But previous to Dr. Hartley’s great work, the question of liberty and necessity had been discussed between Collins and Clark, and Clark and Leibnitz.[71] Collins’s Philosophical inquiry into human liberty, first published in 1715 was the only book on the subject worth reading between the times of Hobbes and Hartley, and a masterly and decisive work it is. This appears to have been translated and repeatedly printed on the continent; Dr. Priestley, who republished it in London, mentioning a second edition in 1756 at Paris, and a third edition when he was there in 1774. The controversy was kept alive in Collins’s life time by Leibnitz; but he like Dr. Edwards who afterwards wrote in defence of the same side of the question in his treatise on Free will, was too much given to expand his ideas, and obscure the sense by the multiplicity of words which he used to express it. The letters of Theodicèe contain many passages well conceived, but the book is insupportably tedious. Hobbes could condense more argument and information in a page, than would serve Leibnitz for a volume.
[71] I do not find that the controversy about the Soul occasioned by the publications of Blount, Coward, Dodwell, &c. involved the question of Liberty and Necessity, though they touch so nearly. It escaped me a few pages back, that Dr. Coward, was also the author of “Second Thoughts concerning the human Soul.” (Estibius Psycalethes) as well as of the Grand Essay.
To this treatise of Collins, plainly and popularly written, no sufficient answer was or could be given. It must have satisfied the mind of every reader capable of understanding the question, though it omitted to notice many objections which were afterwards taken up and fully answered by Dr. Priestley. Collins in his preface takes pains to have it understood that he writes in defence of moral necessity only, and not of physical necessity. A distinction without a difference, though taken by all who have succeeded him.
I do not dwell on the controversy between Jackson on the one side in defence of human liberty, and Gordon and Trenchard in Cato’s letters, because little was added to the sum of knowledge, on either side. Jackson had learning and industry, but he did not understand the question, and had no pretensions to that species of distinguishing acuteness, so necessary to a good metaphysician.
Dr. Priestley, following the enlarged and cheering views of the future happiness of all mankind, first connected by Hartley with this question, shews completely that the doctrine under consideration has nothing to do with the strict calvinistic hypothesis. That it is sufficiently conformable to popular opinion. That it is the only practical doctrine which in fact is, or indeed can be acted upon with respect to the application of reasoning and argument, reward and punishment. That the formation of character and disposition, the actual inferences we make from, and the dependence we place upon them, rest entirely on the truth of this opinion. That from the nature of cause and effect, every volition must be the necessary result of previous circumstances. That the scientia contingentium, the great and insuperable difficulty of God’s pretended foreknowledge of uncertain events, can on no other hypothesis be avoided, and that the doctrine of necessity is perfectly consistent with the great plan of divine benevolence, in the present state, and future destination, of the human race.
These subjects called forth remarks by Dr. Price, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Bryant, Dr. Kenrick, Mr. Whitehead, Dr. Horseley and others; to all of whom, answers were given by Dr. Priestley.
The controversy with Dr. Price is a pleasing specimen of the manner in which an important subject can be amicably discussed between two friends, and made interesting too, by the manner as well as the matter, without any thing of that “seasoning of controversy” which Dr. Horsely afterward thought so necessary to keep alive the public attention, and which he strews over his polemics with so unsparing a hand. The Bishop had not yet however adopted that stile of arrogance by which he has since been so disgracefully distinguished; and it is to be regretted for the sake of his own character as a gentleman and as a writer, that he adopted it at all. Dr. Horsely should recollect, that those who emulate the insolence of Warburton ought at least to give proofs of equal learning and acuteness; and that bigotry and intolerance in defence of opinions which, though a man may profess to believe, he can hardly profess to understand, will do no credit to his religious, his moral, or his literary character in the present state of knowledge. But character as a writer, may be a secondary consideration, to one who is determined to verify the saying, that godliness is great gain.[72]
[72] Dr. Horseley’s polemic strictures on Dr. Priestley’s writings, exhibit a singular compound of insolence and absurdity. But he is contented, I presume, if he rises in the church, as he sinks in reputation. Some of his opinions are truly diverting. His theory of divine generation by the Father contemplating his own perfections, and his grave suggestion of the three persons of the Godhead meeting together in consultation, stand a fair chance of being noticed by some wicked wit, who may wish to expose the infirmities of orthodoxy real or pretended.
It has been a misfortune to this question, that it has seldom been treated by persons who knew any thing of the organization or physiology of the human frame; and that it has been complicated with all the prejudice arising from the theological tenets of those who opposed the doctrine of necessity. Every physician knows, though metaphysicians know little about it, that the laws which govern the animal machine, are as certain and invariable as those which guide the planetary system, and are as little within the controul of the human being who is subject to them. Every sensation therefore, and every idea dependent on, or resulting from the state of the sensory, is the necessary effect of the laws of organization by which that state was produced. But we neither have nor can have any sensation or any idea, but what is so dependent, or but what thus results; for we can neither feel nor think without the brain. The words we use for the Phenomena termed mental, are mere terms of classification and arrangement of the sensations and ideas thus produced, and their combinations. Hence it follows, that all these phenomena depend on the laws which regulate the animal system, and are the necessary, inevitable result of those laws. The obscurity which has enveloped this question, has arisen from want of due attention to that state of mind (or rather of body) which we call, the will; and from the power that animals seem to have over the voluntary muscles. But every Physiologist knows that the state of the system which calls into action the voluntary muscles, that is, a state of want, desire or inclination, whether to act or to abstain, is the result of previous circumstances to which the animal is exposed; and the action of the voluntary muscles, is equally the result of necessary laws, as those of the involuntary.
The great object of terror to the Divines in this question about Necessity, was the consequence resulting, that God is the author of Sin. Many and subtile were the distinctions made upon this subject by the necessarian theologists among the schoolmen, and down to the middle of the seventeenth century. Richard Baxter the peace-maker, in his Christian Directory, his Catholic Theologie and some other works, has briefly reviewed them all, and as usual distinguished upon them so acutely, that what was not quite clear before, he has most effectually obscured. The prevailing opinion, however, seems to have been, not that God permitted the sinful act (for the reply was unanswerable, that God must be considered, as willing that which he does not prevent when he can,) but that God, in the common course of nature as pre-ordained by him, permitted the action itself to come to pass, but not the intention or quo animo of the actor, in which the sin consists; or as Gale expresses it in the quaint language of the time, it is “God’s pre-determinate concurse to the entitative act.”