“Secondly, I would have them tell me whether the second causes be predetermined by the first cause, or not. If it be determined, then the effect is necessary, even in respect of the second causes. If the second cause be not determined, how is the effect determined, the second cause remaining undetermined? Nothing can give that to another which it hath not itself. But say they, nevertheless the power or faculty remaineth free. True, but not in order to the act, if it be once determined. It is free, _in sensu diviso_, but not _in sensu composito_. When a man holds a bird fast in his hand, is she therefore free to fly where she will, because she hath wings? Or a man imprisoned or fettered, is he therefore free to walk where he will, because he hath feet and a locomotive faculty? Judge without prejudice, what a miserable subterfuge is this which many men confide so much in. CERTAIN DISTINCTIONS WHICH HE SUPPOSING MAY BE BROUGHT TO HIS ARGUMENTS, ARE BY HIM REMOVED. _T. H._ He saith, “a man may perhaps answer, that the necessity of things held by him is not a Stoical necessity, but a Christian necessity,” &c., but this distinction I have not used, nor indeed have ever heard before. Nor do I think any man could make Stoical and Christian two kinds of necessities, though they may be two kinds of doctrine. Nor have I drawn my answer to his arguments from the authority of any sect, but from the nature of the things themselves. But here I must take notice of certain words of his in this place, as making against his own tenet. “Where all the causes”, saith he, “being joined together, and subordinate one to another, do make but one total cause, if any one cause, much more the first, in the whole series of subordination of causes be necessary, it determines the rest, and without doubt maketh the effect necessary.” For that which I call the necessary cause of any effect, is the joining together of all causes subordinate to the first, into one total cause. If any one of those, saith he, especially the first, produce its effect necessarily, then all the rest are determined, and the effect also necessary. Now, it is manifest, that the first cause is a necessary cause of all the effects that are next and immediate to it; and therefore by his own reason, all effects are necessary. Nor is that distinction of necessary in respect of the first cause, and necessary in respect of second causes, mine; it does, as he well noteth, imply a contradiction.