(_a_) “Supposing the last dictate of the understanding did always determine the will, yet this determination, being not antecedent in time, nor proceeding from extrinsical causes, but from the proper resolution of the agent, who had now freely determined himself, makes no absolute necessity, but only hypothetical, &c.” This is the Bishop’s answer to the necessity inferred from that, that the will necessarily followeth the last dictate of the understanding; which answer he thinks is not sufficiently taken away, because the last act of the understanding is in time together with the will itself, and therefore not antecedent. It is true, that the will is not produced but in the same instant with the last dictate of the understanding; but the necessity of the will, and the necessity of the last dictate of the understanding, may have been antecedent. For that last dictate of the understanding was produced by causes antecedent, and was then necessary though not yet produced; as when a stone is falling, the necessity of touching the earth is antecedent to the touch itself. For all motion through any determined space, necessarily makes a motion through the next space, unless it be hindered by some contrary external motion; and then the stop is as necessary, as the proceeding would have been. The argument therefore from the last dictate of the understanding, sufficiently inferreth an antecedent necessity, as great as the necessity that a stone shall fall when it is already falling. As for his other answer, that “the will does not certainly follow the last dictate of the understanding, though it always ought to follow it”, he himself says it is but probable; but any man that speaks not by rote, but thinks of what he says, will presently find it false; and that it is impossible to will anything that appears not first in his understanding to be good for him. And whereas he says the will ought to follow the last dictate of the understanding, unless he mean that the man ought to follow it, it is an insignificant speech; for duties are the man’s not the will’s duties: and if he means so, then it is false; for a man ought not to follow the dictate of the understanding, when it is erroneous.