“Next, I do not believe that a man is bound to weigh the expedience or inexpedience of every ordinary trivial action to the least grain in the balance of his understanding; or to run up into his watch-tower with his perspective to take notice of every jackdaw that flies by, for fear of some hidden danger. This seems to me to be a prostitution of reason to petit observations as concerning every rag that a man wears, each drop of drink, each morsel of bread that he eats, each pace that he walks. Thus many steps must he go, not one more nor one less, under pain of mortal sin. What is this but a rack and a gibbet to the conscience? But God leaves many things indifferent: though man may be so curious, he will not. A good architect will be sure to provide sufficient materials for his building; but what particular number of stones or trees, he troubles not his head. And suppose he _should_ weigh each action thus, yet he _doth_ not; so still there is liberty. Thirdly, I conceive it is possible in this mist and weakness of human apprehension, for two actions to be so equally circumstantiated, that no discernible difference can appear between them upon discussion. As suppose a chirurgeon should give two plaisters to his patient, and bid him apply either of them to his wound; what can induce his reason more to the one than to the other, but that he may refer it to chance whether he will use? But leaving these probable speculations, which I submit to better judgments, I answer the philosopher briefly thus: admitting that the will did necessarily follow the last dictate of the understanding, as certainly in many things it doth: yet, first, this is no extrinsical determination from without, and a man’s own resolution is not destructive to his own liberty, but depends upon it. So the person is still free. “Secondly, this determination is not antecedent, but joined with the action. The understanding and the will, are not different agents, but distinct faculties of the same soul. Here is an infallibility, or an hypothetical necessity as we say, _quicquid est, quando est, necesse est esse_: a necessity of consequence, but not a necessity of consequent. Though an agent have certainly determined, and so the action be become infallible, yet if the agent did determine freely, the action likewise is free.”