ree Will (whether in
God or man) that given the same circumstances, the same thing need not,
may not, and perhaps will not, occur. However, an act may be free _in
causa_ which _hic et nunc must_ happen; the Free Will having done that
by choice which brings as a necessary consequence something else. For
there are many things which would involve contradiction and so be
impossible, did not certain consequences follow them. This premised, it
is clear that the antithesis of Mr. Mill's "Law" is Free Will. Law and
antecedent necessity to Mr. Mill are one and the same. But Law in
Catholic terminology means the Will of God decreeing freely or not
freely, according to the subject-matter; and is not opposed to
Free-Will. It guides, it need not coerce or necessitate, though it may.
Neither in one sense, is Law synonymous with Reason, for that is
according to Reason, simply, which does not involve a contradiction,
whether it be done freely or of necessity; and many things are possible,
or non-contradictives, that Law does not prescribe. Nor again does
Free-Will mean lawless in the sense of irrational; or causeless, in the
sense of having no motive: "contra legem," "praeter legem" is not "contra
rationem," "prater rationem." The Divine Will, then, may be free, yet
act according to Law, namely, its own freely-determined Law. And it may
act "not according to Law," and yet act according to Reason. In this
sense, then, theologians identify the Divine Will with the Divine
Reason--I mean, they insist that God's Will is always according to
Reason--in this sense, but, as I think, not in any other. For the Divine
Will is antecedently free as regards all things which are not God; but
the Divine Intellect is not free in the same way. St. Augustine always
tends to view things in the concrete, not distinguishing their "rationes
formales," or distinguishing them vaguely. And Ratio with him does not
mean Reason merely, but living Reason or the Reasoning Being, the Soul.
When St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of Lex AEterna he means the Necessary Law
of Morality, concerning which God is not free, because in decreeing it,
He is but decreeing that there is no Righteousness except by imitation
of Him.

The root of all these difficulties and of all the confusion in speech
which they have brought forth is this: the mystery of Free-Will in God,
the Unchangeable and Eternal, The great truth taught in the words of the
Vatican Council, "Deus, _liberrimo consilio_ co