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It is this: Suppose a man wills a particular thing, or external action, and it is prevented from happening by any outward restraint; or suppose he is unwilling to do a thing, and he is constrained to do it against his will; he is said to labour under compulsion or co-action.
The body merely suffers a change of place and position, in obedience to the act of the will; it does not act, nor can it act, because it is passive in its nature. To do as one wills, in this sense, is a freedom of the body from co-action; it is not a freedom of the will from internal necessity.
Calvin admits that we may be free from co-action or compulsion; but to call this freedom of the will, is, he considers, to decorate a most “diminutive thing with a superb title.” And though this is all the freedom Edwards allows us to possess, yet he does not hesitate to declare that his doctrine is perfectly consistent with “the highest degree of liberty that ever could be thought of, or that ever could possibly enter into the heart of man to conceive.”
Thus, Leibnitz saw and clearly exposed the futility of speaking about a freedom from co-action or restraint, when the question is, not whether the body is untrammelled, but whether the mind itself is free in the act of willing.
Of course he is not accountable for the failure of the consequence of his will in the one case, nor for the consequence of the force imposed on his body in the other. This kind of necessity is called co-action by Calvin and Luther; it is usually denominated “natural necessity” by Edwards and his followers; though it is also frequently termed compulsion, or co-action, by them.
West; and yet it is precisely his own definition of freedom. “But if by liberty,” says he, “be meant a power of willing and choosing, an exemption from co-action and natural necessity, and power, opportunity, and advantage, to execute our own choice; in this sense we hold liberty.” Thus he returns to the absurd idea of free-will as consisting in “elbow-room,” which merely allows our choice or volition to pass into effect.
That indeed, is true; but what end could it answer to deck out a thing so diminutive with a title so superb?” Truly, if Lombard merely meant by the freedom of the will, for which he contended, a freedom from external restraint, or co-action, Calvin might well contemptuously exclaim, “Egregious liberty!” It was reserved for a later period in the history of the Church to deck out this diminutive thing with the superb title of the freedom of the will, and to pass it off for the highest and most glorious liberty of which the human mind can form any conception.
In order to solve this great difficulty, and establish an agreement between necessity and liberty, he insists on the distinction between co-action and necessity.
Now, with how great necessity and co-action the ceremonies are imposed upon us, we have made it evident elsewhere. Sect. 4. 4.
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