And as for the arguments drawn from natural reason they are set down at large in the end of my discourse to which the Bishop maketh his reply; which how well he hath answered, shall appear in due time. For the present, the actions which he thinketh proceed from liberty of will, must either be necessitated, or proceed from fortune, without any other cause; for certainly to _will_ is impossible without thinking on what he willeth. But it is in no man’s election what he shall at any named time hereafter think on. And this I take to be enough to clear the understanding of the reader, that he may be the better able to judge of the following disputation. I find in those that write of this argument, especially in the Schoolmen and their followers, so many words strangers to our language, and such confusion and inanity in the ranging of them, as that a man’s mind in the reading of them distinguisheth nothing. And as things were in the beginning before the Spirit of God was moved upon the abyss, _tohu_ and _bohu_, that is to say, confusion and emptiness; so are their discourses. ------- “TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE MARQUIS OF NEWCASTLE, ETC. “SIR,-- “If I pretended to compose a complete treatise upon this subject, I should not refuse those large recruits of reasons and authorities which offer themselves to serve in this cause, for God and man, religion and policy, Church and Commonwealth, (_a_) against the blasphemous, desperate, and destructive opinion of fatal destiny. But as (_b_) mine aim, in the first discourse, was only to press home those things in writing, which had been agitated between us by word of mouth, (a course much to be preferred before verbal conferences, as being freer from passions and tergiversations, less subject to mistakes and misrelations, wherein paralogisms are more quickly detected, impertinences discovered, and confusion avoided), so my present intention is only to vindicate that discourse, and together with it, (_c_) those lights of the Schools, who were never slighted but where they were not understood. How far I have performed it, I leave to the judicious and impartial reader, resting for mine own part well contented with this, that I have satisfied myself. Your Lordship’s most obliged, to love and serve you, “J. D.” ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE BISHOP’S EPISTLE TO MY LORD OF NEWCASTLE. (_a_) “Against the blasphemous, desperate, and destructive opinion of fatal destiny.” This is but choler, such as ordinarily happeneth unto them who contend against greater difficulties than they expected.