458 tarEDOM OF WILL. I. Liberty or freedom may be attributed in a figurative sense to inanimate beings ; so we say by way of simile, free as the air or wind. It is yet a little more properly applied to ani- mals ; so a bird released from its cage is free, or a horse from his bridle or harness. All manner of outward necessity, that is, restraint or constraint, is inconsistent with this freedomof brute creatures. But there are some actions which a beast performs with a kind of brutal freedom, and yet by a sort of natural neces- sity also. A horse naturally avoids the fireby an inward neces- sity, thoughhe doth it freely, that is, with all the freedom he has : and when he is thirsty, he freely drinks, yet it is by an inward or natural necessity, where nothing restrains him. But leaving these . ideas of a less proper freedom, let us rather consider liberty in its more proper sense, as it belongs to men or other intelligent creatures, or to God himself, who is the Creator. H. Liberty, as ascribed to intellectual beings, is either moral or natural. Natural liberty has various ideas, as will appear immediately. " Moral liberty is a freedom from all supe- rior authority :" in this sense, God alone is universally and per- fectly free, having no authority superior to himself. But there are many instances of particular moral freedom among men; au apprentice is free from the authorityof his master when he has served seven years ; and the lad is free from the government of his tutor when his childhood is past, and he commences man, It is no longer necessary that the apprenticeshould obey his mas- ter's commands, nor the youth those of his tutor, which it was morally necessary or plain duty for them to obey before. In this moral sense, necessity or restraint and liberty are evidently in- consistent. III. Natural liberty must be distinguished into a liberty of volition, or a liberty of action : The first is a liberty of the will, the last is rather a liberty of the executive powers*. It is this freedom of volition or chasingwhich is properly the liberty of an intelligent being, and the chief subject of dispute, and not the freedom of the inferior powers from restraint or constraint in acting or executing the determinations of the will. There are many cases wherein the will may be free to chuse, but the man is not free to act. The freedom of the will is very con- sistent with the restraint of action : so a person whose mouth is stopped, may be willing or chuse either to speak or to keep silence ; and he is free in this choice, so far as the volition * Note, when action is contradistingaished from volition, I mean chiefly the action or motionof the inferior and executive powers ; for in the nature of Mutes the will is the chief agent, and volition isaction in the properest sense ; but I fear it deviates too much from the sense of mankind to permit the words action and avent to be applied only to the will, and to nothing else, as sortie writers have done in this controversy. However, it is but a debate about words.
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