just by reason of his absolute dominion and irresistible power As fire doth assimilate other things to it self and convert them into the nature of fire This were to make the eternall Law a Lesbian rule Sin is defined to be that which is done or said or thought contrary to the eternall Law But by this doctrine nothing is done nor said nor thought contrary to the will of God St. Anselm said most truly then the will of man is good and just and right when he wills that which God would have him to will but according to this doctrine every man alwayes wills that which God would have him to will If this be true we need not pray Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven T. H. hath devised a new kind of heaven upon earth The worst is it is an heaven without Justice Justice is a constant and perpetuall act of the will to give every one his own But to inflict punishment for those things which the Judge himself did determine and necessitate to be done is not to give every one his own right punitive Justice is a relation of equallity and proportion between the demerit and the punishment But supposing this opinion of absolute and universall necessity there is no demerit in the world we use to say that right springs from Law and fact as in this Syllogism Every thief ought to be punished there 's the Law But such an one is a thief there 's the fact therefore he ought to be punished there 's the right But this opinion of T. H. grounds the right to be punished neither upon Law nor upon Fact but upon the irresistible power of God Yea it overturneth as much as in it lies all Law First the eternall Law which is the ordination of divine Wisdom by which all Creatures are directed to that end which is convenient for them That is not to necessitate them to eternall flames Then the Law participated which is the ordination of right reason instituted for the common good to shew unto man what he ought to do and what he ought not to do To what purpose is it to shew the right way to him who is drawn and haled a contrary way by Adamantine bonds of inevitable necessity Lastly howsoever T. H. cries out that God cannot sin yet in truth he makes him to be the principall and most proper cause of all sin For he makes him to be the cause not onely of the Law and of the action but even of the irregularity it self and the difference between the action and the Law wherein the very essence of sin doth consist He makes God to determin Davids will and necessitate him to kill Uriah In causes physically and essentially subordinate the cause of the cause is evermore the cause of the effect These are those deadly fruits which spring from the poisonous root of the absolute necessity of all things which T. H. seeing and that neither the sins of Esau nor Pharaoh nor any wicked person do proceed from the operative but from the permissive will of God And that punishment is an act of justice not of dominion onely I hope that according to his promise he will change his opinion Numb 13. J. D. Proofs of Liberty drawn from reason argument 1 THe first argument is Herculeum or Baculinum drawn from that pleasant passage between Zeno and his man The servant had committed some pettilarceny and the master was cudgelling him well for it The servant thinks to creep under his masters blind-side and pleades for himself That the necessity of destiny did compell him to steal The master answers the same necessity of destiny compells me to beat thee He that denies liberty is fitter to be refuted with rodds than with arguments untill he confess that it is free for him that beates him either to continue striking or to give over that is to have true liberty T. H. OF the Arguments from reason the first is that which he saith is drawn from Zenos beating of his man which is therefore called Argumentum baculinum that is to say a wooden Argument The story is this Zeno held that all actions were necessary His man therefore being for some fault beaten excused himself upon the necessity of it To avoid this excuse his master pleaded likewise the necessity of beating him So that not he that mainteined but he that derided the necessity of things was beaten contrary to that he would infer And the argument was rather withdrawn than drawn from the story J. D. WHether the argument be withdrawn from the story or the answer withdrawn from the argument let the Reader judge T. H. mistakes the scope of the reason the strength whereof doth not lie neither in the authority of Zeno a rigid Stoick which is not worth a button in this cause Nor in the servants being an adversary to Stoicall necessity for it appeares not out of the story that the servant did deride necessity but rather that he pleaded it in good earnest for his own justification Now in the success of the fray we were told even now that no power doth justifie an action but onely that which is irresistible Such was not Zenos And therefore it advantageth neither of their causes neither that of Zeno nor this of T. H. What if the servant had taken the staff out of his masters hand and beaten him soundly would not the same argument have served the man as well as it did the master that the necessity of destiny did compell him to strike again Had not Zeno smarted justly for his Paradox And might not the spectators well have taken up the Judges Apothegm concerning the dispute between Corax and his Schollar An ill egg of an ill bird But the strength of this argument lies partly in the ignorance of Zeno that great Champion of necessity and the beggarliness of his cause which admitted no defence but with a cudgell No man saith the servant ought to be beaten for doing that which he is compelled inevitably to do but I am compelled inevitably to steal The major is so evident that it cannot be denied If a strong man shall take a weak mans hand perforce and do violence with it to a third person he whose hand is forced is innocent and he only culpable who compelled him The minor was Zenos own doctrine what answer made the great patron of destiny to his servant very learnedly he denied the conclusion and cudgelled his servant telling him in effect that though there was no reason why he should be beaten yet there was a necessity why he must be beaten And partly in the evident absurdity of such an opinion which deserves not to be confuted with reasons but with rods There are four things said the Philosoher which ought not to be called into question First such things whereof it is wickedness to doubt as whether the soul be immortall whether there be a God such an one should not be confuted with reasons
as for a man to consult and ponder with himself whether he should draw in his Breath or whether he should increase in stature Secondly to resolve implies a mans dominion over his own actions and his actuall determination of himself but he who holds an absolute necessity of all things hath quitted this dominion over himself and which is worse hath quitted it to the second extrinsecal causes in which he makes all his actions to be determined one may as well call again Yesterday as resolve or newly determine that which is determined to his hand already I have perused this treatise weighed T. H. his answers considered his reasons and conclude that he hath missed and misled the question that the answers are evasions that his Arguments are parologisms that the opinion of absolute and universall necessity is but a result of some groundless and ill chosen principles and that the defect is not in himself but that his cause will admit no better defence and therefore by his favour I am resolved to adhere to my first opinion perhaps another man reading this discourse with other eyes judgeth it to be pertinent and well founded How comes this to pass the treatise is the same the exteriour causes are the same yet the resolution is contrary Do the second causes play fast and loose do they necessitate me to condemn and necessitate him to maintain what is it then the difference must be in our selves either in our intellectuals because the one sees clearer then the other or in our affections which betray our understandings and produce an implicite adhaerence in the one more than in the other Howsoever it be the difference is in our selves The outward causes alone do not chain me to the one resolution nor him to the other resolution But T. H. may say that our severall and respective deliberations and affections are in part the causes of our contrary resolutions and do concur with the outward causes to make up one totall and adaequate cause to the necessary production of this effect If it be so he hath spun a fair thred to make all this stir for such a necessity as no man ever denied or doubted of when all the causes have actually determined themselves then the effect is in being for though there be a priority in nature between the cause and the effect yet they are together in time And the old rule is whatsoever is when it is is necessarily so as it is This is no absolute necessity but onely upon supposition that a man hath determined his own liberty When we question whether all occurrences be necessary we do not question whether they be necessary when they are nor whether they be necessary in sensu composito after we have resolved and finally determined what to do but whether they were necessary before they were determined by our selves by or in the praecedent causes before our selves or in the exteriour causes without ourselves It is not inconsistent with true liberty to determine it self but it is inconsistent with true liberty to be determined by another without it self T. H. saith further that upon your Lordships desire and mine he was contented to begin with this discourse of liberty and necessity that is to change his former resolution If the chain of necessity be no stronger but that it may be snapped so easily in sunder if his will was no otherwise determined from without himself but onely by the signification of your Lordships desire and my modest intreaty then we may safely conclude that humane affairs are not alwaies governed by absolute necessity that a man is Lord of his own actions if not in chief yet in mean subordinate to the Lord Paramount of Heaven and Earth and that all things are not so absolutely determined in the outward and precedent causes but that fair intreaties and morall perswasions may work upon a good nature so far as to prevent that which otherwise had been and to produce that which otherwise had not been He that can reconcile this with an Antecedent Necessity of all things and a Physicall or naturall determination of all causes shall be great Apollo to me Whereas T. H. saith that he had never uttered his opinion of this question I suppose he intends in writing my conversation with him hath not been frequent yet I remember well that when this question was agitated between us two in your Lordships Chamber by your command he did then declare himself in words both for the absolute necessity of all events and for the ground of this necessity the Flux or concatenation of the second causes Numb 2. T. H. ANd first I assure your Lordship I find in it no new Argument neither from Scripture nor from reason that I have not often heard before which is as much as to say that I am not surprised J. D. THough I be so unhappy that I can present no novelty to T. H. yet I have this comfort that if he be not surprised then in reason I may expect a more mature answer from him and where he failes I may ascribe it to the weakness of his cause not to want of preparation But in this case I like Epictetus his Counsell well that the Sheep should not brag how much they have eaten or what an excellent pasture they do go in but shew it in their Lamb and VVool. Apposite answers and down right Arguments advantage a cause To tell what we have heard or seen is to no purpose when a respondent leaves many things untouched as if they were too hot for his Fingers and declines the weight of other things and alters the true state of the question it is a shrewd sign either that he hath not weighed all things maturely or else that he maintains a desperate cause Numb 3. T. H. THe Praeface is an handsome one but it appears even in that that he hath mistaken the question for whereas he saies thus If I be free to write this discourse I have obteined the cause I deny that to be true for 't is not enough to his freedom of writing that he had not written it unless he would himself if he will obtein the cause he must prove that before he writ it it was not necessary he should write it afterward It may be he thinks it all one to say I was free to write it and it was not necessary I should write it But I think otherwise for he is free to do a thing that may do it if he have the will to do it and may forbear if he have the will to forbear And yet if there be a necessity that he shall have the will to do it the action is necessarily to follow And if there be a necessity that he shall have the will to forbear the forbearing also will be necessary The question therefore is not whether a man be a free agent that is to say whether he can write or forbear speak or be silent according to his
themselves to load the Horses back with so much weight as the least of all his feathers doth amount unto But we shall meet with his Horse load of feathers again Num. 23. These things being thus briefly touched he proceeds to his answer My argument was this If any of these or all of these causes formerly recited do take away true liberty that is still intended from necessity then Adam before his fall had no true liberty But Adam before his fall had true liberty He mis-recites the argument and denies the consequence which is so clearly proved that no man living can doubt of it Because Adam was subjected to all the same causes as well as we the same decree the same praescience the same influences the same concourse of causes the same efficacy of objects the same dictates of reason But it is onely a mistake for it appears plainly by his following discourse that he intended to deny not the consequence but the Assumption For he makes Adam to have had no liberty from necessity before his fall yea he proceeds so far as to affirm that all humane wills his and ours and each propension of our wills even during our deliberation are as much necessitated as any thing else whatsoever that we have no more power to forbear those actions which we do then the fire hath power not to burn Though I honour T. H. for his person and for his learning yet I must confess ingenuously I hate this Doctrin from my heart And I beleeve both I have reason so to do and all others who shall seriously ponder the horrid consequences which flow from it It destroyes liberty and dishonours the nature of man It makes the second causes and outward objects to be the Rackets and Men to be but the Tennis-Balls of destiny It makes the first cause that is God Almighty to be the introducer of all evill and sin into the world as much as Man yea more then Man by as much as the motion of the Watch is more from the Artificer who did make it and wind it up then either from the spring or the wheels or the thred if God by his speciall influence into the second causes did necessitate them to operate as they did And if they being thus determined did necessitate Adam inevitably irresistibly not by an accidentall but by an essentiall subordination of causes to whatsoever he did Then one of these two absurdities must needs follow either that Adam did not sin and that there is no such thing as sin in the world because it proceeds naturally necessarily and essentially from God Or that God is more guilty of it and more the cause of evill than man because man is extrinsecally inevitably determined but so is not God And in causes essentially subordinate the cause of the cause is always the cause of the effect What Tyrant did ever impose Lawes that were impossible for those to keep upon whom they were imposed and punish them for breaking those Lawes which he himself had necessitated them to break which it was no more in their power not to break then it is in the power of the fire not to burn Excuse me if I hate this doctrine with a perfect hatred which is so dishonorable both to God and man which makes men to blaspheme of necessity to steal of necessity to be hanged of necessity and to be damned of necessity And therefore I must say and say again Quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulis odi It were better to be an Atheist to believe no God or to be a Manichee to believe two Gods a God of good and a God of evill or with the Heathens to believe thirty thousand Gods than thus to charge the true God to be the proper cause and the true Author of all the sins and evills which are in the world Numb 12. J. D. argument 5 FIftly if there be no liberty there shall be no day of Doom no last Judgment no rewards nor punishments after death A man can never make himself a criminall if he be not left at liberty to commit a crime No man can be justly punished for doing that which was not in his power to shun To take away liberty hazards heaven but undoubtedly it leaves no hell T. H. THE Arguments of greatest consequence are the third and fift and fall both into one Namely If there be a necessity of all events that it will follow that praise and reprehension reward and punishment are all vain and unjust And that if God should openly forbid and secretly necessitate the same action punishing men for what they could not avoid there would be no belief among them of heaven or hell To oppose hereunto I must borrow an answer from St. Paul Rom. 9. ver 11. from the 11. verse of the Chapter to the 18. is laid down the very same objection in these words When they meaning Esau and Jacob were yet unborn and had done neither good nor evill That the purpose of God according to election not by works but by him that calleth might remain firm it was said to her viz. to Rebekah that the elder shall serve the younger And what then shall we say is there iniustice with God God forbid It is not therefore in him that willeth nor in him that runneth but in God that sheweth mercy For the Scripture saith to Pharaoh I have stirred thee up that I I may shew my power in thee and that my Name may be set forth in all the earth Therefore whom God willeth he hath mercy or and whom he willeth he hardeneth Thus you see the case put by St. Paul is the same with that of J. D. and the same objection in these words following Thou wilt ask me then why will God yet complain for who hath resisted his will To this therefore the Apostle answers not by denying it was Gods will or that the decree of God concerning Esau was not before he had sinned or that Esau was not necessitated to do what he did but thus Who art thou O Man that interrogatest God shall the work say to the workman why hast thou made me thus Hath not the Potter power over the clay of the same stuff to make one vessell to honour another to dishonour According therefore to this answer of St. Paul I answer J D's objection and say The power of God alone without other help is sufficient Justification of any action he doth That which men make among themselves here by pacts and Covenants and call by the name of Justice and according whereunto men are counted and tearmed rightly just and unjust is not that by which God Almighties actions are to be measured or called just no more than his counsailes are to be measured by human wisedom That which he does is made just by his doing Just I say in him not always just in us by the Examples for a man that shall command a thing openly and plot secretly the hinderance of the
which is good But hatred there signifies Comparative hatred or a less degree of love or at the most a negation of love As Gen. 29.31 When the Lord saw that Leah was hated we may not conclude thence that Jacob hated his Wife The precedent verse doth fully expound the sense ver 30. Jacob loved Rachel more then Leah So Mat. 6.24 No man can serve two Masters for either he will hate the one and love the other So Luke 14.26 If any Man hate not his Father and Mother c. he cannot be my Disciple St. Mathew tells us the sense of it Math. 10.37 He that loveth Father or Mother more then me is not worthy of me Secondly those words ver 15. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy do prove no more but this that the preferring of Jacob before Esau and of the Christians before the Jews was not a debt from God either to the one or to the other but a work of mercy And what of this All men confess that Gods mercies do exceed mans deserts but Gods punishments do never exceed mans misdeeds As we see in the Parable of the Labourers Matth. 20. Friend I do thee no wrong did not I agree with thee for a penny Is it not lawfull for me to do with mine own as I will Is thy eye evill because I am good Acts of Mercy are free but acts of Justice are due That which follows ver 17. comes something nearer the cause The Scripture saith unto Pharoah for this same purpose I have raised thee up that is I have made thee a King or I have preserved thee that I might shew my power in thee But this particle that doth not alwaies signifie the main end of an action but sometimes onely a consequent of it As Matth. 2.15 He departed into Egypt that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet out of Egypt have I called my Son without doubt Josephs aim or end of his journey was not to fulfill prophesies but to save the life of the Child Yet because the fulfilling of the prophecy was a consequent of Josephs journy he saith That it might be fulfilled So here I have raised thee up that I might shew my power Again though it should be granted that this particle that did denote the intention of God to destroy Pharaoh in the Red Sea yet it was not the Antecedent intention of God which evermore respects the good and benefit of the creature but Gods consequent intention upon the praevision of Pharaohs obstinacy that since he would not glorifie God in obeying his word he should glorifie God undergoing his judgements Hitherto we find no aeternal punishments nor no temporal punishment without just deserts It follows ver 18. whom he will he hardneth Indeed hardness of heart is the greatest judgement that Gods lays upon a sinner in this use worse then all the Plagues of Egypt But how doth God harden the heart not by a naturall influence of any evill act or habit into the will nor by inducing the will with perswasive motives to obstinacy and rebellion for God tempteth no man but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and intised Jam. 1.13 Then God is said to harden the heart three wayes First negatively and not positively not by imparting wickedness but by not imparting grace as the Sun descending to the tropick of Capricorne it is said with us to be the cause of Winter that is not by imparting cold but by not imparting heat It is an act of mercy in God to give his grace freely but to detein it is no act of injustice So the Apostle opposeth hardning to shewing of mercy To harden is as much as not to shew mercy Secondly God is said to harden the heart occasionally and not causally by doing good which incorrigible sinners make an occasion of growing worse and worse and doing evill as a Master by often correcting of an untoward Scholar doth accidentally and occasionally harden his heart and render him more obdurate insomuch as he growes even to despise the Rod. Or as an indulgent parent by his patience and gentleness doth incourage an obstinate son to become more rebellious So whether we look upon Gods frequent judgments upon Pharaoh or Gods iterated favours in removing and withdrawing those judgments upon Pharaohs request both of them in their severall kinds were occasions of hardning Pharaohs heart the one making him more presumptuous the other more desperately rebellious So that which was good in it was Gods that which was evill was Pharaohs God gave the occasion but Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration This is cleerly confirmed Gen. 8.15 When Pharaoh saw that there was respite he hardned his heart And Gen. 9.34 When Pharaoh saw that the Rain and the Hail and the Thunders were ceased he sinned yet more and hardned his heart he and his servants So Psal 105.25 He turned their hearts so that they hated his people and dealt subtilly with them That is God blessed the Children of Israel whereupon the Egyptians did take occasion to hate them as is plain Exod. 1. ver 7 8 9 10. So God hardened Pharaohs heart and Pharaoh hardened his own heart God hardened it by not shewing mercy to Pharaoh as he did to Nebuchadnezzar who was as great a sinner as he or God hardned it occasionally but still Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration by determining his own will to evill and confirming himself in his obstinacy So are all presumptuous sinners Psal 95.8 Harden not your hearts as in the provocation as in the day of temptation in the wilderness Thirdly God is said to harden the heart permissively but not operatively nor effectively as he who only le ts loose a Greyhound out of the slip is said to hound him at the Hare Will you see plainly what St. Paul intends by hardning Read ver 22. What if God willing to shew his wrath and to make his power known that is by a consequent will which in order of nature followes the provision of sin indured with much long suffering the vessells of wrath fitted to destruction And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessells of mercy c. There is much difference between induring and impelling or inciting the vessells of wrath He saith of the vessells of mercy that God prepared them unto glory But of the vessells of wrath he saith only that they were fitted to destruction that is not by God but by themselves St. Paul saith that God doth endure the vessells of wrath with much long suffering T. H. saith that God wills and effects by the second causes all their actions good and bad that he necessitateth them and determineth them irresistibly to do those acts which he condemneth as evill and for which he punisheth them If doing willingly and enduring If much long suffering and necessitating imply not a contrariety one to another reddat
mihi minam Diogenes Let him that taught me Logick give me my money again But T. H. saith that this distinction between the operative and permissive Will of God And that other between the action and the irregularity do dazell his understanding Though he can find no difference between these two yet others do St. Paul himself did Act. 13.18 About the time of 40. yeares suffered he their manners in the Wilderness And Act. 14.16 Who intimes past suffered all Nations to walk in their own wayes T. H. would make suffering to be inciting their manners to be Gods manners their wayes to be Gods wayes And Act. 17.30 The times of this ignorance God winked at It was never heard that one was said to wink or connive at that which was his own act And 1 Cor. 10.13 God is faithfull who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able To tempt is the Devills act therefore he is called the Tempter God tempts no man to sin but he suffers them to be tempted And so suffers that he could hinder Sathan if he would But by T. H. his doctrine To tempt to sin and to suffer one to be tempted to sin when it is in his power to hinder it is all one And so he transforms God I write it with horrour into the Devill and makes tempting to be Gods own work and the Devill to be but his instrument And in that noted place Rom. 2.4 Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thy self wrath against the day of wrath and revealation of the righteous judgment of God Here are as many convincing Arguments in this one text against the opinion of T. H. almost as there are words Here we learn that God is rich in goodness and will not punish his creatures for that which is his own act Secondly that he suffers and forbeares sinners long and doth not snatch them away by sudden death as they deserve Thirdly that the reason of Gods forbearance is to bring men to repentance Fourthly that hardness of heart and impenitency is not casually from God but from our selves Fiftly that it is not the insufficient proposall of the means of their conversion on Gods part which is the cause of mens perdition but their own contempt and despising of these means Sixtly that punishment is not an act of absolute dominion but an act of righteous Judgment whereby God renders to every man according to his own deeds wrath to them and only to them who treasure up wrath unto themselves and eternall life to those who continue patiently in well-doing If they deserve such punishment who onely neglect the goodness and long suffering of God what do they who utterly deny it and make Gods doing and his suffering to be all one I do beseech T. H. to consider what a degree of wilfulness it is out of one obscure text wholly misunderstood to contradict the clear current of the whole Scripture Of the same mind with St. Paul was St. Peter 1 Pet. 3.22 The long suffering of God waited once in the dayes of Noah And 2 Pet. 3.15 Account that the long suffering of the Lord is salvation This is the name God gives himself Exod. 34.6 The Lord the Lord God mercifull and gracious long suffering c. Yet I do acknowledge that which T. H. saith to be commonly true That he who doth permit any thing to be done which it is in his power to hinder knowing that if he do not hinder it it will be done doth in some sort will it I say in some sort that is either by an antecedent will or by a consequent will either by an operative will or by a permissive will or he is willing to let it be done but not willing to do it Sometimes an antecedent engagement doth cause a man to suffer that to be done which otherwise he would not suffer So Darius suffered Daniel to be cast into the Lions den to make good his rash decree So Herod suffered John Baptist to be beheaded to make good his rash oath How much more may the immutable rule of justice in God and his fidelity in keeping his word draw from him the punishment of obstinate sinners though antecedently he willeth their conversion He loveth all his Creatures well but his own Justice better Again sometimes a man suffereth that to be done which he doth not will directly in it self but indirectly for some other end or for the producing of some great good As a man willeth that a putrid member be cut off from his body to save the life of the whole Or as a Judge being desirous to save a malefactors life and having power to repreive him doth yet condemn him for example sake that by the death of one he may save the lives of many Marvell not then if God suffer some creatures to take such courses as tend to their own ruine so long as their sufferings do make for the greater manifestation of his glory and for the greater benefit of his faithfull servants This is a most certain truth that God would not suffer evill to be in the world unless he knew how to draw good out of evill Yet this ought not to be so understood as if we made any priority or posteriority of time in the acts of God but onely of nature Nor do we make the antecedent and consequent will to be contrary one to another because the one respects man pure and uncorrupted the other respects him as he is lapsed The objects are the same but considered after a diverse manner Nor yet do we make these wills to be distinct in God for they are the same with the divine essence which is one But the distinction is in order to the objects or things willed Nor lastly do we make this permission to be a naked or a meer permission God causeth all good permitteth all evill disposeth all things both good and evill T. H. demands how God should be the cause of the action and yet not be the cause of the irregularity of the action I answer because he concurres to the doing of evill by a generall but not by a speciall influence As the Earth gives nourishment to all kinds of plants as well to Hemlock as to Wheat but the reason why the one yields food to our sustenance the other poison to our destruction is not from the generall nourishment of the earth but from the speciall quality of the root Even so the generall power to act is from God In him we live and move and have our being This is good But the specification and determination of this generall power to the doing of any evill is from our selves and proceeds from the free will of man This is bad And to speak properly the free will of man is not the efficient cause of sin as the root
of the Hemlock is of poison sin having no fruentity or being in it as poison hath But rather the deficient cause Now no defect can flow from him who is the highest perfection Wherefore T. H. is mightily mistaken to make the particular and determinate act of killing Uriah to be from God The generall power to act is from God but the specification of this generall and good power to murther or to any particular evill is not from God but from the free will of man So T. H. may see clearly if he will how one may be the cause of the Law and likewise of the action in some sort that is by generall influence and yet another cause concurring by speciall influence and determining this generall and good power may make it self the true cause of the anomy or the irregularity And therefore he may keep his longer and shorter garments for some other occasion Certainly they will not fit this subject unless he could make generall and speciall influence to be all one But T. H. presseth yet further that the case is the same and the objection used by the Jews ver 19. Why doth he yet find fault who hath resisted his will is the very same with my argument And St. Pauls answer ver 20. O man who art thou that repliest against God shall the thing formed say to him that formed it why hast thou made me thus Hath not the Potter power over his clay c is the very same with his answer in this place drawn from the irresistible power and absolute dominion of God which justifieth all his actions And that the Apostle in his answer doth not deny that it was Gods will nor that Gods decree was before Esaus sin To which I reply First that the case is not at all the same but quite different as may appear by these particulars first those words before they had done either good or evill are not cannot be referred to those other words Esau have I hated Secondly If they could yet it is less than nothing because before Esau had actually sinned his future sins were known to God Thirdly by the Potters clay here is not to be understood the pure mass but the corrupted mass of mankind Fourthly the hating here mentioned is onely a comparative hatred that is a less degree of love Fiftly the hardening which St. Paul speaks of is not a positive but a negative obduration or a not imparting of grace Sixtly St. Paul speaketh not of any positive reprobation to eternall punishment much less doth he speak of the actuall inflicting of punishment without sin which is the question between us and wherein T. H. differs from all that I remember to have read who do all acknowledge that punishment is never actually inflicted but for sin If the question be put why God doth good to one more than to another or why God imparteth more grace to one than to another as it is there the answer is just and fit because it is his pleasure and it is sawciness in a creature in this case to reply May not God do what he will with his own Matth. 20.15 No man doubteth but God imparteth grace beyond mans desert But if the case be put why God doth punish one more than another or why he throws one into hell-fire and not another which is the present case agitated between us To say with T. H. that it is because God is Omnipotent or because his power is irresistible or meerly because it is his pleasure is not only not warranted but is plainly condemned by St. Paul in this place So many differences there are between those two cases It is not therefore against God that I reply but against T. H. I do not call my Creator to the Bar but my fellow creature I ask no account of Gods counsails but of mans presumptions It is the mode of these times to father their own fancies upon God and when they cannot justifie them by reason to plead his Omnipotence or to cry O altitudo that the wayes of God are unsearchable If they may justifie their drowsy dreams because Gods power dominion is absolute much more may we reject such phantasticall devises which are inconsistent with the truth and goodness Justice of God and make him to be a Tyrant who is the Father of Mercies and the God of all consolation The unsearchableness of Gods wayes should be a bridle to restrain presumption and not a sanctuary for spirits of error Secondly this objection conteined ver 19. to which the Apostle answers ver 20. is not made in the person of Esau or Pharaoh as T. H. supposeth but of the unbelieving Jews who thought much at that grace and favour which God was pleased to vouchsafe unto the Gentiles to acknowledge them for his people which honour they would have appropriated to the posterity of Abraham And the Apostles answer is not only drawn from the Soveraign Dominion of God to impart his grace to whom he pleaseth as hath been shewed already but also from the obstinacy and proper fault of the Jews as appeareth ver 22. What if God willing that is by a consequent will to shew his wrath and to make his power known endured with much long suffering the vessells of wrath fitted to destruction They acted God endured They were tolerated by God but fitted to destruction by themselves for their much wrong doing here is Gods much long suffering And more plainly ver 31. Israel hath not atteined to the Law of righteousness wherefore because they sought it not by faith but as it were by the works of the Law This reason is set down yet more emphatically in the next Chapter ver 3. They that is the Israelites being ignorant of Gods righteousness that is by faith in Christ and going about to establish their own righteousness that is by the works of the Law have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God And yet most expresly Chap. 11. v. 20. Because of unbelief they were broken off but thou standest by faith Neither was there any precedent binding decree of God to necessitate them to unbelief and consequently to punishment It was in their own power by their concurrence with Gods grace to prevent these judgments and to recover their former estate ver 23. If they that is the unbelieving Jews abide not still in unbelief they shall be grafted in The Crown and the Sword are immovable to use St. Anselmes comparison but it is we that move and change places Sometimes the Jews were under the Crown and the Gentiles under the Sword sometimes the Jews under the Sword and the Gentiles under the Crown Thirdly though I confess that human Pacts are not the measure of Gods Justice but his justice is his own immutable will whereby he is ready to give every man that which is his own as rewards to the good punishments to the bad so nevertheless God may oblige himself freely to his creature He made the
Covenant of works with mankind in Adam and therefore he punisheth not man contrary to his own Covenant but for the transgression of his duty And Divine Justice is not measured by Omnipotence or by irresistible power but by Gods will God can do many things according to his absolute power which he doth not He could raise up children to Abraham of stones but he never did so It is a rule in Theology that God cannot do any thing which argues any wickedness or imperfection as God cannot deny himself 2 Tim. 2.13 He cannot lie Tit. 1.2 These and the like are fruits of impotence not of power So God cannot destroy the righteous with the wicked Gen. 18.25 He could not destroy Sodome whilst Lot was in it Gen. 19.22 not for want of dominion or power but because it was not agreeable to his Justice nor to that Law which himself had constituted The Apostle saith Heb. 6.10 God is not unrighteous to forget your work As it is a good consequence to say this is from God therefore it is righteous so is this also This thing is unrighteous therefore it cannot proceed from God We see how all Creatures by instinct of nature do love their young as the Hen her Chickens how they will expose themselves to death for them And yet all these are but shadowes of that love which is in God towards his Creatures How impious is it then to conceive that God did creat so many millions of souls to be tormented eternally in hell without any fault of theirs except such as he himself did necessitate them unto meerly to shew his dominion and because his power is irresistible The same privilege which T. H. appropriates here to power absolutely irresistible a friend of his in his book de Cive cap. 6. pag. 70. ascribes to power respectively irresistible or to Soveraign Magistrates whose power he makes to be as absolute as a mans power is over himself not to be limitted by any thing but only by their strength The greatest propugners of Soveraign power think it enough for Princes to challenge an immunity from coercive power but acknowledge that the Law hath a directive power over them But T. H. will have no limits but their strength Whatsoever they do by power they do justly But saith he God objected no sin to Job but justified his afflicting him by his power First this is an Argument from authority negatively that is to say worth nothing Secondly the afflictions of Job were no vindicatory punishments to take vengeance of his sins whereof we dispute but probatory chastisements to make triall of his graces Thirdly Job was not so pure but that God might justly have laid greater punishments upon him then those afflictions which he suffered Witness his impatience even to the cursing of the day of his nativity Job 3.3 Indeed God said to Job where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth Job 38.4 that is how canst thou judge of the things that were done before thou wast born or comprehend the secret causes of my judgments And Job 42.9 Hast thou an arm like God As if he should say why art thou impatient doest thou think thy self able to strive with God But that God should punish Job without desert here is not a word Concerning the blind man mentioned John 9. his blindness was rather a blessing to him than a punishment being the means to raise his Soul illuminated and to bring him to see the face of God in Jesus Christ The sight of the body is common to us with Ants and Flies but the sight of the soul with the blessed Angells We read of some who have put out their bodily eyes because they thought they were an impediment to the eye of the Soul Again neither he nor his parents were innocent being conceived and born in sin and iniquity Psal 51.5 And in many things we offend all Jam. 3.2 But our Saviours meaning is evident by the Disciples question ver 2. They had not so sinned that he should be born blind Or they were not more grievous sinners than other men to deserve an exemplary judgment more than they but this corporall blindness befell him principally by the extraordinary providence of God for the manifestation of his own glory in restoring him to his sight So his instance halts on both sides neither was this a punishment nor the blind man free from sin His third instance of the death and torments of beasts is of no more weight then the two former The death of brute beasts is not a punishment of sin but a debt of nature And though they be often slaughtered for the use of man yet there is a vast difference between those light and momentary pangs and the unsufferable and endless pains of hell between the meer depriving of a creature of temporall life and the subjecting of it to eternall death I know the Philosophicall speculations of some who affirme that entity is better than non-entity that it is better to be miserable and suffer the torments of the damned than to be annihilated and cease to be altogether This entity which they speak of is a Metaphysicall entity abstracted from the matter which is better than non-entity in respect of some goodness not morall nor naturall but transcendentall which accompanies every being But in the concrete it is far otherwise where that of our Saviour often takes place Matth. 26.24 Woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed It had been good for that man that he had not been born I add that there is an Analogicall Justice and Mercy due even to the brute beasts Thou shalt not mussle the mouth of the Oxe that treadeth out the corn And a just man is mercifull to his beast But his greatest errour is that which I touched before to make Justice to be the proper result of Power Power doth not measure and regulate Justice but Justice measures regulates Power The will of God and the Eternall Law which is in God himself is properly the rule and measure of Justice As all goodness whether Naturall or Morall is a participation of divine goodness and all created Rectitude is but a participation of divine rectitude so all Lawes are but participations of the eternall Law from whence they derive their power The rule of Justice then is the same both in God and us but it is in God as in him that doth regulate and measure in us as in those who are regulated and measured As the will of God is immutable alwayes willing what is just and right and good So his justice likewise is immutable And that individuall action which is justly punished as sinfull in us cannot possibly proceed from the speciall influence and determinative power of a just cause See then how grossely T. H. doth understand that old and true principle that the Will of God is the rule of Justice as if by willing things in themselves unjust he did render them
benefit others by his example The truth is the punishing of delinquents by Law respecteth both the evill act past and the good to come The ground of it is the evill act past the scope or end of it is the good to come The end without the ground cannot justifie the act A bad intention may make a good action bad but a good intention cannot make a bad action good It is not lawfull to do evill that good may come of it nor to punish an innocent person for the admonition of others that is to fall into a certain crime for fear of an uncertain Again though there were no other end of penalties inflicted neither probatory nor castigatory nor exemplary but only vindicatory to satisfie the Law out of a zeal of Justice by giving to every one his own yet the action is just and warrantable Killing as it is considered in it self without all undue circumstances was never prohibited to the lawfull Magistrate who is the Vicegerent or Lieutenant of God from whom he derives his power of life and death T. H. hath one plea more As a drowning man catcheth at every Bulrush so he layes hold on every pretence to save a desperate cause But first it is worth our observation to see how oft he changeth shapes in this one particular First he told us that it was the irresistible power of God that justifies all his actions though he command one thing openly and plot another thing secretly though he be the cause not only of the action but also of the irregularity though he both give man power to act and determine this power to evill as well as good though he punish the Creatures for doing that which he himself did necessitate them to do But being pressed with reason that this is tyrannical first to necessitate a man to do his will and then to punish him for doing of it he leaves this pretence in the plain field and flies to a second That therefore a man is justly punished for that which he was necessitated to do because the act was voluntary on his part This hath more shew of reason than the former if he did make the will of man to be in his own disposition but maintaining that the will is irresistibly determined to will whatsoever it doth will the injustice and absurdity is the same First to necessitate a man to will and then to punish him for willing The dog onely bites the stone which is thrown at him with a strange hand but they make the first cause to punish the instrument for that which is his own proper act Wherefore not being satisfied with this he casts it off and flies to his third shift Men are not punished saith he therefore because their theft proceeded from election that is because it was willingly done for to Elect and Will saith he are both one Is not this to blow hot and cold with the same breath but because it was noxious and contrary to mens preservation Thus far he saith true that every creature by the instinct of nature seeks to preserve it self cast water into a dusty place and it contracts it self into little globes that is to preserve it self And those who are noxious in the eye of the Law are justly punished by them to whom the execution of the Law is committed but the Law accounts no persons noxious but those who are noxious by their own fault It punisheth not a thorn for pricking because it is the nature of the thorn and it can do no otherwise nor a child before it have the use of reason If one should take mine hand perforce and give another a box on the ear with it my hand is noxious but the Law punisheth the other who is faulty And therefore he hath reason to propose the question how it is just to kill one man to amend another if he who killed did nothing but what he was necessitated to do He might as well demand how it is lawfull to murther a company of innocent Infants to make a bath of their lukewarm blood for curing the Leprosy It had been a more rational way first to have demonstrated that it is so and then to have questioned why it is so His assertion it self is but a dream and the reason which he gives of it why it is so is a dream of a dream The sum of it is this That where there is no Law there no killing or any thing els can be unjust that before the constitution of Common-wealths every man had power to kill another if he conceived him to be hurtfull to him that at the constitution of Commonwealths particular men lay down this right in part and in part reserve it to themselves as in case of theft or murther That the right which the Commonwealth hath to put a malefactor to death is not created by the Law but remaineth from the first right of Nature which every man hath to preserve himself that the killing of men in this case is as the killing of beasts in order to our own preservavation This may well be called stringing of Paradoxes But first there never was any such time when mankind was without Governors and Lawes and Societies Paternall Government was in the world from the beginning and the Law of Nature There might be sometimes a root of such Barbarous Theevish Brigants in some rocks or desarts or odd corners of the world but it was an abuse and a degeneration from the nature of man who is a politicall creature This savage opinion reflects too much upon the honour of mankind Secondly there never was a time when it was lawfull ordinarily for private men to kill one another for their own preservation If God would have had men live like wild beasts as Lions Bears or Tygers he would have armed them with hornes or tusks or talons or pricks but of all creatures man is born most naked without any weapon to defend himself because God had provided a better means of security for him that is the Magistrate Thirdly that right which private men have to preserve themselves though it be with the killing of another when they are set upon to be murdered or robbed is not a remainder or a reserve of some greater power which they have resigned but a privilege which God hath given them in case of extreme danger and invincible necessity that when they cannot possibly have recourse to the ordinary remedy that is the Magistrate every man becomes a Magistrate to himself Fourthly nothing can give that which it never had The people whilest they were a dispersed rabble which in some odd cases might happen to be never had juftly the power of life and death and therefore they could not give it by their election All that they do is to prepare the matter but it is God Almighty that infuseth the soul of power Fiftly and lastly I am sorry to hear a man of reason and parts to compare the murthering of men with
man for doing that which it hath determined him to do to profess one thing and to intend another It destroyes the goodness of God making him to be an hater of mankind and to delight in the torments of his creatures whereas the very doggs licked the sores of Lazarus in pitty and commiseration of him It destroyes the Justice of God making him to punish the creatures for that which was his own act which they had no more power to shun than the fire hath power not to burn It destroyes the very power of God making him to be the true Author of all the defects and evills which are in the world These are the fruits of Impotence not of Omnipotence He who is the effective cause of sin either in himselfe or in the Creature is not Almighty There needs no other Devill in the world to raise jealousies and suspitions between God and his creatures or to poison mankind with an apprehension that God doth not love them but onely this opinion which was the office of the Serpent Gen. 3.5 Fourthly for the outward worship of God How shall a man praise God for his goodness who believes him to be a greater Tyrant than ever was in the world who creates millions to burn eternally without their fault to express his power How shall a man hear the Word of God with that reverence and devotion and faith which is requisite who believeth that God causeth his Gospel to be preached to the much greater part of Christians not with any intention that they should be converted and saved but meerly to harden their hearts and to make them inexcusable How shall a man receive the blessed Sacrament with comfort and confidence as a Seal of Gods love in Christ who believeth that so many millions are positively excluded from all fruit and benefit of the Passions of Christ before they had done either good or evill How shall he prepare himself with care and conscience who apprehendeth that Eating and Drinking unworthily is not the cause of damnation but because God would damn a man therefore he necessitates him to eat and drink unworthily How shall a man make a free vow to God without gross ridiculous hypocrisy who thinks he is able to perform nothing but as he is extrinsecally necessitated Fiftly for Repentance how shall a man condemn and accuse himself for his sins who thinks himself to be like a Watch which is wound up by God and that he can go neither longer nor shorter faster nor slower truer nor falser than he is ordered by God If God sets him right he goes right If God set him wrong he goes wrong How can a man be said to return into the right way who never was in any other way but that which God himself had chalked out for him What is his purpose to amend who is destitute of all power but as if a man should purpose to fly without wings or a begger who hath not a groat in his purse purpose to build Hospitalls We use to say admit one absurdity and a thousand will follow To maintain this unreasonable opinion of absolute necessity he is necessitated but it is hypothetically he might change his opinion if he would to deal with all antient Writers as the Goths did with the Romans who destroyed all their magnificent works that there might remain no monument of their greatness upon the face of the earth Therefore he will not leave so much as one of their opinions nor one of their definitions nay not one of their tearmes of Art standing Observe what a description he hath given us here of Repentance It is a glad returning into the right way after the grief of being out of the way It amazed me to find gladness to be the first word in the description of repentance His repentance is not that repentance nor his piety that piety nor his prayer that kind of prayer which the Church of God in all Ages hath acknowledged Fasting and Sackcloth and Ashes and Teares and Humi-cubations used to be companions of Repentance Joy may be a consequent of it not a part of it It is a returning but whose act is this returning Is it Gods alone or doth the penitent person concur also freely with the grace of God If it be Gods alone then it is his repentance not mans repentance what need the penitent person trouble himself about it God will take care of his own work The Scriptures teach us otherwise that God expects our concurrence Revel 3.19 Be zealous and repent behold I stand at the dore and knock If any man hear my voyce and open the dore I will come in to him It is a glad returning into the right way Why dare any more call that a wrong way which God himself hath determined He that willeth and doth that which God would have him to will and to do is never out of his right way It followes in his description after the grief c. It is true a man may grieve for that which is necessarily imposed upon him but he cannot grieve for it as a fault of his own if it never was in his power to shun it Suppose a Writing-master shall hold his Scholars hand in his and write with it the Scholars part is only to hold still his hand whether the Master write well or ill the Scholar hath no ground either of joy or sorrow as for himself no man will interpret it to be his act but his Masters It is no fault to be out of the right way if a man had not liberty to have kept himself in the way And so from Repentance he skipps quite over New obedience to come to Prayer which is the last Religious duty insisted upon by me here But according to his use without either answering or mentioning what I say Which would have shewed him plainely what kind of prayer I intend not contemplative prayer in generall as it includes thanksgiving but that most proper kind of prayer which we call Petition which used to be thus defined to be an act of Religion by which we desire of God something which we have not and hope that we shall obtain it by him Quite contrary to this T. H. tells us that prayer is not a cause nor a meanes of Gods blessing but only a signification that we expect it from him If he had told us onely that prayer is not a meritorious cause of Gods blessings as the poor man by begging an almes doth not deserve it I should have gone along with him But to tell us that it is not so much as a means to procure Gods blessing and yet with the same breath that God will not give his blessings but to those who pray who shall reconcile him to himself The Scriptures teach us otherwise Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my Name he will give it you John 16.23 Ask and it shall be given you seek and ye shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you
Matth. 7.7 St. Paul tells the Corinthians 2 Cor. 1.11 that he was helped by their prayers that 's not all that the gift was bestowed upon him by their means So prayer is a means And St. James saith cap. 5.16 The effectuall fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much If it be effectuall then it is a cause To shew this efficacy of prayer our Saviour useth the comparison of a Father towards his Child of a Neighbour towards his Neighbour yea of an unjust Judge to shame those who think that God hath not more compassion than a wicked man This was signified by Jacobs wrestling and prevailing with God Prayer is like the Tradesmans tools wherewithall he gets his living for himself and his family But saith he Gods will is unchangeable What then He might as well use this against study Physick and all second causes as against Prayer He shewes even in this how little they attribute to the endeavours of men There is a great difference between these two mutare voluntatem to change the will which God never doth in whom there is not the least shadow of turning by change His will to love and hate was the same from eternity which it now is and ever shall be His love and hatred are immovable but we are removed Non tellus cymbam tellurem cymba reliquit And velle mutationem to will a change which God often doth To change the will argues a change in the Agent but to will a change only argues a change in the object It is no inconstancy in a man to love or to hate as the object is changed Praesta mihi omnia eadem idem sum Prayer works not upon God but us It renders not him more propitious in himself but us more capable of mercy He saith this That God doth not bless us except we pray is a motive to prayer Why talks he of motives who acknowledgeth no liberty nor admitts any cause but absolutely necessary He saith Prayer is the gift of God no less than the blessing which we pray for and conteined in the same decree with the blessing It is true the spirit of prayer is the gift of God will he conclude from thence that the good imployment of one talent or of one gift of God may not procure another Our Saviour teacheth us otherwise Come thou good and faithfull servant thou hast been faithfull in little I will make thee ruler over much Too much light is an enemy to the light and too much Law is an enemy to Justice I could wish we wrangled less about Gods Decrees untill we understood them better But saith he Thanksgiving is no cause of the blessing past and prayer is but a thanksgiving He might even as well tell me that when a beggar craves an almes and when he gives thanks for it it is all one Every thanksgiving is a kind of prayer but every prayer and namely Petition is not a thanks-giving In the last place he urgeth that in our prayers we are bound to submit our wills to Gods Will who ever made any doubt of this we must submit to the Preceptive will of God or his Commandments we must submit to the effective Will of God when he declares his good pleasure by the event or otherwise But we deny and deny again either that God wills things ad extra without himself necessarily or that it is his pleasure that all second causes should act necessarily at all times which is the question and that which he allegeth to the contrary comes not neer it Numb 16. J. D. argument 4 FOurthly the order beauty and perfection of the world doth require that in the Universe should be Agents of all sorts some necessary somefree some contingent He that shall make either all things necessary guided by destiny or all things free governed by election or all things contingent happening by chance doth overthrow the beauty and the perfection of the world T. H. THE fourth Argument from reason is this The Order Beauty and Perfection of the world requireth that in the Vniverse should be Agents of all sorts some necessary some free some contingent He that shall make all things necessary or all things free or all things contingent doth overthrow the beauty and perfection of the world In which Argument I observe first a contradiction For seeing he that maketh any thing in that he maketh it he maketh it to be necessary it followeth that he that maketh all things maketh all things necessary to be As if a workman make a garment the garment must necessarily be So if God make every thing every thing must necessarily be Perhaps the beauty of the world requireth though we know it not that some Agents should work without deliberation which he calls necessary Agents And some Agents with deliberation and those both he and I call free Agents And that some Agents should work and we not know how And them effects we both call contingent But this hinders not but that he that electeth may have his election necessarily determined to one by former causes And that which is contingent and imputed to Fortune be nevertheless necessary and depend on precedent necessary causes For by contingent men do not mean that which hath no cause but which hath not for cause any thing which we perceive As for example when a Travailer meets with a shower the journey had a cause and the rain had a cause sufficient enough to produce it but because the journey caused not the rain nor the rain the journey we say they were contingent one to another And thus you see though there be three sorts of events Necessary Contingent and Free yet they may be all necessary without the destruction of the beauty or perfection of the Univers J. D. THE first thing he observes in mine Argument is contradiction as he calls it but in truth it is but a deception of the sight As one candle sometimes seems to be two or a rod in the water shewes to be two rods Quicquid recipitur recipitur ad modum recipient is But what is this contradiction Because I say he who maketh all things doth not make them necessary What a contradiction and but one proposition That were strange I say God hath not made all Agents necessary he saith God hath made all Agents necessary Here is a contradiction indeed but it is between him and me not between me and my self But yet though it be not a formall contradiction yet perhaps it may imply a contradiction in adjecto Wherefore to clear the matter and dispell the mist which he hath raised It is true that every thing when it is made it is necessary that it be made so as it is that is by a necessity of infallibility or supposition supposing that it be so made but this is not that absolute antecedent necessity whereof the question is between him and me As to use his own instance Before the Garment be made the Tailor is
free to make it either of the Italian Spanish or French fashion indifferently But after it is made it is necessary that it be of that fashion whereof he hath made it that is by a necessity of supposition But this doth neither hinder the cause from being a free cause nor the effect from being a free effect but the one did produce freely and the other was freely produced So the contradiction is vanished In the second part of his answer he grants that there are some free Agents and some contingent Agents and that perhaps the beauty of the world doth require it but like a shrewd Cow which after she hath given her milk casts it down with her foot in the conclusion he tells us that nevertheless they are all necessary This part of his answer is a meer Logomachy as a great part of the controversies in the world are or a contention about words What is the meaning of necessary and free and contingent actions I have shewed before what free and necessary do properly signifie but he misrecites it He saith I make all Agents which want deliberation to be necessary but I acknowledge that many of them are contingent Neither do I approove his definition of contingents though he say I concur with him that they are such agents as work we know not how For according to this description many necessary actions should be contingent and many contingent actions should be necessary The Loadstone draweth Iron the Jet chaff we know not how and yet the effect is necessary and so it is in all Sympathies and Antipathies or occult qualities Again a man walking in the streets a Tile falls down from an house and breaks his head We know all the causes we know how this came to pass The man walked that way the pin failed the Tile fell just when he was under it And yet this is a contingent effect The man might not have walked that way and then the Tile had not fallen upon him Neither yet do I understand here in this place by contingents such events as happen besides the scope or intention of the Agents as when a man digging to make a grave finds a Treasure though the word be sometimes so taken But by contingents I understand all things which may be done and may not be done may happen or may not happen by reason of the in determination or accidentall concurrence of the causes And those same things which are absolutely Incontingent and yet Hypothetically necessary As supposing the Passenger did walk just that way just at that time and that the pin did fail just then and the Tile fall it was necessary that it should fall upon the Passengers head The same defence will keep out his shower of rain But we shall meet with his shower of rain again Numb 34. Whither I refer the further explication of this point Numb 17. J. D. argument 5 FIftly take away liberty and you take away the very nature of evill and the formall reason of sin If the hand of the Painter were the law of painting or the hand of the Writer the law of writing whatsoever the one did write or the other paint must infallibly be good Seeing therefore that the first cause is the rule and Law of goodness if it do necessitate the will or the person to evill either by it self immediatly or mediatly by necessary flux of second causes it will no longer be evill The essence of sin consists in this that one commit that which he might a void If there be no liberty to produce sin there is no such thing as sin in the world Therefore it appeares both from Scripture and reason that there is true Liberty T. H. TO the fift Argument from reason which is that if liberty be taken away the nature and formall reason of sin is taken away I answer by denying the consequence The nature of sin consisteth in this that the action done proceed from our will and be against the Law A Judge in judging whether it be sin or not which is done against the Law looks at no higher cause of the action then the will of the doer Now when I say the action was necessary I do not say it was done against the will of the doer but with his will and so necessarily because mans will that is every act of the will and purpose of man had a sufficient and therefore a necessary cause and consequently every voluntary action was necessitated An action therefore may be voluntary and a sin and nevertheless be necessary And because God may afflict by right derived from his Omnipotency though sin were not And the example of punishment on voluntary sinners is the cause that produceth Justice and maketh sin less frequent For God to punish such sinners as I have shewed before is no injustice And thus you have my answer to his objections both out of Scripture and reason J. D. SCis tu simulare cupressum quid hoc It was shrewd counsail which Alcibiades gave to Themistocles when he was busy about his accounts to the State that he should rather study how to make no accounts So it seemes T. H. thinks it a more compendious way to baulk an argument then to satisfie it And if he can produce a Rowland against an Oliver if he can urge a reason against a reason he thinks he hath quitted himself fairely But it will not serve his turn And that he may not complain of misunderstanding it as those who have a politick deafness to hear nothing but what liketh them I will first reduce mine argument into form and then weigh what he saith in answer or rather in opposition to it That opinion which takes away the formall reason of sin and by consequence sin it self is not to be approoved this is cleer because both Reason and Religion Nature and Scripture do proove and the whole world confesseth that there is sin But this opinion of the necessity of all things by reason of a conflux of second causes ordered and determined by the first cause doth take away the very formall reason of sin This is prooved thus That which makes sin it self to be good and just and lawfull takes away the formall cause and distroyes the essence of sin for if sin be good and just and lawfull it is no more evill it is no sin no anomy But this opinion of the necessity of all things makes sin to be very good and just and lawfull for nothing can flow essentially by way of Physicall determination from the first cause which is the Law and Rule of Goodness and Justice but that which is good and just and lawfull but this opinion makes sin to proceed essentially by way of Physicall determination from the first cause as appeares in T. H. his whole discourse Neither is it materiall at all whether it proceed immediatly from the first cause or mediately so as it be by a necessary flux of second and determinate causes which
produce it inevitably To these proofs he answers nothing but onely by denying the first consequence as he calls it and then sings over his old song That the nature of sin consisteth in this that the action proceeds from our will and be against the Law which in our sense is most true if he understand a just Law and a free rationall will But supposing as he doth that the Law injoines things impossible in themselves to be done then it is an unjust and Tyrannicall Law and the transgression of it is no sin not to do that which never was in our power to do And supposing likewise as he doth that the will is inevitably determined by speciall influence from the first cause then it is not mans will but Gods Will and flowes essentially from the Law of Goodness That which he addes of a Judge is altogether impertinent as to his defence Neither is a Civill Judge the proper Judge nor the Law of the Land the proper Rule of Sin But it makes strongly against him for the Judge goes upon a good ground and even this which he confesseth that the Judge looks at no higher cause then the will of the doer prooves that the will of the doer did determine it self freely and that the malefactor had liberty to have kept the Law if he would Certainly a Judge ought to look at all materiall circumstances and much more at all essentiall causes Whether every sufficient cause be a necessary cause will come to be examined more properly Numb 31. For the present it shall suffice to say that liberty flowes from the sufficiency and contingency from the debility of the cause Nature never intends the generation of a monster If all the causes concur sufficiently a perfect creature is produced but by reason of the insufficiency or debility or contingent aberration of some of the causes sometimes a Monster is produced Yet the causes of a Monster were sufficient for the production of that which was produced that is a Monster otherwise a Monster had not been produced What is it then A Monster is not produced by vertue of that order which is set in Nature but by the contingent aberration of some of the naturall causes in their concurrence The order set in Nature is that every like should beget its like But supposing the concurrence of the causes to be such as it is in the generation of a Monster the generation of a Monster is necessary as all the events in the world are when they are that is by an hypotheticall necessity Then he betakes himself to his old help that God may punish by right of omnipotence though there were no sin The question is not now what God may do but what God will do according to that Covenant which he hath made with man Fac hoc vives Do this and thou shalt live whether God doth punish any man contrary to this Covenant Hosea 13.9 O Israel thy destruction is from thy self but in me is thy help He that wills not the death of a Sinner doth much less will the death of an innocent Creature By death or destruction in this discourse the onely separation of Soul and Body is not intended which is a debt of nature and which God as Lord of Life and Death may justly do and make it not a punishment but a blessing to the party but we understand the subjecting of the Creature to eternall torments Lastly he tells of that benenefit which redounds to others from Exemplary Justice which is most true but not according to his own grounds for neither is it Justice to punish a man for doing that which it was impossible alwayes for him not to do Neither is it lawfull to punish an innocent person that good may come of it And if his opinion of absolute necessity of all things were true the destinies of men could not be altered either by examples or fear of punishment Numb 18. J. D. BUt the Patrons of necessity being driven out of the plain field with reason have certain retreats or distinctions which they fly unto for refuge First they distinguish between Stoicall necessity and Christian necessity between which they make a threefold difference First say they the Stoicks did subject Jupiter to destiny but we subject destiny to God I answer that the Stoicall and Christian destiny are one and the same fatum quasi effatum Jovis Hear Seneca Destiny is the necessity of all things and actions depending upon the disposition of Jupiter c. I add that the Stoicks left a greater liberty to Jupiter over destiny than these Stoicall Christians do to God over his decrees either for the beginnings of things as Euripides or for the progress of of them as Chrysippus or at least of the circumstances of time and place as all of them generally So Virgil Sed trahere moras ducere c. So Osyris in Apuleius promiseth him to prolong his life Ultra fato constituta tempora beyond the times set down by the destinies Next they say that the Stoicks did hold an eternall flux and necessary connexion of causes but they believe that God doth act praeter contra naturam besides and against nature I answer that it is not much materiall whether they attribute necessity to God or to the Starrs or to a connexion of causes so as they establish necessity The former reasons do not onely condemn the ground or foundation of necessity but much more necessity it self upon what ground soever Either they must run into this absurdity that the effect is determined the cause remaining undetermined or els hold such a necessary connexion of causes as the Stoicks did Lastly they say the Stoicks did take away liberty and contingence but they admit it I answer what liberty or contingence was it they admit but a titular liberty and an empty shadow of contingence who do profess stifly that all actions and events which either are or shall be cannot but be nor can be otherwise after any other manner in any other Place Time Number Order Measure nor to any other end than they are and that in respect of God determining them to one what a poor ridiculous liberty or contingence is this Secondly they distinguish between the first cause and the second causes they say that in respect of the second causes many things are free but in respect of the first cause all things are necessary This answer may be taken away two wayes First so contraries shall be true together The same thing at the same time shall be determined to one and not determined to one the same thing at the same time must necessarily be and yet may not be Perhaps they will say not in the same respect But that which strikes at the root of this question is this If all the causes were onely collaterall this exception might have some colour but where all the causes being joined together and subordinate one to another do make but one totall
without himself he wills freely not necessarily Whatsoever cause acts or works necessarily doth act or work all that it can do or all that is in its power But it is evident that God doth not all things without himself which he can do or which he hath power to do He could have raised up children unto Abraham of the very stones which were upon the banks of Jordan Luk. 3.8 but he did not He could have sent twelve Legions of Angells to the succour of Christ but he did not Matth. 26.53 God can make T. H. live the years of Methuselah but it is not necessary that he shall do so nor probable that he will do so The productive power of God is infinite but the whole created world is finite And therefore God might still produce more if it pleased him But this it is when men go on in a confused way and will admit no distinctions If T. H. had considered the difference between a necessary being and a necessary cause or between those actions of God which are imminent within himself and the transient works of God which are extrinsecall without himself he would never have proposed such an evident error for a manifest truth Qui pauca considerat facile pronuntiat Numb 19. J. D. THirdly they distinguish between liberty from compulsion and liberty from necessitation The Will say they is free from compulsion but not free from necessitation And this they fortifie with two reasons First because it is granted by all Divines that hypotheticall necessity or necessity upon a supposition may consist with liberty Secondly because God and the good Angells do good necessarily and yet are more free than we To the first reason I confess that necessity upon a supposition may sometimes consist with true liberty as when it signifies onely an infallible certitude of the understanding in that which it knowes to be or that it shall be But if the supposition be not in the Agents power nor depend upon any thing that is in his power If there be an exteriour antecedent cause which doth necessitate the effect to call this free is to be mad with reason To the second reason I confess that God and the good Angells are more free than we are that is intensively in the degree of freedom but not extensively in the latitude of the object according to a liberty of exercise but not of specification A liberty of exercise that is to doe or not to do may consist well with a necessity of specification or a determination to the doing of good But a liberty of exercise and a necessity of exercise A liberty of specification and a necessity of specification are not compatible nor can consist together He that is antecedently necessitated to do evill is not free to do good So this instance is nothing at all to the purpose T. H. BUt the distinction of free into free from compulsion and free from necessitation I acknowledge for to be free from compulsion is to do a thing so as terrour be not the cause of his will to do it for a man is then onely said to be compelled when fear makes him willing to it as when a man willingly throwes his goods into the Sea to save himself or submitts to his enemy for fear of being killed Thus all men that do any thing from love or revenge or lust are free from compulsion and yet their actions may be as necessary as those which are done upon compulsion for sometimes other passions work as forcibly as fear But free from necessitation I say nothing can be And 't is that which he undertook to disproove This distinction he sayes useth to be fortified by two reasons but they are not mine The first he sayes is That it is granted by all Divines that an hypotheticall necessity or necessity upon supposition may stand with liberty That you may understand this I will give you an example of hypotheticall necessity If I shall live I shall eat this is an hypotheticall necessity Indeed it is a necessary proposition that is to say it is necessary that that proposition should be true whensoever uttered but t is not the necessity of the thing nor is it therefore necessary that the man shall live or that the man shall eat I do not use to fortifie my distinctions with such reasons Let him confute them as he will it contents me But I would have your Lordship take notice hereby how an easy and plain thing but withall false may be with the grave usage of such tearmes as hypotheticall necessity and necessity upon supposition and such like tearmes of Schoolemen obscur'd and made to seem profound learning The second reason that may confirm the distinction of free from compulsion and free from necessitation he sayes is that God and good Angells do good necessarily and yet are more free than we The reason though I had no need of yet I think it so far forth good as it is true that God and good Angells do good necessarily and yet are free but because I find not in the Articles of our faith nor in the Decrees of our Church set down in what manner I am to conceive God and good Angells to work by necessity or in what sense they work freely I suspend my sentence in that point and am content that there may be a freedom from compulsion and yet no freedom from necessitation as hath been prooved in that that a man may be necessitated to some actions without threats and without fear of danger But how he can avoid the consisting together of freedom and necessity supposing God and good Angells are freer than men and yet do good necessarily that we must now examin I confess saith he that God and good Angells are more free than we that is intensively in degree of freedom not extensively in the latitude of the object according to a liberty of exercise not of specification Again we have here two distinctions that are no distinctions but made to seem so by tearmes invented by I know not whom to cover ignorance and blind the understanding of the Reader For it cannot be conceived that there is any liberty greater than for a man to do what he will and to forbear what he will One heat may be more intensive than another but not one liberty than another He that can do what he will hath all liberty possibly and he that cannot has none at all Also liberty as he sayes the Schooles call it of exercise which is as I have said before a liberty to do or not to do cannot be without a liberty which they call of specification that is to say a liberty to do or not to do this or that in particular for how can a man conceive that he has liberty to do any thing that hath not liberty to do this or that or somewhat in particular If a man be forbidden in Lent to eat this and that and every other particular kind of flesh
comes to have such a power But the chiefest difficulty which offers it self in this Section is whether Eternity be an indivisible point as I maintain it or an everlasting succession as he would have it According to his constant use he gives no answer to what was urged by me but pleads against it from his own incapacity I never could conceive saith he how eternity should be an indivisible point I believe that neither we nor any man els can comprehend it so cleerly as we do these inferiour things The neerer that any thing comes to the essence of God the more remote it is from our apprehension But shall we therefore make potentialities and successive duration and former and later or a part without a part as they say to be in God Because we are not able to understand cleerly the divine perfection we must not therefore attribute any imperfection to him He saith moreover that he understands as little how it can be true which I say that God is not just but Justice it self not eternall but Eternity it self It seemes howsoever he be versed in this question that he hath not troubled his head overmuch with reading School-Divines or Metaphysicians if he make faculties or qualities to be in God really distinct-from his essence God is a most simple or pure act which can admit no composition of substance and accidents Doth he think that the most perfect Essence of God cannot act sufficiently without faculties and qualities The infinite perfection of the Divine essence excludes all passive or receptive powers and cannot be perfected more than it is by any accidents The attributes of God are not divers vertues or qualities in him as they are in the creatures but really one and the same with the Divine Essence and among themselves They are attributed to God to supply the defect of our capacity who are not able to understand that which is to be known of God under one name or one act of the understanding Furthermore he saith that he understands not how I conclude from hence that Eternity is an indivisible point and not a succession I will help him The Divine Substance is indivisible But Eternity is the Divine Substance The major is evident because God is actus simplicissimus a most simple act wherein there is no manner of composition neither of matter and forme nor of subject and accidents nor of parts c. and by consequence no divisibility The minor hath been cleerly demonstrated in mine answer to his last doubt and is confessed by all men that whatsoever is in God is God Lastly he saith He conceives not how it can be said that an infinite point wherein is no succession can comprehend all time which is successive I answer that it doth not comprehend it formally as time is successive but eminently and virtually as Eternity is infinite To day all Eternity is coexistent with this day To morrow all Eternity will be coexistent with to morrow and so in like manner with all the parts of time being it self without parts He saith He finds not these phrases in the Scripture No but he may find the thing in the Scripture that God is infinite in all his attributes and not capable of any imperfection And so to shew his antipathy against the School-men that he hath no liberty or power to contain himself when he meets with any of of their phrases or tenets he falls into another paroxisme or fit of inveighing against them And so concludes his answer with a plaudite to himself because he had defeated both my squadrons of arguments and reserves of distinctions Dicite Io Paean Io bis dicite Paean But because his eye-sight was weak and their backs were towards him he quite mistook the matter Those whom he see rowted and running away were his own scattered forces Numb 25. T. H. My opinion about Liberty and Necessity FIrst I conceive that when it cometh into a mans mind to do or not to do some certain action if he have no time to deliberate the doing or abstaining necessarily followeth the present thought he had of the good or evill consequence thereof to himself As for example in suddain anger the action shall follow the thought of of revenge in suddain fear the thought of escape Also when a man hath time to deliberate but deliberates not because never any thing appeared that could make him doubt of the consequence the action followes his opinion of the goodness or harm of it These actions I call voluntary He if I understand him aright calls them Spontaneous I call them voluntary because those actions that follow immediatly the last appetite are voluntary And here where there is one onely appetite that one is the last Besides I see 't is reasonable to punish a rash action which could not be justly done by man unless the same were voluntary For no action of a man can be said to be without deliberation though never so suddain because 't is supposed he had time to deliberate all the precedent time of his life whether he should do that kind of action or not And hence it is that he that killeth in a suddain passion of anger shall nevertheless be justly put to death because all the time wherein he was able to consider whether to kill were good or evill shall be held for one continuall deliberation and consequently the killing shall be judged to proceed from election J. D. THis part of T. H. his discourse hangs together like a sick mans dreames Even now he tells us that a man may have time to deliberate yet not deliberate By and by he saith that no action of a man though never so suddain can be said to be without deliberation He tells us Numb 33. that the scope of this section is to shew what is spontaneous Howbeit he sheweth onely what is voluntary so making voluntary and spontaneous to be all one whereas before he had told us that every spontaneous action is not voluntary because indeliberate Nor every voluntary action spontaneous if it proceed from fear Now he tells us that those actions which follow the last appetite are voluntary and where there is one onely appetite that is the last But before he told us that voluntary praesupposeth some praecedent deliberation and Meditation of what is likely to follow both upon the doing and abstaining from the action He defines Liberty Numb 29. to be the absence of all extrinsecall impediments to action And yet in his whole discourse he laboureth to make good that whatsoever is not done is therefore not done because the Agent was necessitated by extrinsecall causes not to do it Are not extrinsecall causes which determine him not to do it extrinsecall impediments to action So no man shall be free to do any thing but that which he doth actually He defines a free Agent to be him who hath not made an end of deliberating Numb 28. And yet defines liberty to be an absence of
interposition of the earth to be the cause of the Eclipse of the Moon Or the most certain occurrent in the nature of things And now that I have answered T. H. his Arguments drawn from the private conceptions of men concerning the sense of words I desire him seriously without prejudice to examine himself and those natural notions which he findes in himself not of words but of things these are from nature those are by imposition whether he doth not finde by experience that he doth many things which he might have left undone if he would and omits many things which he might have done if he would whether he doth not somethings out of meer animosity and will without either regard to the direction of right reason or serious respect of what is honest or profitable onely to shew that he will have a dominion over his own actions as we see ordinarily in Children and wise men finde at some times in themselves by experience And I apprehend this very defence of necessity against liberty to be partly of that kinde Whether he is not angry with those who draw him from his study or cross him in his desires if they be necessitated to do it why should he be angry with them any more than he is angry with a sharp winter or a rainy day that keeps him at home against his antecedent will whether he doth not sometime blame himself and say O what a fool was I to do thus and thus or wish to himself O that I had been wise or O that I had not done such an act If he have no dominion over his actions if he be irresistibly necessitated to all things what he doth he might as well wish O that I had not breathed or blame himself for growing old O what a fool was I to grow old Numb 34. T. H. FOr the seventh point that all events have necessary causes it is there proved in that they have sufficient causes Further Let us in this place also suppose any event never so casuall as for example the throwing Ambs-ace upon a paire of Dice and see if it must not have been necessary before it was thrown for seeing it was thrown it had a beginning and consequently a sufficient cause to produce it consisting partly in the Dice partly in the outward things as the posture of the parties hand the measure of force applied by the caster The posture of the parts of the Table and the like In summe there was nothing wanting that was necessarily requisite to the producing of that particular cast and consequently that cast was necessarily thrown For if it had not been thrown there had wanted somewhat requisite to the throwing of it and so the cause had not been sufficient In the like manner it may be proved that every other accident how contingent soever it seeme or how voluntary soever it be is produced necessarily which is that J. D. disputes against The same also may be proved in this manner Let the case be put for example of the weather T is necessary that to morrow it shall rain or not rain If therefore it be not necessary it shall rain it is necessary it shall not rain Otherwise it is not necessary that the proposition It shall rain or it shall not rain should be true I know there are some that say it may necessarily be true that one of the two shall come to pass but not singly that it shall rain or it shall not rain Which is as much as to say One of them is necessary yet neither of them is necessary And therefore to seeme to avoid that absurdity they make a distinction that neither of them is true determinatè but indeterminatè Which distinction either signifies no more than this One of them is true but we know not which and so the necessity remains though we know it not Or if the meaning of the distinction be not that it has no meaning And they might as well have said One of them is true Tytyrice but neither of them Tupatulice J. D. HIs former proof that all sufficient causes are necessary causes is answered before Numb 31. And his two instances of casting Ambs-ace raining to morrow are altogether impertinent to the question now agitated between us for two reasons First our present controversie is concerning free actions which proceed from the liberty of mans will both his instances are of contingent actions which proceed from the indetermination or contingent concurrence of natural causes First that there are free actions which proceed meerly from election without any outward necessitation is a truth so evident as that there is a Sun in the Heavens and he that doubteth of it may as well doubt whether there be a shell without the Nut or a stone within the Olive A man proportions his time each day and allots so much to his Devotions so much to his Study so much to his Diet so much to his Recreations so much to necessary or civil visits so much to his rest he who will seek for I know not what causes of all this without himself except that good God who hath given him a reasonable Soul may as well seek for a cause of the Egyptian Pyramides among the Crocodiles of Nilus Secondly for mixt actions which proceed from the concurrence of free and natural Agents though they be not free yet they are not necessary as to keep my former instance a man walking through a street of a Citie to do his occasions a Tile falls from an House and breaks his head the breaking of his head was not necessary for he did freely choose to go that way without any necessitation neither was it free for he did not deliberate of that accident therefore it was contingent and by undoubted consequence there are contingent actions in the World which are not free Most certainly by the concurrence of free causes as God the good and bad Angels and men with natural Agents sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident many events happen which otherwise had never hapned many effects are produced which otherwise had never been produced And admitting such things to be contingent not necessary all their consequent effects not onely immediate but mediate must likewise be contingent that is to say such as do not proceed from a continued connexion and succession of necessary causes which is directly contrary to T. H. his opinion Thirdly for the actions of bruit beasts though they be not free though they have not the use of reason to restrain their appetites from that which is sensitively good by the consideration of what is rationaly good or what is honest and though their fancies be determined by nature to some kindes of work yet to think that every individual action of theirs and each animal motion of theirs even to the least murmure or gesture is bound by the chain of unalterable necessity to the extrinsecal causes or objects I see no ground for it Christ saith one
of these Sparrows doth not fall to the ground without your Heavenly Father that is without an influence of power from him or exempted frō his disposition he doth not say which your heavenly Father casteth not down Lastly for the natural actions of inanimate Creatures wherein there is not the least concurrence of any free or voluntary Agents the questiō is yet more doubtfull for many things are called cōtingent in respect of us because we know not the cause of them which really in themselves are not contingent but necessary Also many things are contingent in respect of one single cause either actually hindred or in possibility to be hindred which are necessary in respect of the joynt concurrence of all collateral causes But whether there be a necessary connexion of all natural causes from the beginning so as they must all have concurred as they have done in the same degree of power have been deficient as they have beē in all events whatsoever would require a further examination if it were pertinent to this question of liberty but it is not It is sufficient to my purpose to have shewed that all elective actions are free from absolute necessity And moreover that the concurrence of voluntary and free Agents with natural causes both upon purpose and accidentally hath helped them to produce many effects which otherwise they had not produced and hindred them from producing many effects which otherwise they had produced And that if this inintervention of voluntary and free Agents had been more frequent than it hath been as without doubt it might have been many natural events had been otherwise than they are And therefore he might have spared his instances of casting Ambs-ace and raining to morrow And first for his casting Ambs-ace If it be thrown by a fair Gamester with indifferent Dice it is a mixt action the casting of the Dice is free but the casting of Ambs-ace is contingent a man may deliberate whether he will cast the Dice or not but it were folly to deliberate whether he will cast Ambs-ace or not because it is not in his power unless he be a cheater that can cogge the Dice or the Dice be false Dice then the contingency or the degree of contingency ceaseth accordingly as the Caster hath more or less cunning or as the figure or making of the Dice doth incline them to Ambs-ace more than to another cast or necessitate them to this cast and no other Howsoever so far as the cast is free or contingent so far it is not necessary And where necessity begins there liberty and contingency do cease to be Likewise his other instance of raining or not raining to morrow is not of a free elective act nor alwayes of a contingent act In some Countries as they have their nati venti their certain winds at set seasons so they have their certain and set rains The Aethiopian rains are supposed to be the cause of the certain inundation of Nilus In some eastern Countries they have rain onely twice a year and those constant which the Scriptures call the former and the later rain In such places not onely the causes do act determinately and necessarily but also the determination or necessity of the event is foreknown to the inhabitants In our Climate the natural causes coelestial and sublunary do not produce rain so necessarily at set times neither can we say so certainly and infallibly it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow Neverthelesse it may so happen that the causes are so disposed and determined even in our climate that this proposition it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow may be necessary in it self and the Prognosticks or tokens may be such in the sky in our own bodies in the creatures animate and inanimate as weather-glasses c. that it may become probably true to us that it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow But ordinarily it is a contingent proposition to us whether it be contingent also in it self that is whether the concurrence of the causes were absolutely necessary whether the vapours or matter of the rain may not yet be dispersed or otherwise consumed or driven beyond our coast is a speculation which no way concerns this question So we see one reason why his two instances are altogether impertinent because they are of actions which are not free nor elective nor such as proceed from the liberty of mans will Secondly our dispute is about absolute necessity his proofs extend onely to Hypothetical necessity Our question is whether the concurrence and determination of the causes were necessary before they did concur or were determined He proves that the effect is necessary after the causes have concurred and are determined The freest actions of God or man are necessary by such a necessity of supposition And the most contingent events that are as I have shewed plainly Numb 3. where his instance of Ambs-ace is more fully answered So his proof looks another way from his proposition His proposition is that the casting of Ambs-ace was necessary before it was thrown His proof is that it was necessary when it was thrown examine all his causes over and over and they will not afford him one grain of antecedent necessity The first cause is in the Dice True if they be false Dice there may be something in it but then his contingency is destroyed If they be square Dice they have no more inclination to Ambs-ace than to Cinque and Quater or any other cast His second cause is the posture of the parties hand But what necessity was there that he should put his hand into such a posture None at all The third cause is the measure of the force applied by the caster Now for the credit of his cause let him but name I will not say a convincing reason nor so much as a probable reason but even any pretence of reason how the Caster was necessitated from without himself to apply just so much force and neither more or lesse If he cannot his cause is desperate and he may hold his peace for ever his last cause is the posture of the Table But tell us in good earnest what necessity there was why the Caster must throw into that Table rather than the other or that the Dice must fall just upon that part of the Table before the cast was thrown He that makes these to be necessary causes I do not wonder if he make all effects necessary effects If any one of these causes be contingent it is sufficient to render the cast contingent and now that they are all so contingent yet he will needs have the effect to be necessary And so it is when the cast is thrown but not before the cast was thrown which he undertook to prove who can blame him for being so angry with the School-men and their distinctions of necessity into absolute and hypothetical seeing they touch
his freehold so nearly But though his instance of raining to morrow be impertinent as being no free action yet because he triumphs so much in his argument I will not stick to go a little out of my way to meet a friend For I confess the validity of the reason had been the same if he had made it of a free action as thus Either I shall finish this reply to morrow or I shall not finish this reply to morrow is a necessary proposition But because he shall not complain of any disadvantage in the alteration of his terms I will for once adventure upon his shower of rain And first I readily admit his major that this proposition either it will rain to morrow or it will not rain to morrow is necessarily true for of two contradictory propositions the one must of necessity be true because no third can be given But his minor that it could not be necessarily true except one of the Members were necessarily true is most false And so is his proof likewise That if neither the one nor the other of the Members be necessarily true it cannot be affirmed that either the one or the other is true A conjunct proposition may have both parts false and yet the proposition be true as if the Sun shine it is day is a true proposition at midnight And T. H. confesseth as much Numb 19. If I shall live I shall eat is a necessary proposition that is to say it is necessary that that proposition should be true whensoever uttered But it is not the necessity of the thing nor is it therefore necessary that the man shall live or that the man shall eat And so T. H. proceeds I do not use to fortifie my distinctions with such reasons But it seemeth he hath forgotten himself and is contented with such poor fortifications And though both parts of a disjunctive proposition cannot be false because if it be a right disjunction the Members are repugnant whereof one part is infallibly true yet vary put the proposition a little to abate the edge of the disjunctions and you shall finde that which T. H. saith to be true that it is not the necessity of the thing which makes the proposition to be true As for example vary it thus I know that either it will rain to morrow or that it will not rain to morrow is a true proposition But it is not true that I know it will rain to morrow neither is it true that I know it will not rain to morrow wherefore the certain truth of the proposition doth not prove that either of the Members is determinately true in present Truth is a conformity of the understanding to the thing known whereof speech is an interpreter If the understanding agree not with the thing it is an errour if the words agree not with the understanding it is a lie Now the thing known is known either in it self or in its causes If it be known in it self as it is then we expresse our apprehension of it in words of the present tence as the Sun is risen If it be known in its cause we expresse our selves in words of the future tense as to morrow will be an Eclipse of the Moon But if we neither know it in its self nor in its causes then there may be a foundation of truth but there is no such determinate truth of it that we can reduce it into a true proposition we cannot say it doth rain to morrow or it doth not rain to morrow That were not onely false but absurd we cannot positively say it will rain to morrow because we do not know it in its causes either how they are determined or that they are determined wherefore the certitude and evidence of the disjunctive proposition is neither founded upon that which will be actually to morrow for it is granted that we do not know that Nor yet upon the determination of the causes for then we would not say indifferently either it will rain or it will not rain but positively it will rain or positively it will not rain But it is grounded upon an undeniable principle that of two contradictory propositions the one must necessarily be true And therefore to say either this or that will infallibly be but it is not yet determined whether this or that shall be is no such senselesse assertion that it deserved a Tytyrice Tupatulice but an evident truth which no man that hath his eyes in his head can doubt of If all this will not satisfie him I will give one of his own kinde of proofs that is an instance That which necessitates all things according to T. H. is the decree of God or that order which is set to all things by the eternal cause Numb 11. Now God himself who made this necessitating decree was not subjected to it in the making thereof neither was there any former order to oblige the first cause necessarily to make such a decree therefore this decree being an act ad extra was freely made by God without any necessitation Yet nevertheless this disjunctive proposition is necessarily true Either God did make such a decree or he did not make such a decree Again though T. H. his opinion were true that all events are necessary and that the whole Christian world are deceived who believe that some events are free from necessity yet he will not deny but if it had been the good pleasure of God he might have made some causes free from necessity seeing that it neither argues any imperfection nor implies any contradiction Supposing therefore that God had made some second causes free from any such antecedent determination to one yet the former disjunction would be necessarily true Either this free undetermined cause will act after this manner or it will not act after this manner Wherefore the necessary truth of such a disjunctive proposition doth not prove that either of the members of the disjunction singly considered is determinately true in present but onely that the one of them will be determinately true to morrow T. H. THe last thing in which also consisteth the whole controversy Namely that there is no such thing as an Agent which when all things requisite to action are present can nevertheless forbeare to produce it or which is all one that there is no such thing as freedom from necessity is easily inferd from that which hath been before alledged For if it be an Agent it can work And if it work there is nothing wanting of what is requisite to produce the action and consequently the cause of the action is sufficients And if sufficient then also necessary as hath been proved before J. D. I Wonder that T. H. should confess that the whole weight of this controversy doth rest upon this proposition That there is no such thing as an Agent which when all things requisite to action are present can nevertheless forbear to act And yet bring nothing but such poor Bull-rushes
to support it If it be an Agent saith he it can work what of this A posse ad esse non valet argumentum from can work to will work is a weak inference And from will work to doth work upon absolute necessity is another gross inconsequence He proceeds thus If it work there is nothing wanting of what is requisite to produce the action True there wants nothing to produce that which is produced but there may want much to produce that which was intended One horse may pull his heart out and yet not draw the Coach whither it should be if he want the help or concurrence of his fellowes And consequently saith he the cause of the action is sufficient Yes sufficient to do what it doth though perhaps with much prejudice to it self but not alwayes sufficient to do what it should do or what it would do As he that begets a Monster should beget a man and would beget a man if he could The last link of his argument follows And if sufficient then also necessary stay there by his leave there is no necessary connexion between sufficiency and efficiency otherwise God himself should not be All-sufficient Thus his Argument is vanished But I will deal more favourably with him and grant him all that which he labours so much in vain to prove That every effect in the world hath sufficient causes Yea more that supposing the determination of the free and contingent causes every effect in the world is necessary But all this will not advantage his cause the black of a bean for still it amounts but to an hypotheticall necessity and differs as much from that absolute necessity which he maintains as a Gentleman who travailes for his pleasure differs from a banished man or a free Subject from a slave Numb 36. T. H. AND thus you see how the inconveniences which he objecteth must follow upon the holding of necessity are avoided and the necessity it self demonstratively prooved To which I could add if I thought it good Logick the inconveniency of denying necessity as that it distroyes both the Decrees and Prescience of God Almighty for whatsoever God hath purposed to bring to pass by man as an instrument or foreseeth shall come to passe A man if he have Liberty such as he affirmeth from necessitation might frustrate and make not to come to pass And God should either not foreknow it and not Decree it or he should foreknow such things shall be as shall never be and decree that which shall never come to pass J. D. THus he hath laboured in vain to satisfie my reasons and to proove his own assertion But for demonstration there is nothing like it among his Arguments Now he saith he could add other Arguments if he thought it good Logick There is no impediment in Logick why a man may not press his Adversary with those absurdities which flow from his opinion Argumentum ducens ad impossibile or ad absurdum is a good form of reasoning But there is another reason of his forbearance though he be loth to express it Haeret lateri laethalis arundo The Arguments drawn from the attributes of God do stick so close in the sides of his cause that he hath no mind to treate of that subject By the way take notice of his own confession that he could add other reasons if he thought it good Logick If it were predetermined in the outward causes that he must make this very defence and no other how could it be in his power to add or substract any thing Just as if a blind-man should say in earnest I could see if I had mine eyes Truth often breaks out whilest men seek to smother it But let us view his Argument If a man have liberty from necessitation he may frustrate the Decrees of God and make his prescience false First for the Decrees of God This is his Decree that man should be a free Agent If he did consider God as a most simple Act without priority or posteriority of time or any composition He would not conceive of his Decrees as of the Lawes of the Medes and Persians long since enacted and passed before we were born but as coexistent with our selves and with the acts which we do by vertue of those Decrees Decrees and Attributes are but notions to help the weakness of our understanding to conceive of God The Decrees of God are God himself and therefore justly said to be before the foundation of the world was laid And yet coexistent with our selves because of the Infinite and Eternall being of God The summe is this The Decree of God or God himself Eternally constitutes or ordaines all effects which come to to pass in time according to the distinct natures or capacities of his creatures An Eternall Ordination is neither past nor to come but alwaies present So free actions do proceed as well from the Eternall Decree of God as necessary and from that order which he hath set in the world As the Decree of God is Eternall so is his Knowledge And therefore to speak truly and properly there is neither fore-knowledge nor after-knowledge in him The Knowledge of God comprehends all times in a point by reason of the eminence vertue of its infinite perfection And yet I confess that this is called fore-knowledge in respect of us But this fore-knowledge doth produce no absolute necessity Things are not therefore because they are fore-known but therfore they are fore-known because they shall come to pass If any thing should come to pass otherwise than it doth yet Gods knowledge could not be irritated by it for then he did not know that it should come to pass as now it doth Because every knowledge of vision necessarily presupposeth its object God did know that Judas should betray Christ but Judas was not necessitated to be a traitor by Gods knowledge If Judas had not betrayed Christ then God had not fore-known that Judas should betray him The case is this A watch-man standing on the steeples-top as it is the use in Germany gives notice to them below who see no such things that company are coming and how many His prediction is most certain for he sees them What a vain collection were it for one below to say what if they do not come then a certaine prediction may fail It may be urged that there is a difference between these two cases In this case the coming is present to the Watch-man but that which God fore-knowes is future God knowes what shall be The Watch-man onely knowes what is I answer that this makes no difference at all in the case by reason of that disparity which is between Gods knowledge and ours As that coming is present to the Watchman which is future to them who are below So all those things which are future to us are present to God because his Infinite and Eternall knowledge doth reach to the future being of all Agents and events Thus much is
this They who may do and might have done many things which they leave undone and who leave undone many things which they might do are not necessitated nor precisely and antecently determined to do what they do But we might do many things which we do not and we do many things which we might leave undone as appeares evidently by the texts alledged Therefore we are not antecedently and precisely determined nor necessitated to do all things which he do What is here of election in this Argument To what proposition to what tearm doth T. H. apply his answer He neither affirmes nor denieth nor distinguisheth of any thing contained in my argument Here I must be bold to call upon him for a more pertinent answer Numb 10. J. D. argument 3 THirdly if there be no true liberty but all things come to pass by inevitable necessity then what are all those interrogations and objurgations and reprehensions and expostulations which we find so frequently in holy Scriptures be it spoken with all due respect but feined and hypocriticall exaggerations Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded that thou shouldest not eat Gen. 3.11 And ver 13. he saith to Eve Why hast thou done this And to Cain Why art thou wroth and why is thy countenance cast down And why will ye dy O house of Israel Doth God command openly not to eat and yet secretly by himself or by the second causes necessitate him to eat Doth he reprehend him for doing that which he hath antecedently determined that he must doe Doth he propose things under impossible conditions Or were not this plain mockery and derision Doth a loving Master chide his servant because he doth not come at his call and yet knowes that the poor servant is chained and fettered so as he cannot moove by the Masters own order without the servants default or consent They who talk here of a twofold will of God secret and revealed and the one opposite to the other understand not what they say These two wills concerne severall persons The secret will of God is what he will do himself The revealed will of God is what he would have us to do It may be the secret will of God to take away the life of the Father yet it is Gods revealed will that his Son should wish his life and pray for his life Here is no contradiction where the Agents are distinct But for the same person to command one thing and yet to necessitate him that is commanded to do another thing To chide a man for doing that which he hath determined inevitably and irresistibly that he must do This were I am afraid to utter what they are not afraid to assert the highest dissimulation Gods chiding prooves mans liberty T. H. TO the third and fift arguments I shall make but one answer J. D. CErtainly distinct Arguments as the third and fift are the one drawn from the truth of God the other drawn from the Justice of God the one from his objurgations and reprehensions the other from his Judgments after life did require distinct answers But the plain truth is that neither here nor in his answer to the fift Argument nor in this whole Treatise is there one word of solution or satisfaction to this Argument or to any part of it All that looks like an answer is contained Numb 12. That which he does is made just by his doing Just I say in him not alwayes just in us by the example for a man that shall command a thing openly and plot secretly the hinderance of the same if he punish him whom he commanded so for not doing it is unjust I dare no insist upon it I hope his meaning is not so bad as the words intimate and as I apprehend That is to impute falshood to him that is Truth it self and to justifie feining and dissimulation in God as he doth tyranny by the infiniteness of his power and the absoluteness of his dominion And therefort by his leave I must once again tender him a new summons for a full and clear Answer to this Argument also He tells us that he was not surprised Whether he were or not is more than I know But this I see plainly that either he is not provided or that his cause admits no choise of answers The Jews dealt ingenuously when they met with a difficult knot which they could not untie to put it upon Elias Elias will answer it when he comes Numb 11. J. D. argument 4 FOurthly if either the decree of God or the foreledge of God or the influence of the Stars or the concatenation of causes or the physicall or morall efficacy of objects or the last dictate of the understanding do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty For he was subjected to the same decrees the same praescience the same constellations the same causes the same objects the same dictates of the understanding But quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulus odi The greatest opposers of our liberty are as earnest maintainers of the liberty of Adam Therefore none of these supposed impediments take away true liberty T. H. THe fourth Argument is to this effect If the decree of God or his foreknowledge or the influence of the Stars or the concatenation of causes or the physicall or morall efficacy of causes or the last dictate of the understanding or whatsoever it be do take away true liberty then Adam before his fall had no true liberty Quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulus odi That which I say necessitateth and determinateth every action that be may no longer doubt of my meaning is the sum of all those things which being now existent conduce and concurre to the production of that action hereafter whereof if any one thing now were wanting the effect could not be produced This concourse of causes whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes may well be called in respect they were all set and ordered by the eternall cause of all things God Almighty the decree of God But that the fore-knowledge of God should be a cause of any thing cannot be truly said seeing foreknowledge is knowledge and knowledge depends on the existence of the things known and not they on it The influence of the Stars is but a small part of the whole cause consisting of the concourse of all Agents Nor doth the concourse of all causes make one simple chain or concatenation but an innumerable number of chains joyned together not in all parts but in the first link God Almighty and consequently the whole cause of an event does not alwaies depend upon one single chain but on many together Naturall efficacy of objects does determine voluntary Agents and necessitates the will and consequently the action but for morall efficacy I understand not what he means by it The last dictate of the judgement concerning the good or bad that
may follow on any action is not properly the whole cause but the last part of it And yet may be said to produce the effect necessarily in such manner as the last feather may be said to break an Horses back when there were so many laid on before as there wanted but that to do it Now for his Argument That if the concourse of all the causes necessitate the effect that then it follows Adam had no true liberty I deny the consequence for I make not onely the effect but also the election of that particular effect to be necessary in as much as the will it self and each propension of a man during his deliberation is as much necessitated and depends on a sufficient cause as any thing else whatsoever As for example it is no more necessary that fire should burn then that a man or other creature whose limbs be moved by fancy should have election that is liberty to do what he has a fancy to though it be not in his will or power to choose his fancy or choose his election or will This Doctrin because he saies he hates I doubt had better been suppressed as it should have been if both your Lordship and he had not pressed me to an answer J. D. THis Argument was sent forth onely as an espie to make a more full discovery what were the true grounds of T. H. his supposed necessity which errand being done and the foundation whereupon he builds being found out which is as I called it a concatenation of causes and as he calles it a concourse of necessary causes It would now be a superfluous and impertinent work in me to undertake the refutation of all those other opinions which he doth not undertake to defend And therefore I shall wave them for the present with these short animadversions Concerning the eternall decree of God he confounds the decree it self with the execution of his decree And concerning the fore-knowledge of God he confounds that speculative knowledge which is called the knowledge of vision which doth not produce the intellective objects no more then the sensitive vision doth produce the sensible objects with that other knowledge of God which is called the knowledge of approbation or a practicall knowledge that is knowledge joyned with an act of the will of which Divines do truly say that it is the cause of things as the knowledge of the Artist is the cause of his work God made all things by his word Joh. 1. that is by his wisdom Concerning the influences of the Stars I wish he had expressed himself more clearly For as I do willingly grant that those Heavenly Bodies do act upon these sublunary things not onely by their motion and light but also by an occult vertue which we call influence as we see by manifold experience in the Loadstone and Shell-fish c. So if he intend that by these influences they do naturally or physically determine the will or have any direct dominion over humane Counsels either in whole or in part either more or less he is in an errour Concerning the concatenation of causes whereas he makes not one chain but an innumerable number of chains I hope he speaks hyperbolically and doth not intend that they are actually infinite the difference is not materiall whether one or many so long as they are all joyned together both in the first linck and likewise in the effect It serves to no end but to shew what a shadow of liberty T. H. doth fancy or rather what a dream of a shadow As if one chain were not sufficient to load poor man but he must be clogged with innumerable chains This is just such another freedom as the Turkish Galli-slaves do injoy But I admire that T. H. who is so versed in this question should here confess that he understands not the difference between physicall or naturall and morall efficacy And much more that he should affirm that outward objects do determine voluntary agents by a naturall efficacy No object no second agent Angell or Devill can determine the will of man naturally but God alone in respect of his supreme dominion over all things Then the will is determined naturally when God Almighty besides his generall influence whereupon all second causes do depend as well for their being as for their acting doth moreover at sometimes when it pleaseth him in cases extraordinary concurre by a speciall influence and infuse something into the will in the nature of an act or an habit whereby the will is moved and excited and applied to will or choose this or that Then the will is determined morally when some object is proposed to it with perswasive reasons and arguments to induce it to will Where the determination is naturall the liberty to suspend its act is taken away from the will but not so where the determination is morall In the former case the will is determined extrinsecally in the latter case intrinsecally The former produceth an absolute necessity the latter onely a necessity of supposition If the will do not suspend but assent then the act is necessary but because the will may suspend and not assent therefore it is not absolutely necessary In the former case the will is moved necessarily and determinately In the latter freely and indeterminately The former excitation is immediate the latter is mediate mediante intellectu and requires the help of the understanding In a word so great a difference there is between naturall and morall efficacy as there is between his opinion and mine in this question There remains onely the last dictate of the understanding which he maketh to be the last cause that concerneth to the determination of the will and to the necessary production of the act as the last feather may be said to break an Horses back when there were so many laid on before that there wanted but that to do it I have shewed Numb 7. that the last dictate of the understanding is not alwaies absolute in it self nor conclusive to the will and when it is conclusive yet it produceth no Antecedent nor Extrinsecall necessity I shall onely adde one thing more in present That by making the last judgement of right reason to be of no more weight then a single feather he wrongs the understanding as well as he doth the will the indeavours to deprive the will of its supreme power of application and to deprive the understanding of its supreme power of judicature and definition Neither corporeall agents and objects nor yet the sensitive appetite it self being an inferiour faculty and affixed to the Organ of the Body have any direct or immediate dominion or command over the rationall will It is without the sphear of their activity All the access which they have unto the will is by the means of the understanding sometimes clear and sometimes disturbed and of reason either right or mis-informed Without the help of the understanding all his second causes were not able of