it an indivisible point To this I answer that as soon as I can conceive Eternity an indivisible point or any thing but an everlasting succession I will renounce all I have written in this subject I know St. Thomas Aquinas calls eternity Nunc stans an ever abiding now which is easy enough to say but though I fain would I never could conceive it They that can are more happy than I. But in the mean time he alloweth hereby all men to be of my opinion save onely those that conceive in their minds a nunc stans which I think are none I understand as little how it can be true that God is not just but Justice it self not wise but Wisedom it self not eternall but Eternity it self Nor how he concludes thence that Eternity is a ponit indivisible and not a succession Nor in what sense it can be said that an infinite point c. wherein is no succession can comprehend all times though time be successive These phrases I find not in the Scripture I wonder therefore what was the designe of the School-men to bring them up unless they thought a man could not be a true Christian unless his understanding be first strangled with such hard sayings And thus much in answer to his discourse wherein I think not onely his squadrons but also his reserves of distinctions are defeated And now your Lordship shall have my doctrine concerning the same question with my reasons for it positively and briefly as I can without any tearmes of Art in plain English J. D. THat poor discourse which I mention was not written against any Divines but in way of examination of a French Treatise which your Lordships Brother did me the honour to shew me at York My assertion is most true that we ought not to desert a certain truth because we are not able to comprehend the certain manner Such a truth is that which I maintain that the will of man in ordinary actions is free from extrinsecall determination A truth demonstrable in reason received and believed by all the world And therefore though I be not able to comprehend or express exactly the certain manner how it consists together with Gods Eternall Prescience and Decrees which exceed my weak capacity yet I ought to adhere to that truth which is manifest But T. H. his opinion of the absoute necessity of all events by reason of their antecedent determination in their extrinsecall and necessary causes is no such certain Truth but an innovation a strange paradox without probable grounds rejected by all Authours yea by all the world Neither is the manner how the second causes do operate so obscure or so transcendent above the reach of reason as the Eternall Decrees of God are And therefore in both these respects he cannot challenge the same priviledge I am in profession of an old truth derived by inheritance or succession from mine ancestors And therefore though I were not able to clear every quirk in Law yet I might justly hold my possession untill a better title were shewed for another He is no old Possessor but a new Pretender and is bound to make good his claime by evident proofs not by weak and inconsequent suppositions or inducements such as those are which he useth here of praises dispraises rewards punishments the memory of good and evill sequells and events which may incline the will but neither can nor do necessitate the will Nor by uncertain and accidentall inferences such as this The memory of praises dispraises rewards punishments good and evill sequelis do make us he should say dispose us to elect what we elect but the memory of these things is from the sense and the sense from the operation of the externall objects and the Agency of externall octjects is onely from God therefore all actions even of free and voluntary Agents are necessary To pass by all the other great imperfections which are to be found in this Sorite It is just like that old Sophisticall piece He that drinks well sleeps well he that sleeps well thinks no hurt he that thinks no hurt lives well therefore he that drinks well lives well In the very last passage of my discourse I proposed mine own private opinion how it might be made appear that the Eternall Prescience and Decrees of God are consistent with true liberty and contingency And this I set down in as plain tearmes as I could or as so profound a speculation would permit which is almost wholly misunderstood by T. H. and many of my words wrested to a wrong sense As first where I speak of the aspect of God that is his view his knowledge by which the most free and contingent actions were manifest to him from eternity Heb. 4.11 All things are naked and open to his eyes and this not discursively but intuitively not by externall species but by his internall Essence He confounds this with the Will and the Decrees of God Though he found not the word Aspect before in this discourse he might have found prescience Secondly he chargeth me that hitherto I have maintained that Liberty and the Decrees of God are irreconcilable If I have said any such thing my heart never went along with my pen. No but his reason why he chargeth me on this manner is because I have maintained that Liberty and the absolute necessity of all things are irreconciliable That is true indeed What then Why saith he Necessity and Gods Decrees are all one How all one that were strange indeed Necessity may be a consequent of Gods Decrees it cannot be the Decree it self But to cut his argument short God hath decreed all effects which come to pass in time yet not all after the same manner but according to the distinct natures capacities and conditions of his creatures which he doth not destroy by his Decree Some he acteth with some he cooperateth by speciall influence and some he onely permitteth Yet this is no idle or bare permission seeing he doth concurre both by way of generall influence giving power to act and also by disposing all events necessary free and contingent to his own glory Thirdly he chargeth me that I allow all men to be of his opinion save onely those that conceive in their minds a Nunc stans or how eternity is an indivisible point rather than an everlasting succession But I have given no such allowance I know there are many other wayes proposed by Divines for reconciling the Eternall Prescience and Decrees of God with the Liberty and Contingency of second causes some of which may please other judgments better than this of mine Howsoever though a man could comprehend none of all these wayes yet remember what I said that a certain truth ought not to be rejected because we are not able in respect of our weakness to understand the certain manner or reason of it I know the Load-stone hath an attractive power to draw the Iron to it And yet I know not how it
by reason whether this or that definitely considered be a good and fit means or indefinitely what are good and fit means to be chosen for attaining some wished end Numb 27. T. H. THirdly I conceive that in all deliberations that is to say in all alternate succession of contrary appetites the last is that which we call the Will and is immediatly before the doing of the action or next before the doing of it become impossible All other appetites to do and to quit that come upon a man during his deliberation are usually called intentions and inclinations but not wills there being but one will which also in this case may be called last will though the intention change often J. D. STill here is nothing but confusion he confounds the faculty of the will with the act of volition he makes the will to be the last part of deliberation He makes the intention which is a most proper and elicite act of the will or a willing of the end as it is to be attained by certain means to be no willing at all but onely some antecedaneous inclination or propension He might as well say that the uncertain agitation of the needle hither and thither to find out the Pole and the resting or fixing of it self directly towards the Pole were both the same thing But the grossest mistake is that he will acknowledge no act of a mans will to be his will but onely the last act which he calls the last will If the first were no will how comes this to be the last will According to this doctrine the will of a man should be as unchangeable as the Will of God at least so long as there is a possibility to effect it According to this doctrine concupiscence with consent should be no sin for that which is not truly willed is not a sin Or rather should not be at all unless either the act followed or were rendred impossible by some intervening circumstances According to this doctrine no man can say this is my will because he knowes not yet whether it shall be his last appeal The truth is there be many acts of the will both in respect of the means and of the end But that act which makes a mans actions to be truly free is Election which is the deliberate chosing or refusing of this or that means or the acceptation of one means before another where divers are represented by the understanding Numb 28. T. H. FOurthly that those actions which man is said to do upon deliberation are said to be voluntary and done upon choise and election So that voluntary action and action proceeding from election is the same thing And that of a voluntary Agent 't is all one to say he is free and to say he hath not made an end of deliberating J. D. THis short Section might pass without an animadversion but for two things The one is that he confounds a voluntary act with a free act A free act is onely that which proceeds from the free election of the rationall will after deliberation but every act that proceeds from the sensitive appetite of man or beast without deliberation or election is truly voluntary The other thing observable is his conclusion that it is all one to say a man is free and to say he hath not made an end of deliberating Which confession of his overturnes his whole structure of absolute necessity for if every Agent be necessitated to act what he doth act by a necessary and naturall flux of extrinsecall causes then he is no more free before he deliberates or whilest he deliberates than he is after but by T. H. his confession here he is more free whilest he deliberates than he is after And so after all his flourishes for an absolute or extrinsecall necessity he is glad to fit himself down and rest contented with an hypotheticall necessity which no man ever denied or doubted of Ascribing the necessitation of a man in free acts to his own deliberation and in indeliberate acts to his last thought Numb 25. what is this to a naturall and speciall influence of extrinsecall causes Again Liberty saith he is an absence of extrinsecall impediments but deliberation doth produce no new extrinsecall impediments therefore let him chose which part he will either he is free after deliberation by his own doctrine or he was not free before Our own deliberation and the direction of our own understanding and the election of our own will do produce an hypotheticall necessity that the event be such as the understanding hath directed and the will elected But forasmuch as the understanding might have directed otherwise and the will have elected otherwise this is far from an absolute necessity Neither doth liberty respect onely future acts but present acts also Otherwise God did not freely create the world In the same instant wherein the will elects it is free according to a priority of Nature though not of time to elect otherwise And so in a divided sense the will is free even whilest it acts though in a compounded sense it be not free Certainly deliberation doth constitute not destroy liberty Numb 29. T. H. FIftly I conceive liberty to be rightly defined in this manner Liberty is the absence of all the impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and in the intrinsecall quality of the Agent As for example the water is said to descend freely or to have liberty to descend by the Chanell of the River because there is no impediment that way but not across because the banks are impediments And though water cannot ascend yet men never say it wants the liberty to ascend but the faculty or power because the impediment is in the nature of the water and intrinsecall So also we say he that is tied wants the liberty to go because the impediment is not in him but in his hands where as we say not so of him that is sick or lame because the impediment is in himself J. D. HOw that should be a right definition of liberty which comprehends neither the Genus nor the difference neither the matter nor the forme of liberty which doth not so much as accidentally describe liberty by its marks and tokens How a reall faculty or the Elective power should be defined by a negation or by an ababsence is past my understanding and contrary to all the rules of right Reason which I have learned Negatives cannot explicate the nature of things defined By this definition a stone hath liberty to ascend into the aire because there is no outward impediment to hinder it and so a violent act may be a free act Just like his definition are his instances of the liberty of the water to descend down the Channell and a sick or a lame mans liberty to goe The later is an impotence and not a power or a liberty The former is so far from being a free act that it is scarce a naturall act
hand Secondly he makes but an empty shew of a power in the will either to write or not to write If it be precisely and inevitably determined in all occurrences whatsoever what a man shall will and what he shall not will what he shall write and what he shall not write to what purpose is this power God and Nature never made any thing in vain but vain and frustraneous is that power which never was and never shall be deduced into Act. Either the agent is determined before he acteth what he shall will and what he shall not will what he shall act and what he shall not act and then he is no more free to act than he is to will Or els he is not determined and then there is no necessity No effect can exceed the vertue of its cause if the action be free to write or to forbear the power or faculty to will or nill must of necessity be more free Quod efficit tale illud magis est tale If the will be determined the writing or not writing is likewise determined and then he should not say he may write or he may forbear but he must write or he must forbear Thirdly this answer contradicts the sense of all the world that the will of man is determined without his will or without any thing in his power Why do we ask men whether they will do such a thing or not Why do we represent reasons to them Why do we pray them Why do we intreat them Why do we blame them if their will come not upon them according to their will Wilt thou be made clean said our Saviour to the Paralitike person John 5.6 to what purpose if his will was extrinsecally determined Christ complains We have piped unto you and ye have not danced Matth. 11.17 How could they help it if their wills were determined without their wills to forbear And Matth. 23.37 I would have gathered your children together as the Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings but ye would not How easily might they answer according to T. H. his doctrine Alas blame not us Our wills are not in our own power or disposition if they were we would thankfully embrace so great a favour Most truly said St. Austin De lib. Au. l. 3. c. 30. Our will should not be a will at all if it were not in our power This is the belief of all mankind which we have not learned from our Tutors but is imprinted in our hearts by nature We need not turn over any obscure books to find out this truth The Poets chant it in the Theaters the Shepheards in the mountains The Pastors teach it in their Churches the Doctors in the Universities The common people in the marketts and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto it except an handfull of men who have poisoned their intellectualls with paradoxicall principles Fourthly this necessity which T. H. hath devised which is grounded upon the necessitation of a mans will without his will is the worst of all others and is so far from lessening those difficulties and absurdities which flow from the fatall destiny of the Stoicks that it increaseth them and rendreth them unanswerable No man blameth fire for burning whole Cities No man taxeth poison for destroying men but those persons who apply them to such wicked ends If the will of man be not in his own disposition he is no more a free agent than the fire or the poison Three things are required to make an act or omission culpable First that it be in our power to perform it or forbear it Secondly that we be obliged to perform it or forbear it respectively Thirdly that we omit that which we ought to have done or do that which we ought to have omitted No man sins in doing those things which he could not shun or forbearing those things which never were in his power T. H. may say that besides the power men have also an appetite to evill objects which renders them culpable It is true but if this appetite be determined by anothers not by themselves Or if they have not the use of reason to curb or restrain their appetites they sin no more than a stone descending downeward according to its naturall appetite or the brute beasts who commit voluntary errours in following their sensitive appetites yet sin not The question then is not whether a man be necessitated to will or nill yet free to act or forebear But having the ambiguous acceptions of the word free the question is plainly this whether all agents and all events natural civill moral for we speak not now of the conversion of a sinner that concerns not this question be predetermined extrinsecally and inevitably without their own concurrence in the determination so as all actions and events which either are or shall be cannot but be nor can be otherwise after any other manner or in any other place time number measure order nor to any other end than they are And all this in respect of the supreme cause or a concourse of extrinsecall causes determining them to one So my preface remaines yet unanswered Either I was extrinsecally and inevitably predetermined to write this discourse without any concurrence of mine in the determination and without any power in me to change or oppose it or I was not so predetermined If I was then I ought not to be blamed for no man is justly blamed for doing that which never was in his power to shun If I was not so predetermined then mine actions and my will to act are neither compelled nor necessitated by any extrinsecall causes but I elect and choose either to write or to forbear according to mine own will and by mine own power And when I have resolved and elected it is but a necessity of supposition which may and doth consist with true liberty not a real anteeedent necessity The two hornes of this Dilemma are so strait that no mean can be given nor room to pass between them And the two consequences are so evident that in stead of answering he is forced to decline them Numb 4. J. D. AND so to fall in hand with the question without any further proems or prefaces By liberty I do understand neither a liberty from sin nor a liberty from misery nor a liberty from servitude nor a liberty from violence but I understand a liberty from necessity or rather from necessitation that is an universall immunity from all inevitability and determination to one whether it be of the exercise only which the Schooles call a liberty of contradiction and is found in God and in the good and bad Angells that is not a liberty to do both good and evill but a liberty to do or not to do this or that good this or that evill respectively or whether it be a liberty of specification and exercise also which the Schooles call liberty of contrariety and is found in men indowed with reason and
be a fit means but not the onely meanes to atteine the desired end In these cases no man can doubt but that the will may choose or not choose this or that indifferently Yea though the understanding shall judge one of these means to be more expedient than another yet for as much as in the less expedient there is found the reason of good the will in respect of that dominion which it hath over it self may accept that which the understanding judgeth to be less expedient and refuse that which it judgeth to be more expedient Fourthly sometimes the will doth not will the end so efficaciously but that it may be and often is deterred from the prosecution of it by the difficulty of the means and notwithstanding the judgment of the understanding the will may still suspend its own act Fiftly supposing but not granting that the will did necessarily follow the last dictate of the understanding yet this prooves no antecedent necessity but coexistent with the act no extrinsecall necessity the will and understanding being but two faculties of the same soul no absolute necessity but meerly upon supposition And therefore the same Authors who maintain that the judgment of the understanding doth necessarily determine the will do yet much more earnestly oppugne T. H. his absolute necessity of all occurrences Suppose the will shall apply the understanding to deliberate and not require a review Suppose the dictate of the understanding shall be absolute not this or that indifferently nor this rather than that comparatively but this positively not this freely but this necessarily And suppose the will do well efficaciously and do not suspend its own act Then here is a necessity indeed but neither absolute nor extrinsecall nor antecedent flowing from a concourse of causes without our selves but a necessity upon supposition which we do readily grant So far T. H. is wide from the truth whilest he mainteines either that the apprehension of a greater good doth necessitate the will or that this is an absolute necessity Lastly whereas he saith that the nature of election doth consist in following our hopes and feares I cannot but observe that there is not one word of Art in this whole Treatise which he useth in the right sense I hope it doth not proceed out of an affectation of singularity nor out of a contempt of former Writers nor out of a desire to take in sunder the whole frame of Learning and new mould it after his own mind It were to be wished that at least he would give us a new Dictionary that we might understand his sense But because this is but touched here sparingly and upon the by I will forbear it untill I meet with it again in its proper place And for the present it shall suffice to say that hopes and feares are common to brute beasts but election is a rationall act and is proper only to man who is Sanctius his animal mentisque capacius altae T. H. THE second place of Scripture is Josh 24.15 The third is 2 Sam. 24.12 whereby t is cleerely prooved that there is election in man but not prooved that such election was not necessitated by the hopes and feares and considerations of good and bad to follow which depend not on the will nor are subject to election And therefore one answer serves all such places if they were a thousand J. D. THis answer being the very same with the former word for word which hath already been sufficiently shaken in pieces doth require no new reply Numb 8. T. H. SUpposing it seemes I might answer as I have done that necessity and election might stand together and instance in the actions of Children fools and brute beasts whose fancies I might say are necessitated and determined to one before these his proofs out of Scripture he desires to prevent that instance and therefore sayes that the actions of children fools mad-men and beasts are indeed determined but that they proceed not from election nor from free but from spontaneous Agents As for example that the Bee when it maketh honey does it spontaneously And when the Spider makes his webb he does it spontaneously and not by election Though I never meant to ground any answer upon the experience of what Children foools mad-men and beasts do yet that your Lordship may understand what can be meant by spontaneous and how it differs from voluntary I will answer that distinction and shew that it fighteth against its fellow Arguments Your Lordship is therefore 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 mans 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 ones 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 therfore 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 be therefore spontaneous of which nevertheless as he thinks we never consulted nor deliberated of in our selves as when making no question nor any the least doubt in the world but that the thing we are about is good we eat or walk or in anger strike or revile which he thinks spontaneous but not voluntary nor elective actions And with such kind of actions he sayes necessitation may stand but not from such as are voluntary and proceed upon election and deliberation Now if I make it appear to you that even these actions which he sayes proceed from spontaneity and which he ascribes only to fools Children mad-men and beasts proceed from deliberation and election 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 ordinary men are Then his 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 proove And first your Lordships own experience furnishes you with proof enough that horses doggs and other brute beasts do demurre oftentimes upon the way they are to take The horse retiring from some strange figure he sees and comming on again to avoid the spur And what els does man that deliberateth but one while proceed toward action another while retire from it as the hope of greater good drawes him or the fear of greater evill drives him A Child may be so young as to do all which it does without all deliberation but that is but till it chance to be hurt by doing somewhat or till it be
just by reason of his absolute dominion and irresistible power As fire doth assimilate other things to it self and convert them into the nature of fire This were to make the eternall Law a Lesbian rule Sin is defined to be that which is done or said or thought contrary to the eternall Law But by this doctrine nothing is done nor said nor thought contrary to the will of God St. Anselm said most truly then the will of man is good and just and right when he wills that which God would have him to will but according to this doctrine every man alwayes wills that which God would have him to will If this be true we need not pray Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven T. H. hath devised a new kind of heaven upon earth The worst is it is an heaven without Justice Justice is a constant and perpetuall act of the will to give every one his own But to inflict punishment for those things which the Judge himself did determine and necessitate to be done is not to give every one his own right punitive Justice is a relation of equallity and proportion between the demerit and the punishment But supposing this opinion of absolute and universall necessity there is no demerit in the world we use to say that right springs from Law and fact as in this Syllogism Every thief ought to be punished there 's the Law But such an one is a thief there 's the fact therefore he ought to be punished there 's the right But this opinion of T. H. grounds the right to be punished neither upon Law nor upon Fact but upon the irresistible power of God Yea it overturneth as much as in it lies all Law First the eternall Law which is the ordination of divine Wisdom by which all Creatures are directed to that end which is convenient for them That is not to necessitate them to eternall flames Then the Law participated which is the ordination of right reason instituted for the common good to shew unto man what he ought to do and what he ought not to do To what purpose is it to shew the right way to him who is drawn and haled a contrary way by Adamantine bonds of inevitable necessity Lastly howsoever T. H. cries out that God cannot sin yet in truth he makes him to be the principall and most proper cause of all sin For he makes him to be the cause not onely of the Law and of the action but even of the irregularity it self and the difference between the action and the Law wherein the very essence of sin doth consist He makes God to determin Davids will and necessitate him to kill Uriah In causes physically and essentially subordinate the cause of the cause is evermore the cause of the effect These are those deadly fruits which spring from the poisonous root of the absolute necessity of all things which T. H. seeing and that neither the sins of Esau nor Pharaoh nor any wicked person do proceed from the operative but from the permissive will of God And that punishment is an act of justice not of dominion onely I hope that according to his promise he will change his opinion Numb 13. J. D. Proofs of Liberty drawn from reason argument 1 THe first argument is Herculeum or Baculinum drawn from that pleasant passage between Zeno and his man The servant had committed some pettilarceny and the master was cudgelling him well for it The servant thinks to creep under his masters blind-side and pleades for himself That the necessity of destiny did compell him to steal The master answers the same necessity of destiny compells me to beat thee He that denies liberty is fitter to be refuted with rodds than with arguments untill he confess that it is free for him that beates him either to continue striking or to give over that is to have true liberty T. H. OF the Arguments from reason the first is that which he saith is drawn from Zenos beating of his man which is therefore called Argumentum baculinum that is to say a wooden Argument The story is this Zeno held that all actions were necessary His man therefore being for some fault beaten excused himself upon the necessity of it To avoid this excuse his master pleaded likewise the necessity of beating him So that not he that mainteined but he that derided the necessity of things was beaten contrary to that he would infer And the argument was rather withdrawn than drawn from the story J. D. WHether the argument be withdrawn from the story or the answer withdrawn from the argument let the Reader judge T. H. mistakes the scope of the reason the strength whereof doth not lie neither in the authority of Zeno a rigid Stoick which is not worth a button in this cause Nor in the servants being an adversary to Stoicall necessity for it appeares not out of the story that the servant did deride necessity but rather that he pleaded it in good earnest for his own justification Now in the success of the fray we were told even now that no power doth justifie an action but onely that which is irresistible Such was not Zenos And therefore it advantageth neither of their causes neither that of Zeno nor this of T. H. What if the servant had taken the staff out of his masters hand and beaten him soundly would not the same argument have served the man as well as it did the master that the necessity of destiny did compell him to strike again Had not Zeno smarted justly for his Paradox And might not the spectators well have taken up the Judges Apothegm concerning the dispute between Corax and his Schollar An ill egg of an ill bird But the strength of this argument lies partly in the ignorance of Zeno that great Champion of necessity and the beggarliness of his cause which admitted no defence but with a cudgell No man saith the servant ought to be beaten for doing that which he is compelled inevitably to do but I am compelled inevitably to steal The major is so evident that it cannot be denied If a strong man shall take a weak mans hand perforce and do violence with it to a third person he whose hand is forced is innocent and he only culpable who compelled him The minor was Zenos own doctrine what answer made the great patron of destiny to his servant very learnedly he denied the conclusion and cudgelled his servant telling him in effect that though there was no reason why he should be beaten yet there was a necessity why he must be beaten And partly in the evident absurdity of such an opinion which deserves not to be confuted with reasons but with rods There are four things said the Philosoher which ought not to be called into question First such things whereof it is wickedness to doubt as whether the soul be immortall whether there be a God such an one should not be confuted with reasons
the like he answereth not a word more than what is already satisfied And therefore I am silent Numb 15. J. D. argument 3 THirdly let this opinion be once radicated in the minds of men that there is no true liberty and that all things come to pass inevitably and it will utterly destroy the Study of piety Who will bewaile his sinns with teares what will become of that Grief that Zeal that Indignation that holy Revenge which the Apostle speaks of if men be once throughly persuaded that they could not shun what they did A man may grieve for that which he could not help but he will never be brought to bewall that as his own fault which flowed not from his own errour but from an antecedent necessity Who will be carefull or sollicitous to perform obedience that believeth there are inevitable bounds and limits set to all his devotions which he can neither go beyond nor come short of To what end shall he pray God to avert those evills which are inevitable or to confer those favours which are impossible We indeed know not what good or evill shall happen to us but this we know that if all things be necessary our devotions and indeavours cannot alter that which must be In a word the onely reason why those persons who tread in this path of fatall destiny do sometimes pray or repent or serve God is because the light of nature and the strength of reason and the evidence of Scripture do for that present transport them from their ill chosen grounds and expell those Stociall fancies out of their heads A complete Stoick can neither pray nor repent nor serve God to any purpose Either allow liberty or destroy Church as well as Commonwealth Religion as well as Policy T. H. HIs third Argument consisteth in other inconveniences which he saith will follow namely impiety neglicence of Religious duties repentance and zeal to Gods service To which I answer as to the rest that they follow not I must confess if we consider far the greatest part of mankind not as they should be but as they are that is as men whom either the study of acquiring wealth or preferments or whom the appetite of sensuall delights or the impatience of meditating or the rash imbracing of wrong principles have made unapt to discuss the truth of things that the dispute of this question will rather hurt than help their piety And therefore if he had not desired this answer I would not have written it Nor do I write it but in hope your Lordship and he will keep it in private Nevertheless in very truth the necessity of events does not of it self draw with it any impiety at all For piety consisteth onely in two things One that we honour God in our hearts which is that we think of his power as highly as we can for to honour any thing is nothing els but to think it to be of great power The other that we signifie that honour and esteem by our words and actions which is called cultus or worship of God He therefore that thinketh that all things proceed from Gods Eternall Will and consequently are necessary does he not think God Omnipotent does he not esteem of his power as highly as possible which is to honour God as much as can be in his heart Again he that thinketh so is he not more apt by externall acts and words to acknowledge it then he that thinketh otherwise Yet is this externall acknowledgement the same thing which we call worship So this opinion fortifieth piety in both kinds externally internally and therefore is far from destroying it And for repentance which is nothing but a glad returning into the right way after the grief of being out of the way though the cause that made him go astray were necessary yet there is no reason why he should not grieve and again though the cause why he returned into the way were necessary there remaines still the causes of joy So that the necessity of the actions taketh away neither of those parts of repentance grief for the errour nor joy for the returning And for prayer whereas he saith that the necessity of things destroyes prayer I deny it For though prayer be none of the causes that moove Gods will his will being unchangeable yet since we find in Gods Word he will not give his blessings but to those that ask them the motive to prayer is the same Prayer is the gift of God no less than the blessings And the prayer is decreed together in the same decree wherein the blessing is decreed T is manifest that thanksgiving is no cause of the blessing past And that which is past is sure and necessary Yet even amongst men thanks is in use as an acknowledgment of the benefit past though we should expect no new benefit for our gratitude And prayer to God Almighty is but thanksgiving for his blessings in generall and though it precede the particular thing we ask yet it is not a cause or means of it but a signification that we expect nothing but from God in such manner as he not as we will And our Saviour by word of mouth bids us pray Thy will not our will be done and by example teaches us the same for he prayed thus Father if it be thy will let this cup pass c. The end of prayer as of thanksgiving is not to move but to honour God Almighty in acknowledging that what we ask can be effected by him only J. D. I Hope T. H. will be persuaded in time that it is not the Covetousness or Ambition or Sensuallity or Sloth or Prejudice of his Readers which renders this doctrine of absolute necessity dangerous but that it is in its own nature destructive to true godliness And though his answer consist more of oppositions than of solutions yet I will not willingly leave one grain of his matter unweighed First he erres in making inward piety to consist meerly in the estimation of the judgment If this were so what hinders but that the Devills should have as much inward piety as the best Christians for they esteem Gods power to be infinite and tremble Though inward piety do suppose the act of the understanding yet it consisteth properly in the act of the will being that branch of Justice which gives to God the honor which is due unto him Is there no Love due to God no Faith no Hope Secondly he erres in making inward piety to ascribe no glory to God but only the glory of his Power or Omnipotence What shall become of all other the divine attributes and particularly of his Goodness of his Truth of his Justice of his mercy which beget a more true and sincere honour in the heart than greatness it self Magnos facile laudamus bonos lubenter Thirdly this opinion of absolute necessity destroyes the truth of God making him to command one thing openly and to necessitate another privately to chide a