He taketh it ill that I say that arguments do seldom work on men of wit
and learning, when they have once engaged themselves in a contrary
opinion. Nevertheless it is not only certain by experience, but also
there is reason for it, and that grounded upon the natural disposition
of mankind. For it is natural to all men to defend those opinions, which
they have once publicly engaged themselves to maintain; because to have
that detected for error, which they have publicly maintained for truth,
is never without some dishonour, more or less; and to find in themselves
that they have spent a great deal of time and labour in deceiving
themselves, is so uncomfortable a thing, as it is no wonder if they
employ their wit and learning, if they have any, to make good their
errors. And, therefore, where he saith, (_a_) “solid and substantial
reasons work sooner upon them, than upon weaker judgments; and that the
more exact the balance is, the sooner it discovers the real weight that
is put into it”: I confess, the more solid a man’s wit is, the better
will solid reasons work upon him. But if he add to it that which he
calls learning, that is to say, much reading of other men’s doctrines
without weighing them with his own thoughts, then their judgments become
weaker, and the balance less exact. And whereas he saith, “that they
whose gold is true, are not afraid to have it tried by the touch”; he
speaketh as if I had been afraid to have my doctrine tried by the touch
of men of wit and learning; wherein he is not much mistaken, meaning by
men of learning (as I said before) such as had read other men, but not
themselves. For by reading others, men commonly obstruct the way to
their own exact and natural judgment, and use their wit both to deceive
themselves with fallacies, and to requite those, who endeavour at their
own entreaty to instruct them, with revilings.
(_b_) “If we be in an error, it is such an error as is sucked from
nature; as is confirmed by reason, by experience, and by Scripture; as
the Fathers and Doctors of the Church of all ages have delivered; an
error, wherein we have the concurrence of all the best philosophers, an
error that bringeth to God the glory of justice, &c.; that renders men
more devout, more pious, more humble, more industrious, more penitent
for their sins.” All this is but said; and what heretofore hath been
offered in proof for it, hath been sufficiently refuted, and the
contrary proved; namely, that it is an error contrary to the nature of
the will; repugnant to reason and experience; repugnant to the
Scripture; repugnant to the doctrine of St. Paul, (and ’tis pity the
Fathers and Doctors of the Church have not followed St. Paul therein);
an error not maintained by the best philosophers, (for they are not the
best philosophers, which the Bishop thinketh so); an error that taketh
from God the glory of his prescience, nor bringeth to him the glory of
his other attributes; an error that maketh men, by imagining they can
repent when they will, neglect their duties; and that maketh men
unthankful for God’s graces, by thinking them to proceed from the
natural ability of their own will.
(_c_) “‘But,’ saith he, ‘when they dispute of God’s actions
philosophically, then they consider them again as if he had such
faculties, and in such manner as we have them.’ And is this the cause of
our error? That were strange indeed; for they who dispute
philosophically of God, do neither ascribe faculties to him, in that
manner that we have them, nor yet do they attribute any proper faculties
at all to God. God’s understanding and his will is his very essence,
&c.” Methinks he should have known at these years, that to dispute
philosophically is to dispute by natural reason, and from principles
evident by the light of nature, and to dispute of the faculties and
proprieties of the subject whereof they treat. It is therefore
unskilfully said by him, that they who dispute philosophically of God,
ascribe unto him no proper faculties. If no proper faculties, I would
fain know of him what improper faculties he ascribes to God. I guess he
will make the understanding and the will, and his other attributes, to
be in God improper faculties, because he cannot properly call them
faculties; that is to say, he knows not how to make it good that they
are faculties, and yet he will have these words, “God’s understanding
and his will are his very essence”, to pass for an axiom of philosophy.
And whereas I had said, we ought not to dispute of God’s nature, and
that He is no fit subject of our philosophy, he denies it not, but says
I say it.
(_d_) “With a purpose to make a noise with declaiming against those who
dare dispute of the nature of God, that is, who dare set forth his
justice and his goodness, &c.” The Bishop will have much ado to make
good, that to dispute of the nature of God, is all one with setting
forth his justice and his goodness. He taketh no notice of these words
of mine, ‘pious men attribute to God Almighty for honour’s sake,
whatsoever they see is honourable in the world’; and yet this is setting
forth God’s justice, goodness, &c, without disputing of God’s nature.
(_e_) “In the flames of the true Tophet, that is hell.” The true Tophet
was a place not far from the walls of Jerusalem, and consequently on the
earth. I cannot imagine what he will say to this in his answer to my
_Leviathan_, if there he find the same, unless he say, that in this
place by the _true_ Tophet, he meant a _not true_ Tophet.
(_f_) “_This is life eternal_ (saith our Saviour) _to know the only true
God, and Jesus Christ_, &c.” This which followeth to the end of his
answer and of the book, is a reprehension of me, for saying that ‘true
religion consisteth in obedience to Christ’s lieutenants’. If it be
lawful for Christians to institute amongst themselves a commonwealth and
magistrates, whereby they may be able to live in peace one with another,
and unite themselves in defence against a foreign enemy; it will
certainly be necessary to make to themselves some supreme judge in all
controversies, to whom they ought all to give obedience. And this is no
such strange doctrine, nor so uncouth a phrase to Christian ears, as the
Bishop makes it, whatsoever it be to them that would make themselves
judges of the Supreme Judge himself. No; but, saith he, Christ is the
Supreme Judge, and we are not to obey men rather than God. Is there any
Christian man that does not acknowledge that we are to be judged by
Christ, or that we ought not to obey him rather than any man that shall
be his lieutenant upon earth? The question therefore is, not of who is
to be obeyed, but of what be his commands. If the Scripture contain his
commands, then may every Christian know by them what they are. And what
has the Bishop to do with what God says to me when I read them, more
than I have to do with what God says to him when he reads them, unless
he have authority given him by him whom Christ hath constituted his
lieutenant? This lieutenant upon earth, I say, is the supreme civil
magistrate, to whom belongeth the care and charge of seeing that no
doctrine may be taught the people, but such as may consist with the
general peace of them all, and with the obedience that is due to the
civil sovereign. In whom would the Bishop have the authority reside of
prohibiting seditious opinions, when they are taught (as they are often)
in divinity books and from the pulpit? I could hardly guess, but that I
remember that there have been books written to entitle the bishops to a
_divine right_, underived from the civil sovereign. But because he
maketh it so heinous a matter, that the supreme civil magistrate should
be Christ’s lieutenant upon earth, let us suppose that a bishop, or a
synod of bishops, should be set up (which I hope never shall) for our
civil sovereign; then that which he objecteth here, I could object in
the same words against himself. For I could say in his own words, _This
is life eternal, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ_ (John
xvii. 3.). _Pure religion, and undefiled before God is this, to visit
the fatherless_, &c. (James i. 27.) _Fear God and keep his commandments_
(Eccles. xii. 13.). But the Bishop hath found a more compendious way to
heaven, namely, that true religion consisteth in obedience to Christ’s
lieutenants; that is (now by supposition), to the bishops. That is to
say, that every Christian of what nation soever, coming into the country
which the bishops govern, should be of their religion. He would make the
civil magistrate to be Christ’s lieutenant upon earth for matters of
religion, and supreme judge in all controversies, and say they ought to
be obeyed by all; how strange soever and uncouth it seem to him now, the
sovereignty being in others. And I may say to him, what if the
magistrate himself (I mean by supposition the bishops) should be wicked
men; what if they should command as much contrary to the law of God or
nature, as ever any Christian king did, (which is very possible); must
we obey them rather than God? Is the civil magistrate become now the
only ground and pillar of truth? No:
Synedri jussum est voce episcoporum,
Ipsum quod colit ut colamus omnes.
Æternum colo Principem, dierum
Factorem, Dominumque episcoporum.
And thus the Bishop may see, there is little difference between his Ode
and my Parode to it; and that both of them are of equal force to
conclude nothing.
The Bishop knows that the kings of England, since the time of Henry
VIII, have been declared by act of Parliament supreme governors of the
Church of England, in all causes both civil and ecclesiastical, that is
to say, in all matters both ecclesiastical and civil, and consequently
of this Church supreme head on earth; though perhaps he will not allow
that name of _head_. I should wonder therefore, whom the Bishop would
have to be Christ’s lieutenant here in England for matters of religion,
if not the supreme governor and head of the Church of England, whether
man or woman whosoever he be, that hath the sovereign power, but that I
know he challenges it to the Bishops, and thinks that King Henry VIII.
took the ecclesiastical power away from the Pope, to settle it not in
himself, but them. But he ought to have known, that what jurisdiction,
or power of ordaining ministers, the Popes had here in the time of the
king’s predecessors till Henry VIII, they derived it all from the king’s
power, though they did not acknowledge it; and the kings connived at it,
either not knowing their own right, or not daring to challenge it; till
such time as the behaviour of the Roman clergy had undeceived the
people, which otherwise would have sided with them. Nor was it unlawful
for the king to take from them the authority he had given them, as being
Pope enough in his own kingdom without depending on a foreign one: nor
is it to be called schism, unless it be schism also in the head of a
family to discharge, as often as he shall see cause, the school-masters
he entertaineth to teach his children. If the Bishop and Dr. Hammond,
when they did write in the defence of the Church of England against
imputation of schism, quitting their own pretences of jurisdiction and
_jus divinum_, had gone upon these principles of mine, they had not been
so shrewdly handled as they have been, by an English Papist that wrote
against them.
And now I have done answering to his arguments, I shall here, in the end
of all, take that liberty of censuring his whole book, which he hath
taken in the beginning, of censuring mine. ‘I have’, saith he, (No. I.)
‘perused T. H.’s answers, considered his reasons, and conclude he hath
missed and mislaid the question; that his answers are evasions, that his
arguments are paralogisms, and that the opinion of absolute and
universal necessity is but a result of some groundless and ill chosen
principles.’ And now it is my turn to censure. And first, for the
strength of his discourse and knowledge of the point in question, I
think it much inferior to that which might have been written by any man
living, that had no other learning besides the ability to write his
mind; but as well perhaps as the same man would have done it if to the
ability of writing his mind he had added the study of School-divinity.
Secondly, for the manners of it, (for to a public writing there
belongeth good manners), it consisteth in railing and exclaiming and
scurrilous jesting, with now and then an unclean and mean instance. And
lastly, for his elocution, the virtue whereof lieth not in the flux of
words, but in perspicuity, it is the same language with that of the
kingdom of darkness. One shall find in it, especially where he should
speak most closely to the question, such words as these: divided sense,
compounded sense, hypothetical necessity, liberty of exercise, liberty
of specification, liberty of contradiction, liberty of contrariety,
knowledge of approbation, practical knowledge, general influence,
special influence, instinct, qualities infused, efficacious election,
moral efficacy, moral motion, metaphorical motion, _practice practicum_,
_motus primo primi_, _actus eliciti_, _actus imperati_, permissive will,
consequent will, negative obduration, deficient cause, simple act, _nunc
stans_; and other like words of nonsense divided: besides many
propositions such as these: the will is the mistress of human actions,
the understanding is her counsellor, the will chooseth, the will
willeth, the will suspends its own act, the understanding understandeth,
(I wonder how he missed saying, the understanding suspendeth its own
act,) the will applies the understanding to deliberate; the will
requires of the understanding a review; the will determines itself; a
change may be willed without changing of the will; man concurs with God
in causing his own will; the will causeth willing; motives determine the
will not naturally, but morally; the same action may be both future and
not future; God is not just but justice, not eternal but eternity;
eternity is _nunc stans_; eternity is an infinite point which
comprehendeth all time, not formally, but eminently; all eternity is
co-existent with to-day, and the same co-existent with to-morrow: and
many other like speeches of nonsense compounded, which the truth can
never stand in need of. Perhaps the Bishop will say, these terms and
phrases are intelligible enough; for he hath said in his reply to No.
XXIV, that his opinion is demonstrable in reason, though he be not able
to comprehend, how it consisteth together with God’s eternal prescience;
and though it exceed his weak capacity, yet he ought to adhere to that
truth which is manifest. So that to him that truth is manifest, and
demonstrable by reason, which is beyond his capacity; so that words
beyond capacity are with him intelligible enough.
But the reader is to be judge of that. I could add many other passages
that discover, both his little logic, as taking the insignificant words
above recited, for terms of art; and his no philosophy in distinguishing
between moral and natural motion, and by calling some motions
metaphorical, and by his blunders at the causes of sight and of the
descent of heavy bodies, and his talk of the inclination of the
load-stone, and divers other places in his book.
But to make an end, I shall briefly draw up the sum of what we have both
said. That which I have maintained is, that no man hath his future will
in his own present power. That it may be changed by others, and by the
change of things without him; and when it is changed, it is not changed
nor determined to any thing by itself; and that when it is undetermined,
it is no will; because every one that willeth, willeth something in
particular. That deliberation is common to men with beasts, as being
alternate appetite, and not ratiocination; and the last act or appetite
therein, and which is immediately followed by the action, is the only
will that can be taken notice of by others, and which only maketh an
action in public judgment voluntary. That to be free is no more than to
do if a man will, and if he will to forbear; and consequently that this
freedom is the freedom of the man, and not of the will. That the will is
not free, but subject to change by the operation of external causes.
That all external causes depend necessarily on the first eternal cause,
God Almighty, who worketh in us both to will and to do, by the mediation
of second causes. That seeing neither man nor any thing else can work
upon itself, it is impossible that any man in the framing of his own
will should concur with God, either as an actor or as an instrument.
That there is nothing brought to pass by fortune as by a cause, nor any
thing without a cause, or concurrence of causes, sufficient to bring it
so to pass; and that every such cause, and their concurrence, do proceed
from the providence, good pleasure, and working of God; and
consequently, though I do with others call many events _contingent_, and
say they _happen_, yet because they had every of them their several
sufficient causes, and those causes again their former causes, I say
they _happen_ necessarily. And though we perceive not what they are, yet
there are of the most contingent events as necessary causes as of those
events whose causes we perceive; or else they could not possibly be
foreknown, as they are by him that foreknoweth all things. On the
contrary, the Bishop maintaineth: that the will is free from
necessitation; and in order thereto that the judgment of the
understanding is not always _practice practicum_, nor of such a nature
in itself as to oblige and determine the will to one, though it be true
that spontaneity and determination to one may consist together. That the
will determineth itself, and that external things, when they change the
will, do work upon it not naturally, but morally, not by natural motion,
but by moral and metaphorical motion. That when the will is determined
naturally, it is not by God’s general influence, whereon depend all
second causes, but by special influence, God concurring and pouring
something into the will. That the will when it suspends not its act,
makes the act necessary; but because it may suspend and not assent, it
is not absolutely necessary. That sinful acts proceed not from God’s
will, but are willed by him by a _permissive_ will, not an _operative_
will, and that he hardeneth the heart of man by a negative obduration.
That man’s will is in his own power, but his _motus primo primi_ not in
his own power, nor necessary save only by a hypothetical necessity. That
the will to change, is not always a change of will. That not all things
which are produced, are produced from _sufficient_, but some things from
_deficient_ causes. That if the power of the will be present _in actu
primo_, then there is nothing wanting to the production of the effect.
That a cause may be sufficient for the production of an effect, though
it want something necessary to the production thereof; because the will
may be wanting. That a necessary cause doth not always necessarily
produce its effect, but only then when the effect is necessarily
produced. He proveth also, that the will is free, by that universal
notion which the world hath of election: for when of the six Electors
the votes are divided equally, the King of Bohemia hath a casting voice.
That the prescience of God supposeth no necessity of the future
existence of the things foreknown, because God is not eternal but
eternity, and eternity is a _standing now_, without succession of time;
and therefore God foresees all things intuitively by the presentiality
they have in _nunc stans_, which comprehendeth in it all time past,
present, and to come, not formally, but eminently and virtually. That
the will is free even then when it acteth, but that is in a compounded,
not in a divided sense. That to be made, and to be eternal, do consist
together, because God’s decrees are made, and are nevertheless eternal.
That the order, beauty, and perfection of the world doth require that in
the universe there should be agents of all sorts, some necessary, some
free, some contingent. That though it be true, that to-morrow it shall
rain or not rain, yet neither of them is true _determinate_. That the
doctrine of necessity is a blasphemous, desperate, and destructive
doctrine. That it were better to be an Atheist, than to hold it; and he
that maintaineth it, is fitter to be refuted with rods than with
arguments. And now whether this his doctrine or mine be the more
intelligible, more rational, or more conformable to God’s word, I leave
it to the judgment of the reader.
But whatsoever be the truth of the disputed question, the reader may
peradventure think I have not used the Bishop with that respect I ought,
or without disadvantage of my cause I might have done; for which I am to
make a short apology. A little before the last parliament of the late
king, when every man spake freely against the then present government, I
thought it worth my study to consider the grounds and consequences of
such behaviour, and whether it were conformable or contrary to reason
and to the Word of God. And after some time I did put in order and
publish my thoughts thereof, first in Latin, and then again the same in
English; where I endeavoured to prove both by reason and Scripture, that
they who have once submitted themselves to any sovereign governor,
either by express acknowledgment of his power, or by receiving
protection from his laws, are obliged to be true and faithful to him,
and to acknowledge no other supreme power but him in any matter or
question whatsoever, either civil or ecclesiastical. In which books of
mine, I pursued my subject without taking notice of any particular man
that held any opinion contrary to that which I then wrote; only in
general I maintained that the office of the clergy, in respect of the
supreme civil power, was not magisterial, but ministerial; and that
their teaching of the people was founded upon no other authority than
that of the civil sovereign; and all this without any word tending to
the disgrace either of episcopacy or of presbytery. Nevertheless I find
since, that divers of them, whereof the Bishop of Derry is one, have
taken offence especially at two things; one, that I make the supremacy
in matters of religion to reside in the civil sovereign; the other, that
being no clergyman, I deliver doctrines, and ground them upon words of
the Scripture, which doctrines they, being by profession divines, have
never taught. And in this their displeasure, divers of them in their
books and sermons, without answering any of my arguments, have not only
exclaimed against my doctrine, but reviled me, and endeavoured to make
me hateful for those things, for which (if they knew their own and the
public good) they ought to have given me thanks. There is also one of
them, that taking offence at me for blaming in part the discipline
instituted heretofore, and regulated by the authority of the Pope, in
the universities, not only ranks me amongst those men that would have
the revenue of the universities diminished, and says plainly I have no
religion, but also thinks me so simple and ignorant of the world as to
believe that our universities maintain Popery. And this is the author of
the book called _Vindiciæ Academiarum_. If either of the universities
had thought itself injured, I believe it could have authorised or
appointed some member of theirs, whereof there be many abler men than
he, to have made their vindication. But this Vindex, (as little dogs to
please their masters use to bark, in token of their sedulity,
indifferently at strangers, till they be rated off), unprovoked by me
hath fallen upon me without bidding. I have been publicly injured by
many of whom I took no notice, supposing that that humour would spend
itself; but seeing it last, and grow higher in this writing I now
answer, I thought it necessary at last to make of some of them, and
first of this Bishop, an example.