Though I never meant to ground my answer upon the experience of what children, fools, madmen, and beasts do; yet that your Lordship may understand what can be meant by spontaneous, and how it differeth from voluntary, I will answer that distinction, and show that it fighteth against its fellow arguments.
Your Lordship therefore is to consider, that all voluntary actions, where the thing that induceth the will is not fear, are called also spontaneous, and said to be done by a man’s own accord. As when a man giveth money voluntarily to another for merchandise, or out of affection, he is said to do it of his own accord, which in Latin is sponte, and therefore the action is spontaneous; though to give one’s money willingly to a thief to avoid killing, or throw it into the sea to avoid drowning, where the motive is fear, be not called spontaneous. But every spontaneous action is not therefore voluntary, for voluntary presupposes some precedent deliberation, that is to say, some consideration, and meditation, of what is likely to follow, both upon the doing, and abstaining from the action deliberated of; whereas many actions are done of our own accord, and are therefore spontaneous, for which nevertheless, as my Lord thinks, we never consulted nor deliberated in ourselves. As when making no question nor any the least doubt in the world, but the thing we are about is good, we eat and walk, or in anger strike or revile, which my Lord thinks spontaneous, but not voluntary nor elective actions, and with such kind of actions, he says necessitation may stand, but not with such as are voluntary, and proceed upon election and deliberation. Now if I make it appear to your Lordship, that those actions, which, he says, proceed from spontaneity, and which he ascribes to children, fools, madmen, and beasts, proceed from election and deliberation, and that actions inconsiderate, rash, and spontaneous, are ordinarily found in those, that are by themselves and many more thought as wise, or wiser than ordinarily men are, then my Lord Bishop’s argument concludeth, that necessity and election may stand together, which is contrary to that which he intendeth by all the rest of his arguments to prove.
And first your Lordship’s own experience furnishes you with proof enough, that horses, dogs, and other brute beasts, do demur oftentimes upon the way they are to take, the horse retiring from some strange figure that he sees, and coming on again to avoid the spur. And what else doth a man that deliberateth, but one while proceed toward action, another while retire from it, as the hope of greater good draws him, or the fear of greater evil drives him away.
A child may be so young as to do what it does without all deliberation, but that is but till it have the chance to be hurt by doing of somewhat, or till it be of age to understand the rod: for the actions, wherein he hath once had a check, shall be deliberated on the second time.
Fools and madmen manifestly deliberate no less than the wisest men, though they make not so good a choice, the images of things being by disease altered.
For bees and spiders, if my Lord Bishop had had so little to do as to be a spectator of their actions, he would have confessed not only election, but art, prudence, and policy, in them, very near equal to that of mankind. Of bees, Aristotle says, their life is civil.
Again, his Lordship is deceived, if he think any spontaneous action, after once being checked in it, differs from an action voluntary and elective: for even the setting of a man’s foot, in the posture for walking, and the action of ordinary eating, was once deliberated of how and when it should be done, and though afterward it became easy and habitual, so as to be done without forethought; yet that does not hinder but that the act is voluntary, and proceedeth from election. So also are the rashest actions of choleric persons voluntary and upon deliberation: for who is there but very young children, that hath not considered when and how far he ought, or safely may strike or revile? Seeing then his Lordship agrees with me, that such actions are necessitated, and the fancy of those that do them determined to the action they do, it follows out of his Lordship’s own doctrine, that the liberty of election does not take away the necessity of electing this or that individual thing. And thus one of his arguments fights against another.
The second argument from Scripture, consisteth in histories of men that did one thing, when if they would, they might have done another; the places are two: one is 1 Kings iii. 10, where the history says, God was pleased that Solomon, who might, if he would, have asked riches, or revenge, did nevertheless ask wisdom at God’s hands: the other is the words of St. Peter to Ananias, Acts v. 4: After it was sold, was it not in thine own power?
To which the answer is the same with that I answered to the former places, that they prove there is election, but do not disprove the necessity, which I maintain, of what they so elect.
The fourth argument (for to the third and fifth I shall make but one answer) is to this effect; If the decrees of God, or his foreknowledge, or the influence of the stars, or the concatenation of causes, or the physical or moral efficacy of causes, or the last dictate of the understanding, or whatsoever it be, do take away true liberty, then Adam before his fall had no true liberty. Quicquid ostendes mihi sic incredulus odi.