manner. Others are driven into the defence of Liberty by difficulties imagined to flow from the doctrine of Necessity, combating what they allow to be matter of seeming experience. Others, and those the most discerning, either think Liberty cannot be proved by experience, or think men may see by experience, that they are necessary agents, and the bulk of mankind have always been persuaded that they are necessary agents.
Our experience itself considered.
Having thus paved the way by showing that Liberty is not a plain matter of experience, by arguments drawn from the asserters of Liberty themselves, and by consequence subverted the argument from experience for Liberty; we will now run over the various actions of men which can be conceived to concern this subject, and examine, whether we can know from experience, that man is a free or a necessary agent. I think those actions may be reduced to these four: 1. Perception of Ideas. 2. Judging of Propositions. 3. Willing. 4. Doing as we will.
1. Perception of Idea Of this there can be no dispute but it is a necessary action of man, since it is not even a voluntary action. The ideas both of sensation and reflection, offer themselves to us whether we will or no, and we cannot reject them. We must be conscious that we think, when we do think; and thereby we necessarily have the ideas of reflection. We must also use our senses when awake; and thereby necessarily receive the ideas of sensation. And as we necessarily receive ideas, so each idea is necessarily what it is in our mind; for it is not possible to make any thing different from itself. This first necessary action, the reader will see, is the foundation and cause of all the other intelligent actions of man, and makes them also necessary. For, as a judicious author, and nice observer of the inward actions of man, says truly: “Temples have their sacred images, and we see what
