III. PART beholding of them by reason of His infinite intellect, doth not at all determine free agents, nor necessitate contingent events, but only infers an infallibility, that is, as we use to call it, a hypothetical necessity, or a necessity upon supposition, which doth consist with true liberty. Much of this is confessed by Mr. Hobbes himself:-" that the foreknowledge of God should be the cause of anything, cannot be truly said; seeing foreknowledge is knowledge, and knowledge dependeth on the existence of things known, and not they on iti." I desire to know, whether God do His own works ad extra (as the creation and destruction of the world) freely or necessarily? as, whether He was necessitated to create the world. precisely at such a time, in such a manner? Certainly God foreknoweth His own works, as much as He foreknoweth the determinate acts of free agents; yet His foreknowledge of His own works ad extra, doth not necessitate Himself. If he say, that God Himself determineth His own acts ad extra, so I say doth the free agent also; with this difference, that God is infinite and independent upon any other, but the free agent is finite and dependent upon God, both for his being and for his acting. Then, if God's freedom in His own works ad extra doth not take away His prescience, neither doth the liberty of free agents take it away. To his second inconvenience,--that "it is impossible that that which is foreknown by God should not come to pass, or come to pass otherwise than it is foreknown," I answer, that God's foreknowledge is not such an act as T. H. imagineth; that is, an act that is expired, or an act that is done and past; but it is always in doing, an eternal act, a present act, a present intuition; and consequently doth no more make the agent unfree, or the contrary event impossible, until it be actually produced, than my knowing that such a man stabbed himself upon such a day, made it then unpossible for him to have forborne stabbing of himself, or my seeing a man eat in present, made it unpossible for him, before he did eat, to have forborne eating. God is the total cause of all natures and essences, but He is not the total cause of all their acts and operations. Neither did He create His creatures to be idle, i [See above in the Defence, T. H., Numb. xi. pp. 58, 59.] II. but that they should each of them exercise such acts as are DISCOURSE agreeable to their respective natures; necessary agents, necessary acts; free agents, free acts. And until the free agent have determined itself, that is, until the last moment before production, the contrary act is not made unpossible; and then, only upon supposition. He that precipitated himself, until the very moment that he did precipitate himself, might have withheld himself; and if he had withheld himself, then I had not seen him precipitate himself, but withhold himself. vectives His frequent invectives against unsignificant words are but [T. H.'s inlike the complaints of that old beldame Harpaste in Seneca, against unwho still cried out against the darkness of the room, and significant words.] desired to be brought into another chamber, little believing that her own blindness was the true cause of it. What Suarez' saith, as I know neither what nor where, so neither doth it concern either me or the cause. sion be thinking.] His last assault against liberty in his "Fountains of Argu- [His confuments" is this;-"Certainly to will is impossible without tween willthinking on what a man willeth, but it is in no man's elec- ing and tion what he shall at any named time hereafter think on"." A man might well conjecture by this very reason, that his 751 "fountain" was very near drying up. This argument is levied rather against the memory, or against the understanding, than against the will: and may serve as well against freedom to do, as against freedom to will; which is contrary to his principles. It is as impossible to do without thinking on what a man doth, as it is "to will without thinking on what he willeth;" but "it is in no man's election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on;" therefore a man is not free to choose what he will do. this word "to think" signifies with him, but I know what other authors make it to signify,-to use reason, to understand, to know; and they define a "thought" to be "the understanding actually employed or busied about some object"." Hath not he spun us a fair thread? He undertaketh to shew a defect in the will, and he allegeth a defect in the I know not what patus." This seems to be borrowed PART understanding. Is a man therefore not free to go to his III. dinner, because perhaps he thinks not on it just at dinner time? Let the free agent be free to will or nill, and to choose which part he will, without necessitation or determination to one, when he doth think on it; and we shall not want true liberty. AN ANSWER TO THE ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE EPISTLE It was no 'passion' but a sad truth, to call the opinion of fatal destiny "blasphemous";" which maketh God to be directly the author of sin, which is a degree worse than atheism; and "desperate," which taketh away all care and solicitude, and thrusts man headlong, without fear or wit, upon rocks and precipices; and "destructive"" which turneth all governments, Divine and human, off from their hinges; the practical consequences whereof do utterly ruin all societies. Neither am I guilty (that I know of yet) so much as of one "uncivil word"," either against Mr. Hobbes his person, or his parts. He is over unequal and indulgent to himself; who dare assume the boldness to introduce such insolent and paradoxical opinions into the world, and will not allow other men the liberty to welcome them as they deserve. I wish he himself in his Animadversions, and his parasitical publisher of his former treatise, had observed the same temper and moderation: particularly towards the lights of the schools, whom he slighteth and vilifieth every where, as a company of pedantic dunces who understood not themselves, yet held the world in awe under contribution by their fustian "jargon," until "a third Cato dropped down from heaven," to stand up for the vindication of Christian liberty from scholastic tyranny, and Stoical necessity from natural and moral liberty. But this is certain; if these poor despised Schoolmen were necessitated by antecedent and extrinsecal causes to speak such gibberish and nonsense, and the Christian world to receive it and applaud it, they cannot be justly blamed. And [Epistle to the Marquis of Newcastle, prefixed to the Defence, above p. 17; Disc. i. Pt. iii.] P [Qu., Animadv. upon the Bishop's Epist. to my Lord of Newcastle, p. 17.] 9 [Juv., ii. 40.] II. if that great assertor were necessitated in like manner, he DISCOURSE cannot justly be praised; any more than we praise a conduit for spouting out water, when the cock is turned. AN ANSWER TO THE ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE BISHOP'S I am well Epistle sur I am well contented to believe, that the copy of T. H. his [T. H. 's treatise was surreptitiously gained from him'. Yet he ac- reptitiously knowledgeth, that he shewed it to two; and if my intelli- printed.] gence out of Frances did not fail, to many more. pleased to believe, that he was not the author of that lewd Epistle, which was prefixed before it; but rather some young braggadocio, one of his disciples, who wanted all other means to requite his master for his new acquired light, but servile flattery whom he styleth the "great author-the repairer of our breaches-the assertor of our reputation, who hath performed more in a few sheets" than is comprehended "in all the voluminous works of the priests and ministers;" yea, as if that expression were too modest, in all "the libraries of the priests, jesuits, and ministers," or in "the catechisms and confessions of a thousand assemblies"." On the other side, he belcheth out reproaches against the poor clergy, as if they were a pack of fools and knaves. For their folly, he sticks not to style "the black coats, generally taken, a sort of ignorant tinkers," &c. And for their knavery, he saith, they make the Scriptures (which he setteth forth in as graceless a dress as he can imagine) "the decoys of the people," to advance themselves "to promotions, leisure, and luxury." And so he concludeth, that this little treatise of Mr. Hobbes "will cast an eternal blemish on all the cornered caps of the priests and jesuits, and all the black and white caps of the" ministers. Herein I cannot acquit Mr. Hobbes, that being in III. PART London at the same time when this ridiculous Epistle was printed and published, he did not for his own cause, sooner or later, procure it to be suppressed. [The author's exceptions to T. H.'s book De Cive.] [The au thor's valediction defended.] Concerning myself, I can safely say, that I was so far from 752 "intending" my defence "for the press," that since it was perfected, and one only copy transcribed for the Marquis of Newcastle and himself, it hath scarcely ever beheld the sun. Questions may be ventilated, and truth cleared from mistakes, privately between particular persons, as well or better than publicly in print. As touching my exceptions to his book De Cive, he saith, he "did indeed intend to have answered them, as finding them neither political nor theological, nor that" I "alleged any reasons by which they were to be justified." The inference would have holden more strongly the contrary way;-that because they were neither theological nor political, and destitute of reasons to support them, they were fitter to be despised than to be answered. But why did he then "intend to answer them," and thought himself so much concerned in it? Surely he hath forgotten himself: for there was never a one of those exceptions which was not backed with several reasons. But concerning them and his Leviathan, I shall be sparing to speak more in present. Peradventure I may reserve two or three chapters, one to shew him his theological errors, another how destructive his political errors are to all societies, a third of his contradictions; out of all which, if my leisure serve me, I may chance to gather a posy, and present it to hima. He chargeth me to say, that there were "two of our own Church answering" his Leviathane. It may be so: but it is more than I know. I said, one of our own Church, and one strangerf." In the conclusion of my Epistle to the Reader, I used this a [Shortly after the publication of the Leviathan, that is, in the latter part of 1651, Hobbes returned home from Paris, and continued to reside in England thenceforward. See his Life in the Biogr. Brit. His Letter on Liberty and Necessity was published in 1654.] [Qu., Animadv. upon the Bp's. Epist. to the Reader, pp. 19, 20.] [Ibid., p. 20.] d [See the Catching of Leviathan, Disc. iii. Pt. iii; at the end of this volume.] [Qu., Animadv. upon the Bp's. Epist. to the Reader, p. 20.] [Defence, Epist. to the Reader, above p. 20; Disc. i. Pt. iii.] |