Part 12

_T. H._ Of the arguments from reason, the first is that which he saith is drawn from Zeno’s beating of his man, which is therefore called _argumentum baculinum_, that is to say, a wooden argument. The story is this. Zeno held that all actions were necessary. His man therefore, being for some fault beaten, excused himself upon the necessity of it. To avoid this excuse, his master pleaded likewise the necessity of beating him. So that not he that maintained, but he that derided the necessity of things, was beaten; contrary to that he would infer; and the argument was rather withdrawn, than drawn, from the story.

_J. D._ “Whether the argument be withdrawn from the story, or the answer withdrawn from the argument, let the reader judge. T. H. mistakes the scope of the reason, the strength whereof doth not lie, neither in the authority of Zeno, a rigid Stoic, which is not worth a button in this cause; nor in the servant’s being an adversary to stoical necessity. For it appears not out of the story, that the servant did deride necessity, but rather that he pleaded it in good earnest for his own justification. Now in the success of the fray, we were told even now, that no power doth justify an action, but only that which is irresistible. Such was not Zeno’s. And therefore it advantageth neither of their causes, neither that of Zeno, nor this of T. H. What if the servant had taken the staff out of his master’s hand, and beaten him soundly, would not the same argument have served the man as well as it did the master, that the necessity of destiny did compel him to strike again? Had not Zeno smarted justly for his paradox? And might not the spectators well have taken up the judge’s apothegm, concerning the dispute between Corax and his scholar, ‘an ill egg of an ill bird’? But the strength of this argument lies _partly_ in the ignorance of Zeno, that great champion of necessity, and the beggarliness of his cause, which admitted no defence but with a cudgel. No man, saith the servant, ought to be beaten for doing that which he is compelled inevitably to do: but I am compelled inevitably to steal. The major is so evident, that it cannot be denied. If a strong man shall take a weak man’s hand per force, and do violence with it to a third person, he whose hand is forced, is innocent, and he only culpable who compelled him. The minor was Zeno’s own doctrine; what answer made the great patron of destiny to his servant? very learnedly he denied the conclusion, and cudgelled his servant; telling him in effect, that though there was no reason why he should be beaten, yet there was a necessity why he must be beaten. And _partly_ in the evident absurdity of such an opinion, which deserves not to be confuted with reasons, but with rods. There are four things, said the philosopher, which ought not to be called into question. First, such things whereof it is wickedness to doubt; as whether the soul be immortal, whether there be a God, such an one should not be confuted with reasons, but cast into the sea with a mill-stone about his neck, as unworthy to breathe the air, or to behold the light. Secondly, such things as are above the capacity of reason; as among Christians, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Thirdly, such principles as are evidently true; as that two and two are four, in arithmetic; that the whole is greater than the part, in logic. Fourthly, such things as are obvious to the senses; as whether the snow be white. He who denied the heat of the fire, was justly sentenced to be scorched with fire; and he that denied motion, to be beaten until he recanted. So he who denies all liberty from necessitation, should be scourged until he become an humble suppliant to him that whips him, and confess that he hath power, either to strike, or to hold his hand.”

_T. H._ In this Number XIII. which is about Zeno and his man, there is contained nothing necessary to the instruction of the reader. Therefore I pass it over.

NO. XIV.

[Sidenote: The Bishop’s reply.]

_J. D._ “Secondly, this very persuasion that there is no true liberty, is able to overthrow all societies and commonwealths in the world. The laws are unjust, which prohibit that which a man cannot possibly shun. All consultations are vain, if every thing be either necessary or impossible. Who ever deliberated whether the sun should rise to-morrow, or whether he should sail over mountains? It is to no more purpose to admonish men of understanding than fools, children, or madmen, if all things be necessary. Praises and dispraises, rewards and punishments, are as vain as they are undeserved, if there be no liberty. All counsels, arts, arms, books, instruments, are superfluous and foolish, if there be no liberty. In vain we labour, in vain we study, in vain we take physic, in vain we have tutors to instruct us, if all things come to pass alike, whether we sleep or wake, whether we be idle or industrious, by unalterable necessity. But it is said, that though future events be certain, yet they are unknown to us: and therefore we prohibit, deliberate, admonish, praise, dispraise, reward, punish, study, labour, and use means. Alas! how should our not knowing of the event, be a sufficient motive to us to use the means, so long as we believe the event is already certainly determined, and can no more be changed by all our endeavours, than we can stay the course of heaven with our finger, or add a cubit to our stature? Suppose it be unknown, yet it is certain. We cannot hope to alter the course of things by our labours; let the necessary causes do their work, we have no remedy but patience, and shrug up the shoulders. Either allow liberty, or destroy all societies.”

_T. H._ The second argument is taken from certain inconveniences which he thinks would follow such an opinion. It is true that ill use may be made of it, and therefore your Lordship and J. D. ought, at my request, to keep private that I say here of it. But the inconveniences are indeed none; and what use soever be made of truth, yet truth is truth; and now the question is, not what is fit to be preached, but what is true. The first inconvenience he says is this, that laws which prohibit any action are then unjust. The second, that all consultations are vain. The third, that admonitions to men of understanding, are of no more use than to fools, children, and madmen. The fourth, that praise, dispraise, reward, and punishment, are in vain. The fifth, that counsels, arts, arms, books, instruments, study, tutors, medicines, are in vain. To which argument, expecting I should answer by saying, that the ignorance of the event were enough to make us use means, he adds (as it were a reply to my answer foreseen) these words: “Alas, how should our not knowing of the event be a sufficient motive to make us use the means?” Wherein he saith right; but my answer is not that which he expecteth. I answer,

First, that the necessity of an action doth not make the law which prohibits it unjust. To let pass, that not the necessity, but the will to break the law, maketh the action unjust, because the law regardeth the will, and no other precedent causes of action; and to let pass, that no law can be possibly unjust, in as much as every man makes, by his consent, the law he is bound to keep, and which, consequently, must be just, unless a man can be unjust to himself: I say, what necessary cause soever precedes an action, yet, if the action be forbidden, he that doth it willingly, may justly be punished. For instance, suppose the law on pain of death prohibit stealing, and there be a man who by the strength of temptation is necessitated to steal, and is thereupon put to death: does not this punishment deter others from theft? Is it not a cause that others steal not? Doth it not frame and make their will to justice? To make the law is therefore to make a cause of justice, and to necessitate justice; and consequently it is no injustice to make such a law.

The institution of the law is not to grieve the delinquent for that which is passed and not to be undone; but to make him and others just, that else would not be so: and respecteth not the evil act past, but the good to come. Insomuch as without this good intention of future, no past act of a delinquent could justify his killing in the sight of God. But, you will say, how is it just to kill one man to amend another, if what was done were necessary? To this I answer, that men are justly killed, not for that their actions are not necessitated, but that they are spared and preserved, because they are not noxious; for where there is no law, there no killing, nor any thing else can be unjust. And by the right of nature we destroy, without being unjust, all that is noxious, both beasts and men. And for beasts, we kill them justly, when we do it in order to our own preservation. And yet J. D. confesseth, that their actions, as being only spontaneous and not free, are all necessitated and determined to that one thing which they shall do. For men, when we make societies or commonwealths, we lay down our right to kill, excepting in certain cases, as murder, theft, or other offensive actions. So that the right which the commonwealth hath, to put a man to death for crimes, is not created by the law, but remains from the first right of nature, which every man hath to preserve himself; for the law doth not take that right away, in case of criminals, who were by law excepted. Men are not therefore put to death or punished, for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest: inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills, such as men would have them. And thus it is plain, that from the necessity of a voluntary action cannot be inferred the injustice of the law that forbiddeth it, or of the magistrate that punisheth it.

Secondly, I deny that it makes consultations to be in vain; it is the consultation that causeth a man, and necessitateth him, to choose to do one thing rather than another. So that unless a man say that cause to be in vain, which necessitateth the effect, he cannot infer the superfluousness of consultation out of the necessity of the election proceeding from it. But it seems he reasons thus: If I must needs do this rather than that, then I shall do this rather than that, though I consult not at all; which is a false proposition, a false consequence, and no better than this: If I shall live till to-morrow, I shall live till to-morrow, though I run myself through with a sword to-day. If there be a necessity that an action shall be done, or that any effect shall be brought to pass, it does not therefore follow that there is nothing necessarily required as a means to bring it to pass. And therefore, when it is determined that one thing shall be chosen before another, it is determined also for what cause it shall be chosen; which cause, for the most part, is deliberation or consultation. And therefore consultation is not in vain; and indeed the less in vain, by how much the election is more necessitated.

The same answer is to be given to the third supposed inconvenience; namely, that admonitions are in vain; for admonitions are parts of consultations; the admonitor being a counsellor, for the time, to him that is admonished.

The fourth pretended inconvenience is, that praise and dispraise, reward and punishment, will be in vain. To which I answer, that for praise and dispraise, they depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised or dispraised. For, what is it else to praise, but to say a thing is good? Good, I say, for me, or for somebody else, or for the state and commonwealth. And what is it to say an action is good, but to say, it is as I would wish, or as another would have it, or according to the will of the state, that is to say, according to law? Does J. D. think, that no action can please me or him, or the commonwealth, that should proceed from necessity?

Things may be therefore necessary and yet praiseworthy, as also necessary and yet dispraised, and neither of both in vain; because praise and dispraise, and likewise reward and punishment, do by example make and conform the will to good or evil. It was a very great praise, in my opinion, that Velleius Paterculus gives Cato, where he says, he was good by nature, _et quia aliter esse non potuit_.

To his fifth and sixth inconvenience, that counsels, arts, arms, books, instruments, study, medicines, and the like, would be superfluous, the same answer serves that to the former; that is to say, that this consequence, if the effect shall necessarily come to pass, then it shall come to pass without its cause, is a false one. And those things named, counsels, arts, arms, &c., are the causes of those effects.

_J. D._ “Nothing is more familiar with T. H. than to decline an argument. But I will put it into form for him. (_a_) The first inconvenience is thus pressed. Those laws are unjust and tyrannical, which do prescribe things absolutely impossible in themselves to be done, and punish men for not doing of them. But supposing T. H’s opinion of the necessity of all things to be true, all laws do prescribe absolute impossibilities to be done, and punish men for not doing of them. The former proposition is so clear that it cannot be denied. Just laws are the ordinances of right reason; but those laws which prescribe absolute impossibilities, are not the ordinances of right reason. Just laws are instituted for the public good; but those laws which prescribe absolute impossibilities, are not instituted for the public good. Just laws do show unto a man what is to be done, and what is to be shunned; but those laws which prescribe impossibilities, do not direct a man what he is to do, and what he is to shun. The minor is as evident. For if his opinion be true, all actions, all transgressions are determined antecedently inevitably to be done by a natural and necessary flux of extrinsical causes. Yea, even the will of man, and the reason itself is thus determined. And therefore whatsoever laws do prescribe any thing to be done, which is not done, or to be left undone which is done, do prescribe absolute impossibilities, and punish men for not doing of impossibilities. In all his answer there is not one word to this argument, but only to the conclusion. He saith, that ‘not the necessity, but the will to break the law makes the action unjust.’ I ask what makes the will to break the law; is it not his necessity? What gets he by this? A perverse will causeth injustice, and necessity causeth a perverse will. He saith, ‘the law regardeth the will, but not the precedent causes of action.’ To what proposition, to what term is this answer? He neither denies nor distinguisheth. First, the question here is not what makes actions to be unjust, but what makes laws to be unjust. So his answer is impertinent. It is likewise untrue. For first, that will which the law regards, is not such a will as T. H. imagineth. It is a free will, not a determined necessitated will; a rational will, not a brutish will. Secondly, the law doth look upon precedent causes, as well as the voluntariness of the action. If a child, before he be seven years old or have the use of reason, in some childish quarrel do willingly stab another, whereof we have seen experience, yet the law looks not upon it as an act of murder; because there wanted a power to deliberate, and consequently true liberty. Manslaughter may be as voluntary as murder, and commonly more voluntary; because being done in hot blood there is the less reluctation. Yet the law considers, that the former is done out of some sudden passion without serious deliberation, and the other out of prepensed malice and desire of revenge; and therefore condemns murder, as more wilful and more punishable than manslaughter.”

(_b_) “He saith, ‘that no law can possibly be unjust;’ and I say, that this is to deny the conclusion, which deserves no reply. But to give him satisfaction, I will follow him in this also, if he intended no more but that unjust laws are not genuine laws, nor bind to active obedience, because they are not the ordinations of right reason, not instituted for the common good, nor prescribe that which ought to be done; he said truly, but nothing at all to his purpose. But if he intend, as he doth, that there are no laws _de facto_, which are the ordinances of reason erring, instituted for the common hurt, and prescribing that which ought not to be done, he is much mistaken. Pharaoh’s law, to drown the male children of the Israelites (Exod. i. 22); Nebuchadnezzar’s law, that whosoever did not fall down and worship the golden image which he had set up, should be cast into the fiery furnace (Dan. iii. 4-6); Darius’s law, that whosoever should ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of the king, should be cast into the den of lions (Dan. vi. 7); Ahasuerus’s law, to destroy the Jewish nation, root and branch (Esther iii. 13); the Pharisees’ law, that whosoever confesseth Christ, should be excommunicated (John ix. 22); were all unjust laws.

(_c_) “The ground of this error is as great an error itself (such an art he hath learned of repacking paradoxes); which is this, ‘that every man makes by his consent the law which he is bound to keep.’ If this were true, it would preserve them, if not from being unjust, yet from being injurious. But it is not true. The positive law of God, contained in the Old and New Testament; the law of nature, written in our hearts by the finger of God; the laws of conquerors, who come in by the power of the sword; the laws of our ancestors, which were made before we were born; do all oblige us to the observation of them; yet to none of all these did we give our actual consent. Over and above all these exceptions, he builds upon a wrong foundation, that all magistrates at first were elective. The first governors were fathers of families; and when those petty princes could not afford competent protection and security to their subjects, many of them did resign their several and respective interests into the hands of one joint father of the country.

“And though his ground had been true, that all first legislators were elective, which is false; yet his superstructure fails: for it was done in hope and trust that they would make just laws. If magistrates abuse this trust, and deceive the hopes of the people by making tyrannical laws, yet it is without their consent. A precedent trust doth not justify the subsequent errors and abuses of a trustee. He who is duly elected a legislator, may exercise his legislative power unduly. The people’s implicit consent doth not render the tyrannical laws of their legislators to be just.

(_d_) “But his chiefest answer is, that ‘an action forbidden, though it proceed from necessary causes, yet if it were done willingly, it may be justly punished;’ which, according to his custom, he proves by an instance. ‘A man necessitated to steal by the strength of temptation, yet if he steal willingly, is justly put to death.’ Here are two things, and both of them untrue.

“First, he fails in his assertion. Indeed we suffer justly for those necessities, which we ourselves have contracted by our own fault; but not for extrinsical antecedent necessities, which were imposed upon us without our fault. If that law do not oblige to punishment, which is not intimated, because the subject is invincibly ignorant of it; how much less that law which prescribes absolute impossibilities: unless perhaps invincible necessity be not as strong a plea as invincible ignorance. That which he adds, ‘if it were done willingly,’ though it be of great moment, if it be rightly understood, yet in his sense, that is, if a man’s ‘will be not in his own disposition,’ and ‘if his willing do not come upon him according to his will, nor according to anything else in his power,’ it weighs not half so much as the least feather in all his horse-load. For if that law be unjust and tyrannical which commands a man to do that which is impossible for him to do, then that law is likewise unjust and tyrannical, which commands him to will that which is impossible for him to will.

“Secondly, his instance supposeth an untruth, and is a plain begging of the question. No man is extrinsically, antecedently, and irresistibly necessitated by temptation to steal. The devil may solicit us, but he cannot necessitate us. He hath a faculty of persuading, but not a power of compelling. _Nos ignem habemus, spiritus flammam ciet_; as Gregory Nazianzen, he blows the coals, but the fire is our own. _Mordet duntaxat sese in fauces illius objicientem_; as St. Austin, he bites not, until we thrust ourselves into his mouth. He may propose, he may suggest, but he cannot move the will effectively. _Resist the devil, and he will flee from you_ (James iv. 7). By faith we are able _to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked_ (Ephes. vi. 16). And if Satan, who can both propose the object, and choose out the fittest times and places to work upon our frailties, and can suggest reasons, yet cannot necessitate the will, (which is most certain); then much less can outward objects do it alone. They have no natural efficacy to determine the will. Well may they be occasions, but they cannot be causes of evil. The sensitive appetite may engender a proclivity to steal, but not a necessity to steal. And if it should produce a kind of necessity, yet it is but moral, not natural; hypothetical, not absolute; coexistent, not antecedent from ourselves, nor extrinsical. This necessity, or rather proclivity, was free in its causes; we ourselves by our own negligence in not opposing our passions when we should and might, have freely given it a kind of dominion over us. Admit that some sudden passions may and do extraordinarily surprise us; and therefore we say, _motus primo primi_, the first motions are not always in our power, neither are they free: yet this is but very rarely, and it is our own fault that they do surprise us. Neither doth the law punish the first motion to theft, but the advised act of stealing. The intention makes the thief. But of this more largely No. XXV.