NO. VIII. _T. H._ Supposing, it seems, I might answer as I have done, that necessity and election might stand together, and instance in the actions of children, fools, and brute beasts, whose fancies, I might say, are necessitated and determined to one: before these his proofs out of Scripture, he desires to prevent that instance, and therefore says, that the actions of children, fools, madmen, and beasts, are indeed determined, but that they proceed not from election, nor from free, but from spontaneous agents. As for example, that the bee, when it maketh honey, does it spontaneously; and when the spider makes his web, he does it spontaneously, and not by election. Though I never meant to ground any answer upon the experience of what children, fools, madmen, and beasts do, yet that your Lordship may understand what can be meant by spontaneous, and how it differs from voluntary, I will answer that distinction, and show that it fighteth against its fellow arguments. Your Lordship therefore is to consider, that all voluntary actions, where the thing that induceth the will is not fear, are called also spontaneous, and said to be done by a man’s own accord. As when a man giveth money voluntarily to another for merchandise, or out of affection, he is said to do it of his own accord, which in Latin is _sponte_, and therefore the action is spontaneous; though to give one’s money willingly to a thief to avoid killing, or throw it into the sea to avoid drowning, where the motive is fear, be not called spontaneous. But every spontaneous action is not therefore voluntary; for voluntary presupposes some precedent deliberation, that is to say, some consideration and meditation of what is likely to follow, both upon the doing and abstaining from the action deliberated of; whereas many actions are done of our own accord, and are therefore spontaneous; of which nevertheless, as he thinks, we never consulted nor deliberated in ourselves, as when making no question nor any the least doubt in the world but that the thing we are about is good, we eat, or walk, or in anger strike or revile, which he thinks spontaneous, but not voluntary nor elective actions. And with such kind of actions he says necessitation may stand, but not with such as are voluntary, and proceed upon election and deliberation. Now if I make it appear to you that even these actions which he says proceed from spontaneity, and which he ascribes only to fools, children, madmen, and beasts, proceed from deliberation and election, and that actions inconsiderate, rash and spontaneous, are ordinarily found in those that are, by themselves and many more, thought as wise or wiser than ordinary men are; then his argument concludeth, that necessity and election may stand together, which is contrary to that which he intendeth by all the rest of his arguments to prove. And first, your Lordship’s own experience furnishes