Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (Foote).djvu/58

 and will have regard to the agreeableness or disagreeableness of objects in themselves, it is no longer the faculty contended for, but a faculty moved and affected by the nature of things.

So that man, with a faculty of choice indifferent to all objects, must make more wrong choices than man considered as a necessary being; in the same proportion, as acting as it happens, is a worse direction to choose right, than the use of our senses, experience, and reason.

3. Thirdly, the existence of such an arbitrary faculty, to choose without regard to the qualities of objects, would destroy the use of our senses, appetites, passions, and reason; which have been given us to direct us in our inquiries after truth, in our pursuit after happiness, and to preserve our beings. For if we had a faculty, which chose without regard to the notices and advertisements of these powers, and by its choice over-ruled them, we should then be endued with a faculty to defeat the end and uses of these powers.

But the imperfection of Liberty inconsistent with Necessity will yet more appear by considering the great perfection of being necessarily determined.

Can anything be perfect that is not necessarily perfect? For whatever is not necessarily perfect may be imperfect, and is by consequence imperfect.

Is it not a perfection in God necessarily to know all truth?

Is it not a perfection in him to be necessarily happy?

Is it not also a perfection in him to will and do always what is best? For if all things are indifferent to him, as some of the advocates of Liberty assert, and become good only by his willing them, he cannot have any motive from his own ideas, or from the nature of things, to will one thing rather than another, and consequently he must will without any reason or cause,