(_a_) “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
elicit act of the will, to be no willing at all, but only some
antecedaneous (he might as well have said, antecedent) inclination.” To
confound the faculty of the will with the will, were to confound a
_will_ with _no will_; for the faculty of the will is no will; the act
only which he calls _volition_, is the will. As a man that sleepeth hath
the _power_ of _seeing_, and _seeth not_, nor hath for that time any
_sight_; so also he hath the _power_ of willing, but _willeth nothing_,
nor hath for that time any _will_. I must therefore have departed very
much from my own principles, if I have confounded the _faculty_ of the
_will_ with the _act_ of _volition_. He should have done well to have
shown where I confounded them. It is true, I make the will to be the
last part of deliberation; but it is that will which maketh the action
voluntary, and therefore needs must be the last. But for the preceding
variations of the will to do and not to do, though they be so many
several wills, contrary to and destroying one another, they usually are
called _intentions_; and therefore they are nothing to the will, of
which we dispute, that maketh an action voluntary. And though a man have
in every long deliberation a great many _wills_ and _nills_, they use to
be called inclinations, and the last only _will_ which is immediately
followed by the voluntary action. But nevertheless, both he that hath
those intentions, and God that seeth them, reckoneth them for so many
wills.
(_b_) “According to this doctrine, concupiscence with consent should be
no sin; for that which is not truly willed, is not a sin.” This is no
consequent to my doctrine: for I hold that they are, in the sight of
God, so many consents, so many willings, which would have been followed
by actions, if the actions had been in their power. It had been fitter
for a man in whom is required gravity and sanctity more than ordinary,
to have chosen some other kind of instance. But what meaneth he by
_concupiscence with consent_? Can there be concupiscence without
consent? It is the consent itself. There may be also a lawful
concupiscence with consent. For concupiscence makes not the sin, but the
unlawfulness of satisfying such concupiscence; and not the consent, but
the will and design to prosecute that which a man knoweth to be
unlawful. An appetite to another man’s bread, is concupiscence; and
though it be with consent to eat, it is no sin; but the design to take
it from the other, notwithstanding that he may fail in his design, that
is the sin. And this instance might have served his turn as well as the
other; and for consent, if he had understood the truth, he might have
put design.