A treatise of freewill / by Ralph Cudworth ; now first edited from the original MS and with notes by John Allen.

  • Cudworth, Ralph, 1617-1688.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise of freewill / by Ralph Cudworth ; now first edited from the original MS and with notes by John Allen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    96/110 (page 84)
    Men could no more help contingency than necessity. Wherefore the matter can be resolved into nothing else but God’s absolute ])ower, and his arbitrary and unaccountable wll, which by reason of his omnipo- tence makes that to be just whatsoever he will do. It seems he thinks not fit to damn men to eternity but such as ^vere necessitated to do wicked actions before, but he might have done otherwise if he had thought good by his absolute power. To answer this, no man shall be damned for the contingency of any action where there was no difference of better or worse, a perfect equality and one thing as much eligible as the other; there can be no fault nor blame in this case, as was said before. But where there is an inequality of better or worse, a diversity of good, honesty and duty on one hand, and sensual gain and pleasure on the other, men having a power here over themselves to intend and exert themselves in resisting their sensual appetites, and endeavouring more and more by degrees to comply with tlie dictates of conscience opposed to them; if at the end of their lives they have run their course as that they have suffered themselves at last to be quite foiled and vanquished by the worser, it is just that they should fall short of the prize set before them, that they should lose the crown, and receive shame, disgrace, and jnuiishment. Men shall not bo damned for the cast of a die or such a fortuitous’ contingency. But for their not