reatest imperfection, namely sin,
springs from perfection itself. But it is no less a paradox to present as a
perfection the thing which is the least reasonable in the world, the
advantage whereof would consist in being privileged against reason. And
that, after all, rather than pointing out the source of the evil, would be
to contend that it has none. For if the will makes its resolve without the
existence of anything, either in the person who chooses or in the object
which is chosen, to prompt it to the choice, there will be neither cause
nor reason for this election; and as moral evil consists in the wrong
choice, that is admitting that moral evil has no source at all. Thus in the
rules of good metaphysics there would have to be no moral evil in Nature;
and also for the same reason there would be no moral good either, and all
morality would be destroyed. But we must listen to our gifted author, from
whom the subtlety of an opinion maintained by famous philosophers among the
Schoolmen, and the adornments that he has added thereto himself by his[417]
wit and his eloquence, have hidden the great disadvantages contained
therein. In setting forth the position reached in the controversy, he
divides the writers into two parties. The one sort, he says, are content to
say that the freedom of the will is exempt from outward constraint; and the
other sort maintain that it is also exempt from inward necessity. But this
exposition does not suffice, unless one distinguish the necessity that is
absolute and contrary to morality from hypothetical necessity and moral
necessity, as I have already explained in many places.

13. The first section of this chapter is to indicate the nature of choice.
The author sets forth in the first place the opinion of those who believe
that the will is prompted by the judgement of the understanding, or by
anterior inclinations of the desires, to resolve upon the course that it
adopts. But he confuses these authors with those who assert that the will
is prompted to its resolution by an absolute necessity, and who maintain
that the person who wills has no power over his volitions: that is, he
confuses a Thomist with a Spinozist. He makes use of the admissions and the
odious declarations of Mr. Hobbes and his like, to lay them to the charge
of those who are infinitely far removed from them, and who take great care
to refute them. He lays these things to their charge because they believe,
as Mr. Hobbes beli