“Seventhly, concerning those actions which are done upon precedent and passed deliberations; they are not only spontaneous, but free acts. Habits contracted by use and experience, do help the will to act with more facility and more determinately, as the hand of the artificer is helped by his tools. And precedent deliberations, if they were sad and serious, and proved by experience to be profitable, do save the labour of subsequent consultations; _frustra fit per plura, quod fieri potest per pauciora_. Yet nevertheless the actions which are done by virtue of these formerly acquired habits, are no less free, than if the deliberation were coexistent with this particular action. He that hath gained an habit and skill to play such a lesson, needs not a new deliberation how to play every time that he plays it over and over. Yet I am far from giving credit to him in this, that walking or eating universally considered, are free actions, or proceed from true liberty; not so much because they want a particular deliberation before every individual act, as because they are animal motions and need no deliberation of reason, as we see in brute beasts. And nevertheless the same actions, as they are considered individually, and invested with their due circumstances, may be and often are free actions subjected to the liberty of the agent. “Lastly, whereas T. H. compareth the first motions or rash attempts of choleric persons with such acquired habits, it is a great mistake. Those rash attempts are voluntary actions, and may be facilitated sometimes by acquired habits. But yet for as much as actions are often altered and varied by the circumstances of time, place, and person, so as that act which at one time is morally good, at another time may be morally evil; and for as much as a general precedent deliberation how to do this kind of action, is not sufficient to make this or that particular action good or expedient, which being in itself good, yet particular circumstances may render inconvenient or unprofitable to some persons, at some times, in some places: therefore a precedent general deliberation how to do any act, as for instance, how to write, is not sufficient to make a particular act, as my writing this individual reply, to be freely done, without a particular and subsequent deliberation. A man learns French advisedly; that is a free act. The same man in his choler and passion reviles his friend in French, without any deliberation; this is a spontaneous act, but it is not a free act. If he had taken time to advise, he would not have reviled his friend. Yet as it is not free, so neither is it so necessary as the bees making honey, whose fancy is not only inclined, but determined, by nature to that act. So every way he fails. And his conclusion, that the liberty of election doth not take away the necessity of electing this or that individual thing, is no consequent from my doctrine, but from his own. Neither do my arguments