_J. D._ “Because T. H. disavows these two distinctions, I have joined them together in one paragraph. He likes not the distinction of necessity, or destiny, into Stoical and Christian; no more do I. We agree in the conclusion, but our motives are diverse. My reason is, because I acknowledge no such necessity either as the one or as the other; and because I conceive that those Christian writers, who do justly detest the naked destiny of the Stoics, as fearing to fall into those gross absurdities and pernicious consequences which flow from thence, do yet privily, though perhaps unwittingly, under another form of expression introduce it again at the back-door, after they had openly cast it out at the fore-door. But T. H. rusheth boldly without distinctions, which he accounts but jargon, and without foresight, upon the grossest destiny of all others, that is, that of the Stoics. He confesseth, that “they may be two kinds of doctrine.” May be? Nay, they are; without all peradventure. And he himself is the first who bears the name of a Christian, that I have read, that hath raised this sleeping ghost out of its grave, and set it out in its true colours. But yet he likes not the names of Stoical and Christian destiny. I do not blame him, though he would not willingly be accounted a Stoic. To admit the thing, and quarrel about the name, is to make ourselves ridiculous. Why might not I first call that kind of destiny which is maintained by Christians, Christian destiny: and that other maintained by Stoics, Stoical destiny? But I am not the inventor of the term. If he had been as careful in reading other men’s opinions, as he is confident in setting down his own, he might have found not only the thing, but the name itself often used. But if the name of _fatum Christianum_ do offend him, let him call it with Lipsius, _fatum verum_; who divides destiny into four kinds: 1. mathematical or astrological destiny: 2. natural destiny: 3. Stoical or violent destiny: and 4. true destiny; which he calls, ordinarily, _nostrum_, our destiny, that is, of Christians; and _fatum pium_, that is, godly destiny; and defines it just as T. H. doth his destiny, to be (_a_) a series or order of causes depending upon the divine counsel (_De Constantia_, lib. 1. cap. xvii. xviii. xix). Though he be more cautelous than T. H. to decline those rocks which some others have made shipwreck upon, yet the divines thought he came too near them; as appears by his Epistle to the Reader in a later edition, and by that note in the margin of his twentieth chapter, ‘Whatsoever I dispute here, I submit to the judgment of the wise, and being admonished I will convert it; one may convince me of error, but not of obstinacy.’ So fearful was he to over-shoot himself; and yet he maintained both true liberty and true contingency. T. H. saith, ‘he hath not sucked his answer from any sect’; and I say, so much the worse. It is better to be the disciple of an old sect, than the ring-leader of a new.