Part 19

“Concerning the second argument drawn from the liberty of God and the good angels; as I cannot but approve his modesty, in ‘suspending his judgment concerning the manner how God and the good angels do work necessarily or freely, because he finds it not set down in the Articles of our faith, or the decrees of our Church’, especially in this age, which is so full of atheism, and of those scoffers which St. Peter prophesied of, (2 Pet. iii. 3), who neither believe that there is God or angels, or that they have a soul, but only as salt, to keep their bodies from putrifaction; so I can by no means assent unto him in that which follows, that is to say, that he hath proved that liberty and necessity of the same kind may consist together, that is, a liberty of exercise with a necessity of exercise, or a liberty of specification with a necessity of specification. Those actions which he saith are necessitated by passion, are for the most part dictated by reason, either truly or apparently right, and resolved by the will itself. But it troubles him, that I say that God and the good angels are more free than men, intensively in the degree of freedom, but not extensively in the latitude of the object, according to a liberty of exercise, but not of specification: which he saith are no distinctions, but terms invented to cover ignorance. Good words. Doth he only see? Are all other men stark blind? By his favour, they are true and necessary distinctions; and if he alone do not conceive them, it is because distinctions, as all other things, have their fates, according to the capacities or prejudices of their readers. But he urgeth two reasons. ‘One heat,’ saith he, ‘may be more intensive than another, but not one liberty than another.’ Why not, I wonder? Nothing is more proper to a man than reason; yet a man is more rational than a child, and one man more rational than another, that is, in respect of the use and exercise of reason. As there are degrees of understanding, so there are of liberty. The good angels have clearer understandings than we, and they are not hindered with passions as we, and by consequence they have more use of liberty than we. (f) His second reason is: ‘he that can do what he will, hath all liberty, and he that cannot do what he will, hath no liberty’. If this be true, then there are no degrees of liberty indeed. But this which he calls liberty, is rather an omnipotence than a liberty to do whatsoever he will. A man is free to shoot, or not to shoot, although he cannot hit the white whensoever he would. We do good freely, but with more difficulty and reluctance than the good spirits. The more rational, and the less sensual the will is, the greater is the degree of liberty. His other exception against liberty of exercise, and liberty of specification, is a mere mistake, which grows merely from not rightly understanding what liberty of specification, or contrariety is. A liberty of specification, saith he, is a liberty to do or not to do this or that in particular. Upon better advice he will find, that this which he calls a liberty of specification, is a liberty of contradiction, and not of specification, nor of contrariety. To be free to do or not to do this or that particular good, is a liberty of contradiction; so likewise, to be free to do or not to do this or that particular evil. But to be free to do both good and evil, is a liberty of contrariety, which extends to contrary objects or to diverse kind of things. So his reason to prove that a liberty of exercise cannot be without a liberty of specification, falls flat to the ground: and he may lay aside his lenten licence for another occasion. I am ashamed to insist upon these things, which are so evident that no man can question them who doth understand them.

(g) “And here he falls into another invective against distinctions and scholastical expressions, and the ‘doctors of the Church, who by this means tyrannized over the understandings of other men.’ What a presumption is this, for one private man, who will not allow human liberty to others, to assume to himself such a licence to control so magistrally, and to censure of gross ignorance and tyrannising over men’s judgments, yea, as causes of the troubles and tumults which are in the world, the doctors of the Church in general, who have flourished in all ages and all places, only for a few necessary and innocent distinctions. Truly, said Plutarch, that a sore eye is offended with the light of the sun. (h) What then, must the logicians lay aside their first and second intentions, their abstracts and concretes, their subjects and predicates, their modes and figures, their method synthetic and analytic, their fallacies of composition and division, &c.? Must the moral philosopher quit his means and extremes, his principia congenita et acquisita, his liberty of contradiction and contrariety, his necessity absolute and hypothetical, &c.? Must the natural philosopher give over his intentional species, his understanding agent and patient, his receptive and eductive power of the matter, his qualities infusæ or influxæ, symbolæ or dissymbolæ, his temperament ad pondus and ad justitiam, his parts homogeneous and heterogeneous, his sympathies and antipathies, his antiperistasis, &c.? Must the astrologer and the geographer leave their apogæum and perigæum, their artic and antartic poles, their equator, zodiac, zenith, meridian, horizon, zones, &c.? Must the mathematician, the metaphysician, and the divine, relinquish all their terms of art and proper idiotisms, because they do not relish with T. H.’s palate? But he will say, they are obscure expressions. What marvel is it, when the things themselves are more obscure? Let him put them into as plain English as he can, and they shall be never a whit the better understood by those who want all grounds of learning. Nothing is clearer than mathematical demonstration: yet let one who is altogether ignorant in mathematics hear it, and he will hold it to be as T. H. terms these distinctions, plain fustian or jargon. Every art or profession hath its proper mysteries and expressions, which are well known to the sons of art, not so to strangers. Let him consult with military men, with physicians, with navigators; and he shall find this true by experience. Let him go on shipboard, and the mariners will not leave their starboard and larboard, because they please not him, or because he accounts it gibberish. No, no: it is not the School divines, but innovators and seditious orators, who are the true causes of the present troubles of Europe. (i) T. H. hath forgotten what he said in his book, De Cive, cap. XII.: ‘that it is a seditious opinion, to teach that the knowledge of good and evil belongs to private persons’: and cap. XVII. ‘that in questions of faith, the civil magistrates ought to consult with ecclesiastical doctors, to whom God’s blessing is derived by imposition of hands so as not to be deceived in necessary truths, to whom our Saviour hath promised infallibility.’ These are the very men whom he traduceth here. There he ascribes infallibility to them; here he accuseth them of gross superstitious ignorance. There he attributes too much to them; here he attributes too little. Both there and here he takes too much upon him; (1 Cor. xiv. 32): The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.”

ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE BISHOP’S REPLY NO. XIX.

(a) “This proposition, the will is free, may be understood in two senses; either that the will is not compelled, or that the will is not always necessitated, &c. The former sense, that the will is not compelled, is acknowledged by all the world as a truth undeniable.” I never said the will is compelled, but do agree with the rest of the world in granting that it is not compelled. It is an absurd speech to say it is compelled, but not to say it is necessitated, or a necessary effect of some cause. When the fire heateth, it doth not compel heat; so likewise when some cause maketh the will to anything, it doth not compel it. Many things may compel a man to do an action, in producing the will; but that is not a compelling of the will, but of the man. That which I call necessitation, is the effecting and creating of that will which was not before, not a compelling of a will already existent. The necessitation or creation of the will, is the same thing with the compulsion of the man, saving that we commonly use the word compulsion, in those actions which proceed from terror. And therefore this distinction is of no use; and that raving which followeth immediately after it, is nothing to the question, whether the will be free, though it be to the question, whether the man be free.

(b) “First he erreth in this, to think that actions proceeding from fear are properly compulsory actions; which in truth are not only voluntary, but free actions.” I never said nor doubted, but such actions were both voluntary and free; for he that doth any thing for fear, though he say truly he was compelled to it, yet we deny not that he had election to do or not to do, and consequently that he was a voluntary and free agent. But this hinders not, but that the terror might be a necessary cause of his election of that which otherwise he would not have elected, unless some other potent cause made it necessary he should elect the contrary. And therefore, in the same ship, in the same storm, one man may be necessitated to throw his goods overboard, and another man to keep them within the ship; and the same man in a like storm be otherwise advised, if all the causes be not like. But that the same individual man, as the Bishop says, that chose to throw his goods overboard, might chose not to throw his goods overboard, I cannot conceive; unless a man can choose to throw overboard and not to throw overboard, or be so advised and otherwise advised, all at once.

(c) “Secondly, T. H. errs in this also, where he saith, that ‘a man is then only said to be compelled, when fear makes him willing to an action.’ As if force were not more prevalent with a man than fear,” &c. When I said fear, I think no man can doubt but the fear of force was understood. I cannot see therefore what quarrel he could justly take, at saying that a man is compelled by fear only; unless he think it may be called compulsion when a man by force, seizing on another man’s limbs, moveth them as himself, not as the other man pleaseth. But this is not the meaning of compulsion: neither is the action so done, the action of him that suffereth, but of him that useth the force. But this, as if it were a question of the propriety of the English tongue, the Bishop denies; and says when a man is moved by fear, it is improperly said he is compelled. But when a man is moved by an external cause, the will resisting as much as it can, then he says, he is properly said to be compelled; as in a rape, or when a Christian is drawn or carried by violence to the idol’s temple. Insomuch as by this distinction it were very proper English to say, that a stone were compelled when it is thrown, or a man when he is carried in a cart. For my part, I understand compulsion to be used rightly of living creatures only, which are moved only by their own animal motion, in such manner as they would not be moved without the fear. But of this dispute the English and well-bred reader is the proper judge.

(d) “Thirdly, the question is not, whether all the actions of a man be free, but whether they be ordinarily free.” Is it impossible for the Bishop to remember the question, which is whether a man be free to will? Did I ever say, that no actions of a man are free? On the contrary, I say that all his voluntary actions are free, even those also to which he is compelled by fear. But it does not therefore follow but that the will, from whence those actions and their election proceed, may have necessary causes, against which he hath never yet said anything. That which followeth immediately, is not offered as a proof, but as explication, how the passions of a man surprise him; therefore I let it pass, noting only that he expoundeth motus primo primi, which I understood not before, by the word antipathy.

(e) “A necessity of supposition is of two kinds; sometimes a thing supposed, is in the power of the agent to do or not to do, &c.; sometimes a thing supposed, is not in the power of the agent to do or not to do,” &c.

When the necessity is of the former kind of supposition, then, he says, freedom may consist with this necessity, in the latter sense that it cannot. And to use his own instances, to vow continence in a Romish priest, upon supposition that he is a Romish priest, is a necessary act, because it was in his power to be a priest or not. On the other side, supposing a man having a natural antipathy against a cat; because this antipathy is not in the power of the party affected, therefore the running away from the cat is no free act.

I deny not but that it is a free act of the Romish priest to vow continence, not upon the supposition that he was a Romish priest, but because he had not done it unless he would; if he had not been a Romish priest, it had been all one to the freedom of his act. Nor is his priesthood anything to the necessity of his vow, saving that if he would not have vowed he should not have been made a priest. There was an antecedent necessity in the causes extrinsical; first, that he should have the will to be a priest, and then consequently that he should have the will to vow. Against this he allegeth nothing. Then for his cat, the man’s running from it is a free act, as being voluntary, and arising from a false apprehension (which nevertheless he cannot help) of some hurt or other the cat may do him. And therefore the act is as free as the act of him that throweth his goods into the sea. So likewise the act of Jacob in blessing his sons, and the act of Balaam in blessing Israel, are equally free and equally voluntary, yet equally determined by God, who is the author of all blessings, and framed the will of both of them to bless, and whose will, as St. Paul saith, cannot be resisted. Therefore both their actions were necessitated equally; and, because they were voluntary, equally free. As for Caiphas’ his prophecy, which the text saith he spake not of himself, it was necessary; first, because it was by the supernatural gift of God to the high-priests, as sovereigns of the commonwealth of the Jews, to speak to the people as from the mouth of God, that is to say, to prophecy; and secondly, whensoever he did speak not as from God, but as from himself, it was nevertheless necessary he should do so, not that he might not have been silent if he would, but because his will to speak was antecedently determined to what he should speak from all eternity, which he hath yet brought no argument to contradict.

He approveth my modesty in suspending my judgment concerning the manner how the good angels do work, necessarily or freely, because I find it not set down in the articles of our faith, nor in the decrees of our Church. But he useth not the same modesty himself. For whereas he can apprehend neither the nature of God nor of angels, nor conceive what kind of thing it is which in them he calleth will, he nevertheless takes upon him to attribute to them liberty of exercise, and to deny them a liberty of specification; to grant them a more intensive liberty than we have, but not a more extensive; using, not incongruously, in the incomprehensibility of the subject incomprehensible terms, as liberty of exercise and liberty of specification, and degrees of intension in liberty; as if one liberty, like heat, might be more intensive than another. It is true that there is greater liberty in a large than in a straight prison, but one of those liberties is not more intense than the other.

(f) “His second reason is, he that can do what he will, hath all liberty, and he that cannot do what he will, hath no liberty. If this be true, then there are no degrees of liberty indeed. But this which he calls liberty, is rather an omnipotence than a liberty.” It is one thing to say a man hath liberty to do what he will, and another thing to say he hath power to do what he will. A man that is bound, would say readily he hath not the liberty to walk; but he will not say he wants the power. But the sick man will say he wants the power to walk, but not the liberty. This is, as I conceive, to speak the English tongue: and consequently an Englishman will not say, the liberty to do what he will, but the power to do what he will, is omnipotence. And therefore either I or the Bishop understand not English. Whereas he adds that I mistake the meaning of the words liberty of specification, I am sure that in that way wherein I expound them, there is no absurdity. But if he say, I understand not what the Schoolmen mean by it, I will not contend with him; for I think they know not what they mean themselves.

(g) “And here he falls into another invective against distinctions and scholastical expressions, and the doctors of the Church, who by this means tyrannized over the understanding of other men. What a presumption is this, for one private man,” &c. That he may know I am no enemy to intelligible distinctions, I also will use a distinction in the defence of myself against this his accusation. I say therefore that some distinctions are scholastical only, and some are scholastical and sapiential also. Against those that are scholastical only, I do and may inveigh. But against those that are scholastical and sapiential also, I do not inveigh. Likewise some doctors of the Church, as Suarez, Johannes à Duns, and their imitators, to breed in men such opinions as the Church of Rome thought suitable to their interest, did write such things as neither other men nor themselves understood. These I confess I have a little slighted. Other doctors of the Church, as Martin Luther, Philip Melancthon, John Calvin, William Perkins, and others, that did write their sense clearly, I never slighted, but always very much reverenced and admired. Wherein, then, lieth my presumption? If it be because I am a private man, let the Bishop also take heed he contradict not some of those whom the world worthily esteems, lest he also (for he is a private man) be taxed of presumption.

(h) “What then, must the logicians lay aside their first and second intentions, their abstracts and concretes &c.: must the moral philosopher quit his means and extremes, his principia congenita et acquisita, his liberty of contradiction and contrariety, his necessity absolute and hypothetical, &c.: must the natural philosopher give over his intentional species, &c.: because they do not relish with T. H.’s palate?” I confess that among the logicians, Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio, &c. are terms of art. But if the Bishop think that words of first and second intention, that abstract and concrete, that subjects and predicates, moods and figures, method synthetic and analytic, fallacies of composition and division, be terms of art, I am not of his opinion. For these are no more terms of art in logic, than lines, figures, squares, triangles, &c. in the mathematics. Barbara, Celarent, and the rest that follow, are terms of art, invented for the easier apprehension of young men, and are by young men understood. But the terms of the School with which I have found fault, have been invented to blind the understanding, and cannot be understood by those that intend to learn divinity. And to his question whether the moral philosopher must quit his means and extremes, I answer, that though they are not terms of art, he ought to quit them when they cannot be understood; and when they can, to use them rightly. And therefore, though means and extremes be terms intelligible, yet I would have them quit the placing of virtue in the one, and of vice in the other. But for his liberty of contradiction and contrariety, his necessity absolute and hypothetical, if any moral philosopher ever used them, then away with them; they serve for nothing but to seduce young students. In like manner, let the natural philosopher no more mention his intentional species, his understanding agent and patient, his receptive and eductive power of the matter, his qualities infusæ or influxæ, symbolæ or dissymbolæ, his temperament ad pondus and ad justitiam. He may keep his parts homogeneous and heterogeneous; but his sympathies and antipathies, his antiperistasis and the like names of excuses rather than of causes, I would have him fling away. And for the astrologer, (unless he means astronomer), I would have him throw away his whole trade. But if he mean astronomer, then the terms of apogæum and perigæum, artic, antartic, equator, zodiac, zenith, meridian, horizon, zones, &c. are no more terms of art in astronomy, than a saw or a hatchet in the art of a carpenter. He cites no terms of art for geometry; I was afraid he would have put lines, or perhaps equality or inequality, for terms of art. So that now I know not what be those terms he thinks I would cast away in geometry. And lastly, for his metaphysician, I would have him quit both his terms and his profession, as being in truth (as Plutarch saith in the beginning of the life of Alexander the Great) not at all profitable to learning, but made only for an essay to the learner; and the divine to use no word in preaching but such as his auditors, nor in writing but such as a common reader, may understand. And all this, not for the pleasing of my palate, but for the promotion of truth.

(i) “T. H. hath forgotten what he said in his book, De Cive, cap. XII., that it is ‘a seditious opinion to teach that the knowledge of good and evil belongs to private persons’: and cap. XVII, that ‘in questions of faith the civil magistrates ought to consult with the ecclesiastical doctors, to whom God’s blessing is derived by imposition of hands, so as not to be deceived in necessary truths,’ &c. There he attributes too much to them, here he attributeth too little; both there and here he takes too much upon him. The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.” He thinks he hath a great advantage against me from my own words in my book De Cive, which he would not have thought if he had understood them. The knowledge of good and evil is judicature, which in Latin is cognitio causarum, not scientia. Every private man may do his best to attain a knowledge of what is good and evil in the action he is to do; but to judge of what is good and evil in others, belongs not to him, but to those whom the sovereign power appointeth thereunto. But the Bishop not understanding, or forgetting, that cognoscere is to judge, as Adam did of God’s commandment, hath cited this place to little purpose. And for the infallibility of the ecclesiastical doctors by me attributed to them, it is not that they cannot be deceived, but that a subject cannot be deceived in obeying them when they are our lawfully constituted doctors. For the supreme ecclesiastical doctor, is he that hath the supreme power: and in obeying him no subject can be deceived, because they are by God himself commanded to obey him. And what the ecclesiastical doctors, lawfully constituted, do tell us to be necessary in point of religion, the same is told us by the sovereign power. And therefore, though we may be deceived by them in the belief of an opinion, we cannot be deceived by them in the duty of our actions. And this is all that I ascribe to the ecclesiastical doctors. If they think it too much, let them take upon them less. Too little they cannot say it is, who take it, as it is, for a burthen. And for them who seek it as a worldly preferment, it is too much. I take, he says, too much upon me. Why so? Because the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. This is it that he finds fault with in me, when he says that I am a private man, that is to say, no prophet, that is to say, no bishop. By which it is manifest, that the Bishop subjecteth not his spirit but to the Convocation of bishops. I admit that every man ought to subject his spirit to the prophets. But a prophet is he that speaketh unto us from God; which I acknowledge none to do, but him that hath due authority so to do. And no man hath due authority so to do immediately, but he that hath the supreme authority of the commonwealth; nor mediately, but they that speak such things to the people, as he that hath the supreme authority alloweth of. And as it is true in this sense, that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets; so it is also true that we ought not to believe every spirit, but to try the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world (1 John iv. 1). Therefore I that am a private man, may examine the prophets; which to do, I have no other means but to examine whether their doctrine be agreeable to the law; which theirs is not, who divide the commonwealth into two commonwealths, civil and ecclesiastical.

NO. XX.

J. D. “Now to the distinction itself, I say, first, that the proper act of liberty is election, and election is opposed, not only to coaction, but also to coarctation, or determination to one. Necessitation or determination to one, may consist with spontaneity, but not with election or liberty; as hath been showed. The very Stoics did acknowledge a spontaneity. So our adversaries are not yet gone out of the confines of the Stoics.

“Secondly, to rip up the bottom of this business, this I take to be the clear resolution of the Schools. There is a double act of the will: the one more remote, called imperatus, that is, in truth the act of some inferior faculty, subject to the command of the will, as to open or shut one’s eyes; without doubt these actions may be compelled. The other act is nearer, called actus elicitus, an act drawn out of the will, as to will, to choose, to elect. This may be stopped or hindered by the intervening impediment of the understanding, as a stone lying on a table is kept from its natural motion; otherwise the will should have a kind of omnipotence. But the will cannot be compelled to an act repugnant to its inclination, as when a stone is thrown upwards into the air; for that is both to incline and not to incline to the same object at the same time, which implies a contradiction. Therefore to say the will is necessitated, is to say, the will is compelled so far as the will is capable of compulsion. If a strong man holding the hand of a weaker, should therewith kill a third person, hæc quidem vis est, this is violence; the weaker did not willingly perpetrate the fact, because he was compelled. But now suppose this strong man had the will of the weaker in his power as well as the hand, and should not only incline, but determine it secretly and insensibly to commit this act: is not the case the same? Whether one ravish Lucretia by force, as Tarquin, or by amatory potions and magical incantations not only allure her, but necessitate her to satisfy his lust, and incline her effectually, and draw her inevitably and irresistibly, to follow him spontaneously, Lucretia in both these conditions is to be pitied. But the latter person is more guilty, and deserves greater punishment, who endeavours also, so much as in him lies, to make Lucretia irresistibly partake of his crime. I dare not apply it, but thus only: take heed how we defend those secret and invincible necessitations to evil, though spontaneous and free from coaction.

“These are their fastnesses.”

T. H. In the next place, he bringeth two arguments against distinguishing between being free from compulsion, and free from necessitation. The first is, that election is opposite, not only to coaction or compulsion, but also to necessitation or determination to one. This is it he was to prove from the beginning, and therefore bringeth no new argument to prove it. And to those brought formerly, I have already answered; and in this place I deny again, that election is opposite to either. For when a man is compelled, for example, to subject himself to an enemy or to die, he hath still election left in him, and a deliberation to bethink which of these two he can better endure; and he that is led to prison by force, hath election, and may deliberate, whether he will be haled and trained on the ground, or make use of his feet.

Likewise when there is no compulsion, but the strength of temptation to do an evil action, being greater than the motives to abstain, necessarily determines him to the doing of it, yet he deliberates whilst sometimes the motives to do, sometimes the motives to forbear, are working on him, and consequently he electeth which he will. But commonly, when we see and know the strength that moves us, we acknowledge necessity; but when we see not, or mark not the force that moves us, we then think there is none, and that it is not causes, but liberty that produceth the action. Hence it is that they think he does not choose this, that of necessity chooseth it; but they might as well say fire does not burn, because it burns of necessity. The second argument is not so much an argument, as a distinction, to show in what sense it may be said that voluntary actions are necessitated, and in what sense not. And therefore he allegeth, as from the authority of the Schools and that which “rippeth up the bottom of the question”, that there is a double act of the will. The one, he says, is actus imperatus, an act done at the command of the will by some inferior faculty of the soul, as to open or shut one’s eyes: and this act may be compelled. The other, he says, is actus elicitus, an act allured, or an act drawn forth by allurement out of the will, as to will, to choose, to elect: this, he says, cannot be compelled. Wherein letting pass that metaphorical speech of attributing command and subjection to the faculties of the soul, as if they made a commonwealth or family among themselves, and could speak one to another, which is very improper in searching the truth of the question: you may observe first, that to compel a voluntary act is nothing else but to will it. For it is all one to say, my will commands the shutting of mine eyes or the doing of any other action, and to say, I have the will to shut mine eyes. So that actus imperatus here, might as easily have been said in English, a voluntary action, but that they that invented the term understood not any thing it signified. Secondly you may observe, that actus elicitus is exemplified by these words, to will, to elect, to choose, which are all one; and so to will is here made an act of the will; and indeed, as the will is a faculty or power of a man’s soul, so to will is an act of it according to that power. But as it is absurdly said, that to dance is an act allured or drawn by fair means out of the ability to dance; so it is also to say, that to will is an act allured or drawn out of the power to will, which power is commonly called the will. Howsoever it be, the sum of his distinction is, that a voluntary act may be done on compulsion, that is to say, by foul means; but to will that or any act cannot be but by allurement or fair means. Now, seeing fair means, allurements, and enticements, produce the action which they do produce as necessarily as threatening and foul means, it follows, that to will may be made as necessary as any thing that is done by compulsion. So that the distinction of actus imperatus, and actus elicitus, are but words, and of no effect against necessity.

J. D. “In the next place follow two reasons of mine own against the same distinction, the one taken from the former grounds, that election cannot consist with determination to one. To this, he saith, he hath answered already. No; truth is founded upon a rock. He hath been so far from prevailing against it, that he hath not been able to shake it. (a) Now again he tells us, that ‘election is not opposite to either’, necessitation or compulsion. He might even as well tell us, that a stone thrown upwards moves naturally; or that a woman can be ravished with her own will. Consent takes away the rape. This is the strangest liberty that ever was heard of, that a man is compelled to do what he would not, and yet is free to do what he will. And this he tells us upon the old score, that ‘he who submits to his enemy for fear of death, chooseth to submit’. But we have seen formerly, that this which he calls compulsion, is not compulsion properly, nor that natural determination of the will to one, which is opposite to true liberty. He who submits to an enemy for saving his life, doth either only counterfeit, and then there is no will to submit; (this disguise is no more than a stepping aside to avoid a present blow); or else he doth sincerely will a submission, and then the will is changed. There is a vast difference between compelling and changing the will. Either God or man may change the will of man, either by varying the condition of things, or by informing the party otherwise: but compelled it cannot be, that is, it cannot both will this and not will this, as it is invested with the same circumstances; though, if the act were otherwise circumstantiated, it might nill that freely which now it wills freely. (b) Wherefore this kind of actions are called mixed actions, that is partly voluntary, partly involuntary. That which is compelled in a man’s present condition or distress, that is not voluntary nor chosen. That which is chosen, as the remedy of its distress, that is voluntary. So hypothetically, supposing a man were not in that distress, they are involuntary; but absolutely without any supposition at all, taking the case as it is, they are voluntary. (c) His other instance of ‘a man forced to prison, that he may choose whether he will be haled thither upon the ground, or walk upon his feet,’ is not true. By his leave, that is not as he pleaseth, but as it pleaseth them who have him in their power. If they will drag him, he is not free to walk; and if they give him leave to walk, he is not forced to be dragged. (d) Having laid this foundation, he begins to build upon it, that ‘other passions do necessitate as much as fear’. But he errs doubly; first, in his foundation. Fear doth not determine the rational will naturally and necessarily. The last and greatest of the five terrible things is death; yet the fear of death cannot necessitate a resolved mind to do a dishonest action, which is worse than death. The fear of the fiery furnace could not compel the three children to worship an idol, nor the fear of the lions necessitate Daniel to omit his duty to God. It is our frailty, that we are more afraid of empty shadows than of substantial dangers, because they are nearer our senses; as little children fear a mouse or a visard more than fire or weather. But as a fit of the stone takes away the sense of the gout for the present, so the greater passion doth extinguish the less. The fear of God’s wrath and eternal torments doth expel corporeal fear: fear not them who kill the body, but fear him who is able to cast both body and soul into hell (Luke xii. 4). (e) Da veniam imperator; tu carcerem, ille gehennam minatur.--Excuse me, O emperor, thou threatenest men with prison, but he threatens me with hell. (f) Secondly, he errs in his superstruction also. There is a great difference, as to this case of justifying, or not justifying an action, between force and fear, and other passions. Force doth not only lessen the sin, but takes it quite away. He who forced a betrothed damsel was to die; ‘but unto the damsel,’ saith he, ‘thou shalt do nothing, there is in her no fault worthy of death’ (Deut. xxii. 26). Tamar’s beauty, or Ammon’s love, did not render him innocent; but Ammon’s force rendered Tamar innocent. But fear is not so prevalent as force. Indeed if fear be great and justly grounded, such as may fall upon a constant man, though it do not dispense with the transgression of the negative precepts of God or nature, because they bind to all times, yet it diminisheth the offence even against them, and pleads for pardon. But it dispenseth in many cases with the transgression of the positive law, either divine or human; because it is not probable that God or the law would oblige man to the observation of all positive precepts, with so great damage as the loss of his life. The omission of circumcision was no sin, whilst the Israelites were travelling through the wilderness. By T. H.’s permission, (g) I will propose a case to him. A gentleman sends his servant with money to buy a dinner; some Russians meet him by the way, and take it from him by force; the servant cried for help, and did what he could to defend himself, but all would not serve. The servant is innocent, if he were to be tried before a court of Areopagites. Or suppose the Russians did not take it from him by force, but drew their swords and threatened to kill him except he delivered it himself; no wise man will conceive, that it was either the master’s intention or the servant’s duty to hazard his life or limbs for saving of such a trifling sum. But on the other side, suppose this servant, passing by some cabaret or tennis-court where his comrades were drinking or playing, should stay with them, and drink or play away his money, and afterwards plead, as T. H. doth here, that he was overcome by the mere strength of temptation. I trow, neither T. H. nor any man else would admit of this excuse, but punish him for it: because neither was he necessitated by the temptation, and what strength it had was by his own fault, in respect of that vicious habit which he had contracted of drinking or gaming: (James i. 14): Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Disordered passions of anger, hatred, lust, if they be consequent (as the case is here put by T. H.) and flow from deliberation and election, they do not only not diminish the fault, but they aggravate it, and render it much greater.

(h) “He talks much of the ‘motives to do and motives to forbear, how they work upon and determine a man’; as if a reasonable man were no more than a tennis-ball, to be tossed to and fro by the rackets of the second causes; as if the will had no power to move itself, but were merely passive, like an artificial popingay removed hither and thither by the bolts of the archers, who shoot on this side and on that. What are motives, but reasons or discourses framed by the understanding, and freely moved by the will? What are the will and the understanding, but faculties of the same soul? And what is liberty but a power resulting from them both? To say that the will is determined by these motives, is as much as to say that the agent is determined by himself. If there be no necessitation before the judgment of right reason doth dictate to the will, then there is no antecedent, no extrinsical necessitation at all. (i) All the world knows, that when the agent is determined by himself, then the effect is determined likewise in its cause. But if he determined himself freely, then the effect is free. Motives determine not naturally, but morally; which kind of determination may consist with true liberty. But if T. H.’s opinion were true, that the will were naturally determined by the physical and special influence of extrinsical causes, not only motives were vain, but reason itself and deliberation were vain. No, saith he, they are not vain, because they are the means. Yes, if the means be superfluous, they are vain. What needed such a circuit of deliberation to advise what is fit to be done, when it is already determined extrinsically what must be done?

(k) “He saith, ‘that the ignorance of the true causes and their power, is the reason why we ascribe the effect to liberty; but when we seriously consider the causes of things, we acknowledge a necessity’. No such thing, but just the contrary. The more we consider, and the clearer we understand, the greater is the liberty, and the more the knowledge of our own liberty. The less we consider, and the more incapable that the understanding is, the lesser is the liberty, and the knowledge of it. And where there is no consideration nor use of reason, there is no liberty at all, there is neither moral good nor evil. Some men, by reason that their exterior senses are not totally bound, have a trick to walk in their sleep. Suppose such a one in that case should cast himself down a pair of stairs or from a bridge, and break his neck or drown himself; it were a mad jury that would find this man accessary to his own death. Why? Because it was not freely done, he had not then the use of reason.

(l) “Lastly, he tells us, that ‘the will doth choose of necessity, as well as the fire burns of necessity’. If he intend no more but this, that election is the proper and natural act of the will as burning is of the fire, or that the elective power is as necessarily in a man as visibility, he speaks truly, but most impertinently; for, the question is not now of the elective power, in actu primo, whether it be an essential faculty of the soul, but whether the act of electing this or that particular object, be free and undetermined by any antecedent and extrinsical causes. But if he intend it in this other sense, that as the fire hath no power to suspend its burning, nor to distinguish between those combustible matters which are put unto it, but burns that which is put unto it necessarily, if it be combustible; so the will hath no power to refuse that which it wills, nor to suspend its own appetite: he errs grossly. The will hath power either to will or nill, or to suspend, that is, neither to will nor nill the same object. Yet even the burning of the fire, if it be considered as it is invested with all particular circumstances, is not otherwise so necessary an action as T. H. imagineth. (m) Two things are required to make an effect necessary. First, that it be produced by a necessary cause, such as fire is; secondly, that it be necessarily produced. Protagoras, an atheist, began his book thus: ‘Concerning the Gods, I have nothing to say, whether they be or they be not’: for which his book was condemned by the Athenians to be burned. The fire was a necessary agent, but the sentence or the application of the fire to the book was a free act; and therefore the burning of his book was free. Much more the rational will is free, which is both a voluntary agent, and acts voluntarily.

(n) “My second reason against this distinction, of liberty from compulsion but not from necessitation, is new, and demonstrates clearly that to necessitate the will by a physical necessity, is to compel the will so far as the will is capable of compulsion; and that he who doth necessitate the will to evil after that manner, is the true cause of evil, and ought rather to be blamed than the will itself. But T. H., for all he saith he is not surprised, can be contented upon better advise to steal by all this in silence. And to hide this tergiversation from the eyes of the reader, he makes an empty shew of braving against that famous and most necessary distinction, between the elicite and imperate acts of the will; first, because the terms are improper; secondly, because they are obscure. What trivial and grammatical objections are these, to be used against the universal current of divines and philosophers. Verborum ut nummorum, it is in words as it is in money: use makes them proper and current. A tyrant at first signified a lawful and just prince; now, use hath quite changed the sense of it, to denote either a usurper or an oppressor. The word præmunire is now grown a good word in our English laws, by use and tract of time; and yet at first it was merely mistaken for a præmonere. The names of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, were derived at first from those heathenish deities, the Sun, the Moon, and the warlike god of the Germans. Now we use them for distinction sake only, without any relation to their first original. He is too froward, that will refuse a piece of coin that is current throughout the world, because it is not stamped after his own fancy. So is he that rejects a good word, because he understands not the derivation of it. We see foreign words are daily naturalized and made free denizens in every country. But why are the terms improper? ‘Because,’ saith he, ‘it attributes command, and subjection to the faculties of the soul, as if they made a commonwealth or family among themselves, and could speak one to another.’ Therefore, he saith, (o) they who invented this term of actus imperatus, understood not anything what it signified. No; why not? It seemeth to me, they understood it better than those who except against it. They knew there are mental terms, which are only conceived in the mind, as well as vocal terms, which are expressed with the tongue. They knew, that howsoever a superior do intimate a direction to his inferior, it is still a command. Tarquin commanded his son by only striking off the tops of the poppies, and was by him both understood and obeyed. Though there be no formal commonwealth or family either in the body or in the soul of man, yet there is a subordination in the body, of the inferior members to the head; there is a subordination in the soul, of the inferior faculties to the rational will. Far be it from a reasonable man so far to dishonour his own nature, as to equal fancy with understanding, or the sensitive appetite with the reasonable will. A power of command there is, without all question; though there be some doubt in what faculty this command doth principally reside, whether in the will or in the understanding. The true resolution is, that the directive command or counsel is in the understanding; and the applicative command, or empire for putting in execution of what is directed, is in the will. The same answer serves for his second impropriety, about the word elicite. For saith he, ‘as it is absurdly said, that to dance is an act allured, or drawn by fair means, out of the ability to dance; so is it absurdly said, that to will or choose, is an act drawn out of the power to will’. His objection is yet more improper than the expression. The art of dancing rather resembles the understanding than the will. That drawing which the Schools intend, is clear of another nature from that which he conceives. By elicitation, he understands a persuading or enticing with flattering words, or sweet alluring insinuations, to choose this or that. But that elicitation which the Schools intend, is a deducing of the power of the will into act; that drawing which they mention, is merely from the appetibility of the object, or of the end. As a man draws a child after him with the sight of a fair apple, or a shepherd draws his sheep after him with the sight of a green bough: so the end draws the will to it by a metaphorical motion. What he understands here by an ability to dance, is more than I know, or any man else, until he express himself in more proper terms; whether he understand the locomotive faculty alone, or the art or acquired habit of dancing alone, or both of these jointly. It may be said aptly without any absurdity, that the act of dancing is drawn out (elicitur) of the locomotive faculty helped by the acquired habit. He who is so scrupulous about the received phrases of the Schools, should not have let so many improper expressions have dropt from his pen; as in this very passage, he confounds the compelling of a voluntary action, with the commanding of a voluntary action, and willing with electing, which, he saith, ‘are all one’. Yet to will properly respects the end, to elect the means.

(p) “His other objection against this distinction of the acts of the will into elicite and imperate, is obscurity. ‘Might it not,’ saith he, ‘have been as easily said in English, a voluntary action.’ Yes, it might have been said as easily, but not as truly, nor properly. Whatsoever hath its original from the will, whether immediately or mediately, whether it be a proper act of the will itself, as to elect, or an act of the understanding, as to deliberate, or an act of the inferior faculties or of the members, is a voluntary action: but neither the act of reason, nor of the senses, nor of the sensitive appetite, nor of the members, are the proper acts of the will, nor drawn immediately out of the will itself; but the members and faculties are applied to their proper and respective acts by the power of the will.

“And so he comes to cast up the total sum of my second reason with the same faith that the unjust steward did make his accounts (Luke xvi). ‘The sum of J. D.’s distinction is,’ saith he, ‘that a voluntary act may be done on compulsion,’ (just contrary to what I have maintained), ‘that is to say, by foul means: but to will that or any act, cannot be but by allurement or fair means.’ I confess the distinction is mine, because I use it; as the sun is mine, or the air is mine, that is common to me with all who treat of this subject. (q) But his mistakes are so thick, both in relating my mind and his own, that the reader may conclude he is wandered out of his known way. I will do my duty to show him the right way. First, no acts which are properly said to be compelled, are voluntary. Secondly, acts of terror, (which he calls foul means), which are sometimes in a large improper sense called compulsory actions, may be, and for the most part are, consistent with true liberty. Thirdly, actions proceeding from blandishments or sweet persuasions, (which he calls fair means), if they be indeliberated, as in children who want the use of reason, are not presently free actions. Lastly, the strength of consequent and deliberated desires doth neither diminish guilt, nor excuse from punishment, as just fears of extreme and imminent dangers threatened by extrinsical agents often do; because the strength of the former proceeds from our own fault, and was freely elected in the causes of it; but neither desires nor fears, which are consequent and deliberated, do absolutely necessitate the will.