_T. H._ Fourthly, that those actions which man is said to do upon
deliberation, are said to be voluntary, and done upon choice and
election. So that voluntary action, and action proceeding from election,
is the same thing. And that of a voluntary agent, it is all one to say
he is free, and to say he hath not made an end of deliberating.
[Sidenote: The Bishop’s reply.]
_J. D._ (_a_) “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 only that which proceeds from the free election
of the rational will after deliberation; but every act that proceeds
from the sensitive appetite of man or beast, without deliberation or
election, is truly voluntary. (_b_) 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 overturns his
whole structure of absolute necessity. For if every agent be
necessitated to act what he doth act by a necessary and natural flux of
extrinsical causes, then he is no more free before he deliberates, or
whilst he deliberates, than he is after; but by T. H.’s confession here,
he is more free whilst he deliberates, than he is after. And so after
all his flourishes, for an absolute or extrinsical necessity, he is glad
to set himself down, and rest contented with an hypothetical 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, No. XXV. What is this to a natural and special
influence of extrinsical causes? (_c_) “Again, ‘liberty’, saith he, ‘is
an absence of extrinsical impediments’; but deliberation doth produce no
new extrinsical impediment; therefore let him choose 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
hypothetical necessity, that the event be such as the understanding hath
directed, and the will elected. But for as much as the understanding
might have directed otherwise, and the will have elected otherwise, this
is far from an absolute necessity. Neither doth liberty respect only
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 whilst it
acts; though in a compounded sense it be not free. Certainly,
deliberation doth constitute, not destroy liberty.