`  :*Here is even more nuance, I'm afraid: ``Priestley acknowledged that his doctrine of necessity was not original with him: Hobbes had states its essentials, Cambridge neo-Platonists (especially John Norris and Ralph Cudworth) had argued for some parts of it, Spinoza and Locke had discussed it....For Priestley, the doctrine of philosophical necessity was a matter of continuing personal influence and concern. It represented the relationship of cause and effect, and therefore disclosed God...It directly followed from the one aspect of his Calvinist heritage that he had retained: a belief in the omnipotence and omniscience of God. He had given up his liberty with considerable reluctance, but having done so, the conviction that 'all things, past, present, and to come, are precisely what the Author of nature really intended them to be, and has made provision for', and an unreserved confidence in the goodness and providential care of God, produced that serenity of mind and cheerful acceptance of circumstances that were such marked characteristics of Priestley throughout his life. This was the aspect of the doctrine of necessity that he wanted to share with others. What he wrote was, in fact, an ingenious piece of sophistry. In insisted that the doctrine of necessity was more consistent with the expectations of most people than that of free will, if each was properly understood. Liberty and necessity were perfectly commensurate with each other. Voluntary was not opposed to necessary, but to involuntary; chance, or contingency, opposed to necessary. Nonetheless, there is an absolute determinism in Priestley's necessity: there is no distinction between moral and physical necessity. As, in the physical world, the connection between cause and effect is invariable and therefore necessary, so, in the mind, there is some fixed law of nature....Yet, if God is the proper and sole cause of all things, no man can act other than he does, and god is the ultimate author of sin! Yes, said Priestley, this is true, but in a confined view only. There is no sin in God, for it is disposition of mind and design that constitute sinfulness of action. The Divine Being appears to determine vice, but only so that good may result to the whole system. Only an infinite mind is capable of comprehending entirety`` (Schofield, Vol. 2, 78-79)  ::*Perhaps it is a similar idea, but Priestley felt he was saying something a bit new and Leibniz isn't placed in this line of precursors, which makes me a bit nervous. Also, I feel that the description of evil is slightly different, don't you? This is why I worry about us inserting the statement. I certainly feel like I don't know enough to say just how similar it is.  |  `