(_b_) “His second argument is, _ex concessis_: ‘It is out of controversy, that of voluntary actions the will is a necessary cause’. The argument may be thus reduced: necessary causes produce necessary effects; but the will is a necessary cause of voluntary actions. I might deny his major; necessary causes do not always produce necessary effects, except they be also necessarily produced.” He has reduced the argument to nonsense, by saying necessary causes produce not necessary effects. For necessary effects, unless he mean such effects as shall necessarily be produced, is insignificant. Let him consider therefore with what grace he can say, necessary causes do not always produce their effects, except those effects be also necessarily produced. But his answer is chiefly to the minor, and denies that the will is not a necessary cause of what it wills in particular actions. That it wills when it wills, saith he, is necessary; but that it wills this or that, is free. Is it possible for any man to conceive, that he that willeth, can will anything but this or that particular thing? It is therefore manifest, that either the will is a necessary cause of this or that or any other particular action, or not the necessary cause of any voluntary action at all. For universal actions there be none. In that which followeth, he undertaketh to make his doctrine more expressly understood by considering the act of the will three ways: “in respect of its nature, in respect of its exercise, and in respect of its object”. For the nature of the act, he saith, that “that which the will wills, is necessarily voluntary”, and that in this sense he grants it is out of controversy, that the will is a necessary cause of voluntary actions. Instead of “that which the will wills”, to make it sense, read that which the man wills; and then if the man’s will be, as he confesseth, a necessary cause of voluntary actions, it is no less a necessary cause that they are actions, than that they are voluntary. For the exercise of the act, he saith that “the will may either will, or suspend its act”. This is the old canting, which hath already been sufficiently detected. But to make it somewhat, let us read it thus: the man that willeth, may either will or suspend his will: and thus it is intelligible, but false; for how can he that willeth, at the same time suspend his will? And for the object he says, that “it is not necessary but free”, &c. His reason is, because, he says, it was not necessary, for example, in choosing a Pope, to choose him this or that day, or to choose this or that man. I would be glad to know, by what argument he can prove the election not to have been necessitated: for it is not enough for him to say, I perceive no necessity in it; nor to say, they might have chosen another, because he knows not whether they might or not; nor to say if he had not been freely elected, the election had been void or none. For though that be