deliberations and affections are in part the causes of our contrary resolutions, and do concur with the outward causes to make up one total and adequate cause to the necessary production of this effect. If it be so, he hath spun a fair thread, to make all this stir for such a necessity as no man ever denied or doubted of. When all the causes have actually determined themselves, then the effect is in being; for though there be a priority in nature between the cause and the effect, yet they are together in time. And the old rule is, (_e_) ‘whatsoever is, when it is, is necessarily so as it is.’ This is no absolute necessity, but only upon supposition, that a man hath determined his own liberty. When we question whether all occurrences be necessary, we do not question whether they be necessary when they are, nor whether they be necessary _in sensu composito_, after we have resolved and finally determined what to do; but whether they were necessary before they were determined by ourselves, by or in the precedent causes before ourselves, or in the exterior causes without ourselves. It is not inconsistent with true liberty to determine itself, but it is inconsistent with true liberty to be determined by another without itself. “T. H. saith further ‘that upon your Lordship’s desire and mine, he was contented to begin with this discourse of Liberty and Necessity,’ that is, to change his former resolution. (_f_) If the chain of necessity be no stronger, but that it may be snapped so easily insunder; if his will was no otherwise determined without himself, but only by the signification of your Lordship’s desire and my modest entreaty, then we may easily conclude that human affairs are not always governed by absolute necessity; that a man is lord of his own actions, if not in chief, yet in mean, subordinate to the Lord paramount of heaven and earth; and that all things are not so absolutely determined in the outward and precedent causes, but that fair entreaties and moral persuasions may work upon a good nature so far, as to prevent that which otherwise had been, and to produce that which otherwise had not been. He that can reconcile this with an antecedent necessity of all things, and a physical or natural determination of all causes, shall be great Apollo to me. “Whereas T. H. saith that he had never uttered his opinion of this question, I suppose he intends in writing; my conversation with him hath not been frequent, yet I remember well that when this question was agitated between us two in your Lordship’s chamber by your command, he did then declare himself in words, both for the absolute necessity of all events, and for the ground of this necessity, the flux or concatenation of the second causes.” ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE BISHOP’S REPLY NO. I. (_a_) “The first day that I did read over T. H.’s defence of necessity,” &c.