Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/47

 ceivable difference between them, but chuses one by a mere act of willing without any cause but his own free act. To which I answer, 1. First, by asking whether this and other instances like this are the only instances wherein man is free to will or chuse among objects? If they are the only instances where man is free to will or chuse among objects? If they are the only instances wherein man is free to will or chuse among objects, then we are advanc’d a great way in the question; because there are few (if any) objects of the will that are perfectly alike; and because necessity is hereby allow’d to take place in all cases where there is a perceiveable difference in things, and consequently in all moral and religious cases, for the sake whereof such endeavors have been us’d to maintain so absurd and inconsistent a thing as liberty or freedom from necessity. So that liberty is almost, if not quite, reduc’d to nothing, and destroy’d as to the grand end in asserting it. If those are not the only instances wherein man is free to will or chuse among objects, but man is free to will in other cases, these other cases should be assign’d, and not such cases as are of no consequence, and which by the great likeness of the objects to one a-