Part 4

Therefore, where it is said that God will have all men to be saved, it is not meant of his will internal, but of his commandments or will revealed; as if it had been said, “God hath given commandments, by following of which all men may be saved.” So where God says, O Israel, how often would I have gathered thee, &c., as a hen doth her chickens, but thou wouldest not, it is thus to be understood: “How oft have I by my prophets given thee such counsel, as, being followed, thou hadst been gathered,” &c. And the like interpretations are to be given to the like places. For it is not Christian to think, if God had the purpose to save all men, that any man could be damned; because it were a sign of want of power to effect what he would. So these words, What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done: if by them be meant the Almighty power, might receive this answer: “Men might have been kept by it from sinning.” But when we are to measure God by his revealed will, it is as if he had said, “What directions, what laws, what threatenings could have been used more, that I have not used?” God doth not will and command us to inquire what his will and purpose is, and accordingly to do it; for we shall do that, whether we will or not; but to look into his commandments, that is, as to the Jews, the law of Moses; and as to other people, the laws of their country.

O Israel, thy destruction is from thyself, but in me is thy help: or as some English translations have it, O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, &c., is literally true, but maketh nothing against me; for the man that sins willingly, whatsoever be the cause of his will, if he be not forgiven, hath destroyed himself, as being his own act.

Where it is said, They have offered their sons unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, nor came it into my mind; these words, nor came it into my mind, are by some much insisted on, as if they had done it without the will of God. For whatsoever is done comes into God’s mind, that is, into his knowledge, which implies a certainty of the future action, and that certainty an antecedent purpose of God to bring it to pass. It cannot therefore be meant God did not will it, but that he had not the will to command it. But by the way it is to be noted, that when God speaks to men concerning his will and other attributes, he speaks of them as if they were like to those of men, to the end he may be understood. And therefore to the order of his work, the world, wherein one thing follows another so aptly as no man could order it by design, he gives the name of will and purpose. For that which we call design, which is reasoning, and thought after thought, cannot be properly attributed to God; in whose thoughts there is no fore nor after.

But what shall we answer to the words in Ecclesiasticus: Say not thou, it is through the Lord I fell away; say not thou, he hath caused me to err. If it had not been, say not thou, but “think not thou,” I should have answered that Ecclesiasticus is Apocrypha, and merely human authority. But it is very true that such words as these are not to be said; first, because St. Paul forbids it: Shall the thing formed, saith he, say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me so? Yet true it is, that he did so make him. Secondly, because we ought to attribute nothing to God but what we conceive to be honourable, and we judge nothing honourable but what we count so amongst ourselves; and because accusation of man is not honourable, therefore such words are not to be used concerning God Almighty. And for the same cause it is not lawful to say that any action can be done, which God hath purposed shall not be done; for it is a token of want of the power to hinder it. Therefore neither of them is to be said, though one of them must needs be true. Thus you see how disputing of God’s nature which is incomprehensible, driveth men upon one of these two rocks. And this was the cause I was unwilling to have my answer to the Bishop’s doctrine of liberty published.

And thus much for comparison of our two opinions with the Scriptures; which whether it favour more his or mine, I leave to be judged by the reader. And now I come to compare them again by the inconveniences which may be thought to follow them.

First, the bishop says, that this very persuasion, that all things come to pass by necessity, is able to overthrow all societies and commonwealths in the world. The laws, saith he, are unjust which prohibit that which a man cannot possibly shun.

Secondly, that it maketh superfluous and foolish all consultations, arts, arms, books, instruments, teachers, and medicines, and which is worst, piety and all other acts of devotion. For if the event be necessary, it will come to pass whatsoever we do, and whether we sleep or wake.

This inference, if there were not as well a necessity of the means as there is of the event, might be allowed for true. But according to my opinion, both the event and means are equally necessitated. But supposing the inference true, it makes as much against him that denies as against him that holds this necessity. For I believe the Bishop holds for as certain a truth, what shall be, shall be, as what is, is, or what has been, has been. And then the ratiocination of the sick man, “If I shall recover, what need I this unsavoury potion? if I shall not recover, what good will it do me?” is a good ratiocination. But the Bishop holds, that it is necessary he shall recover or not recover. Therefore it follows from an opinion of the Bishop’s, as well as from mine, that medicine is superfluous. But as medicine is to health, so is piety, consultation, arts, arms, books, instruments, and teachers, every one to its several end. Out of the Bishop’s opinion it follows as well as from mine, that medicine is superfluous to health. Therefore from his opinion as well as from mine, it followeth, (if such ratiocination were not unsound), that piety, consultation, &c. are also superfluous to their respective ends. And for the superfluity of laws, whatsoever be the truth of the question between us, they are not superfluous, because by the punishing of one, or of a few unjust men, they are the cause of justice in a great many.

But the greatest inconvenience of all that the Bishop pretends may be drawn from this opinion, is, “that God in justice cannot punish a man with eternal torments for doing that which it was never in his power to leave undone.” It is true, that seeing the name of punishment hath relation to the name of crime, there can be no punishment but for crimes that might have been left undone; but instead of punishment if he had said affliction, may not I say that God may afflict, and not for sin? Doth he not afflict those creatures that cannot sin? And sometimes those that can sin, and yet not for sin, as Job, and the man in the gospel that was born blind, for the manifestation of his power which he hath over his creature, no less but more than hath the potter over his clay to make of it what he please? But though God have power to afflict a man and not for sin without injustice, shall we think God so cruel as to afflict a man, and not for sin, with extreme and endless torment? Is it not cruelty? No more than to do the same for sin, when he that so afflicteth might without trouble have kept him from sinning. But what infallible evidence hath the Bishop, that a man shall be after this life eternally in torments and never die? Or how is it certain there is no second death, when the Scripture saith there is? Or where doth the Scripture say that a second death is an endless life? Or do the Doctors only say it? Then perhaps they do but say so, and for reasons best known to themselves. There is no injustice nor cruelty in him that giveth life, to give with it sickness, pain, torments, and death; nor in him that giveth life twice, to give the same miseries twice also. And thus much in answer to the inconveniences that are pretended to follow the doctrine of necessity.

On the other side from this position, that a man is free to will, it followeth that the prescience of God is quite taken away. For how can it be known beforehand what man shall have a will to, if that will of his proceed not from necessary causes, but that he have in his power to will or not will? So also those things which are called future contingents, if they come not to pass with certainty, that is to say, from necessary causes, can never be foreknown; so that God’s foreknowing shall sometimes be of things that shall not come to pass, which is as much to say, that his foreknowledge is none; which is a great dishonour to the all-knowing power.

Though this be all the inconvenient doctrine that followeth free-will, forasmuch as I can now remember; yet the defending of this opinion hath drawn the Bishop and other patrons of it into many inconvenient and absurd conclusions, and made them make use of an infinite number of insignificant words; whereof one conclusion is in Suarez, that God doth so concur with the will of man, that if man will, then God concurs; which is to subject not the will of man to God, but the will of God to man. Other inconvenient conclusions I shall then mark out, when I come to my observations upon the Bishop’s reply. And thus far concerning the inconveniences that follow both opinions.

The attribute of God which he draweth into argument is his justice, as that God cannot be just in punishing any man for that which he was necessitated to do. To which I have answered before, as being one of the inconveniences pretended to follow upon the doctrine of necessity. On the contrary, from another of God’s attributes, which is his foreknowledge, I shall evidently derive, that all actions whatsoever, whether they proceed from the will or from fortune, were necessary from eternity. For whatsoever God foreknoweth shall come to pass, cannot but come to pass, that is, it is impossible it should not come to pass, or otherwise come to pass than it was foreknown. But whatsoever was impossible should be otherwise, was necessary; for the definition of necessary is, that which cannot possibly be otherwise. And whereas they that distinguish between God’s prescience and his decree, say the foreknowledge maketh not the necessity without the decree; it is little to the purpose. It sufficeth me, that whatsoever was foreknown by God, was necessary: but all things were foreknown by God, and therefore all things were necessary. And as for the distinction of foreknowledge from decree in God Almighty, I comprehend it not. They are acts co-eternal, and therefore one.

And as for the arguments drawn from natural reason they are set down at large in the end of my discourse to which the Bishop maketh his reply; which how well he hath answered, shall appear in due time. For the present, the actions which he thinketh proceed from liberty of will, must either be necessitated, or proceed from fortune, without any other cause; for certainly to will is impossible without thinking on what he willeth. But it is in no man’s election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on. And this I take to be enough to clear the understanding of the reader, that he may be the better able to judge of the following disputation. I find in those that write of this argument, especially in the Schoolmen and their followers, so many words strangers to our language, and such confusion and inanity in the ranging of them, as that a man’s mind in the reading of them distinguisheth nothing. And as things were in the beginning before the Spirit of God was moved upon the abyss, tohu and bohu, that is to say, confusion and emptiness; so are their discourses.

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“TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE, ETC.

“SIR,--

“If I pretended to compose a complete treatise upon this subject, I should not refuse those large recruits of reasons and authorities which offer themselves to serve in this cause, for God and man, religion and policy, Church and Commonwealth, (a) against the blasphemous, desperate, and destructive opinion of fatal destiny. But as (b) mine aim, in the first discourse, was only to press home those things in writing, which had been agitated between us by word of mouth, (a course much to be preferred before verbal conferences, as being freer from passions and tergiversations, less subject to mistakes and misrelations, wherein paralogisms are more quickly detected, impertinences discovered, and confusion avoided), so my present intention is only to vindicate that discourse, and together with it, (c) those lights of the Schools, who were never slighted but where they were not understood. How far I have performed it, I leave to the judicious and impartial reader, resting for mine own part well contented with this, that I have satisfied myself.

Your Lordship’s most obliged, to love and serve you, “J. D.”

ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE BISHOP’S EPISTLE TO MY LORD OF NEWCASTLE.

(a) “Against the blasphemous, desperate, and destructive opinion of fatal destiny.”

This is but choler, such as ordinarily happeneth unto them who contend against greater difficulties than they expected.

(b) “My aim in the first discourse was only to press home those things in writing, which had been agitated between us by word of mouth: a course much to be preferred before verbal conferences, as being freer from passions, &c.”

He is here, I think, mistaken; for in our verbal conference there was not one passionate word, nor any objecting of blasphemy or atheism, nor any other uncivil word; of which in his writing there are abundance.

(c) “Those lights of the Schools, who were never slighted but where they were not understood.”

I confess I am not apt to admire every thing I understand not, nor yet to slight it. And though the Bishop slight not the Schoolmen so much as I do, yet I dare say he understands their writings as little as I do. For they are in most places unintelligible.

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TO THE READER.

“Christian reader, this ensuing treatise was (a) neither penned nor intended for the press, but privately undertaken, that by the ventilation of the question truth might be cleared from mistakes. The same was Mr. Hobbes’ desire at that time, as appeareth by four passages in his book, wherein he requesteth and beseecheth that it may be kept private. But either through forgetfulness or change of judgment, he hath now caused or permitted it to be printed in England, without either adjoining my first discourse, to which he wrote that answer, or so much as mentioning this reply, which he hath had in his hands now these eight years. So wide is the date of his letter, in the year 1652, from the truth, and his manner of dealing with me in this particular from ingenuity, (if the edition were with his own consent). Howsoever, here is all that passed between us upon this subject, without any addition, or the least variation from the original.