Part 15

(e) “He pleads moreover that the law is a cause of justice,” &c. “All this is most true, of a just law justly executed.”

But I have shown that all laws are just, as laws, and therefore not to be accused of injustice by those that owe subjection to them; and a just law is always justly executed. Seeing then that he confesseth that all that he replieth to here is true, it followeth that the reply itself, where it contradicteth me, is false.

(f) “He addeth that the sufferings imposed by the law upon delinquents, respect not the evil act passed, but the good to come; and that the putting of a delinquent to death by the magistrate for any crime whatsoever, cannot be justified before God, except there be a real intention to benefit others by his example.”

This he neither confirmeth nor denieth, and yet forbeareth not to discourse upon it to little purpose; and therefore I pass it over.

(g) “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, &c.”

To all this, which hath been pressed before, I have answered before; but that he says I say, “having commanded one thing openly, he plots another thing secretly,” it is not mine, but one of his own ugly phrases. And the force it hath, proceeded out of an apprehension he hath, that affliction is not God’s correction, but his revenge upon the creatures of his own making; and from a reasoning he useth, “because it is not just in a man to kill one man for the amendment of another, therefore neither is it so in God;” not remembering that God hath, or shall have killed all the men in the world, both nocent and innocent.

My assertion, he saith, “is a dream, and the sum of it this; that where there is no law, there no killing or anything else can be unjust; that before the constitution of commonwealths, every man had power to kill another,” &c., and adds, that “this may well be called stringing of paradoxes.” To these my words he replies:

(h) “There was never any time when mankind was without governors, laws, and societies.”

It is very likely to be true, that since the creation there never was a time in which mankind was totally without society. If a part of it were without laws and governors, some other parts might be commonwealths. He saw there was paternal government in Adam; which he might do easily, as being no deep consideration. But in those places where there is a civil war at any time, at the same time there is neither laws, nor commonwealth, nor society, but only a temporal league, which every discontented soldier may depart from when he pleases, as being entered into by each man for his private interest, without any obligation of conscience: there are therefore almost at all times multitudes of lawless men. But this was a little too remote from his understanding to perceive. Again, he denies, that ever there was a time when one private man might lawfully kill another for his own preservation; and has forgotten that these words of his (No. II.), “this is the belief of all mankind, which we have not learned from our tutors, but is imprinted in our hearts by nature; we need not turn over any obscure books to find out this truth,” &c.; which are the words of Cicero in the defence of Milo, and translated by the Bishop to the defence of free-will, were used by Cicero to prove this very thing, that it is and hath been always lawful for one private man to kill another for his own preservation. But where he saith it is not lawful ordinarily, he should have shown some particular case wherein it is unlawful. For seeing it is a “belief imprinted in our hearts,” not only I, but many more are apt to think it is the law of nature, and consequently universal and eternal. And where he saith, this right of defence where it is, “is not a remainder of some greater power which they have resigned, but a privilege which God hath given them in case of extreme danger and invincible necessity,” &c.; I also say it is a privilege which God hath given them, but we differ in the manner how; which to me seems this, that God doth not account such killing sin. But the Bishop it seems would have it thus: God sends a bishop into the pulpit to tell the people it is lawful for a man to kill another man when it is necessary for the preservation of his own life; of which necessity, that is, whether it be invincible, or whether the danger be extreme, the bishop shall be the judge after the man is killed, as being a case of conscience. Against the resigning of this our general power of killing our enemies, he argues thus: “Nothing can give that which it never had; the people whilst they were a dispersed rabble, which in some odd cases might happen to be, never had justly the power of life and death, and therefore they could not give it by their election,” &c. Needs there much acuteness to understand, what number of men soever there be, though not united into government, that every one of them in particular having a right to destroy whatsoever he thinketh can annoy him, may not resign the same right, and give it to whom he please, when he thinks it conducible to his preservation? And yet it seems he has not understood it.

He takes it ill that I compare the “murdering of men with the slaughtering of brute beasts:” as also a little before, he says, “my opinion reflects too much upon the honour of mankind: the elements are for the plants, the plants for the brute beasts, and the brute beasts for man.” I pray, when a lion eats a man, and a man eats an ox, why is the ox more made for the man, than the man for the lion? “Yes,” he saith, “God gave man liberty (Gen. ix. 3) to eat the flesh of the creatures for his sustenance.” True, but the lion had the liberty to eat the flesh of man long before. But he will say, no; pretending that no man of any nation, or at any time, could lawfully eat flesh, unless he had this licence of holy Scripture, which it was impossible for most men to have. But how would he have been offended, if I had said of man as Pliny doth: “quo nullum est animal neque miserius, neque superbius?” The truth is, that man is a creature of greater power than other living creatures are, but his advantages do consist especially in two things: whereof one is the use of speech, by which men communicate one with another, and join their forces together, and by which also they register their thoughts that they perish not, but be reserved, and afterwards joined with other thoughts, to produce general rules for the direction of their actions. There be beasts that see better, others that hear better, and others that exceed mankind in other senses. Man excelleth beasts only in making of rules to himself, that is to say, in remembering, and in reasoning aright upon that which he remembereth. They which do so, deserve an honour above brute beasts. But they which mistaking the use of words, deceive themselves and others, introducing error, and seducing men from the truth, are so much less to be honoured than brute beasts, as error is more vile than ignorance. So that it is not merely the nature of man, that makes him worthier than other living creatures, but the knowledge that he acquires by meditation, and by the right use of reason in making good rules of his future actions. The other advantage a man hath, is the use of his hands for the making of those things which are instrumental to his well-being. But this advantage is not a matter of so great honour, but that a man may speak negligently of it without offence. And for the dominion that a man hath over beasts, he saith, “it is lost in part for the sin of man, because the strongest creatures, as lions and bears, have withdrawn their obedience; but the most profitable and useful creatures, as sheep and oxen, do in some degree retain their obedience.” I would ask the Bishop, in what consisteth the dominion of man over a lion or a bear. Is it in an obligation of promise, or of debt? That cannot be; for they have no sense of debt or duty. And I think he will not say, that they have received a command to obey him from authority. It resteth therefore that the dominion of man consists in this, that men are too hard for lions and bears, because, though a lion or a bear be stronger than a man, yet the strength, and art, and especially the leaguing and societies of men, are a greater power than the ungoverned strength of unruly beasts. In this it is that consisteth this dominion of man. And for the same reason when a hungry lion meeteth an unarmed man in a desert, the lion hath the dominion over the man, if that of man over lions, or over sheep and oxen, may be called dominion, which properly it cannot; nor can it be said that sheep and oxen do otherwise obey us, than they would do a lion. And if we have dominion over sheep and oxen, we exercise it not as dominion, but as hostility; for we keep them only to labour, and to be killed and devoured by us; so that lions and bears would be as good masters to them as we are. By this short passage of his concerning dominion and obedience, I have no reason to expect a very shrewd answer from him to my Leviathan.

(i) “The next branch of his answer concerns consultations, which, saith he, ‘are not superfluous, though all things come to pass necessarily; because they are the cause which doth necessitate the effect, and the means to bring it to pass.’”

His reply to this is, that he hath “showed sufficiently, that reason doth not determine the will physically,” &c. If not physically, how then? As he hath told us in another place, morally. But what it is to determine a thing morally, no man living understands. I doubt not but he had therefore the will to write this reply, because I had answered his treatise concerning true liberty. My answer therefore was, at least in part, the cause of his writing; yet that is the cause of the nimble local motion of his fingers. Is not the cause of local motion physical? His will therefore was physically, and extrinsically, and antecedently, and not morally caused by my writing.

(k) “He adds further that ‘as the end is necessary, so are the means, and when it is determined that one thing shall be chosen before another, it is determined also for what cause it shall be so chosen.’ All which is truth, but not the whole truth,” &c.

Is it not enough that it is truth? Must I put all the truth I know into two or three lines? No. I should have added, that God doth adapt and fit the means to their respective ends, free means to free ends, contingent means to contingent ends, necessary means to necessary ends. It may be I would have done so, but for shame. Free, contingent and necessary are not words that can be joined to means or ends, but to agents and actions; that is to say, to things that move or are moved: a free agent being that whose motion or action is not hindered or stopped, and a free action, that which is produced by a free agent. A contingent agent is the same with an agent simply. But, because men for the most part think those things are produced without cause, whereof they do not see the cause, they use to call both the agent and the action contingent, as attributing it to fortune. And therefore, when the causes are necessary, if they perceive not the necessity, they call those necessary agents and actions, in things that have appetite, free; and in things inanimate, contingent. The rest of his reply to this point is very little of it applied to my answer. I note only that where he says, “but if God have so ordered the world, that a man cannot, if he would, neglect any means of good, &c.;” he would fraudulently insinuate that it is my opinion, that a man is not free to do if he will, and to abstain if he will. Whereas from the beginning I have often declared that it is none of my opinion; and that my opinion is only this, that he is not free to will, or which is all one, he is not master of his future will. After much unorderly discourse he comes in with “this is the doctrine that flows from this opinion of absolute necessity;” which is impertinent; seeing nothing flows from it more than may be drawn from the confession of an eternal prescience.

(l) “But he tells me in great sadness, that ‘my argument is no better than this; if I shall live till to-morrow, I shall live till to-morrow, though I run myself through with a sword to-day; which, saith he, is a false consequence, and a false proposition.’ Truly, if by running through, he understand killing, it is a false or rather a foolish proposition.” He saith right. Let us therefore see how it is not like to his. He says, “if it be absolutely necessary that a man shall live till to-morrow, then it is vain and superfluous for him to consult whether he should die to-day or not.” “And this,” he says, “is a true consequence.” I cannot perceive how it is a better consequence than the former; for if it be absolutely necessary that a man should live till to-morrow, and in health, which may also be supposed, why should he not, if he have the curiosity, have his head cut off to try what pain it is. But the consequence is false; for if there be a necessity of his living, it is necessary also that he shall not have so foolish a curiosity. But he cannot yet distinguish between a seen and an unseen necessity, and that is the cause he believeth his consequence to be good.

(m) “The next branch of my argument concerns admonitions,” &c.

Which he says is this: “If all things be necessary, then it is to no more purpose to admonish men of understanding, than fools, children, or madmen; but that they do admonish the one and not the other, is confessedly true; and no reason under heaven can be given for it but this, that the former have the use of reason and true liberty, with a dominion over their own actions, which children, fools, and madmen have not.”

The true reason why we admonish men and not children, &c., is because admonition is nothing else but telling a man the good and evil consequences of his actions. They who have experience of good and evil, can better perceive the reasonableness of such admonition, than they that have not; and such as have like passions to those of the admonitor, do more easily conceive that to be good or bad which the admonitor saith is so, than they who have great passions, and such as are contrary to his. The first, which is want of experience, maketh children and fools unapt; and the second, which is strength of passion, maketh madmen unwilling to receive admonition; for children are ignorant, and madmen in an error, concerning what is good or evil for themselves. This is not to say children and madmen want true liberty, that is, the liberty to do as they will, nor to say that men of judgment, or the admonitor himself hath a dominion over his own actions, more than children or madmen, (for their actions are also voluntary), or that when he admonisheth he hath always the use of reason, though he have the use of deliberation, which children, fools, madmen, and beasts also have. There be, therefore, reasons under heaven which the Bishop knows not of.

Whereas I had said, that things necessary may be praiseworthy, and to praise a thing is to say it is good, he distinguisheth and saith:

(n) “True, but this goodness is not a metaphysical goodness; so whatsoever hath a being is good; nor a natural goodness; the praise of it passeth wholly to the Author of nature, &c.; but a moral goodness, or a goodness of actions, rather than of things. The moral goodness of an action is the conformity of it to right reason,” &c.

There hath been in the Schools derived from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, an old proverb rather than an axiom: ens, bonum, et verum convertuntur. From hence the Bishop hath taken this notion of a metaphysical goodness, and his doctrine that whatsoever hath a being is good; and by this interpreteth the words of Gen. i. 31: God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. But the reason of those words is, that good is relative to those that are pleased with it, and not of absolute signification to all men. God therefore saith, that all that he had made was very good, because he was pleased with the creatures of his own making. But if all things were absolutely good, we should be all pleased with their being, which we are not, when the actions that depend upon their being are hurtful to us. And therefore, to speak properly, nothing is good or evil but in regard of the action that proceedeth from it, and also of the person to whom it doth good or hurt. Satan is evil to us, because he seeketh our destruction, but good to God, because he executeth his commandments. And so his metaphysical goodness is but an idle term, and not the member of a distinction. And as for natural goodness and evilness, that also is but the goodness and evilness of actions; as some herbs are good because they nourish, others evil because they poison us; and one horse is good because he is gentle, strong, and carrieth a man easily; another bad, because he resisteth, goeth hard, or otherwise displeaseth us; and that quality of gentleness, if there were no more laws amongst men than there is amongst beasts, would be as much a moral good in a horse or other beast as in a man. It is the law from whence proceeds the difference between the moral and the natural goodness: so that it is well enough said by him, that “moral goodness is the conformity of an action with right reason”; and better said than meant; for this right reason, which is the law, is no otherwise certainly right than by our making it so by our approbation of it and voluntary subjection to it. For the law-makers are men, and may err, and think that law, which they make, is for the good of the people sometimes when it is not. And yet the actions of subjects, if they be conformable to the law, are morally good, and yet cease not to be naturally good; and the praise of them passeth to the Author of nature, as well as of any other good whatsoever. From whence it appears that moral praise is not, as he says, from the good use of liberty, but from obedience to the laws; nor moral dispraise from the bad use of liberty, but from disobedience to the laws. And for his consequence, “if all things be necessary, then moral liberty is quite taken away, and with it all true praise and dispraise”, there is neither truth in it, nor argument offered for it; for there is nothing more necessary than the consequence of voluntary actions to the will. And whereas I had said, that to say a thing is good, is to say it is as I or another would wish, or as the state would have it, or according to the law of the land, he answers, that “I mistake infinitely”. And his reason is, because “we often wish what is profitable or delightful, without regarding as we ought what is honest”. There is no man living that seeth all the consequences of an action from the beginning to the end, whereby to weigh the whole sum of the good with the whole sum of the evil consequence. We choose no further than we can weigh. That is good to every man, which is so far good as he can see. All the real good, which we call honest and morally virtuous, is that which is not repugnant to the law, civil or natural; for the law is all the right reason we have, and, (though he, as often as it disagreeth with his own reason, deny it), is the infallible rule of moral goodness. The reason whereof is this, that because neither mine nor the Bishop’s reason is right reason fit to be a rule of our moral actions, we have therefore set up over ourselves a sovereign governor, and agreed that his laws shall be unto us, whatsoever they be, in the place of right reason, to dictate to us what is really good. In the same manner as men in playing turn up trump, and as in playing their game their morality consisteth in not renouncing, so in our civil conversation our morality is all contained in not disobeying of the laws.

To my question, “whether nothing could please him, that proceeded from necessity”, he answers: “yes; the fire pleaseth him when he is cold, and he says it is good fire, but does not praise it morally”. He praiseth, he says, first the Creator of the fire, and then him who provided it. He does well; yet he praiseth the fire when he saith it is good, though not morally. He does not say it is a just fire, or a wise, or a well-mannered fire, obedient to the laws; but these attributes it seems he gives to God, as if justice were not of his nature, but of his manners. And in praising morally him that provided it, he seems to say, he would not say the fire was good, if he were not morally good that did provide it.

To that which I had answered concerning reward and punishment, he hath replied, he says, sufficiently before, and that that which he discourseth here, is not only to answer me, but also to satisfy himself, and saith:

(o) “Though it be not urged by him, yet I do acknowledge that I find some improper and analogical rewards and punishments, used to brute beasts, as the hunter rewards his dog,” &c.

For my part, I am too dull to perceive the difference between those rewards used to brute beasts, and those that are used to men. If they be not properly called rewards and punishments, let him give them their proper name. It may be he will say, he has done it in calling them analogical; yet for any thing that can be understood thereby, he might have called them paragogical, or typical, or topical, if he had pleased. He adds further, that whereas he had said that the actions of bees and spiders were done without consultation, by mere instinct of nature, and by a determination of their fancies, I misallege him, and say he made their individual actions necessary. I have only this to answer, that, seeing he says that by instinct of nature their fancies were determined to special kinds of works, I might justly infer they were determined every one of them to some work; and every work is an individual action; for a kind of work in the general, is no work. But these their individual actions, he saith, “are contingent, and therefore not necessary”; which is no good consequence: for if he mean by contingent, that which has no cause, he speaketh not as a Christian, but maketh a Deity of fortune; which I verily think he doth not. But if he mean by it, that whereof he knoweth not the cause, the consequence is nought.

The means whereby setting-dogs, and coy-ducks, and parrots, are taught to do what they do, “is by their backs, by their bellies, by the rod, or by the morsel, which have indeed a shadow or resemblance of rewards and punishments: but we take the word here properly, not as it is used by vulgar people, but as it is used by divines and philosophers,” &c. Does not the Bishop know that the belly hath taught poets, and historians, and divines, and philosophers, and artificers, their several arts, as well as parrots? Do not men do their duty with regard to their backs, to their necks, and to their morsels, as well as setting-dogs, coy-ducks, and parrots? Why then are these things to us the substance, and to them but the shadow or resemblance of rewards or punishments?

(p) “When brute creatures do learn any such qualities, it is not out of judgment or deliberation or discourse, by inferring or concluding one thing from another, which they are not capable of; neither are they able to conceive a reason of what they do,” &c.: but “they remember that when they did after one manner, they were beaten, and when they did after another manner, they were cherished; and accordingly they apply themselves.”

If the Bishop had considered the cogitations of his own mind, not then when he disputeth, but then when he followed those businesses which he calleth trifles, he would have found them the very same which he here mentioneth; saving instead of beating, (because he is exempt from that), he is to put in damage. For, setting aside the discourse of the tongue in words of general signification, the ideas of our minds are the same with those of other living creatures, created from visible, audible, and other sensible objects to the eyes and other organs of sense, as their’s are. For as the objects of sense are all individual, that is, singular, so are all the fancies proceeding from their operations; and men reason not but in words of universal signification, uttered or tacitly thought on. But perhaps he thinketh remembrance of words to be the ideas of those things which the words signify; and that all fancies are not effected by the operation of objects upon the organs of our senses. But to rectify him in those points is greater labour (unless he had better principles) than I am willing, or have at this time leisure, to undergo.