(_a_) “This short section might pass, but for two things; one is, that
he confounds a voluntary act with a free act.” I do indeed take all
voluntary acts to be free, and all free acts to be voluntary; but withal
that all acts, whether free or voluntary, if they be acts, were
necessary before they were acts. But where is the error? ‘A free act’,
saith he, ‘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.’ So that my error lies in this, that I distinguish not
between a rational will and a sensitive appetite in the same man. As if
the appetite and will in man or beast were not the same thing, or that
sensual men and beasts did not deliberate, and choose one thing before
another, in the same manner that wise men do. Nor can it be said of
wills, that one is rational, the other sensitive; but of men. And if it
be granted that deliberation is always (as it is not) rational, there
were no cause to call men rational more than beasts. For it is manifest
by continual experience, that beasts do deliberate.
(_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.” Why so? ‘Because’, saith he, ‘if every agent be
necessitated to act what he doth act by extrinsical causes, then he is
no more free before he deliberates, or whilst he deliberates, than he is
after’. But this is a false consequence; he should have inferred
thus:--“then he is no less necessitated before he deliberates than he is
after”; which is true, and yet nevertheless he is more free. But taking
necessity to be inconsistent with liberty, which is the question between
us: instead of _necessitated_ he puts in _not free_. And therefore to
say ‘a man is free till he hath made an end of deliberating’, is no
contradiction to absolute and antecedent necessity. And whereas he adds
presently after, that I ascribe the necessitation of a man in free acts
to his own deliberation, and in indeliberate acts to his last thoughts:
he mistakes the matter. For I ascribe all necessity to the universal
series or order of causes, depending on the first cause eternal: which
the Bishop understandeth, as if I had said in his phrase, to a special
influence of extrinsical causes; that is, understandeth it not at all.
(_c_) “Again, ‘liberty,’ saith he, ‘is an absence of extrinsical
impediments’: but deliberation doth produce no new extrinsical
impediment; therefore either he is free after deliberation, or he was
not free before.” I cannot perceive in these words any more force of
inference, than of so many other words whatsoever put together at
adventure. But be his meaning what he will, I say not that deliberation
produceth any impediments: for there are no impediments but to the
action, whilst we are endeavouring to do it, which is not till we have
done deliberating. But during the deliberation there arise thoughts in
him that deliberateth, concerning the consequence of the action whereof
he deliberateth, which cause the action following; which are not
impediments to that action which was not done, but the causes of that
which was done. That which followeth in this Number is not intelligible,
by reason of the insignificance of these words, “understanding
directeth; will electeth; hypothetical necessity”; which are but jargon,
and his “divided sense” and “compounded sense”, nonsense. And this also,
“liberty respecteth not future acts only, but present acts also”, is
unintelligible. For how can a man have liberty to do or not to do that
which is at the same instant already done. For where he addeth,
“otherwise God did not freely create the world”, it proves nothing;
because he had the liberty to create it, before it was created. Besides,
it is a profaning of the name of God, to make instances of his
incomprehensible working in a question as this is, merely natural.