' " Non potest Dous Lib. Arbit. integrmn servarc, nisi tarn peccare homincm sinerct, quam bene agere." — Corv. ad Molin., cap. vi.
' " Semper Remonstrantes supponunt liberam obctlicndi potcntiam et non obediendi ; ut qui obcdicns est idcirco obedicns ccnseatnr, quia oum possit non obedire obedit tamcn, et c contra." — Rem. ApoL, p. 70.
' " Quod si quis dicat onuies in universum homines, habere potentiam credcndi si velint, et salutem consequendi : et banc potentiam esse natura; hominum divinitus col- latam, quo tuo argumcnto cum confutabis?" — Armin. Antip., p. 272.
OF FREE-WILL, 119
God's providence; and their corruption, from doing any tiling that is good without his grace. A self-sufficiency for operation, without the effectual motion of Almighty God, the first cause of all things, we can allow neither to men nor angels, unless we intend to make them gods; and a power of doing good, equal unto that they have of doing evil, we must not grant to man by nature, unless we will deny the fall of Adam, and fancy ourselves still in paradise. But let us consider these things apart.
First, I shall not stand to decipher the nature of human liberty, which perhaps would require a larger discourse than my proposed method will bear. It may suffice that, according to my former in- timation, we grant as large a freedom and dominion to our wills over their own acts as a creature, subject to the supreme rule of God's providence, is capable of Endued we are with such a liberty of will as is free from all outward compulsion and inward necessity, having an elective faculty of applying itself unto that which seems good unto it, in which it is a free choice ; notwithstanding, it is sub- servient to the decree of God, as I showed before, chap. iv. Most free it is in all its acts, both in regard of the object it chooseth and in regard of that vital power and faculty whereby it worketh, infal- libly complying with God's providence, and working by virtue of the motion thereof; but surely to assert such a supreme independency and every way unbounded indifferency as the Arminians claim, whereby, all other things requisite being pre-supposed, it should re- main absolutely in our own power to will or not to will, to do any thing or not to do it, is plainly to deny that our wills are subject to the rule of the Most High. It is granted that in such a chimerical, fancied consideration of free-wiU, wherein it is looked upon as having no relation to any act of God's but only its creation, abstracting from his decree, it may be said to have such a liberty in regard of the object; but the truth is, this divided sense is plain nonsense, a mere fiction of such an estate as wherein it never was, nor ever can be, so long as men will confess any deity but themselves, to whose determinations they must be subject. Until, then, more significant terms may be invented for this free power in our nature, which the Scripture never once vouchsafed to name, I shall be content to call it with Prosper, a ^'' spontaneous appetite of what seemeth good unto it," free from all compulsion, but subservient to the providence of God. And against its exaltation to this height of independency, I oppose, —
First, Every thing that is independent of any else in operation is piirely active, and so consequently a god ; for nothing but a divine will
' " Lib. Arbit. est rei sibi placitae spontanens appetitus." — Prosp. ad Collat., cap. xviii. p. 379.
120 A DISPLAY OF AlBIINIANISM.
can be a pure act, possessing such a liberty by virtue of its own essence. Every created will must have a liberty by participation, Avhich includeth such an imperfect potentiality as cannot l)e brought into act without some promotion (as I may so say) of a superior agent. Neither doth this motion, being extrinsical, at all prejudice the true liberty of the will, which require th, indeed, that the internal principle of ojDeration be active and free, but not that that principle be not moved to that ojoeration by an outward superior agent. Nothing in this sense can have an independent principle of opera- tion which hath not an independent being. It is no more necessary to the nature of a free cause, from whence a free action must pro- ceed, that it be the first beginning of it, than it is necessary to the nature of a cause that it be the first cause.
Secondly, If the free acts of our wills are so subservient to the providence of God as that he useth them to what end he will, and by them effecteth many of his purposes, then they cannot of them- selves be so absolutely independent as to have in their own power every necessary circumstance and condition, that they may use or not use at their pleasure. Now, the former is proved by all those reasons and texts of Scripture I before produced to show that the providence of God overruleth the actions and determineth the wills of men freely to do that which he hath appointed. And, truly, were it otherwise, God's dominion over the most things that are in the world were quite excluded; he had not power to determine that any one thing should ever come to pass which hath any reference to the wills of men.