his pupill or do him injustice There is onely this difference that a pupill may implead his Guardian and recover his right against him But from a Soveraign Law-giver there lies no appeal but onely to God Otherwise there would be endlesse appeales which both nature and pollicy doth abhor As in the instance of the Roman Arbitrament formerly mentioned An arbitrary power is the highest of all powers Judges must proceed according to law Arbitrators are tied to no law but their own reason and their own consciences Yet all the world will say that the Romans dealt fraudulently and unjustly with the two parties Lastly the holy Scriptures do every where brand wicked Laws as infamous As the Statutes of Omrâ—… and the Statutes of Israel and stileth them expressely unjust laws or unrighteous decrees He asketh to whom the Bible is a law The Bible is not a law but the positive laws of God are contained in the Bible Doth he think the Law of God is no Law without his suffrage He might have been one of Tiberius his Council when it was proposed to the Senate Whether they should admit Christ to be a God or not He saith I know that it is not a law to all the World Not de facto indeed How should it when the World is so full of Atheists that make no more account of their soules than of so many handfuls of salt to keep their bodies from stinking But de jure by right it is a Law and ought to be a Law to all the World The Heathens and particularly the Stoicks themselves did speak with much more reverence of the holy Books of which to suspect a falsehood they held to be an heinous and detestable crime And the first argument for necessity they produced from the authority of those Books because they said that God did know all things and dispose all things He asketh How the Bible came to be a Law to us Did God speake it viva voce to us have we seen the miracles have we any other assurance then the words of the Prophets and the authority of the Church And so it concludeth that it is the Legislative power of the Common-wealth wheresoever it is placed which makes the Bible a Law in England If a man digged a pit and covered it not again so that an oxe or an asse fell into it he was obbliged by the Mosaical Law to make satisfaction for the dammage I know not whether he do this on purpose to weaken the authority of holy Scripture or not Let God and his own conscience be his Triers But I am sure he hath digged a pit for an oxe or an asse without covering it again and if they chance to stumble blindfold into it their blood will be required at his hands If a Turke had said so much of the Alchoran at Constantinople he were in some danger If it were within the compasse of the present controversie I should esteem it no difficult task to demonstrate perspicuously that the holy Scriptures can be no other then the word of God himself by their antiquity by their harmony by their efficacy by the sanctity and sublimity of their matter such as could not have entered into the thoughts of man without the inspiration of the Holy Ghost By the plainnesse of their stile so full of Majesty by the light of prophetical predictions by the testimony of the blessed Martyrs by a multitude of miracles by the simplicity of the Penmen and Promulgers poor fishermen and shepherds who did draw the World after their oaten reeds and lastly by the judgements of God that have fallen upon such Tyrants and others as have gone about to suppr esse or profane the Sacred Oracles But this is one of those things de quibus nefas est dubitare which he that calleth into question deserveth to be answered otherwise than with arguments But that which is sufficient to confute him is the law of nature which is the same in a great part with the positive Law of God recorded in holy Scriptures All the ten Commandments in respect of their substanrials are acknowledged by all men to be branches of the law of nature I hope he will not say that these laws of nature were made by our Suffrages though he be as likely to say such an absurdity as any man living For he saith the law of nature is the assent it self which all men give to the means of their preservation Every law is a rule of our actions a meer assent is no rule A law commandeth or forbiddeth an assent doth neither But to shew him his vanity Since he delighteth so much in distinctions let him satisfie himself out of the distinction of the law of nature The law of nature is the prescription of right reason whereby thorough that light which nature hath placed in us we know some things to be done because they are honest and other things to be shunned because they are dishonest He had forgotten what he had twice cited and approved out of Cicero concerning the law of nature which Philo calls The law that cannot lie not moral made by mortals not without life or written in paper or columnes without life but that which can not be corrupted written by the immortal God in our understandings Secondly if this which he saith did deserve any consideration it was before the Bible was admitted or assented unto or received as the word of God But the Bible hath been assented unto and received in England sixteen hundred years A fair prescription and in all that time I do not find any law to authorize it or to under-prop heaven from falling with a bullrush This is undeniable that for so many successive ages we have received it as the law of God himself not depending upon our assents or the authority of our Law-makers Thirdly we have not onely a nationall tradition of our own Church for the divine authority of holy Scripture but which is of much more moment we have the perpetuall constant universall tradition of the Catholick Church of Christ ever since Christ himself did tread upon the face of the earth This is so clear a proof of the universall reception of the Bible for the genuine Word of God that there cannot justly be any more doubt made of it than whether there ever was a William the Conquerer or not But this is his opinion That true religion in every Country is that which the Soveraign Magistrate doth admit and injoyne I could wish his deceived followers would think upon what rock he drives them For if this opinion be true then that which is true religion to day may be false religion tomorrow and change as often as the chief Governour or Governours change their opinions Then that which is true religion in one Country is false religion in another Country because the Governours are of different opinions then all the religions of the World Christian Jewish Turkish Heathenish are true religions in
law or the rule of justice in God himself What is become of the divine positive law recorded in holy Scriptures What is become of the law of nature imprinted naturally in the heart of every man by the finger of God himself What is become of the law of nations that is those principles which have been commonly and universally received as laws by all nations in all ages or at least the most prudent pious and civill nations What is become of that Synteresis or noble light of the soul which God hath given mankind to preserve them from vices Are they all gone all vanished and is no rule remaining but only the arbitrary edicts of a mortal Law-giver who may command us to turn Turks or Pagans to morrow who by his own confession may erre in his law-giving Then not onely power absolutely irresistible doth justifie whatsoever it doth but also the power of mortall man may justifie the violation of the laws of the immortal God But I have shewed him sufficiently that there are unjust laws not onely towards God but likewise towards men That unjust laws do not acquit our active obedience to them from damnable sin That it is not onely lawful but necessary to disobey them That God himself hath approved such disobedience and rewarded it To conclude it is not the pleasing of him or me or some private benefit that may redound from thence to him or me that makes any thing to be truely good but the meeting of all perfection in it whereof that thing is capable Bonum ex integra causa malum ex quolibet defectu all requisite perfections must concur to make a thing good but one onely defect makes it evill Nothing is morally good nothing is praiseworthy but that which is truly honest and virtuous And on the other side nothing is morally bad nothing is dispraise worthy but that which is dishonest and vicious To wrangle everlastingly whether those incouragements which are given to Setting-dogs and Coyducks and the like be rewards were a childish fighting with shadows seeing it is confessed that they are not recompenses of honest and virtuous actions to which the laws did appoint rewards Swine that run by a determinate instinct of nature to succour their fellows of the same Herd in distresse do not desire a civicall crown like him who saved the life of a Citizen Nor the Spiders whose phancies are fitted by nature to the weaving of their webs deserve the like commendation with Arachne who atteined to her rare arts of weaving by assidious industry There is a great difference between natural qualities and moral virtues Where nature hath bestowed excellent gifts the chief praise redoundeth to the God of nature And where the bruits have attained to any such rare or beneficial qualities by the instruction of man the chief praise redoundeth unto him that taught them The Harp was not crowned in the Olympian Games but the Harper nor the Horses but the Chariotter And though the incouragements of men and bruits be sometimes the same thing materially yet they are not the same thing formally But where he confoundeth a necessity of specification with a necessity of exercise and affirmeth that the Bees and Spiders are necessitated by nature as well to all their individuall actions as to their severall kinds of works it deserveth no answer but to be sleighted His opinion doth require that he should say that they are determined to their individual actions by the second causes and circumstances though it be untrue but to say they are determined by nature to each individuall act admitteth no defence In the last Paragraph I am beholden to him that he would instruct me but I am of his mind that it would be too great a labour for him For I approve none of his newfangled principles and think he might have spent his time better in meditating upon somewhat else that had been more proper for him I see that where the inferiour faculty doth end the superiour doth begin As where the vegetative doth end there the sensitive doth begin comprehending all that the vegetative doth and much more So where the sensitive ends the intellectual begins And should I confine the intellectual soul which is inorganical immaterial impassible seperable within the bounds of the sensitive or to the power and proceedings thereof when I see the understanding doth correct the sense as about the greatnesse of the Sun Sense hath nothing to do with universalls but reason hath Even in memory which he mentioneth the intellectuall remembrance is another manner of thing than the sensitive memory But this belongs not to this question and therefore I pass by it and leave him to the censure of others Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 15. IN this Section he chargeth me first with a double breach of promise yet there is no promise if they had been promises both are accomplished One of my promises was That I would not leave one grain of his matter unweighed yet I leave these words unanswered Our Saviour bids us pray thy will not our will be done and by example teacheth us the same For he prayed thus Father if it be thy will let this cup passe First this was no promise but mine own private resolution which I might lawfully change at any time upon better grounds Secondly it had been an easie thing to omit two lines in a whole discourse unwillingly Thirdly the intent was onely to omit nothing that was material but this was meerly impertinent Lastly without any more to do it was fully answered in my defence in these words In the last place he urgeth That in our prayers we are bound to submit our wills to Gods will Who ever made a 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 pleasure by the event or otherwise But we deny and deny again that God wills ad extra 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 aledgeth to the contrary comes not near it Where were his eyes That inference which seemeth at least to imply that our prayers cannot change the will of God is now first added And if it had been there formerly is answered abundantly in the same Section The second breach of promise is this that I said here is all that passed between us upon this subject without any addition or the least variation from the original But I have added these words Yes I have seen those silliest of creatures and seeing their rare works I have seen enough to confute all the boldfaced Atheists of this Age and their hellish blasphemies What a stirre is here about two lines which contain neither argument nor answer nor authority nor anything material I did not apply these words to him nor gave the least intimation of any such thing
exercised as it is when a man is driven hither and thither with the wind there is no fear in that case yet there is compulsion But it sufficeth sometimes to compulsion if the force be present such as cannot be resisted and ready to be put in execution if there be need As a man that will not appear freely upon summons is forced by Pursevants and Serjeants although they do not carry him upon their backs nor drag him upon the ground It sufficeth that they be Masters and able to compel him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But according to his Heterodox principles every remote fear doth make compulsion As if a man should say that a child was compelled to run away from a mouse or a coward was compelled to winke when a man holds up his hand at him or a man is compelled to throw his goods overboard which he himself confesseth to be freely and deliberately elected From this first mistake of what compulsion is proceedeth a second That the actions of men compelled are neverthelesse voluntary And a third That compulsion doth not justifie the party compelled all which are meer Logomachies or contentions about words which he is fallen into either ignorantly by not understanding what compulsion is or cunningly and deliberately to have a pretext of excepting against former Authours although it be but like the dogs barking at the moon-shine in the water Force actually exercised did acquit Tamar and the betrothed Damosel from all guilt But Herods fear of a successour did not excuse the murder of the innocents Nor the fear of his Masters severity excuse the unprofitable servants hiding of his Talent in a napkin But I leave these contentions about words which signifie not so much as the shadow of an asse He hath plunged himself here into two reall errours The one is That if the fear be allowed the action which it produceth is allowed also Abrahams fear was just The fear of God is not in this place they will murder me for my wives sake But the action which it produced that is the denial of his wife is not allowed Peters fear was allowed but the denial of his master was not allowable The other and more dangerous errour is That fear doth abrogate a law and make it to be no law in some cases Take the larger exposition of this out of his book De Cive No man is bound by any pacts or contracts whatsoever not to resist him who goeth about to kill him or wound him or to hurt his body Mortem vel vulnera vel aliud damnum corporis inferenti nemo pactis suis quibuscunque obligatur non resistere So a Scholar may resist his Master when he goeth about to whip him So a company of traitors or other capital malefactors may lawfully resist the Soveraign Magistrate This is seditious indeed and openeth a large window to civil war This is directly contrary to what he said in his book De Cive In every perfect Common-wealth the right of the private sword is excluded and no Subject hath right to use his power to the preservation of himself at his own discretion Judge Reader whether we or he be better Subjects he who holdeth that in case of extream danger a Subject hath no obligation to his Soveraign or we who hold it better to die innocents than to live nocents His reason because we bind or guard capital malefactors sheweth a distrust of what they may do de facto not a doubt of what they ought to do de jure I alledged That the omission of circumcision in the Wildernesse was not sin to shew that though no fear or necessity can justifie the breach of the negative Laws of God or nature yet in some cases it may justifie the transgression of the positive Law or the omission of a duty injoyned by affirmative precepts To my instance of two servants the one spending his Masters money in a Tavern the other having it taken away from him by force or yeelding it up upon just fear he answereth nothing the scope of them being to shew that strength of temation doth not justifie an act so much as extrinsecal necessity If the second causes were as rackets men as tennis balls or foot balles To what purpose did God give men reason to govern themselves and to bridle their passions who are tossed to and fro inevitably irresistibly as the rackets please Reason had been a fitter gift for the rackets than for the balls if his opinion were true That upon the planting of a Canon against a wall the battery is necessary before the bullet arrive is true but there is no such necessary connexion between free or contingent Agents and their acts as there is between the Canon and the Battery which he might have easily perceived if he had been pleased to have enlarged his meditation a little further It was in the power of the Canoneer not to have charged the Canon or to have given it but half a charge or to have given no fire or to have turned the mouth of it another way higher or lower to the right hand or to the left In all these cases what had become of his Battery If he hath such a conceit that no man doth or can determine himself contrary to the sense of the whole World let him injoy it Some men have conceited themselves to be Urinals and suffered none to touch them for fear of breaking them but he must not think to obtrude his flegmatick phancies upon all other men who understand themselves better If he were not resolved to oppose all the World without any ground he would never have denyed a moral efficacy or metaphorical motion or have affirmed that motives that is to say persuasives or reasons weighed in the understanding do determine the free Agent naturally Is the perswading of a man to eat and the thrusting of it down his throat the same thing Do an argument and a Canon bullet work after the same manner Did he ever hear a bullet called a motive to the beating down of the wall or flowers called motives to the production of the fruits or meat a motive to nourishment Natural efficay is alwayes necessary and determinate and active to the height of its power But moral Agents act not necessarily nor determinately nor alwayes to the height of their power The Lawyer that he speaketh of may refuse to pleade or delay his pleading or plead better or worse and when he hath done his uttermost it may so fall out that he effecteth nothing for his Client I am ashamed of such silly verbal objections contrary to the known Principles of Arts. He complaineth that I put his notions oftentimes into mine own termes I had thought I had done him a favour to tender him more intelligible and put his sense into the common language of Schollers The understanding being the root of liberty and the will being but intellectus extensus ad habendum
Soveraign Princes are often contradictory one to another One commandeth to worship Christ another forbiddeth it One forbiddeth to offer sacrifice to idols another commandeth it Yea the same person may both forbid idolatry in general and yet authorise it in particular Or forbid it by the publick laws of the Country and yet authorise it by his personal commands Thirdly true Religion is alwayes justified in the sight of God But obedience to the commands of Soveraign Princes is not always justified in the sight of God This is clearly proved out of his own expresse words Whatsoever is commanded by the Soveraign power is as to the Subject though not so alwayes in the sight of God justified by their command VVhence it is evident by his own confession that the wicked commands of Soveraigne Princes are not justified by their Royal authority but are wicked and repugnant to the Law of God And consequently that of the Apostle hath place here Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God judge ye True Religion hath alwayes reference unto God Fourthly true Religion doth not consist in obedience to any laws whatsoever which are repugnant to the Moral Law of God or to the law of Nature This Proposition is granted by himself The laws of nature are immutable and eternal And all Writers do agree that the law of nature is the same with the moral Law Again Soveraigns are all Subjects to the law of nature because such laws be Divine and cannot by any man or Common-wealth be abrogated And in all things not contrary to the moral Law that is to say to the law of nature all Subjects are bound to obey that of Divine Law which is declared to be so by the laws of the Common-wealth But the commands of a Soveraign Prince may be repugnant not onely to the Moral Law or the law of nature but even to the laws of the Common-wealth This assumption is proved four wayes First by his own confession It is manifest enough that when a man receiveth two contrary commands and knows that one of them is Gods he ought to obey that and not the other If there can be no such contrary commands then it is not manifest nor yet true Secondly this is pâ—…oved by his resolution of two queres The fist is this Whether the City or the Soveraign Prince be to be obeyd if he command directly to do any thâ—…ng to the contumely of God or forbid to worship God To which he answereth directly non esse obediendam that he ought not to be obeyed And he gives this reason Because the subjects before the constitution of the Common-wealth had no right to deny the honour due unto God and therefore could transferre no right to command such things to the common-wealth The like he hath in his Leviathan Actions which do naturally signifie contumely cannot by humane power be made a part of Divine Worship As if the denial of Christ upon a Soveraigns command which he justifieth were not contumelious to Christ or as if subjects before the constitution of the common-wealth had any right themselves to deny Christ. But such palpable contradictions are no novelties with him How doth true Religion consist in obedience to the commands of a Soveraign if his commands may be contumelious to God and deny him that worship which is due unto him by the eternal and immutable law of nature and if he be not to be obeyed in such commands His second question is If a Soveraign Prince should command himself to be worshipped with Divine Worship and Attributes whether he ought to be obeyed To which he answereth That although Kings should command it yet we ought to abstain from such attributes as signifie his independence upon God or inmortality or infinite power or the like And from such actions as do signifie the same As to pray unto him being absent to aske those things of him which none but God can give as rain and fair weather or to offer sacrifice to him Then true Religion may sometimes consist in disobedience to the commands of Soveraign Princes Thirdly that the commands of Soveraign Princes in point of Religion may be contrary to the law of nature which needeth no new promulgation or reception doth appear by all those duties internal and external which by his own confession nature doth injoyn us to perform towards God and all which may be and have been countermanded by Soveraign Princes as to acknowledge the existence of God his unity his infinitenesse his providence his creation of the World his omnipotence his eternity his incomprehensibility his ub quity To worship him and him onely with Divine worship with prayes with thanksgivings with oblations and with all expressions of honour Lastly this is proved by examples Nebuchadnezar commanded to worship a golden image And Darius made a decree that no man should ask any petition of any God or man for thirty dayes save of the King onely Yet the transgression of both these commands of Soveraign Princes was justified by God as true Religion Fiftly Christ will deny no man before his Father for true Religion But those who deny Christ before men to fulfil the commands of an earthly Prince he will deny before his father which is in Heaven And therefore Christ encourageth his Disciples against these dangers which might fall upon them by disobedience to such unlawful commands Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell But Mr. Hobs hath found out an evasion for such Renegadoes Whatsoever a Subject is compelled to in obedience to his Soveraign and doth it not in order to his own mind but in order to the lawes of his country that action is not his but his Soveraigns nor is it he that in this case denieth Christ before men but his Governour and the law of his Country If this Fig-leafe would have served the turn Shedrach Meshach and Abednego needed not to have been cast into the fiery Furnace For though they had worshipped the golden image by this doctrine they had not been idolaters but Nebuchadnezar onely and his Princes If this were true Daniel might have escaped the Lions Den If he had forborne his praises to God Darius had been faulty and not he But these holy Saints were of another minde I hope though he might in his baste and passion censure the blessed Martyrs to be fooles which were so many that there were five thousand for every day in the year except the calends of January when the Heathens were so intent upon their devotions that they neglected the slaughter of the poor Christians yet he will not esteem himself wiser than Daniel Behold thou art wiser than Daniel was an hyperbolical or rather an ironical expression With the heart man believeth unto righteousnesse
that the subsequent commands of a Sovereign contrary to his former lawes is an abrogation of them And that it is an opinion repugnant to the nature of a commonwealth that he that hath the soveraign power is subject to the civill lawes The determinations of Scripture upon his grounds do bind the hands of Kings when they themselves please to be bound no longer To conclude sometimes he doth admit the soule to be a distinct substance from the body sometimes he denieth it Sometimes he maketh reason to be a naturall faculty sometimes he maketh it to be an acquired habit In some places he alloweth the will to be a rationall appetite in other places he disallowes it Sometimes he will have it to be a law of nature that men must stand to their pacts Sometimes he maketh covenants of mutuall trust in the state of nature to be void Sometimes he will have no punishment but for crimes that might have been left undone At other times he maketh all crimes to be inevitable Sometimes he will have the dependence of actions upon the will to be truly liberty At other times he ascribeth liberty to rivers which have no will Sometimes he teacheth that though an action be necessitated yet the will to break the law maketh the action to be unjust at other times he maketh the will to be much more necessitated than the action He telleth us that civill law-makers may erre and sin in making of a law And yet the law so made is an infallible rule Yes to lead a man infallibly into a ditch What should a man say to this man How shall one know when he is in earnest and when he is in jest He setteth down his opinion just as Gipsies tell fortunes both waies that if the one misse the other may be sure to hit that when they are accused of falsehood by one they may appeale to another But what did I write in such a place It was the praise of John Baptist that he was not like a reed shaken with the wind bending or inclining hither and thither this way and that way now to old truths then to new errours And it is the honour of every good Christian. St. Paul doth excellently describe such fluctuating Christians by two comparisons the one of little children the other of a ship lying at Hull Eph. 4. 14. That we henceforth be no more children tossed too and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine as a child wavers between his love and duty to his parent or nurse on the one hand and some apple or other toy which is held forth to him on the other hand or as a ship lying at anchor changeth its positure with every wave and every puffe of wind As the last company leaves them or the present occasion makes them so they vary their discourses When the time was T. H. was very kind to me to let me see the causes and grounds of my errours Arguments seldome work on men of wit and learning when they have once ingaged themselves in a contrary opinion If any thing will do it it is the shewing of them the causes of their errours One good turn requireth another Now I will do as much for him If it do not work upon himself Yet there is hope it may undeceive some of his disciples A principall cause of his errours is a fancying to himself a generall state of nature which is so far from being generall that there is not an instance to be found of it in the nature of things where mankind was altogether without laws without governours guided only by self interest without any sense of conscience justice honesty or honour He may search all the corners of America with a candle and lanthorn at noon day and after his fruitlesse paines return a non est invent us Yet all plants and living creatures are subject to degenerate and grow wild by degrees Suppose it should so happen that some remnant of men either chased by war or persecution or forced out of the habitable world for some crimes by themselves committed or being cast by shipwrack upon some deserts by long conversing with savage beasts lions beares wolves and tygers should in time become more bruitish it is his own epithite than the bruites themselves would any man in his right wits make that to be the universall condition of mankind which was onely the condition of an odd handfull of men or that to be the state of nature which was not the state of nature but an accidentall degeneration He that will behold the state of nature rightly must look upon the family of Adam and his posterity in their successive generations from the creation to the deluge and from the deluge untill Abrahams time when the first Kingdome of God by pact is supposed by T. H. to begin All this while which was a great part of that time the world hath stood from the creation lasted the Kingdom of God by nature as he phraseth it And yet in those daies there were lawes and government and more Kings in the world then there are at this present we find nine Kings engaged in one war and yet all their dominions but a narrow circuit of land And so it continued for divers hundreds of years after as we see by all those Kings which Joshua discomfited in the land of Canaan Every City had its own King The reason is evident The originall right of fathers of families was not then extinguished Indeed T. H. supposeth that men did spring out of the earth like Mushromes or Mandrakes That we may return again to the state of nature and consider men as if they were even now suddenly sprouted and grown out of the earth after the manner of Mushroms without any obligation of one to another But this supposion is both false and Atheistical howsoever it dropt from his pen. Mankind did not spring out of the earth but was created by God not many suddenly but one to whom all his posterity were obliged as to their father and ruler A second ground of his his errours is his grosse mistake of the laws of nature which he relateth most impersectly and most untruly A moral Heathen would blush for shame to see such a catalogue of the laws of nature First he maketh the laws of nature to be laws and no laws Just as a man and no man hit a bird and no bird with a stone and no stone on a tree and no tree not laws but theorems laws which required not performance but endeavours laws which were silent and could not be put in execution in the state of nature Where nothing was another mans and therefore a man could not steal where all things were common and therefore no adultery where there was a state of war and therefore it was lawfull to kill where all things were defined by a mans own judgement and therefore what honours he pleased to give unto his father and lastly
name of Gods grace which will afford no shelter for his errour Our question was not about the concurrence of grace and free-will in the conversion of a sinner but meerly about the liberty or necessity of all naturall and civil events when he hath acquitted himself like a man in the former cause then he is free to undertake the second The next collection is of such places of Scripture as say there is election of which T. H. is pleased to affirm That they make equally for him and me I do not blame him if he desire that all places which maintain Election and that all natural and civil events should quite be sequester'd from this controversie For it is not possible to reconcile these places with fatal necessity All choice or election is of more than one but there can be no choice of more than one where there is an extrinsecal determination of all particular events with all their circumstances inevitably irresistibly to one by a fluxe of natural causes So they leave no manner of Election at all no more freedom to chuse a mans actions than to chuse his will But all these places and many more prove expressely that a man is free not onely to do it if he will but to will The reason is evident because to chuse is to will the proper elicite immediate act of the will and to chuse one thing before another is nothing else but to will one thing before another But all these places say that a man is free to chuse that is to will one thing before another Chuse life saith one place Chuse whom ye will serve saith a second place Chuse one of three saith a third place and so of the rest But I have pressed these places formerly and shall do further if there be occasion His third sort of Texts are those which seem to make for me against him But I am at age to chuse and urge mine own arguments for my self and cannot want weapons in this cause Therefore he may forbear such a thanklesse office He telleth us of a great apparent contradiction between the first sort of Texts and the last but being both Scripture they may and must be reconciled This is first to wound the credit of the Scriptures and then to give them a plaister The supposed contradiction is in his own phansie Let him take them according to the analogy of faith in that sense wherein the Church hath ever taken them and there is no shew of contradiction The Scripture consists not in the words but in the sense not in the outside but in the marrow He demands Whether the selling of Ioseph did follow infallibly and inevitably upon the permission of God I answer If we consider Gods permission alone neither inevitably nor infallibly If we consider his permission joyntly with his prescience then infallibly but not inevitably Foreknowledge doth no more necessitate events to come to passe than after-knowledge Gods prescience did no more make Judas his treason inevitable to him than my remembrance now of what was done yesterday did make it inevitable then to him that did it He urgeth further So the prescience of God might have been frustrated by the liberty of humane will I answer nothing lesse The natures and essences of all things come to passe because they were foreknown by God whose knowledge was the directive cause of them But the acts and operations of free Agents are therefore foreknown because they will come to pass If any thing should come to pass otherwise God had foreknown from eternity that it should have come to passe otherwise because his infinite understanding doth encompasse all times and all events in the instant of eternity And consequently he beholds all things past present and to come as present And therefore leaving those forms of speech which are accommodated to us and our capacities To speak properly there is neither fore-knowledge nor after-knowledge in God who neither knows one thing after another nor one thing by deduction from another He askes Whether the treachery and fratricide of Iosephs brethren were no sin I answer yes and therefore it was not from God positively but permissively and dispositively Ye thought evil against me but God meant it unto good to save much people alive But he urgeth Joseph said Be not grieved nor angry with your selves that ye sold me hither Ought not a man to be grieved and angry with himself for sinning Yes but penitent sinners such as Josephs brethren were have great cause of joy and comfort when they understand that God hath disposed their sin to his glory their own good and the benefit of others He demands further Doth God barely permit corporal motions and neither will them nor nill them Or how is God the cause of the motion and the cause of the law yet not of the irregularity It were a much readier way to tell us at once directly That either there is no sin in the World or that God is the authour of sin than to be continually beating the bush after this manner But I answer All corporal motion in general is from God not onely permissively but also causally that is by a general influence but not by a special influence The specifical determination of this good general power to evil is from the free Agent who thereby doth become the cause of the irregularity There is no contrariety between motion in general and the law but between the actual and determinate abuse of this good locomitive power and the law He demands Whether the necessity of hardnesse of heart be not as easily derived from Gods permission that is from his withholding his grace as from his positive decree This question is proposed in a confused blundering manner without declaring distinctly what grace he meaneth I answer two wayes First we are to distinguish between a necessity of consequence or an infallibility and a necessity of consequent or a causal necessity Supposing but not granting that hardnesse of heart is as inâ—…allibly derived from the one as from the other yet not so causally nor so culpably in â—…espect of God who is not obliged in justice â—…o give his free grace to his creature but he is â—…bliged by the rule of his own justice not to determine his own creature to evil and then punish him for the same evil Secondly I answer that even this supposed necessity of infabillity can no way be imputed to God who never forsakes his creature by with holding his grace from him until his creature have first forsaken him who never forsakes his creature so far but that he may by prayers and using good indeavours obtaine the aide of Gods grace either to prevent or remove hardnesse of heart When God created man he made him in such a condition that he did not need special exciting grace to the determination of his will to supernatural good And to all that are within the pale of his
the special determination of God Concerning admonition he saith lesse than of consultation The reason saith he why we admonish men of understanding rather than children fooles and madmen is because they are more capable of the good and evil consequences of their actions and have more experience and their passions are more conform to their Admonitors that is to say moderate and stayed And then after his Bragadochio manner he concludeth There be therefore reasons under heaven which the bishop knows not of My one reason because they have the use of reason and true liberty with a dominion over their ownactions which children fools and mad-men have not includeth more than all his three reasons put together What is it that weigheth the good and evill consequences of our actions Reason What is it that preserveth us from being transported with our passions Reason And what is experienced of good and evil Reason impoproved by observation So we have gained nothing by the change of my reason but three crackt groats fore one good shilling But he hath omitted the principal part of my answer that is the liberty and dominion over their actions which men of understanding have much more than children fools or madmen Without which all his capablenesse of good and evill consequences all his experience of good and evil all his calmness and moderation do signifie just nothing Let a man have as much capacity as Solomon as much experience as Nestor as much moderation as Socrates yet if he have no power to dispose of himself nor to order his own actions but be hurried away by the second causes inevitably irresistiblity without his own willl it is to as much purpose to admonish him as when Icarus had his wings melted by the Sun and was tumbling down headlong into the Sea to have admonished him to take heed of drowning A seasonable admonition may do much good but that is upon our principles not upon his If all events with all their circumstances and the certain means to effect them were precisely determined from eternity it were high presumption in us to interpose without speciall warrant Those means which we judge most convenient are often not looked upon by God Allmighty who doth use to bring light out of darkness and restore sight by clay and spittle and preserve men from perishing by perishing No Perigraph escapeth him without some supererogatory absurdities As here that a man may deliberate without the use of reason that bruit beasts may deliberate that madnesse or phrensie is strength of passion He insisteth longer upon morall praise and dispraise or moral goodnesse or badnesse but speedeth worse entangling himself in twenty errours as these which follow Metaphysicall goodnesse is but an idle term That is good wherewith a man is pleased Good is not of absolute signification to all men Nothing is good of evill but in regard of the action proceeding from it and the person to whom it doth good or hurt Satan is evill to us but good to God If there were laws among Beasts an Horse would be as morally good as man The difference between naturall and morall goodnesse procedeth from the civill law The law is all the right reason that we have We make it right reason by our approbation All actions of Subjects if they be conformable to the law of the land are morally good Morall praise is from obedience to the law Morall dispraise is from disobedience to the law To say a thing is good is to say It is as I or another or the state would have it That is good to every man which is so far good as he can see All the reall good which we call honest and morally virtuous is that which is not repugnant to the law The law is the infallible rule of morall goodnesse Our particular reason is not right reason The reason of our Governour whom we have set over our selves is right reason His Laws whatsoever they be are in the place of right reason to us As in playmorality consisteth in not renoncing the trump So all our morality consisteth in not disobeying the law Is not here an hopefull litter of young errours to be all formed out of three penfulls of inke as if he had been dreaming lately in errours den One Antycira will not afford Hellebore enough to cure him perfectly I was apt to flatter my self a while that by the law he understood the law of right reason But I found it too evident that by right reason he understands the arbitrary edicts of an elective Governoour I could not chuse but cal to mind that of our Laureate Poet God help the man so wrapt in errours endlesse train The Reader might well have expected matter of more edification upon this Subject As wherein the formal reason of goodnesse doth consist in convenience or in the obtainining of all due perfections As likewise the distinction of good either subjectively into the goods of the mind the goods of the body and the goods of fortune Or formally into bonum honestum utile delectabile or honestly good profitably good and delightfully good That which is honestly good is desirable in it self and as it is such That which is profitably good is that which is to be desired as conducing to the obtaining of some other good Thirdly delightfully good is that pleasure which doth arise from the obtaining of the other goods desired But he hath quite cashiered the two former sorts of good That which is honestly good and that which is profitably good and acknowledgeth onely that which is delightfully good or that which pleaseth him or me So as if our humours differ goodnesse must differ and as our humours change goodness must change as the Chamaeleon changeth her colours Many things are good that please not us and many things please us that are not good Thus he hath left no reall good in the World but only that which is relatively good Thus he hath made the Devil himself to become good and which is yet worse good to God Thus he hath made horses to be as capable of morall goodnesse as men if they had but onely laws I wonder why he should stick at that laws are but commands and commands may be intimated to horses as we might see in Bankes his horse which we might call upon his principles an honest virtuous and morally good horse There is a woe denounced against them who call evill good and good evill This is not all he confesseth that law-makers are men and may erre and think that law good for the people which is not yet with the same breath he telleth us That there is no other right reason but their law which is the infallible rule of morall goodnesse So right reason and erring reason a fallible rule and an infallible rule are all one with him What no other rule but this one Lesbian rule the arbitrary dictates of a Governour What is become of the eternall
be loosed from his bonds Therefore he saith amisse That the sick man wanteth power not liberty and the bound man liberty not power If he understood the difference between the Elicite Imperate acts of the will he would be able to judge of such cases better than he is I have onely one more Advertisement to the Reader that after all this glorious ostentation He that can do what he will hath all liberty possible he leaveth man as poor and bare and helpelesse as a grashopper in winter without any liberty to will and consequently without any liberty to do He nameth two Schoolmen I think by the matching of them they be a great part of his store Suares and Iohannes a Duns So he is pleased to call that honour of our Nation and one of the subtilest writers that these last ages have afforded and four later Divines Luther Melancthon Calvine Perkins whom he alwayes much admired If he did so they are the more beholden to him for a man may see by his Treatises That unlesse he meditated of them sometimes he hath not been much acquainted with them He dare not refer his two sorts of devils or his temporary pains of hell or his lawlesse state of mankind by nature or his necessity of active obedience to all human laws or his inefficacy of prayer or his infallible rule of moral goodnesse or his universal necessity of all events by the physical determination of the second causes or any one of his hundreds of Paradoxes to their determination Room for a great Censor not an old Roman Censor but a new English Censor who cometh armed with his own authority to reform not onely Authours but the Arts and Sciences themselves after he hath been dreaming I should have said meditating some years upon the top of Parnassus and now cometh forth sudainly Grammatticus Rhetor Geometres Pictor Alyptes To stay there were to do him wrong a Pentametor added will not contain half his exploites a Poet a Logician a Philosopher Naturall and Morall an Astronomer a Mathematician a Theologian To what purpose did our Universities nourish so many little Professors one great Professor is best as the Cat in the Fable said of one great way But forget not Epictetus his rule Remember to distrust We have seen a Mountebanck or Quacksalver or Operatour or Charlatan call him what you will vapour upon a Stage and sleight the good old Physicians for poring upon Galen and Hippocrates to learn a company of senlesse Aphorismes whilest they by their own meditation and experience had found out remedies more easie more effectual more universal We blame the Court of Rome for their Index expurgatorius It is a shrewd signe when litigants are forced to cut out the tongues of their own witnesses yet they purged out but words or sometimes a sentence rarely prohibited one of their own Authours Here words and sentences and whole Authours and Arts go to wrack together much like the Mahumetan reformation when they sacrificed the most part of their Interpreters of the Alchoran to the fire without ever reading them yet what they did they did by publick authority and spared some as Genuine Expositors But what this our new Censor doth he doth upon his own head and like death sparing none so did not they Down goes all Astrology and Metaphysicks The Moral Philosopher must quit his means and extreams in order to virtue his liberty of contradiction and contrariety his necessity absolute hypothetical his proportion Arithmetical and Geometrical I hope the Geometrician may have leave to hold it still his principia congenita and acquisita his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and most of his terms of Art because Mr. Hobbes hath not read them It is well if Moral Philosophy escape his censure For if the law of the land be the onely infallible rule of right reason then the knowledge of actions morally good and morally bad belongeth properly to the common lawyer The Moral Philosopher may put up his pipes The same Arbitrary power he assumeth to himself in natural Philosophy rejecting all the common terms used by Philosophers euphoniae gratia because they sound not well in his ears for other reasons he hath none Let the naturall Philosopher no more mention his intentionall species his understanding Agent and Patient his receptive and reductive power of the matter his qualities Symbolicall and dissymbolicall his temperament ad pondus and ad justitiam c. I would have him fling away his Sympathies and Antipathies his Antiperistasis and the like Whether it was Astronomy or Astrology in my original I do not know nor have means to see both may signifie the same thing I am sure I neither said nor meant Judiciary or Genethliacal Astrology as my instances do evidence The truth is there are so many mistakes in that impression that sometimes I scarcely know my self what to make of them But he is more propitious to the Astronomer His Apogeum and Perigeum Artick Antarctick Aequator Zodiac Zenith Horizon Zones are not so much as terms of art but are as intelligible as an hatchet or a saw What imaginary circles and lines and poles and points and an imaginary Axeltree and Ramme and Bull and bears and Dragon and yet no terms of art What are they then Let him put it to a Jury of Malmsburians themselves whether they understand these so well as an hatchet or a saw and he is gone The like favour he shews to Logicians Their words of the first and second intention their Abstracts and Concretes Their Subjects and Predicates Their Modes and Figures Their Method Synthetick and Analytick Their Fallacies of Composition and Division are no terms of Art but plain intelligible words He that can say this without blushing may dispute with any man Porphyry makes the five predicables to be five terms of Art Are not the predicaments and post-predicaments and demonstrations a priore and a posteriore terms of Art who made a Mode and a Figure to signifie what they do but Artists Let all the world hear them or read them who have not learned Logick and they shall understand no more of them then of his Jargon Why is not an Antecedent and Hypothetical necessity as intelligible as a Categoricall and Hypotheticall Syllogisme An Individuum vagum if it were not a term of Art should signifie rather an atome or a Rogue than an honest person Though he be so favourable to Logick here he is as little beholden to it as to the other Arts who knows no better what are terms of Art One of the first distinctions which we meet withall in Logick is between the first and second notions The second notions such as all these are are called expressely terms of Art or Logicall Notions or Logicall Organs which they define to be images or representations whereby the understanding doth form to it self real notions And they compare them to brasen weights of no value in
successively until the motive power cease altogether before the hundredth or it may be the thousandth part of the water in the tun be moved As we see in a stone thrown upwards the motion is swifter or slower of longer or of lesser continuance according to the degree of the first impression of force and the figure of the thing cast upwards which ceasing by continued diminution the motion ceaseth Violent motioris are vehement in the beginning remisse in the middle and cease in the end Lastly I answer That the case of a great tun and the whole World is not the same The World is too large a Sphere and exceedeth the activity of poor little weak creatures which are not able to leave such an impression of might as should move upwards to the convex superficies of Heaven and downwards to the center of the Earth and round about to the extremities of the VVorld If this were true the flie might say in earnest See what a dust I do raise It hath been given out that the burning of our heathes in England did hurt their vines in France This had been strange yet not so strange as his paradox That the least motions that are are communicated to the whole World But wise men looked upon this pretence as a meer scare-crow or made dragon The hurt it did was nearer home to destroy the young moorepowtes and spoile some young Burgesses game Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 22. HE cannot imagine how the question Whether outward objects do necessitate or not necessitate the will can any way be referred to moral Philosophy That is his fault If the objects do necessitate the will they take away both virtue and vice that is moral good and moral evil which consist in pre-election and cannot stand with antecedent necessitation to one To reform his errour let him consult with Aristotle Those things that are fair and pleasant do seem to be violent after a sort because being without us they move and necessitate Agents to act with their beauty and delight but it is not so What he addeth that the Principles of moral philosophy are the laws is an absurd supposititious obtrusion of the municipal law in place of the law of right reason which errour hath formerly been sufficiently refelled And to his horse that is lame from some cause that was not in his power I answer That the lamenesse is a natural or accidental defect in the horse but to instance in an horse as a fit subject of virtue or vice is a moral defect in him If he desire to speak to the purpose he must leave such impertinencies In the next Animadversion I meet with nothing but a meer sawing of the wind or an altercation about nothing All the difference between him and me is concerning an antecedent necessity but of a necessity of consequence that when a thing is produced it must necessarily be so as it is there can be no-question between us He himself confesseth as much If the Bishop think that I hold no other ne cessity than that which is expressed in that old foolish rule VVhatsoever is when it is is necessarily so as it is he understandeth me not And he confesseth that the necessity which he maintaineth is an antecedent necessity derived from the beginning of time And yet neverthelesse a great part of that altercation which he makes in these Animadversions is about such a necessity Socrates confesseth that naturally he had vitious inclinations This is no more than a proclinity to evil If by his own condescension he fall into sin this is but an hypothetical necessity yet he maketh it an antecedent necessity Socrates by his good indeavours reformeth his vitious propensions and acquireth the contrary habits or virtues This is but an hyothetical necessity yet he pretendeth it to be antecedent Lastly Socrates by the help of these habits which he himself had acquired doth freely do virtuous actions Still here is no necessity but consequents and still he pretendeth to Antecedent Either saith he these habits do necessitate the will or the will followeth not If these habits or somewhat else do not necessitate the will it may follow freely But saith he If they do onely facilitate men to do such acts then what they do they do not I deny his consequence acquired habits are not solitary but social and adjuvant causes of virtuous actions His next errour is yet more grosse making the person of the Preacher and not the sound of his voice to be the object of hearing Adding that the Preachers voice is the same thing with the hearing and a phansie of the hearer Thus as commonly their errours spring from confusion he confoundeth the images of sounds with sounds themselves What then is the report of a Canon or the sound of a Trumpet turned to a meer phansie By the same reason he may say that the Preacher himself is nothing but a meer phansie There is as much ground for the one as for the other If he go on in this manner he will move me beyond smiling to laugh outright In what sense the object of sight is the cause of sight and in what sense it is not the cause of sight I have shewed distinctly Here he setteth down another great paradox as he himself stileth it out of gallantry That in all the sensâ—… the object is the Agent If he had not said the Agent which signifieth either the sole Agent or the Principal Agent but onely an Agent we had accorded so far But the Principal Agent in all the senses is the creature indowed with sense or the sensitive soul perceiving and judging of the object by the proper Organ The Preachers voice and the Auditos hearing have two distinct subjects otherwise speaking should be hearing and hearing speaking I conclude this Castigation with the authority of as good a Philosopher as himself That it is ridiculous to think external things either fair or delightful to be the causes of humane actions and not rather him who is easily taken with such objects In the later part of this Animadversion his errours are greater and more dangerous than in the former He affirmeth that the will is produced generated and formed in such sort as accidents are effected in a corporeal subject and yet it the will cannot be moved As if generation and augmentation and alteration were not kinds of motion or mutation But the last words because it goeth not from place to place do shew plainly that he acknowledgeth no motion but local motion What no other natural motion but onely local motion no metaphorical motion that were strange We read in holy Scripture of those who have been moved with fear moved with envy moved with compassion moved with choler moved by the Holy Ghost In all these there is no local motion Outward persuasives inward suggestions are all motions God moveth a man to good by his preventing grace The devil moveth a man
commandeth his servant to give money to a stranger if it be not done the injury is done to the Master whom he had before covenanted to obey but the dammage redoundeth to the stranger to whom he had no obligation and therefore could not injure him True according to his Principles who maketh neither conscience nor honesty nor obligation from any one to any one but onely by pacts or promises All just men are of another mind 7. Those men which are so remisly governed that they dare take up arms to defend or introduce a new opinion are still in war and their condition not peace but onely a cessation of arms for fear of one another Why is the fault rather imputed to the remisnesse of the Governour than to the sedition of the people and a state of war feigned where none is The reason is evident because he had no hand in the government but had a hand in the introduction of new opinions 8. In a Soveraign assembly the liberty to protest is taken away both because he that protesteth there denieth their Soveraignty and also whatsoever is commanded by the Soveraign power is as to the subject justified by the command though not so alwayes in the sight of God That is not taken away which all Soveraigns do allow even in the competition for a Crown as was verified in the case of the King of Spain and the House of Braganza about the kingdom of Portugal It is no denial of Soveraignty to appeal humbly from a Soveraign misinformed to himself better informed The commands of a Soveraign person or assembly are so far justified by the command that they may not be resisted but they are not so far justified but that a loyal subject may lawfully seek with all due submission to have them rectified 9. If he whose private interest is to be debated and judged in a Soveraign Assembly make as may friends as he can it is no injustice in him And though he hire such friends with money unlesse there be an expresse law against it yet it is no injustice It is to be feared that such provacations as this are not very needful in these times Is it not unlawful to blind the eyes of the wise with bribes and make them pervert judgement Others pretend expedition or an equal hearing but he who knoweth no obligation but pacts is for downright hiring of his Judges as a man should hire an hackney-coach for an hour There is no gratitude in hiring which is unlawful in the buyer though not so unlawful as in the seller of Justice If any man digged a pit and did not cover it so that an oxe or an asse fell into it he who digged it was to make satisfaction He that hireth his Judges with money to be for him right or wrong diggeth a pit for them and by the equity of this Mosaical-Law will appear not to be innocent Thus after the view of his Religion we have likewise surveighed his Politicks as full of black ugly dismal rocks as the former dictated with the same magisteral authority A man may judge them to be twins upon the first cast of his eye It was Solomons advice Remove not the ancient land marks which thy fathers have set But T. H. taketh a pride in removeing all ancient land-marks between Prince and subject Father and child Husband and Wife Master and servant Man and Man Nilus after a great overflowing doth not leave such a confusion after it as he doth nor an hog in a garden of herbs I wish he would have turned probationer a while and made trial of his new form of government first in his own house before he had gone about to obtrude it upon the Common-wealth And that before his attempts and bold endeavours to reform and to renew the policy of his native Country he had thought more seriously and more sadly of his own application of the fable of Peleus his foolish daughters who desiring to renew the youth of their decripit father did by the counself Medea cut him in pieces and boyle him together with strange herbs but made not of him a new man CHAP. 3. That the Hobbian Principles are inconsistent one with another MY third Harping-Iron is aimed at the head of his Leviathan or the rational part of his discourse to shew that his Principles are contradictory one to another and consequently destructive one of another It is his own observation That which taketh away the reputation of wisdom in him that formeth a Religion or addeth to it when it is already formed is an enjoyning a belief of contradictories for both parts of a contradiction cannot possibly be true And therefore to enjoyn the belief of them is an argument of ignorance How he will free himself from his own censure I do not understand let the Reader judge He affirmeth that an hereditary kingdom is the best form of government We are made subjects to him upon the best condition whose interest it is that we should be safe and sound And this cometh to to passe when we are the Soveraigns inheritance that is in an hereditary kingdom for every one doth of his own accord study to preserve his own inheritance Now let us hear him retract all this There is no perfect form of government where the disposing of the succession is not in the present Soveraign And whether he transfer it by testament or give it or sell it it is rightly disposed He affirmeth That which is said in the Scripture It is better to obey God than man hath place in the kingdom of God by pact and not by nature One can scarcely meet with a more absurd senslesse Paradox That in Gods own kingdom of Nature where he supposeth all men equal and no Governour but God it should not be better to obey God than man the Creatour than the creatour the Soveraign rather than a fellow-subject Of the two it had been the lesse absurdity to have said that it had place in the kingdom of God by nature and not by pact because in the kingdom of God by pact Soveraigns are as mortal gods Now let us see him Penelope like unweave in the night what he had woven in the day or rather unweave in the day what he had woven in the night It is manifest enough that when man receiveth two contrary commands and knows that one of them is Gods he ought to obey that and not the other though it be the command even of his lawful Soveraign Take another place more expresse speaking of the first kingdom of God by pact with Abraham c. He hath these words Nor was there any contract which could adde to or strengthen the obligation by which both they and all men else were bound naturally to obey God Almighty And before any such Kingdom of God by pact As the moral law they were already obliged and needed not have been contracted withall