CHAP. XXV. Of the divers Acceptions or Significations of Freedom or Freeness; and of the several Sorts or Degrees of Freedom in Creatures inanimate, vegetable, sensitive, and rational. in creatures is op 1. FREEDOM or freeness in our English tongue of freedom sometimes imports no more than spontaneum doth in inanimate, Latin. And according to this sense or significa-posed to ention, every thing is said to be done sponte, or freely, or forcement. freely to come to pass, which is done or comes to pass by the proper or natural inclination of any bodily substance, whether it be endowed with life or sense, or with motion only. Thus we say, the water hath a free course, or runneth freely, when it runs that way which nature inclines it, without any let or hinderance, or without any artificial or external help to draw, move, or impel it. Freedom in this sense is opposed only to coaction, to constraint, or enforcement. As when water is drawn or impelled to such a course, which, left to itself, it would not take, we say it is a forced stream or current, not a free stream: and so we call those grounds forced, which bring forth little or no fruit, without great labour, toil, or cost, unto such as till or dress them. And in this sense the Latin word liberum, unto which our English freedom or liberty doth more properly and directly answer than unto the Latin spontaneum, is sometimes used, to wit, as it is opposed only to coaction or enforcement: so a poet, describing the happy estate of the world in the golden age, saith―Ipsaque tellus omnia liberius nullo poscente ferebat-" The earth did bring forth all things necessary or expedient for the use or comfort of man freely :' that is, of its own accord, without the labour, industry, or provident dressing of man. Thus, this and other 66 82 poets i speak of the golden age, from some broken notions or traditions of man's first estate in paradise, and of that estate wherein the world and all things should have continued, if man had not fallen. But this temper of the earth is much altered, or rather inverted, by the fall of man. Most men, it may be, have heard or read of that answer which an ancient philosopher made to this question: "Why nettles, thistles, and other like weeds, should grow so fast in such abundance, of their own accord; whenas flowers, herbs, or comfortable fruits did not grow at all, or seldom come to any good proof, without the extraordinary pains or skill of man?" The best answer which the philosopher could make was this " That the earth was a natural and kind mother unto nettles, weeds, and grass; but a stepmother only to flowers, herbs, or fruit." Now the answer, though for those times held witty, was no way satisfactory. For a man might have further asked him, Why the earth should be a kind mother and loving nurse to weeds, and a hard or cruel stepmother to herbs or fruits?" Unto this question the youngest child amongst us that is rightly catechised in the grounds of religion, or hath but read the three first chapters of the first book of Moses, may give a more full and satisfactory answer, than the wisest philosophers, without the principles of Christian religion, could do. The cause then, or reason, is from the curse wherewith God cursed the earth for man's transgression, 66 iOf that age, Ovid. Met. lib. i. 101, &c. Ipsa quoque immunis, rastroque intacta, nec ullis Gen. iii. 17-19: Because thou hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. But though the heathens could not know this story by light of nature; yet thus much being revealed or made known unto them, they might easily have gathered, that if the earth was thus accursed for man's sake, the nature of man was first accursed or corrupted as in very deed this preposterous and untoward inclination of the earth to bring forth weeds freely and plentifully, and good fruit hardly or by constraint or coaction, is but an emblem or visible picture of the untoward and corrupt disposition of man's heart to bring forth the fruits of the flesh voluntarily, freely, and plentifully; whereas it doth not, it cannot, bring forth the fruits of the Spirit, without the skill and husbandry of him that made it. We have the seeds of sin and iniquity planted in us by nature, and they fructify and increase by our sloth and negligence. As for the fruits of righteousness, the seeds of them must be sown in us by the Spirit of God; and being sown, they do not grow up and prosper without his extraordinary blessing upon his own plants, and his servants' labours. Though Paul may plant, and Apollos water, yet it is God only that gives the increase. I am the vine, saith our Saviour, John xv. 1, and my Father is the husbandman; and, as the apostle, 1 Cor. iii. 9, speaks, we are his husbandry. So that in respect of the fruits of righteousness and works spiritual, man's nature is not free according to this first acception or sense of freedom; that is, as it was opposed unto coaction: Of the but in respect of the fruits of the flesh our corrupt nature is most free; these it brings forth of its own accord more freely and more plentifully than the earth (which God hath cursed for man's sake) doth nettles, thistles, or any worse kind of weed. And yet the more freely our nature brings forth the fruits of sin, 83 the more deeply it is still tainted with the servitude of sin. So that freedom and servitude in some cases, at least in respect of divers objects, are not opposite, but coincident or compatible in one and the same subject or person. radical difference between inanimate and vegeta bles. 2. This kind of freedom, which is only opposed to coaction or enforcement, though it be truly and procreatures perly in creatures inanimate and void of life, yet it is in a higher degree in creatures vegetable or sensitive. Inanimate or lifeless creatures have their inclinations so set by nature, that no contrary inclination can be implanted in them by custom: as, if you move a stone every hour of the day upwards, it will still move itself as freely and as swiftly downwards, as it did at the first. We cannot work any inclination or propension in it, either to move itself upwards, or to be more easily moved by us. But vegetables, of what kind soever, grass, corn, (or weeds which grow up with them,) herbs or plants; albeit they have no freedom or power at all to move themselves out of the places wherein they grow, yet have they a natural faculty to increase themselves, or be augmented by the benignity of the earth wherein they grow, and the influence of moisture and heat from heaven; a capacity withal, which stones, or other inanimate creatures, have not, to be much bettered, both in growth and quality, by the industry k Arist. Eth. Nicom. lib. 2. cap. 1. οὐθὲν γὰρ τῶν φύσει ὄντων ἄλλως ἐθίζεται, οἷον ὁ λίθος φύσει κάτω φερόμενος, οὐκ ἂν ἐθισθείη ἄνω φέρεσθαι, οὐδ ̓ ἂν μυριάκις αὐτὸν ἐθίζῃ τις ἄνω ῥίπτων, οὐδὲ τὸ πῦρ κάτω. Another degree or rank or skilful husbandry of man. of animate or living creatures there is, which the Grecians call (wopurà, and the Latins as well as they can express the Greek, stirp-animalia, or (plant-animalia,) that is, living creatures in some respects best resembling mere vegetables; in others, sensitives, which we call animalia. The most of this rank live in the sea, as oysters, cockles, muscles, or other duller kinds of shell-fishes, which herein agree with mere vegetables, in that they can hardly move themselves out of their places, as from the rocks or sands wherein they breed, and yet have a sense or feeling of their proper nutriment, or of its want, which mere vegetables have not; and a motive power within themselves, answerable to this sense of pain or pleasure, of opening or shutting their mouths, or those instruments of sense by which they suck in their food or nutriment. Some land creatures there be, (if we may believe good writers without our own experiments,) that hold the same correspondency between mere vegetables and sensitive creatures, which the forementioned shell-fishes or sea creatures do. To omit the reports of the Russian lamb, or other like sensitives which are fastened to the earth out of which they grow: it hath been in my hearing, and in a solemn audience avouched by as great a philosopher and divine as any that have written of the West Indies, that there is a kind of herb or plant about Portrico, which though it cannot move itself out of its place, yet hath as nimble and wily motions within itself, as great a command over its own branches, to decline ungrateful touches, as any perfect sensitive creatures have, which are tied to a certain of the station, or settled footing. difference betwixt ve ex-getables and sensitives, 3. Creatures truly sensitive, (that is, such as far ceed vegetables or the (wopurà,) besides the sense of and their motive |