2. 8. Mark 11. 24. Jam. 5. 15. Phil. 1. 19. Isay 38. 5. 1 King 8. 37. 2 Chron. 7. 12. Luk. 17. 13. 18. 2 Cor. 1. 11. T. H. Still mistaketh necessity upon supposition There is more in contingency than ignorance Def. Num. 3. stat of quest cast Num. 1. 3. c. Sin in the world before the civil law Job 4. 18. 2 Pet. 2. 4. Jude 6. Rom. 5. 12. Prov. 8. 15. Rom. 2. 14. 1â—… 15. To command impossibilities is unjust Yet further against his silly distinction free to do if he will not free to will Of monsters What is said to be in deo and what extra deum Exod. 3. 14. To will do in God the same thing He willeth not all he could will Luâ—… 3. 8. T. H. make the will to be compelled Arist. Eth. lib. 3. c. 1. 1 Sam. 28. 23. Est. 1. 8. 2 Cor. 12. 11. Motus primó primi and antipathies To search too boldly into the nature of God is a fault But the greater fault is negligence Rom. 1. 20. Exer c. 12. d. 2. T. H. his liberty omnipotence in shew in deed nothing He dare not refer himself to his own witnesses Terms of Art 1 Cor. 14. 19. A contradiction c. 17. d. 28. Matth. 15. 14. Election and compulsion inconsistent There are mixt actions Eth. l. 3.