Selected quad for the lemma: law_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
law_n	write_v	writer_n	writing_n	50	3	8.5021	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44010	The questions concerning liberty, necessity, and chance clearly stated and debated between Dr. Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, and Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury.	Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679.; Bramhall, John, 1594-1663.	1656 (1656)	Wing H2257; ESTC R16152	266,363	392

according to this description many necessary actions should be contingent and many contingent actions should be necessary The Loadstone draweth Iron the Jet chaff we know not how and yet the effect is necessary and so it is in all Sympathies and Antipathies or occult qualities Again a man walking in the streets a Tile falls down from an house and breaks his head We know all the causes we know how this came to pass The man walked that way the pin failed the Tile fell just when he was under it And yet this is a contingent effect The man might not have walked that way and then the Tile had not fallen upon him Neither yet do I understand here in this place by contingents such events as happen beside the scope or intention of the Agents as when a man digging to make a grave finds a Treasure though the word be sometimes so taken But by contingents I understand all things which may be done and may not be done may happen or may not happen by reason of the indetermination or accidental concurrence of the causes And those same things which are absolutely Incontingent are yet Hypothetically necessary As supposing the passenger did walk just that way just at that time and that the pin did faile just then and the Tile fall it was necessary that it should fall upon the Passengers head The same defence will keep out his shower of rain But we shall meet with his shower of rain again Number 34. Whither I referre the further explication of this point Animadversions upon the Bishops Reply Number XVI IN this Number he would prove that there must be Free Agents and Contingent Agents as well as Necessary Agents from the Order Beauty and Perfection of the World I that thought that the Order Beauty and Perfection of the World required that which was in the World and not that which the Bishop had need of for his Argument could see no force of consequence to inferre that which he calls Free and Contingent That which is in the World is the Order Beauty and Perfection which God hath given the World and yet there are no Agents in the World but such as work a seen Necessity or an unseen Necessity and when they work an unseen Necessity in creatures inanimate then are those creatures said to be wrought upon Contingently and to work Contingently And when the Necessity unseen is of the actions of men then it is commonly called Free and might be so in other living creatures for Free and Voluntary are the same thing But the Bishop in his Reply hath insisted most upon this that I make it a contradiction to say that He that maketh a thing doth not make it necessary and wonders how a Contradiction can be in one Proposition and yet within two or three lines after found it might be and therefore to clear the matter he sayes that such Necessity is not Antecedent but a Necessity of Supposition which nevertheless is the same kind of Necessity which he attributeth to the burning of the fire where there is a necessity that the thing thrown into it shall be burned though yet it be but burning or but departing from the hand that throwes it in and therefore the Necessity is Antecedent The like is in making a Garment the Necessity begins from the first motion towards it which is from Eternity though the Taylor and the Bishop are equally unsensible of it If they saw the whole order and conjunction of Causes they would say it were as Necessary as any thing else can possibly be and therefore God that sees that order and conjunction knowes it is necessary The rest of his Reply is to argue a contradiction in me for he sayes a I grant that there are some Free Agents and some Contingent Agents and that perhaps the beauty of the World doth require it but like a shrewd Cow which after she hath given her milk casts it down with her foot in the conclusion I tell him that nevertheless they are all necessary It is true that I say some are Free Agents and some Contingent nevertheless they may be all necessary For according to the significations of the words Necessary Free and Contingent the distinction is no more but this of Necessary Agents some are Necessary and some are Agents and of Agents some are living creatures and some are inanimate which words are improper but the meaning of them is this men call necessary Agents such as they know to be necessary and contingent Agents such inanimate things as they know not whether they work necessarily or no and by free Agents men whom they know not whether they work necessarily or no. All which confusion ariseth from that presumptuous men take for granted that that is not whith they know not b Neither do I approve his definition of Contingents that they are such Agents as work we know not how The reason is because it would follow that many necessary Actions should be contingent and many contingent Actions necessary But that which followeth from it really is no more but this That many necessary Actions would be such as we know not to be necessary and many Actions which we know not to be necessary may yet be necessary which is a truth But the Bishop defineth Contingents thus All things which may be done and may not be done may happen or may not happen by reason of the Indetermination or accidental concurrence of the Causes By which definition Contingent is nothing or it is the same that I say it is For there is nothing can be done and not be done nothing can happen and not happen by reason of the Indetermination or accidental concurrence of the causes It may be done or not done for ought he knowes and happen or not happen for any determination he perceaveth and that is my definition But that the indetermination can make it happen or not happen is absurd for indetermination maketh it equally to happen or not to happen and therefore both which is a contradiction Therefore indetermination doth nothing and whatsoever causes do is necessary J. D. FIftly take away liberty and you take away the very nature Numb 17. Arg. 5. of evil and the formal reason of sin If the hand of the Painter were the law of painting or the hand of the Writer the law of writing whatsoever the one did write or the other paint must infallibly be good Seeing therefore that the first cause is the rule and Law of goodness if it do necessitate the will or the person to evil either by it self immediatly or mediatly by necessary flux of second causes it will no longer be evill The essence of sin consists in this that one commit that which he might avoid If there be no liberty to produce sin there is no such thing as sin the world Therefore it appears both from Scripture and Reason that there is true Liberty T. H. TO the fift Argument from reason which is that

cause it shall be chosen which cause for the most part is deliberation or consultation And therefore consultation is not in vain and indeed the less in vain by how much the election is more necessitated The same answer is to be given to the third supposed inconvenience Namely that admonitions are in vain for admonitions are parts of consultations The admonitor being ● Counsailer for the time to him that is admonished The fourth pretended inconvenience is that praise and dispraise reward and punishment will be in vain To which I answer that for praise and dispraise they depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised or dispraised For what is it else to praise but to say a thing is good Good I say for me or for some body else or for the State and Commonwealth And what is it to say an action is good but to say it is as I would wish or as another would have it or according to the will of the State that is to say according to Law Does J. D. think that no action can please me or him or the Common-wealth that should proceed from necessity Things may be therefore necessary and yet praise-worthy as also necessary and yet dispraised and neither of both in vain because praise and dispraise and likewise reward and punishment do by example make and conform the will to good or evill It was a very great praise in my opinion tha● Velleius Paterculus gives Cato where he sayes he was ●●od by Nature Et quia aliter esse non potuit To his fift and sixt inconvenience that Councells Arts Arms Books Instruments Study Medicines and the like would be superfluous the same answer serv● that to the former That is to say that this consequence if the effect shall necessarily come to pass then it shall come to pass without its cause is a false one And those things named Councells Arts Arms c. are the causes of those effects J. D. NOthing is more familiar with T. H. than to decline an Argument But I will put it into form for him ● The first inconvenience is thus preffed Those Lawes are unjust and tyrannical which do prescribe things absolutely impossible in themselves to be done and punish men for not doing of them But supposing T. H. his opinion of the necessity of all things to be true all Lawes do prescribe absolute impossibilities to be done and punish men for not doing of them The former proposition is so clear that it cannot be denied Just Lawes are the Ordinances of right Reason but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not the Ordinances of right Reason Just Laws are instituted for the publick good but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not instituted for the publick good Just Lawes do shew unto a man what is to be done and what is to be shunned But those Laws which prescribe impossibilities do not direct a man what he is to do and what he is to shun The Minor is as evident for if his opinion be true all actions all transgressions are determined antecedently inevitably to be done by a natural and necessary flux of extrinsecal causes Yea even the will of man and the reason it self is thus determined And therefore whatsoever Lawes do prescribe any thing to be done which is not done or to be left undone which is done do prescribe absolute impossibilities and punish men for not doing of impossibilities In all his answer there is not one word to this Argument but onely to the conclusion He saith that not the necessity but the will to break the Law makes the action unjust I ask what makes the will to break the Law is it not his necessity What gets he by this A perverse will causeth injustice and necessity causeth a perverse wilf He saith the Law regardeth the will but not the precedent causes of action To what proposition to what tearm is this answer he neither denies nor distinguisheth First the Question here is not what makes actions to be unjust but what makes Lawes to be unjust So his answer is impertinent It is likewise untrue for First that will which the Law regards is not such a will as T. H. imagineth It is a free will not a determined necessitated will a rational will not a brutish will Secondly the Law doth look upon precedent causes as well as the voluntariness of the action If a child before he be seven years old or have the use of reason in some childish quarrell do willingly stab another whereof we have seen experience yet the Law looks not upon it as an act of murther because there wanted a power to deliberate and consequently true liberty Man-slaughter may be as voluntary as murther and commonly more voluntary because being done in hot blood there is the less reluctation yet the Law considers that the former is done out of some sudden passion without serious deliberation and the other out of prepensed malice and desire of revenge and therefore condemns murther as more wilful and more panishable than Man-slaughtter b He saith that no Law can possibly be unjust And I say that this is to deny the conclusion which deserves no reply But to give him satisfaction I will follow him in this also If he intended no more but that unjust Lawes are not genuine Lawes nor bind to active obedience because they are not the ordinations of right Reason nor instituted for the common good nor prescribe that which ought to be done he said truly but nothing at all to his purpose But if he intend as he doth that there are no Lawes de facto which are the ordinances of reason erring instituted for the common hurt and prescribing that which ought not to be done he is much mistaken Pharaohs Law to drown the Male Children of the Israelites Exod. 1. 22. Nebuckadnezzars Law that whosoever did not fall down and worship the golden Image which he had set up should be cast into the fiery furnace Dan. 3. 4 Darius his Law that whosoever should ask a Petition of any God or man for thirty dayes save of the King should be cast into the Den of Lions Dan. 6. 7. Ahashuerosh his Law to destroy the Jewish Nation root and branch Esther 3. 13. The Pharisees Law that whosoever confesseth Christ should be excommunicated John 9. 22. were all unjust Lawes c The ground of this errour is as great an errour it self Such an art be hath learned of repacking Paradoxes which is this That every man makes by his consent the Law which he is bound to keep If this were true it would preserve them if not from being unjust yet from being injurious But it is not true The positive Law of God conteined in the old and new Testament The Law of Nature written in our hearts by the finger of God The Lawes of Conquerors who come in by the power of the Sword The Laws of our Ancesters which were made before we were

he shall have to morrow or an hower or any time after Intervening occasions business which the Bishop calls trifles Trifles of which the Bishop maketh here a great business to change the Will No man can say what he will do to morrow unless he foreknow which no man can what shall happen before to morrow And this being the substance of my opinion it must needs be that when he deduceth from it that Counsells Arts Armes Medicines Teachers Praise Prayer and Piety are in vain that his deduction is false and his ratiocination fallacy And though I need make no other answer to all that he can object against me yet I shall here mark out the causes of his several Parologismes Those Lawes he saith are unjust and tyrannical which do prescribe things absolutly impossible to be done and punish men for not doing of them In which words this is one absurdity that a Law can be unjust for all Lawes are Divine or Civil neither of which can be unjust Of the first there is no doubt And as for Civil Lawes they are made by every man that is subject to them because every one of them consenteth to the placing of the Legislative Power Another is this in the same words that he supposeth there may be Lawes that are not Tyrannical for if he that maketh them have the soveraign Power they may be Regal but not Tyrannical if Tyrant signifie not King as he thinks it doth not Another is in the same words that a Law may prescribe things absolutely impossible in themselves to be done When he sayes impossible in themselves he understands not what himself means Impossible in themselves are contradictions onely as to be and not to be at the same time which the Divines say is not possible to God All other things are possible at least in themselves Raising from the dead changing the course of nature making of a new Heaven and a new Earth are things possible in themselves for there is nothing in their nature able to resist the Will of God and if Laws do not prescribe such things why should I believe they prescribe other things that are more impossible Did he ever readin Suarez of any Tyrant that made a Law commanding any man to do and not to do the same Action or to be and not to be at the same place in one and the same moment of time But out of the doctrine of Necessity it followeth he sayes that all Lawes do prescribe absolute impossibilities to be done Here he has left out in themselves which is a wilfull Fallacy He further sayes that Just Lawes are the Ordinances of right Reason which is an error that hath cost many thousands of men their lives Was there ever King that made a Law which in right reason had been better unmade and shall those Lawes therefore not be obeyed shall we rather rebell I think not though I am not so great a Divine as he I think rather that the Reason of him that hath the Soveraign Authority and by whose Sword we look to be protected both against war from abroad and injuries at home whether it be Right or Erronious in it seslf ought to stand for Right to us that have submitted our selves thereunto by receiving the protection But the Bishop putteth his greatest confidence in this that whether the things be impossible in themselves or made impossible by some unseen accident yet there is no reason that men should be punished for not doing them It seemes he taketh punishment for a kind of revenge and can never therefore agree with me that take it for nothing else but for a correction or for an example which hath for end the framing and necessitating of the Will to virtue and that he is no good man that upon any provocation useth his power though a power lawfully obtained to afflict another man without this end to reforme the will of him or others Nor can I comprehend as having onely humane Idea's that that punishment which neither intendeth the correction of the offender nor the correction of others by example doth proceed from God b He saith that no Law can possibly be unjust c. Against this he replies that the Law of Pharaoh to drown the Male Children of the Israelites and of Nebuckadnezxar to worship the golden Image and of Darius against praying to any but him in thirty dayes and of Ahashuerosh to destroy the Jewes and of the Pharisees to excommunicate the confessors of Christ were all unjust Lawes The Lawes of these Kings as they were Lawes have relation onely to the men that were their subjects And the making of them which was the action of every one of those Kings who were subjects to another King namely to God Almighty had relation to the Law of God In the first relation there could be no injustice in them because all Laws made by him to whom the people had given the Legislative Power are the Acts of every one of that people and no man can do injustice to himself But in relation to God if God have by a Law forbidden it the making of such Lawes is injustice Which Law of God was to those Heathen Princes no other but salus populi that is to say the properest use of their natural reason for the preservation of their subjects If therefore those Lawes were ordained out of wantonness or cruelty or envy or for the pleasing of a Favorite or out of any other sinister end as it seemes they were the making of those Lawes was unjust But if in right Reason they were necessary for the preservation of those people of whom they had undertaken the charge then was it not unjust And for the Pharisees who had the same written Law of God that we have their excommunication of the Christians proceeding as it did from envy was an Act of malicious injustice If it had proceeded from misinterpretation of their own Scriptures it had been a sin of ignorance Nevertheless as it was a Law to their subjects in case they had the Legislative Power which I doubt of the Law was not unjust But the making of it was an unjust action of which they were to give account to none but God I fear the Bishop will think this discourse too subtile but the judgement is the Readers c The ground of this error c. is this That every man makes by his consent the Law which he is bound to keep c. The reason why he thinketh this an error is because the positive Law of God conteined in the Bible is a Law with out our assent the Law of Nature was written in our hearts by the finger of God without our assent the Lawes of Conquerours who come in by the power of the Sword were made without our assent and so were the Lawes of our Ancestors which were made before we were born It is a strange thing that he that understands the non-sense of the Schoolmen should not be able to