A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (1735)/Chapter 2
2d Argument taken from the impossibility of Liberty.II. A second reason to prove man a necessary agent is, because all his actions have a beginning. For whatever has a beginning must have a cause; and every cause is a necessary cause.
If anything can have a beginning which has no cause, then nothing can produce something. And if nothing can produce something, then the world might have had a beginning without a cause: which is not only an absurdity commonly charg’d on Atheists, but is a real absurdity in itself.
Besides, if a cause be not a necessary cause, it is no cause at all. For if causes are not necessary causes; then causes are not suited to, or are indifferent to effects; and the Epicurean System of chance is rendred possible; and this orderly world might have been produc’d by a disorderly or fortuitous concourse of atoms; or which is all one, by no cause at all. For in arguing against the Epicurean system of chance, do we not say, (and that justly) that it is impossible for chance ever to have produc’d an orderly system of things, as not being a cause suit’d to the effect; and that an orderly system of things, which had a beginning, must have had an intelligent Agent for its cause, as being the only proper cause to that effect? All which implies that causes are suited, or have relation to some particular effects, and not to others. And if they be suited to some particular effect and not to others, they can be no causes at all to those others. And therefore a cause not suited to the effect, and no cause; are the same thing. And if a cause not suited to the effect is no cause; then a cause suited to the effect is a necessary cause: for if it does not produce the effect, it is not suited to it, or is no cause at all of it.
Liberty therefore, or a power to act or not to act, to do this is another thing under the same causes, is an impossibility and atheistical.And as liberty stands and can only be grounded on the absurd principle of Epicurean Atheism; so the Epicurean Atheists, who were the most popular and most numerous sect of the Atheists of antiquity, were the great[1] asserters of Liberty; as on the other side, the[2] Stoicks, who were the most popular and most numerous sect among the religionaries of antiquity, were the great asserters of fate and necessity. The case was also the same among the Jews, as among the heathen: the Jews, I say, who besides the light of nature, had many books of Revelation (some whereof are now lost); and who had intimate and personal conversation with God himself. They were principally divided into three sects, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes.[3] The Sadducees, who were esteem’d an irreligious and atheistical sect, maintain’d the liberty of man. But the Pharisees, who were a religious sect, ascrib’d all things to fate, or to God’s appointment, and it was the first article of their creed,[4] that fate and God do all; and consequently they do not assert a true liberty, when they asserted a liberty together with this fatality and necessity of all things. And the Essenes, who were the most religious sect among the Jews, and fell not under the censure of our Saviour for their hypocrisy as the Pharisees did, were asserters of absolute fate and necessity. St. Paul,[5] who was a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee, is suppos’d by the learn’d Dodwell,[6] to have receiv’d his doctrine of fate from the masters of that sect, as they receiv’d it from the Stoicks. And he observes further, that the Stoick Philosophy is necessary for the explication of Christian Theology; that there are examples in the holy scriptures of the Holy Ghost’s speaking according to the opinions of the Stoicks, and that in particular, the apostle St. Paul in what he has disput’d concerning Predestination and Reprobation, is to be expound’d according to the Stoicks opinion concerning fate. So that liberty is both the real foundation of popular Atheism, and has been the profess’d principle of the Atheists themselves; as on the other side, fate, or the necessity of events, has been esteem’d a religious opinion and been the profess’d principle of the religious, both among Heathens and Jews, and also of that great Convert to Christianity and great converter of others, St. Paul.