Against Strang: no ground to grade deliberate acts as more or less free
In John Strang's opinion, what seems to me quite improbable is the difference he sets up, as regards freedom, among things men do on purpose and after deliberation. As he has it, only some acts are free with the freedom that lies in indifference, by which a man can act or not act, do this or that, while others are free only with a simple freedom that does not require the will's indetermination, only that a man act willingly and with judgement.
To this second class, he thinks, belong not only all good actions but also many that in their kind are neither good nor evil. Yet we find by experience that we use our reason, judgement and power of choice in the same way, not only in all the actions of civil life but also in good ones. Why, then, should we think that some acts are freer than others, and that the same kind of freedom does not belong to them all?
Latin
XXXVII. In sententia Joan. Strangii illud omnino mihi videtur improbabile, quod inter eas quae ab hominibus consulto & deliberate fiunt, discrimen quoad libertatem statuit; quasi quaedam duntaxat liberae essent ea libertate quae sita est in indifferentia, & per quam homo potest agere vel non agere; hoc vel illud agere, aliae vero solum libertate simplici ad quam non requiritur voluntatis indeterminatio, sed tantum ut homo sponte & cum judicio agat. Ad quod genus pertinere putat, non solum omnes actiones bonas, sed etiam multas quae ex suo genere nec bonae, nec malae sunt. Cum enim experiamur nos eodem modo uti ratione & judicio nostro, ac eligendi potestate, non tantum in omnibus vitae civilis actionibus, sed etiam in bonis, quare putabimus alias aliis magis esse liberas, neque eandem libertatis speciem omnibus competere?