NECESSITY, whatever is done by a cause or power that is irresistible; in which sense it is opposed to freedom. Man is a necessary agent, if all his actions be so determined by the causes preceding each action,
that not one past action could possibly not have come to pass, or have been otherwise than it hath been; nor one future action can possibly not come to pass, or be otherwise than it shall be. But he is a free agent, if he be able, at any time, under the circumstances and causes he then is, to do different things; or, in other words, if he be not unavoidably determined in every point of time, by the circumstances he is in, and the causes he is under, to do that one thing he does, and not possibly to do any other thing. Whether man is a necessary or a free agent, is a question which has been debated with much ingenuity by writers of the first eminence, from Hobbes and Clarke, to Priestley and Gregory. See METAPHYSICS, Part III. chap. v. and PREDESTINATION.