A careful and strict enquiry into the modern prevailing notions of that freedom of…

Mr. Chubb lays the Foundation of his Scheme of Liberty, and of his Arguments to support it, very much in this Po••• on, That Man is an Agent, and capable of Action. Which doubtless is true: But Self-determination belongs to his Notion of Action, and is the very Essence of it. Whence he infers that it is impossible for a Man to act and be acted upon, in the same Thing, at the same Time; and that nothing that is an Action, can be the Effect of the Action of another: and he insists, that a necessary Agent, or an Agent that is necessarily determined to act, is a plain Contradiction.

But those are a precarious Sort of Demonstrations, which Men build on the Meaning that they arbitrarily affix to a Word; especially when that Meaning is abstruse, inconsistent, and entirely diverse from the original Sense of the Word in common Speech.

That the Meaning of the Word Action, as Mr. Chubb and many others use it, is utterly unintelligible and inconsistent, is manifest, because it belongs to their Notion of an Action, that 'tis something wherein is no Passion or Passiveness; that is (according to their Sense of Passiveness) it is under the Power, Influence or Action of no Cause. And this implies, that Action has no Cause, and is no Effect: for to be an Effect implies Passiveness, or the being subject to the Power and Action of it's Cause. And yet they hold, that the Mind's Action is the Effect of it's own Determination, yea, the Mind's free and voluntary Determination; which is the same with free Choice. So that Action is the Effect of something preceding, even a preceding Act of Choice: And consequently, in this Effect the Mind is passive, subject to the Power and Action of the preceding Cause, which is the foregoing Choice, and therefore can't be active. So that here we have this Contradiction, that Action is always the Effect of foregoing Choice; and therefore can't be Action; because it is passive to the Power of that preceding causal Choice; and the Mind can't be active and passive in the same Thing, at the same Time. Again, they say, Necessity is utterly inconsistent with Action, and a necessary Action is a Contradiction; and so their Notion of Action implies Contingence, […] excludes all Necessity. And therefore their Notion of Action implies, that it has no necessary Dependence or Connection with any Thing foregoing; for such a Dependence or Connection excludes Contingence, and implies Necessity. And yet their Notion of Action implies Necessity, and supposes that it is necessary, and can't be