A sermon of judgement preached at Pauls before the Honourable Lord Major and aldermen…A sermon of iudgement preached at Pauls before the Honourable Lord Maior and aldermen…

The four and twentieth Excuse. But at least, those learned Divines among us that doubt of this, do yet say that the will is necessarily and infallibly Determined by the Practical Understanding, and that is as much unresistibly necessitated by Objects: and therefore ⟨p. 149⟩whatever act was done by my understanding or will, was thus necessitated, and I could not help it. They say, Liberty is but the Acting of the faculty agreeably to its nature: And it was God as Creator that gave Adam his faculties: and God by providential dispose, that presented all Objects to him, by which his understanding, and so his will were unavoidably necessitated.

The four and twentieth Excuse. But at least, those learned Divines among us that doubt of this, do yet say that the will is necessarily and infallibly Determined by the Practical Ʋnderstanding, and that is as much unresistibly necessitated by Objects: and therefore ⟨p. 149⟩whatever act was done by my understanding or will, was thus necessitated, and I could not help it. They say, Liberty is but the Acting of the faculty agreeably to its nature: And it was God as Creator that gave Adam his faculties: and God by providential dispose, that presented all Objects to him, by which his understanding, and so his will were unavoidably necessitated.

Answ. This is of the same nature with the former; uncertain, if not certainly false. Were this true, for ought we can see, it would lay all the sin and misery of the world on God, as the unresistable necessitating Cause; which because we know infallibly to be false, we have no reason to take such principles to be true, which infer it. The understanding doth not by a necessary efficiency Determine the will, but morally; ⟨p. 150⟩or rather is regularly a Condition or necessary Antecedent, without which it may not Determine it self. Yea the will by commanding the sense and fantasy, doth much to determine the understanding. As the eye is not necessary to my going, but to my going right, so is not the Understandings Guidance, necessary to my willing (there the simple Apprehension may suffice) but to my Right willing. There are other ways of Determining the will. Or if the Understanding did Determine the will Efficiently and Necessarily, it is not every act of the understanding that must do it If it be so, when it saith, This must be don, & saith it importunately; yet not when it only saith, This may be done, or you may venture on it; which is the common part which it hath in sin.