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
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
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
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