must will or prefer as things seem to us, unless we can lye to ourselves, and think that to be worst which we think best.
An ingenious author[1] expresses this matter well when he says, “the question, whether a man be at liberty to will which of the two he pleases, motion or rest; carries the absurdity of it so manifestly in itself, that one might hereby be sufficiently convinc’d, that liberty concerns not the will. For to ask, whether a man be at liberty to will either motion or rest, speaking or silence, which he pleases? is to ask, whether a man can will what he wills, or be pleas’d with what he is pleas’d with? A question that needs no answer.”
To suppose a sensible being capable of willing or preferring, (call it as you please) misery, and refusing good, is to deny it to be really sensible; for every man, while he has his senses, aims at pleasure and happiness, and avoids pain and misery; and this, in willing actions, which are suppos’d to be attended with the most terrible consequences. And therefore the ingenious Mr. Norris[2] very justly observes, that all who com-
