(_a_) “Still here is nothing but confusion; he confounds the faculty of the will with the act of volition; he makes the will to be the last part of deliberation; he makes the intention, which is a most proper and elicit act of the will, to be no willing at all, but only some antecedaneous (he might as well have said, antecedent) inclination.” To confound the faculty of the will with the will, were to confound a _will_ with _no will_; for the faculty of the will is no will; the act only which he calls _volition_, is the will. As a man that sleepeth hath the _power_ of _seeing_, and _seeth not_, nor hath for that time any _sight_; so also he hath the _power_ of willing, but _willeth nothing_, nor hath for that time any _will_. I must therefore have departed very much from my own principles, if I have confounded the _faculty_ of the _will_ with the _act_ of _volition_. He should have done well to have shown where I confounded them. It is true, I make the will to be the last part of deliberation; but it is that will which maketh the action voluntary, and therefore needs must be the last. But for the preceding variations of the will to do and not to do, though they be so many several wills, contrary to and destroying one another, they usually are called _intentions_; and therefore they are nothing to the will, of which we dispute, that maketh an action voluntary. And though a man have in every long deliberation a great many _wills_ and _nills_, they use to be called inclinations, and the last only _will_ which is immediately followed by the voluntary action. But nevertheless, both he that hath those intentions, and God that seeth them, reckoneth them for so many wills. (_b_) “According to this doctrine, concupiscence with consent should be no sin; for that which is not truly willed, is not a sin.” This is no consequent to my doctrine: for I hold that they are, in the sight of God, so many consents, so many willings, which would have been followed by actions, if the actions had been in their power. It had been fitter for a man in whom is required gravity and sanctity more than ordinary, to have chosen some other kind of instance. But what meaneth he by _concupiscence with consent_? Can there be concupiscence without consent? It is the consent itself. There may be also a lawful concupiscence with consent. For concupiscence makes not the sin, but the unlawfulness of satisfying such concupiscence; and not the consent, but the will and design to prosecute that which a man knoweth to be unlawful. An appetite to another man’s bread, is concupiscence; and though it be with consent to eat, it is no sin; but the design to take it from the other, notwithstanding that he may fail in his design, that is the sin. And this instance might have served his turn as well as the other; and for consent, if he had understood the truth, he might have put design. NO. XXVIII.