he shall have to morrow or an hower or any time after Intervening occasions business which the Bishop calls trifles Trifles of which the Bishop maketh here a great business to change the Will No man can say what he will do to morrow unless he foreknow which no man can what shall happen before to morrow And this being the substance of my opinion it must needs be that when he deduceth from it that Counsells Arts Armes Medicines Teachers Praise Prayer and Piety are in vain that his deduction is false and his ratiocination fallacy And though I need make no other answer to all that he can object against me yet I shall here mark out the causes of his several Parologismes Those Lawes he saith are unjust and tyrannical which do prescribe things absolutly impossible to be done and punish men for not doing of them In which words this is one absurdity that a Law can be unjust for all Lawes are Divine or Civil neither of which can be unjust Of the first there is no doubt And as for Civil Lawes they are made by every man that is subject to them because every one of them consenteth to the placing of the Legislative Power Another is this in the same words that he supposeth there may be Lawes that are not Tyrannical for if he that maketh them have the soveraign Power they may be Regal but not Tyrannical if Tyrant signifie not King as he thinks it doth not Another is in the same words that a Law may prescribe things absolutely impossible in themselves to be done When he sayes impossible in themselves he understands not what himself means Impossible in themselves are contradictions onely as to be and not to be at the same time which the Divines say is not possible to God All other things are possible at least in themselves Raising from the dead changing the course of nature making of a new Heaven and a new Earth are things possible in themselves for there is nothing in their nature able to resist the Will of God and if Laws do not prescribe such things why should I believe they prescribe other things that are more impossible Did he ever readin Suarez of any Tyrant that made a Law commanding any man to do and not to do the same Action or to be and not to be at the same place in one and the same moment of time But out of the doctrine of Necessity it followeth he sayes that all Lawes do prescribe absolute impossibilities to be done Here he has left out in themselves which is a wilfull Fallacy He further sayes that Just Lawes are the Ordinances of right Reason which is an error that hath cost many thousands of men their lives Was there ever King that made a Law which in right reason had been better unmade and shall those Lawes therefore not be obeyed shall we rather rebell I think not though I am not so great a Divine as he I think rather that the Reason of him that hath the Soveraign Authority and by whose Sword we look to be protected both against war from abroad and injuries at home whether it be Right or Erronious in it seslf ought to stand for Right to us that have submitted our selves thereunto by receiving the protection But the Bishop putteth his greatest confidence in this that whether the things be impossible in themselves or made impossible by some unseen accident yet there is no reason that men should be punished for not doing them It seemes he taketh punishment for a kind of revenge and can never therefore agree with me that take it for nothing else but for a correction or for an example which hath for end the framing and necessitating of the Will to virtue and that he is no good man that upon any provocation useth his power though a power lawfully obtained to afflict another man without this end to reforme the will of him or others Nor can I comprehend as having onely humane Idea's that that punishment which neither intendeth the correction of the offender nor the correction of others by example doth proceed from God b He saith that no Law can possibly be unjust c. Against this he replies that the Law of Pharaoh to drown the Male Children of the Israelites and of Nebuckadnezxar to worship the golden Image and of Darius against praying to any but him in thirty dayes and of Ahashuerosh to destroy the Jewes and of the Pharisees to excommunicate the confessors of Christ were all unjust Lawes The Lawes of these Kings as they were Lawes have relation onely to the men that were their subjects And the making of them which was the action of every one of those Kings who were subjects to another King namely to God Almighty had relation to the Law of God In the first relation there could be no injustice in them because all Laws made by him to whom the people had given the Legislative Power are the Acts of every one of that people and no man can do injustice to himself But in relation to God if God have by a Law forbidden it the making of such Lawes is injustice Which Law of God was to those Heathen Princes no other but salus populi that is to say the properest use of their natural reason for the preservation of their subjects If therefore those Lawes were ordained out of wantonness or cruelty or envy or for the pleasing of a Favorite or out of any other sinister end as it seemes they were the making of those Lawes was unjust But if in right Reason they were necessary for the preservation of those people of whom they had undertaken the charge then was it not unjust And for the Pharisees who had the same written Law of God that we have their excommunication of the Christians proceeding as it did from envy was an Act of malicious injustice If it had proceeded from misinterpretation of their own Scriptures it had been a sin of ignorance Nevertheless as it was a Law to their subjects in case they had the Legislative Power which I doubt of the Law was not unjust But the making of it was an unjust action of which they were to give account to none but God I fear the Bishop will think this discourse too subtile but the judgement is the Readers c The ground of this error c. is this That every man makes by his consent the Law which he is bound to keep c. The reason why he thinketh this an error is because the positive Law of God conteined in the Bible is a Law with out our assent the Law of Nature was written in our hearts by the finger of God without our assent the Lawes of Conquerours who come in by the power of the Sword were made without our assent and so were the Lawes of our Ancestors which were made before we were born It is a strange thing that he that understands the non-sense of the Schoolmen should not be able to
it s left to her Husbands choice either to establish it or to make it void And Josh. 24. 15. Choose you this day whom you will serve c. But I and my house will serve the Lord. He makes his own choice and leaves them to the liberty of their election And 2 Sam. 24 12. I offer thee three things choose thee which of them I shall do If one of these three things was necessarily determined and the other two impossible how was it left to him to choose what should be done Therefore we have true liberty T. H. ANd the first place of Scripture taken from Numb 30. 14 is one of them that look another way The words are If a Wife make a vow it is left to her Husbands choice either to establish it or make it void for it prooves no more but that the Husband is a free or voluntary Agent but not that his choice therein is not necessitated or not determined to what he shall choose by praecedent necessary causes J. D. MY first Argument from Scripture is thus formed Arg. 1. Whosoever have a liberty or power of election are not determined to one by praecedent necessary causes But men have liberty of election The assumption or minor proposition is prooved by three places of Scripture Numb 30. 14. Josh. 24. 15. 2 Sam. 24. 12. I need not insist upon these because T. H. acknowledgeth that it is clearly prooved that there is election in Man But he denieth the major Proposition because saith he Man is necessitated or determined to what he shall choose by praecedent necessary causes I take away this answer three wayes First by Reason Election is evermore either of things 1. possible or at least of things conceived to be possible that is efficacious election when a man hopeth or thinketh of obteining the object Whatsoever the will chooseth it chooseth under the notion of good either honest or delightful or profitable but there can be no reall goodness apprehended in that which is known to be impossible It is true there may be some wandring pendulous wishes of known impossibilities as a man also that hath comitted an offence may wish he had not committed it but to choose efficaciously an impossibility is as impossible as an impossibility it self No man can think to obtein that which he knows impossible to be obteined but he who knows that all things are antecedently determined by necessary causes knows that it is impossible for any thing to be otherwise than it is Therefore to ascribe unto him a power of election to choose this or that indifferently is to make the same thing to be determined to one and to be not determined to one which are contradictories Again whosoever hath an elective power or a liberty to choose hath also a liberty or power to refuse Isa. 7. 10. Before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good He who chooseth this rather than that refuseth that rather than this As Moses choosing to suffer affliction with the people of God did thereby refuse the pleasures of sin Heb. 11. 24. But no man hath any power to refuse that which is necessarily praedetermined to be unlesse it be as the Fox refused the Grapes which were beyond his reach When one thing of two or three is absolutely determined the other are made thereby simply impossible a Secondly I proove it by instances and by that universal 2. notion which the world hath of election what is the difference between an elective and hereditary Kingdom but that in an elective Kingdom they have power or liberty to choose this or that Man indifferently But in an hereditary Kingdome they have no such power nor liberty Where the Law makes a certain Heir there is a necessitation to one where the Law doth not name a certain Heir there is no necessitation to one and there they have power or liberty to choose An haereditary prince may be as grateful and acceptable to his subjects and as willingly received by them according to that liberty which is opposed to compulsion or violence as he who is chosen yet he is not therefore an elective Prince In Germany all the Nobility and Commons may assent to the choice of the Emperour or be well pleased with it when it is concluded yet none of them elect or choose the Emperour but onely those six Princes who have a consultative deliberative and determinative power in his Election And if their votes or suffrages be equally divided three to three then the King of Bohemia hath the casting voice So likewise in Corporations or Common-wealths sometimes the People sometimes the Common Councell have power to name so many persons for such an office and the Supreme Magistrate or Senate or lesser Councel respectively to choose one of those And all this is done with that caution and secrecy by billets or other means that no man knowes which way any man gave his vote or with whom to be offended If it were necessarily and inevitably predetermined that this individual person and no other shall and must be chosen what needed all this circuit and caution to do that which is not possible to be done otherwise which one may do as well as a thousand and for doing of which no rational man can be offended if the electors were necessarily predetermined to elect this man and no other And though T. H. was pleased to passe by my University instance yet I may not untill I see what he is able to say unto it The Junior of the Mess in Cambridge divides the meat in four parts the Senior chooseth first then the second and third in their order The Junior is determined to one and hath no choice left unless it be to choose whether he will take that part which the rest have refused or none at all It may be this part is more agreable to his mind that any of the others would have been but for all that he cannot be said to choose it because he is determined to this one Even such a liberty of election is that which is established by T. H. Or rather much worse in two respects The Junior hath yet a liberty of contradiction left to choose whether he will take that part or not take any part but he who is precisely predetermined to the choice of this object hath no liberty to refuse it Secondly the Junior by dividing carefully may preserve to himself an equal share but he who is wholly determined by extrinsecal causes is left altogether to the mercy and disposition of another Thirdly I proove it by the texts alleadged Numb 30. 3. 13. If a Wife make a vow it is left to her Husbands choice either to establish it or make it void But if it be predetermined that he shall establish it it is not in his power to make it void If it be predetermined that he shall make it void it is not in his power to establish it
perceave so easie a truth as this which he denieth The Bible is a Law To whom To all the World He knowes it is not How came it then to be a Law to us Did God speak it viva voce to us Have we then any other Warrant for it than the Word of the Prophets Have we seen the miracles Have we any other assurance of their certainty than the authority of the Church and is the authority of the Church any other than the authority of the Commonwealth or that of the Commonwealth any other than that of the Head of the Common-wealth or hath the Head of the Commonwealth any other authority than that which hath been given him by the Members Else why should not the Bible be Canonical as well in Constantinople as in any other place They that have the Legislative power make nothing Canon which they make not Law nor Law which they make not Canon And because the Legislative power is from the assent of the subjects the Bible is made Law by the assent of the subjects It was not the Bishop of Rome that made the Scripture Law without his own temporal Dominions nor is it the Clergy that make it Law in their Dioceses and Rectories Nor can it be a Law of it self without special and supernatural revelation The Bishop thinks because the Bible is Law and he is appointed to teach it to the people in his Diocese that therefore it is Law to whom soever he teach it which is somewhat grosse but not so grosse as to say that Conquerors who come in by tho power of the sword make their Lawes also without our assent He thinks belike that if a Conquerour can kill me if he please I am presently obliged without more a doe to obey all his Lawes May not I rather dye if I think fit The Conquerour makes no Law over the Conquered by vertue of his power but by vertue of their assent that promised obedience for the saving of their lives But how then is the assent of the Children obtained to the Laws of their Ancestors This also is from the desire of preserving their lives which first the Parents might take away where the Parents be free from all subjection and where they are not there the Civil power might do the same if they doubted of their obedience The Children therefore when they be grown up to strength enough to do mischeif and to judgement enough to know that other men are kept from doing mischeif to them by fear of the Sword that protecteth them in that very act of receiving that protection and not renouncing it openly do oblige themselves to obey the Lawes of their Protectors to which inreceaving such protection they have assented And whereas he saith the Law of Nature is a Law without our assent it is absurd for the Law of Nature is the Assent it self that all men give to the means of their own preservation d But his cheifest answer is that An action forbidden though it proceed from necessary causes yet if it were done willingly may be justly punished c. This the Bishop also understandeth not and therefore denies it He would have the Judge condemne no man for a crime if it were necessitated as if the Judge could know what acts are necessary unless he knew all that hath anteceded both visible and invisible and what both every thing in it self and altogether can effect It is enough to the Judge that the act he condemneth be voluntary The punishment whereof may if not capital reforme the will of the offender if capital the will of others by example For heat in one body doth not more create heat in another than the terrour of an example creatâ—th fear in another who otherwise were inclined to commit injustice Some few lines before he hath said that I built upon a wrong foundation namely That all Magistrates were at first elective I had forgot to tell you that I never said nor though it And therefore his Reply as to that point is impertinent Not many lines after for a reason why a man may not be justly punished when his crime is voluntary he offereth this that Law is unjust and tyrannical which commands a man to Will that which is impossible for him to Will Whereby it appears he is of opinion that a Law may be made to command the Will The stile of a Law is Do this or Do not this or If thou Do this thou shalt Suffer this but no Law runs thus Will this or Will not this or If thou have a Will to this thou shalt Suffer this He objecteth further that I hegg the question because no mans Will is necessitated Wherein he mistakes for I say no more in that place but that he that doth evill willingly whether he be necessarily willing or not necessarily may be justly punished And upon this mistake he runneth over again his former and already answered non-sense saying we our selves by our own negligence in not opposing our passions when we should and might have freely given them a kind of dominion over us and again motus primo primi the first motions are not alwayes in our power Which motus primo primi signifies nothing and our negligence in not opposing our passions is the same with our want of Will to oppose our Will which is absurd and that we have given them a kind of dominion over us either signifies nothing or that we have a dominion over our Wills or our Wills a dominion over us and consequently either we or our wills are not Free e He pleads moreover that the Law is a cause of Justice c. All this is most true of a just Law justly executed But I have shown that all Lawes are just as Lawes and therefore not to be accused of injustice by those that owe subjection to them and a just Law is alwayes justly executed Seeing then that he confesseth that all that he replieth to here is true it followeth that the Reply it self where it contradicteth me is false f He addeth that the sufferings imposed by the Law upon Delinquents respect not the evil act past but the good to come and that the putting of a Delinquent to death by the Magistrate for any crime whatsoever cannot be justified before God except there be a reall intention to benefit others by his example This he neither confirmeth nor denieth and yet forbeareth not to discourse upon it to little purpose and therefore I pass it over g First he told us that it was the irresistible power of God that justifies all his Actions though he command one thing openly and plot another thing secretly though he be the cause not onely of the Action but also of the irregularity c. To all this which hath been pressed before I have answered also before but that he sayes I say having commanded one thing openly he plots another thing secretly it is not mine but one of his own ugly Phrases And the
are intelligible enough for he hath said in his Reply to Numb 24. that his opinion is demonstrable in reason though he be not able to comprehend how iâ— consisteth together with Gods eternal Prescience and though it exceed his weak capacitie yet he ought to adhere to that truth which is manifest so that to him that truth is manifest â—nd demonstrable by reason which is beyond his capacity so that words beyond capacity are with him intelligible enough But the Reader is to be Judge of that I could add many other passages that discover both his little Logick as taking tâ—â— insignificant word above recited for Terms of Art aâ—d hiâ— no Philosophy in distinguishing between moral and â—â—turâ—lâ— mâ—tion and by calling some motions Metaphorical and his thâ—r offers at the causes of sight and of the descent of heavy lies and his talk of the inclination of the Lâ—ud-stone and diverse other places of his Book But to make an end I shall briefly draw up the sum of what we have both said That which I have maintained is that no man hath his future will in his own present power That it may be changed by others and by the change of things without him and when it is changed it is not changed nor determined to any thing by it self and that when it is undetermined it is no Will because every one that willeth willeth something in particular That deliberation is common to men with beasts as being alternate appetite and not ratiocination and the last act or appetite therein and which is immediately followed by the action the onely will that can be taken notice of by others and which onely maketh an action in publick judgment voluntary That to be free is no more then to do if a man will and if he will to forbear and consequently that this freedome is the freedome of the man and not of the Will That the Will is not free but subject to change by the operation of external causes That all external causes depend necessarily on the first eternal cause God Almighty who worketh in us both to Will and to do by the mediation of second causes That seeing neither man nor any thing else can work upon it self it is impossible that any man in the framing of his own Will should concur with God either as an Actor or as an Instrument That there is nothing brought to passe by fortune as by a cause nor any thing without a cause or concurrence of causes sufficient to bring it so to passe and that every such cause and their concurrence do proceed from the providence good pleasure and working of God and consequently though I do with others call many events Contingent and say they happen yet because they had every of them their several sufficient causes and those causes again their former causes I say they happen necessarily And though we perceive not what they are yet there are of the most Contingent events as necessary causes as of those events whose causes we perceive or else they could not possibly be foreknown as they are by him that foreknoweth all things On the contrary the Bishop maintaineth That the Will is free from necessitation and in order thereto that the Judgment of the understanding is not alwayes practice practicum nor of such a nature in it self as to oblige and determine the Will to one though it be true that Spontaneity and determination to one may consist together That the Will determineth it self and that external things when they change the Will do work upon it not naturally but morally not by natural motion but by moral and Metaphorical motion That when the Will is determined naturally it is not by Gods general influence whereon depend all second causes but by special influence God concurring and powring something into the Will That the Will when it suspends not its Act makes the Act necessary but because it may suspend and not assent it is not absolutely necessary That sinful acts proceed not from Gods Will but are willed by him by a permissive Will not an operative Will and hardeneth the heart of man by a negative obduration That mans Will is in his own power but his motus primo primi not in his own power nor necessary save onely by a Hypothetical necessity That the Will to change is not always a change of Wil That not all things which are produced are produced from sufficient but some things from deficient causes That if the Power of the Will be present in actu primo then therâ— is nothing wanting to the production of the effect That a cause may be sufficient for the production of an effect though it want something necessary to the production thereof because the Will may be wanting That a necessary cause doth not alwayes necessarily produce its effect but onely then when the effect is necessarily produced He proveth also that the Will is free by that universal notion which the World hath of election For when of the six electors the votes are divided equally the King of Bohemia hath a casting voyce That the Prescience of God supposeth no necessity of the future existence of the things foreknown because God is not eternal but eternity and eternity is as standing Now without succession of time and therefore God foresees all things intuitively by the presentiallity they have in Nunc stans which comprehendeth in it all time past present and to come not formally but eminently and vertually That the Will is free even then when it acteth but that is in a compounded not in a divided sense That to be made and to be eternal do consist together because Gods Decrees are made and are nevertheless eternal That the order beauty and perfection of the World doth require that in the universe there should be Agents of all sorts some necessary some free some contingent That though it be true that to morrow it shall rain or not rain yet neither of them is true determinatè That the Doctrine of necessity is a blasphemous desperate and destructive doctrinâ— That it were better to be an Atheist that then to hold it he that maintaineth it is fitter to be refuted with Rodds then with Arguments And now whether this his Doctrine or mine be the more intelligible more rational or more coâ—â—ormable to Gords Word I leave it to the Judgment of the Reader But whatsoever be the truth of the disputed Question the Reader may peradventure think I have not used the Bishop with that respect I ought or without disadvantage of my cause I might have done for which I am to make a short Apologie A little before the last Parliament of the â—â—te King when every man 〈…〉 freely against the then present Government I thought it worth my study to consider the grounds and consequences of such behaviour and whether it were conformable or contrary to reason and to the Word of God and after some time I did put in order and publish my thoughts thereof first in Latine and then again the same in English where I endeavoured to prove both by reason and Scripture That they who have once submitted themselves to any Soveraign Governour either by express acknowledgment of his power or by receiving protection from his Laws are obliged to be true and faithful to him and to acknowledge no other supreme power but him in any matter or question whatsoever either civill or Ecclesiastical In which Books of mine I pursued my subject without taking notice of any particular man that held any opinion contrary to that which I then writ onely in general I maintained that the office of the Clergy in respect of the supreme civil power was not Magisterial but Ministerial and that their teaching of the People was founded up nâ—o other Authority then that of the civil Soveraign and all this without any word tending to the disgrace either of Episcopacy or of Presbytery Nevertheless I find since that divers of them whereof thâ— Bishop of Derry is one have taken offence especially at two things one that I make the supremacy in matters of Religion to residâ— in the civil Soveraign the other that being no Clergy-man I deliver Doctrines and ground them uâ—on Words of the Scripture which Doctrines they being by profession Divines have never taught And in this their displeasure divers of them in their Books and Sermons without answering any of my Arguments have not onely exclâ—iâ—ed against my Doctrine but reviled me and endeavoured to make me hateful 〈…〉 things for which if they knâ—w their own and the Publick good they ought to have given me thanks There is also one of them that taking offence at me for blaming in part the Discipline instituted heretofore and regulated by the Authority of the Pope in the Universities not onely ranks me amongst thosâ— men that would have the Revenue of the Universities diminished and sayes plainly I have no Religion but also thinks me so simple and ignorant of the World as to believe that our Universities maintain Popery And this is the Author of the Book called Vindiciae Academiarum If either of the Universities had thought it self injured I believe it could have Authorised or appointed some member of theirs whereof there be many abler men then he to have made their vinâ—ication But this Vindex as little Doggs to plâ—ase their Masters use to bark in token of their sedulity indifferently at strangers till they be rated off unprovoked by me hath fallen upon me without bidding I have been publiquely injured by many of whom I took no notice supposing that that humour would spend it self but seeing it last and grow higher in this writing I now answer I thought it necessary at last to make of some of them and first of this Bishop an Example FINIS
cause it shall be chosen which cause for the most part is deliberation or consultation And therefore consultation is not in vain and indeed the less in vain by how much the election is more necessitated The same answer is to be given to the third supposed inconvenience Namely that admonitions are in vain for admonitions are parts of consultations The admonitor being â— Counsailer for the time to him that is admonished The fourth pretended inconvenience is that praise and dispraise reward and punishment will be in vain To which I answer that for praise and dispraise they depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised or dispraised For what is it else to praise but to say a thing is good Good I say for me or for some body else or for the State and Commonwealth And what is it to say an action is good but to say it is as I would wish or as another would have it or according to the will of the State that is to say according to Law Does J. D. think that no action can please me or him or the Common-wealth that should proceed from necessity Things may be therefore necessary and yet praise-worthy as also necessary and yet dispraised and neither of both in vain because praise and dispraise and likewise reward and punishment do by example make and conform the will to good or evill It was a very great praise in my opinion thaâ— Velleius Paterculus gives Cato where he sayes he was â—â—od by Nature Et quia aliter esse non potuit To his fift and sixt inconvenience that Councells Arts Arms Books Instruments Study Medicines and the like would be superfluous the same answer servâ— that to the former That is to say that this consequence if the effect shall necessarily come to pass then it shall come to pass without its cause is a false one And those things named Councells Arts Arms c. are the causes of those effects J. D. NOthing is more familiar with T. H. than to decline an Argument But I will put it into form for him â— The first inconvenience is thus preffed Those Lawes are unjust and tyrannical which do prescribe things absolutely impossible in themselves to be done and punish men for not doing of them But supposing T. H. his opinion of the necessity of all things to be true all Lawes do prescribe absolute impossibilities to be done and punish men for not doing of them The former proposition is so clear that it cannot be denied Just Lawes are the Ordinances of right Reason but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not the Ordinances of right Reason Just Laws are instituted for the publick good but those Lawes which prescribe absolute impossibilities are not instituted for the publick good Just Lawes do shew unto a man what is to be done and what is to be shunned But those Laws which prescribe impossibilities do not direct a man what he is to do and what he is to shun The Minor is as evident for if his opinion be true all actions all transgressions are determined antecedently inevitably to be done by a natural and necessary flux of extrinsecal causes Yea even the will of man and the reason it self is thus determined And therefore whatsoever Lawes do prescribe any thing to be done which is not done or to be left undone which is done do prescribe absolute impossibilities and punish men for not doing of impossibilities In all his answer there is not one word to this Argument but onely to the conclusion He saith that not the necessity but the will to break the Law makes the action unjust I ask what makes the will to break the Law is it not his necessity What gets he by this A perverse will causeth injustice and necessity causeth a perverse wilf He saith the Law regardeth the will but not the precedent causes of action To what proposition to what tearm is this answer he neither denies nor distinguisheth First the Question here is not what makes actions to be unjust but what makes Lawes to be unjust So his answer is impertinent It is likewise untrue for First that will which the Law regards is not such a will as T. H. imagineth It is a free will not a determined necessitated will a rational will not a brutish will Secondly the Law doth look upon precedent causes as well as the voluntariness of the action If a child before he be seven years old or have the use of reason in some childish quarrell do willingly stab another whereof we have seen experience yet the Law looks not upon it as an act of murther because there wanted a power to deliberate and consequently true liberty Man-slaughter may be as voluntary as murther and commonly more voluntary because being done in hot blood there is the less reluctation yet the Law considers that the former is done out of some sudden passion without serious deliberation and the other out of prepensed malice and desire of revenge and therefore condemns murther as more wilful and more panishable than Man-slaughtter b He saith that no Law can possibly be unjust And I say that this is to deny the conclusion which deserves no reply But to give him satisfaction I will follow him in this also If he intended no more but that unjust Lawes are not genuine Lawes nor bind to active obedience because they are not the ordinations of right Reason nor instituted for the common good nor prescribe that which ought to be done he said truly but nothing at all to his purpose But if he intend as he doth that there are no Lawes de facto which are the ordinances of reason erring instituted for the common hurt and prescribing that which ought not to be done he is much mistaken Pharaohs Law to drown the Male Children of the Israelites Exod. 1. 22. Nebuckadnezzars Law that whosoever did not fall down and worship the golden Image which he had set up should be cast into the fiery furnace Dan. 3. 4 Darius his Law that whosoever should ask a Petition of any God or man for thirty dayes save of the King should be cast into the Den of Lions Dan. 6. 7. Ahashuerosh his Law to destroy the Jewish Nation root and branch Esther 3. 13. The Pharisees Law that whosoever confesseth Christ should be excommunicated John 9. 22. were all unjust Lawes c The ground of this errour is as great an errour it self Such an art be hath learned of repacking Paradoxes which is this That every man makes by his consent the Law which he is bound to keep If this were true it would preserve them if not from being unjust yet from being injurious But it is not true The positive Law of God conteined in the old and new Testament The Law of Nature written in our hearts by the finger of God The Lawes of Conquerors who come in by the power of the Sword The Laws of our Ancesters which were made before we were
born do all oblige us to the observation of them yet to none of all these did we give our actual consent Over and above all these exceptions he builds upon a wrong foundation that all Magestrates at first were elective The first Governours were Fathers of Families And when those petty Princes could not afford competent protection and security to their subjects many of them did resign their several and respective interists into the hands of one joint Father of the Country And though his ground had been true that all first Legislators were elective which is false yet his superstructure fails for it was done in hope and trust that they would make just Lawes If Magistrates abuse this trust and deceive the hopes of the people by making tyrannical Lawes yet it is without their consent A precedent trust doth not justifie the subsequent errours and abuses of a Trustee He who is duely elected a Legislator may exercise his Legislative power unduely The peoples implicite consent doth not render the tyrannical Lawes of their Legislators to be just d But his chiefest answer is that an action forhidden though it proceed from necessary causes yet if it were done willingly it may be justly punished which according to his custome he proves by an instance A man necessitated to steal by the strength of temptation yet if he steal willingly is justly put to death Here are two things and both of them untrue First he fails in his assertion Indeed we suffer justly for those necessities which we our selves have contracted by our own fault but not for extrinsecal antecedent necessities w ch were imposed upon us without our fault If that Law do not oblige to punishment which is not intimated because the subject is invincibly ignorant of it How much less that Law which prescribes absolute impossibilities unless perhaps invincible necessity be not as strong a plea as invincible ignorance That which he adds if it were done willingly though it be of great moment if it be rightly understood yet in his sense that is if a mans will be not in his own disposition and if his willing do not come upon him according to his will nor according to any thing else in his power it weighs not half so much as the least feather in all his horse-load For if that Law be unjust and tyrannical which commands a man to do that which is impossible for him to do then that Law is likewise unjust and tyrannical which commands him to wil that which is impossible for him to will Secondly his instance supposeth an untruth and is a plain begging of the Question No man is extrinsecally antecedently and irresistibly necessitated by temptation to steal The Devil may sollicite us but he cannot necessitate us He hath a faculty of perswading but not a power of compelling Nosignem habemus spiritus â—â—ammam ciet as Nazi anzen He blowes the coles but the fire is our own Mordet duntaxat sese in fauces illius objicientens as St. Austin he bites not until we thrust our selves into his mouth He may propose he may suggest but he cannot move the will effectively Resist the Devil and he will flie from you Jam. 4. 7. By faith we are able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked Eph. 6. 16. And if Sathan who can both propose the object and choose out the fittest times and places to work upon our frailties and can suggest reasons yet cannot necessitate the will which is most certain then much less can outward objects do it alone They have no natural efficacy to determine the will Well may they be occasions but they cannot be causes of evil The sensitive appetite may engender a proclivity to steal but not a necessity to steal And if it should produce a kind of necessity yet it is but Moral not Natural Hypothetical not Absolute Coexistent not Antecedent from our selves nor Extrinsecall This necessity or rather proclivity was fâ—â—â— in its causes we our selves by our own negligence in not opposing our passions when we should and might have freely given it a kind of dominion over us Admit that some sudden passions may and do extraordinarily surprise us And therefore we say motus primo primi the first motions are not alwayes in our power neither are they free yet this is but very rarely and it is our own fault that they do surprise us Neither doth the Law punish the first motion to theft but the advised act of stealing The intention makes the thief But of this more largely Numb 25. e He pleads moreover that the Law is a cause of justice that it frames the wills of men to justice and that the punishment of one doth conduce to the preservation of many All this is most true of a just Law justly executed But this is no god-a-mercy to T. H. his opinion of absolute necessity If all actions and all events be predetermined Naturally Necessarily Extrinsecally how should the Law frame men morally to good actions He leaves nothing for the Law to do but either that which is done already or that which is impossible to be done If a man be chained to every individual act which he doth and from every act which he doth not by indissolvible bonds of inevitable necessity how should the Law either deterre him or frame him If a Dog be chained fast to a post the sight of a rod cannot draw him from it Make a thousand Lawes that the fire shall not burn yet it will burn And whatsoever men do according to T. H. they do it as necessarily as the fire burneth Hang up a thousand Theevs and if a man be determined inevitably to steal he must steal notwithstanding f He addes that the sufferings imposed by the Law upon delinquents respect not the evil act past but the good to come and that the putting of a delinquent to death by the Magistrate for any crime whatsoever cannot be justified before God except there be a reall intention to benefit others by his example The truth is the punishing of delinquents by Law respecteth both the evil act past and the good to come The ground of it is the evil act past the scope or end of it is the good to come The end without the ground cannot justifie the act A bad intention may make a good action bad but a good intention cannot make a bad action good It is not lawful to do evil that good may come of it nor to punish an innoceut person for the admonition of others that is to fall into a certain crime for fear of an uncertain Again though there were no other end of penalties inflicted neither probatory nor castigatory nor exemplary but only vindicatory to satisfie the Law out of a zeal of Justice by giving to every one his own yet the action is just and warrantable Killing as it is considered in it self without all undue circumstances was never prohibited to the lawful Magistrate who is the Vicegerent or
is not to say children and mad men want true Liberty that is the liberty to do as they will nor to say that men of judgement or the Admonitor himself hath a dominion over his own actions more than children or mad men for their actions are also voluntary or that when he admonisheth he hath alwayes the use of reason though he have the use of deliberation which children fools mad men and beasts also have There be therefore reasons under heaven which the Bishop knowes not of Whereas I had said that things necessary may be praise-worthy and to praise a thing is to say it is good He distinguisheth and saith n True but this goodness is not a Metaphysical goodness so whatsoever hath a being is good nor a Natural goodness The praise of it passeth wholly to the Author of Nature c. But a Moral goodness or a goodness of actions rather than of things The Moral goodness of an action is the conformity of it to right Reason c. There hath been in the Schooles derived from Aristotles Metaphysicks an old Proverb rather than an Axiome Ens Bonum et verum convertuntur From hence the Bishop hath taken this notion of a Metaphysical goodness and his doctrine that whatsoever hath a being is good and by this interpreteth the words of Gen. 1. God saw all that he had made and it was very good But the reason of those words is that Good is relative to those that are pleased with it and not of absolute signification to all men God therefore saith that all that he had made was very good because he was pleased with the Creatures of his own making But if all things were absolutely good we should be all pleased with their Being which we are not when the actions that depend upon their Being are hurtful to us And therefore to speak properly nothing is good or evil but in regard of the action that proceedeth from it and also of the person to whom it doth good or hurt Satan is evil to us because he seeketh our destruction but good to God because he executeth his commandements And so his Metaphysical goodness is but an idle tearm and not the member of a distinction And as for Natural goodness and evilness that also is but the goodness and evilness of Actions as some Hearbs are good because they nourish others evil because they poyson us and one Horse is good because he is gentle strong and carrieth a man easily another bad because he resisteth goeth hard or otherwise displeaseth us and that quality of gentleness if there were no more Lawes amongst men than there is amongst beasts would be as much a moral good in a horse or other beast as in a man T is the Law from whence proceeds the difference between the Moral and the Natural goodness so that it is well enough said by him that Moral goodness is the conformity of an action with right Reason and better said than meant for this right Reason which is the Law is no otherwise certainly Right than by our making it so by our approbation of it and voluntary subjection to it For the Law-makers are men and may erre and think that Law which they make is for the good of the people sometimes when it is not And yet the â—â—â—ions of subjects if they be conformable to the Law are Morally good and yet cease not to be Naturally good and the praise of them passeth to the Author of Nature as well as of any other good whatsoever From whence it appears that Moral praise is not as he sayes from the good use of liberty but from obedience to the Lawes nor Moral dispraise from the bad use of liberty but from disobedience to the Lawes And for his consequence If all things be necessary then Moral Liberty is quite taken away and with it all true praise and dispraise there is neither truth in it nor argument offered for it for there is nothing more necessary than the consequence of voluntary actions to the Will. And whereas I had said that to say a thing is good is to say it is as I or another would wish or as the State would have it or according to the Law of the Land he answers that I mistake infinitely And his reason is because we often wish what is profitable or delightful without regarding as we ought what is honest There is no man living that seeth all the consequences of an action from the beginning to the end whereby to weigh the whole sum of the good with the whole sum of the evill consequents We choose no further than we can weigh That is good to every man which is so farre good as he can see All the reall good which we call honest and Morally vertuâ—us is that which is not repugnant to the Law Civil or Natural for the Law is all the right Reason we have and though he as often as it disagreeth with his own reason denie it is the infallible rule of Moral goodness The reason whereof is this that because neither mine nor the Bishops reason is right Reason fit to be a rule of our Moral actions we have therefore set up over our selves a Soveraign Governour and agreed that his Lawes shall be unto us whatsoever they be in the phace of Right roason to dictate to us what is really good in the same manner as men in playing turn up Trump and as in playing their game their Morality consisteth in not renouncing so in our civil conversation our Morality is all coâ—â—â—â—ned in not disobeying of the Lawes To my question whether nothing could please him that proceeded from Necessity he answers yes The fire pleaseth him when he is cold and he sayes it is good fire but does not praise it Morally He praiseth he sayes first the Creator of the fire and then him who provided it He does well yet he praiseth the fire when he saith it is good though not Morally He does not say it is a just fire or a wise or a well manered fire obedient to the Lawes but these Attributes it seems he gives to God as if justice were not of his nature but of his manners And in praising Morally him that provided it he seemes to say he would not say the fire was good if he were not Morally good that did provide it To that which I had answered concerning reward and punishment he hath replied he sayes sufficiently before and that that which he discoursenh here is not only to answer me but also to satisfie himself and saith o Though it be not urged by him yet I do acknowledge that I find some improper and analogical rewards and punishments used to brute beasts as the Hunter rewards his Dog c. For my part I am too dull to perveave the difference between those rewards used to brute beasts and those that are used to men If they be not properly called rewards and punishments let him give them their proper name