Part 35

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.

END OF VOL. V.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Transcriber’s Note

There were two kinds of sidenote in this volumn. At the top of each page, the section number, along with either “Animadversions upon the Bishop’s reply” or “The Bishop’s Reply”, is repeated. The former have been removed as they are redundant with the section title. The “Bishop’s Reply” notes are positioned before each paragraph beginning “J. D” to mark where the “Bishop’s” voice resumes.

The sidenote on p. 81 mistakenly referred to “Animadversions...” rather than the expected “The Bishop’s reply.”

Other errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.

5.11 to do what he will,[”] Added.

10.13 O Israel, thy de[s]truction Restored.

25.8 So God bless us.[”] Added.

33.8 of the second causes.[”] Added.

38.17 [t]hat one may take away an ell Restored.

62.25 between [l/d]uade distinctions cloven feet. Restored (probable).

85.26 [“/‘]that wise men may do Replaced.

85.27 actions,[”/’] Replaced.

85.33 [“/‘]that fools, children, Replaced.

85.34 and elect,[”/’] Replaced.

126.34 but his own justice better[.] Restored.

137.3 would have him to will.[’] Added.

142.1 [“]Wherefore T. H. is mightily mistaken Added.

145.1 Another is Genesis xix. 22[)]: Removed.

151.14 that all consult[a]tions are vain. Restored.

155.33 for the public good[,/.] Replaced.

185.7 when it is necess[s]ary Removed.

229.23 _Quid hoc?_[”] Added.

310.17 choose a good one.[”] Added.

316.30 and so the[ the] action be become Removed.

324.11 and if he[ ]means so Inserted.

336.5 [“]But because his eyesight was weak Added.

405.28 was I to grow old!’[”] Added.

425.6 forbear to act[”/’]; Replaced.

434.15 not too much possessed with prejudice.[”] Added.

437.24 such poor things as eyes, ears, brains[’] Added.

439.33 the religion of every Ch[r]istian country Inserted.

447.30 per[s]used T. H.’s answers Removed.

454.9 whereof the[ the Bishop of Derry is one Removed.