§ 3 Either I am free to write this discourse for liberty against necessity, or I am not free. If I be free, then I have obtained the cause, and ought not to suffer for the truth. If I be not free, yet I ought not to be blamed, since I do it not out of any voluntary election, but out of an inevitable necessity.

§ 4 And so to fall in hand with the question without any further proems or prefaces, by liberty I do understand neither a liberty from sin, nor a liberty from misery, nor a liberty from servitude, nor a liberty from violence. But I understand a liberty from necessity, or rather from necessitation, that is, a universal immunity from all inevitability and determination to one, whether it be of exercise only, which the Schools call a liberty of contradiction and is found in God and in the good and bad angels, that is, not a liberty to do both good and evil, but a liberty to do or not to do this or that good, this or that evil, respectively; or whether it be a liberty of specification and exercise also, which the Schools call liberty of contrariety and is found in men endowed with reason and understanding, that is, a liberty to do and not to do good and evil, this or that.