MIGHT BE BROUGHT TO EVADE HIS
ARGUMENTS, ARE BY HIM REMOVED.
He says a man may perhaps answer, that the necessity of things held by him, is not a stoical necessity, but a Christian necessity, &c. But this distinction I have not used, nor indeed ever heard before, nor could I think any man could make stoical and Christian two kinds of necessity, though they may be two kinds of doctrine. Nor have I drawn my answer to his Lordship’s arguments from the authority of any sect, but from the nature of the things themselves.
But here I must take notice of certain words of his Lordship’s in this place, as making against his own tenet. Where all the causes, saith he, being joined together, and subordinate one to another, do make but one total cause, if any one cause, much more the first, in the whole series or subordination of causes, be necessary, it determines the rest, and without doubt maketh the effect necessary. For that which I call the necessary cause of any effect, is the joining together of all causes subordinate to the first, into one total cause. If any of these, saith he, especially the first, produce its effect necessarily, then all the rest are determined. Now it is manifest, that the first cause is a necessary cause of all the effects that are next and immediate to it, and therefore by his Lordship’s own reason all effects are necessary.
Nor is that distinction of necessary in respect of the first cause, and necessary in respect of second causes, mine; it does, as his Lordship well notes, imply a contradiction. But the distinction of free into free from compulsion, and free from necessitation, I acknowledge. For to be free from compulsion is to do a thing so as terror be not the cause of his will to do it; for a man is then only said to be compelled, when fear makes him willing to it: as when a man willingly throws his goods into the sea to save himself, or submits to his enemy for fear of being killed. Thus all men that do anything for love, or revenge, or lust, are free from compulsion, and yet their actions may be as necessary as those that are done by compulsion; for sometimes other passions work as forcibly as fear. But free from necessitation, I say, no man can be, and it is that which his Lordship undertook to disprove.
This distinction, his Lordship says, uses to be fortified by two reasons, but they are not mine. The first he says, is, that it is granted by all divines, that an hypothetical necessity, or necessity upon supposition, may stand with liberty. That you may understand this, I will give you an example of hypothetical necessity. If I shall live, I shall eat. This is an hypothetical necessity. Indeed it is a necessary proposition, that is to say, it is necessary that that proposition should be true whensoever uttered, but it is not the necessity of the thing, nor is it therefore necessary that the man should live, nor that the man should eat. I do not use to fortify my distinctions with such reasons; let his Lordship confute them how he will, it contents me; but I would have your Lordship take notice hereby, how easy and plain a thing, but withal false, with the grave usage of such terms as hypothetical necessity, and necessity upon supposition, and such like terms of Schoolmen, may be obscured and made to seem profound learning.
The second reason that may confirm the distinction of free from compulsion, and free from necessitation, he says is, that God and good angels do good necessarily, and yet are more free than we. This reason, though I had no need of, yet I think it so far forth good, as it is true that God and good angels do good necessarily, and yet are free; but because I find not in the articles of our faith, nor in the decrees of our church, set down in what manner I am to conceive God and good angels to work by necessity, or in what sense they work freely, I suspend my sentence in that point, and am content that there be a freedom from compulsion, and yet no freedom from necessitation, as hath been proved, in that a man may be necessitated to some action without threats and without fear of danger. But how my Lord can avoid the consisting together of freedom and necessity, supposing God and good angels are freer than men, and yet do good necessarily, that we must examine: I confess, saith he, that God and good angels are more free than we, that is, intensively in degree of freedom, not extensively in the latitude of the object, according to a liberty of exercise not of specification.
Again, we have here two distinctions that are no distinctions, but made to seem so by terms invented by I know not whom to cover ignorance, and blind the understanding of the reader: for it cannot be conceived that there is any liberty greater, than for a man to do what he will. One heat may be more intensive than another, but not one liberty than another; he that can do what he will, hath all liberty possible, and he that cannot, hath none at all. Also liberty, as his Lordship says the Schools call it, of exercise, which is as I have said before, a liberty to do or not to do, cannot be without a liberty, which they call, of specification, that is to say, a liberty to do, or not to do this or that in particular. For how can a man conceive he hath liberty to do anything, that hath not liberty to do this, or that, or somewhat in particular? If a man be forbidden in Lent to eat this, and that, and every other particular kind of flesh, how can he be understood to have a liberty to eat flesh, more than he that hath no licence at all? You may by this again see the vanity of distinctions used in the Schools, and I do not doubt but that the imposing of them, by authority of doctors in the Church, hath been a great cause that men have laboured, though by sedition and evil courses, to shake them off; for nothing is more apt to beget hatred, than the tyrannizing over men’s reason and understanding, especially when it is done, not by the Scriptures, but by the pretence of learning, and more judgment than that of other men.
In the next place his Lordship bringeth two arguments against distinguishing between free from compulsion and free from necessitation.
The first is, that election is opposite not only to coaction or compulsion, but also 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 him, and a deliberation to bethink which of the two he can better endure. And he that is led to prison by force, hath election, and may deliberate whether he will be hauled and trained on the ground, or make use of his own feet: likewise when there is no compulsion, but the strength of temptation to do an evil action, being greater than the motives to abstain, it necessarily determines him to the doing of it; yet he deliberates while 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 chooses it; but they might as well say, fire doth not burn, because it burns of necessity.