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

'Tis true, the common People and Children, in their Notion of a faulty Act or Deed of any Person, do suppose that it is the Person's own Act and Deed. But this is all that belongs to what they understand by a Thing's being a Person's own Deed or ⟨p. 214⟩Action; even that it is something done by him of Choice. That some Exercise or Motion should begin of it self, don't belong to their Notion of an Action, or Doing. If so, it would belong to their Notion of it, that it is something which is the Cause of it's own Beginning: And that is as much as to say, that it is before it begins to be. Nor is their Notion of an Action some Motion or Exercise that begins accidentally, without any Cause or Reason; for that is contrary to one of the prime Dictates of common Sense, namely, that every Thing that begins to be, has some Cause or Reason why it is.

The common People, in their Notion of a faulty or praise-worthy Deed or Work done by any one, do suppose that the Man does it in the Exercise of Liberty. But then their Notion of Liberty is only a Person's having Opportunity of doing as he pleases. They have no Notion of Liberty consisting in the Will's first acting, and so causing it's own Acts; and determining, and so causing it's own Determinations; or choosing, and so causing it's own Choice. Such a Notion of Liberty is what none have, but those that have darkened their own Minds with confused metaphysical Speculation, and abstruse and ambiguous Terms. If a Man is not restrained from acting as his Will determines, or constrained to act otherwise; then he has Liberty, according to common Notions of Liberty, without taking into the Idea that grand Contradiction of all the Determinations of a Man's free Will being the Effects of the Determinations of his free Will.—Nor have Men commonly any Notion of Freedom consisting in Indifference. For if so, then it would be agreeable to their Notion, that the greater Indifference Men act with, the more Freedom they act with; whereas the Reverse is true. He that in acting, proceeds with the fullest Inclination, does what He does with the greatest Freedom, according to common Sense. And so far is it from being agreeable to common Sense, that such Liberty as consists in Indifference is requisite to Praise or Blame, that on the contrary, the Dictate of every Man's natural Sense thro' the World is, that the further he is from being indifferent in his acting Good or Evil, and the more he does either with full and strong Inclination, the more is he esteemed or abhorred, commended or condemned.