The question is here whether these words ‘a free agent is that, which
when all things needful to the production of the effect are present, can
nevertheless not produce it’, imply a contradiction; as I say it does.
To make it appear no contradiction, he saith: (_a_) “In these words,
‘all things needful’, or ‘all things requisite’, the actual
determination of the will is not included”: as if the will were not
needful nor requisite to the producing of a voluntary action. For to the
production of any act whatsoever, there is needful, not only those
things which proceed from the agent, but also those that consist in the
disposition of the patient. And to use his own instance, it is necessary
to writing, not only that there be pen, ink, paper, &c.; but also a will
to write. He that hath the former, hath all things requisite to write if
he will, but not all things necessary to writing. And so in his other
instances, he that hath men and money, &c. (without that which he
putteth in for a requisite), hath all things requisite to make war if he
will, but not simply to make war. And he in the Gospel that had prepared
his dinner, had all things requisite for his guests if they came, but
not all things requisite to make them come. And therefore “all things
requisite”, is a term ill defined by him.
(_b_) “And indeed if the will were (as he conceives it is) necessitated
extrinsically to every act of willing; if it had no power to forbear
willing what it doth will, nor to will what it does not will; then if
the will were wanting, something requisite to the producing of the
effect were wanting. But now when science and conscience, reason and
religion, our own and other men’s experience doth teach us, that the
will hath a dominion over its own acts to will or nill without
extrinsical necessitation, if the power to will be present _in actu
primo_, determinable by ourselves, then there is no necessary power
wanting in this respect to the producing of the effect.” These words,
“the will hath power to forbear willing what it doth will”; and these,
“the will hath a dominion over its own acts”; and these, “the power to
will is present _in actu primo_, determinable by ourselves”; are as wild
as ever were any spoken within the walls of Bedlam: and if science,
conscience, reason, and religion teach us to speak thus, they make us
mad. And that which followeth is false: “to act or not to act, to work
or not to work, to produce or not to produce, have reference to the
effect, not as a thing which is already done or doing, but as a thing to
be done”. For to act, to work, to produce, are the same thing with to be
doing. It is not the act, but the power that hath reference to the
future: for act and power differ in nothing but in this, that the former
signifieth the time present, the latter the time to come. And whereas he
adds, that I shuffle out effects producible, and thrust into their
places effects produced; I must take it for an untruth, till he cite the
place wherein I have done so.