49. To be determined by our own judgment, is no restraint to liberty.
This is so far from being a restraint or
diminution of freedom, that it is the very improvement and benefit of it; it is not an abridgment, it is the end and
use of our liberty; and the further we are removed from such a determination, the nearer we are to misery and
slavery. A perfect indifference in the mind, not determinable by its last judgment of the good or evil that is
thought to attend its choice, would be so far from being an advantage and excellency of any intellectual nature,
that it would be as great an imperfection, as the want of indifferency. to act, or not to act, till determined by the
will, would be an imperfection on the other side. A man is at liberty to lift up his hand to his head, or let it rest
quiet: he is perfectly indifferent in either; and it would be an imperfection in him, if he wanted that power, if he
were deprived of that indifferency. But it would be as great an imperfection, if he had the same indifferency,
whether he would prefer the lifting up his hand, or its remaining in rest, when it would save his head or eyes from
a blow he sees coming: it is as much a perfection, that desire, or the power of preferring, should be determined by
good, as that the power of acting should be determined by the will; and the certainer such determination is, the
greater is the perfection. Nay, were we determined by anything but the last result of our own minds, judging of the
good or evil of any action, we were not free; the very end of our freedom being, that we may attain the good we
choose. And therefore, every man is put under a necessity, by his constitution as an intelligent being, to be
determined in willing by his own thought and judgment what is best for him to do: else he would be under the
determination of some other than himself, which is want of liberty. And to deny that a man's will, in every
determination, follows his own judgment, is to say, that a man wills and acts for an end that he would not have, at
the time that he wills and acts for it. For if he prefers it in his present thoughts before any other, it is plain he then
thinks better of it, and would have it before any other; unless he can have and not have it, will and not will it, at
the same time; a contradiction too manifest to be admitted.