_T. H._ Fourthly, that those actions which man is said to do upon deliberation, are said to be voluntary, and done upon choice and election. So that voluntary action, and action proceeding from election, is the same thing. And that of a voluntary agent, it is all one to say he is free, and to say he hath not made an end of deliberating. [Sidenote: The Bishop’s reply.] _J. D._ (_a_) “This short section might pass without an animadversion, but for two things. The one is, that he confounds a voluntary act with a free act. A free act is only that which proceeds from the free election of the rational will after deliberation; but every act that proceeds from the sensitive appetite of man or beast, without deliberation or election, is truly voluntary. (_b_) The other thing observable is his conclusion, that ‘it is all one to say a man is free, and to say he hath not made an end of deliberating’; which confession of his overturns his whole structure of absolute necessity. For if every agent be necessitated to act what he doth act by a necessary and natural flux of extrinsical causes, then he is no more free before he deliberates, or whilst he deliberates, than he is after; but by T. H.’s confession here, he is more free whilst he deliberates, than he is after. And so after all his flourishes, for an absolute or extrinsical necessity, he is glad to set himself down, and rest contented with an hypothetical necessity, which no man ever denied or doubted of; ascribing the necessitation of a man in free acts to his own deliberation, and in indeliberate acts to his last thought, No. XXV. What is this to a natural and special influence of extrinsical causes? (_c_) “Again, ‘liberty’, saith he, ‘is an absence of extrinsical impediments’; but deliberation doth produce no new extrinsical impediment; therefore let him choose which part he will, either he is free after deliberation, by his own doctrine, or he was not free before. Our own deliberation, and the direction of our own understanding, and the election of our own will, do produce an hypothetical necessity, that the event be such as the understanding hath directed, and the will elected. But for as much as the understanding might have directed otherwise, and the will have elected otherwise, this is far from an absolute necessity. Neither doth liberty respect only future acts, but present acts also. Otherwise God did not freely create the world. In the same instant wherein the will elects, it is free, according to a priority of nature, though not of time, to elect otherwise. And so in a divided sense, the will is free, even whilst it acts; though in a compounded sense it be not free. Certainly, deliberation doth constitute, not destroy liberty. ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE ANSWER TO NO. XXVIII.