consultation, and to choose and do what is most eligible to our reason; whereas otherwise we should follow our fancy.”[1] Now a choice after deliberation, is a no less necessary choice than a choice by fancy. For though a choice by fancy, or without deliberation, may be one way, and a choice with deliberation may be another way, or different; yet each choice being founded on what is judged best, the one for one reason and the other for another, is equally necessary; and good or bad reasons, hasty or deliberate thoughts, fancy or deliberation, make no difference.
In the same manner Bishop Bramhall,[2] who has written several books for Liberty, and pretends to assert the Liberty taught by Aristotle, defines Liberty thus: He says, “That act which makes a man’s actions to be truly free, is election; which is the deliberate choosing or refusing of this or that means, or the acception of one means before another, where divers are represented by the understanding.”[3] And that this definition places Liberty wholly in choosing the seeming best means, and not in choosing the seeming worst means, equally with the best, will appear from the following passages. He says, “Actions done in sudden and violent passions, are not free; because there is no deliberation nor election. To say the will is determined by motives, that is, by reasons or discourses, is as much as to say that the agent is determined by himself or is free. Because motives determine not naturally but morally; which kind of determination is consistent with true Liberty. Admitting that the will
- ↑ De fato, p. m. 57.
- ↑ Bishop Bramhall was a learned divine, who forgot that St. Augustine and Martin Luther were Necessitarians, and who opposed Hobbes with great insolence and asperity. Considering the greatness of his adversary, and the perfect inability of the Bishop to understand the questions in dispute, it is amusing to read the wish of his clerical editor, in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, that “his opponent had been more worthy of him.”—G.W.F.
- ↑ Bp. Bramhall’s Works, p. 755.
