Hobbes's treatise Of Liberty and Necessity

Summary

Right honourable,

§ 1 I had once resolved to answer my Lord Bishop's objections to my book De cive in the first place, as that which concerns me most, and afterwards to examine his discourse of liberty and necessity which, because I had never uttered my opinion of it, concerned me the less. But seeing it was both your Lordship's and my Lord Bishop's desire I should begin with the latter, I was contented so to do, and here I present and submit it to your Lordship's judgment.

§ 2 And first I assure your Lordship I find in it no new argument, neither from Scripture nor from reason, that I have not often heard before, which is as much as to say that I am not surprised.

§ 3 The preface is a handsome one, but it appears even in that that he has mistaken the question. For whereas he says thus, ‘If I be free to write this discourse, I have obtained the cause’, I deny that to be true. For it is enough to his freedom of writing that he had not written it unless he would himself. If he will obtain the cause, he must prove that before he wrote it, it was not necessary he should write3 it afterward. It may be his Lordship thinks it all one to say, ‘I was free to write it’ and, ‘It was not necessary I should write it.’