First, whosoever have power of election have true liberty, for the proper act of liberty is election. A spontaneity may consist with determination to one: as we see in children, fools, madmen, brute beasts, whose fancies are determined to those things which they act spontaneously; as the bees make honey, the spiders webs. But none of these have liberty of election; which is an act of judgment and understanding, and cannot possibly consist with a determination to one. He that is determined by something before himself or without himself, cannot be said to choose or elect: unless it be as the junior of the mess chooseth in Cambridge, whether he will have the least part or nothing; and scarcely so much.
A Vindication of True Liberty Against Mr. Hobbes (1655); Discourse I, Part III, Number V. 'Election' here, of course, means 'choice'. The distinction between spontaneity and choice is an important one; as has been noted again and again, you can act spontaneously without acting out of choice. Nonetheless the two are regularly confused.
John Bramhall, by the way, eventually became Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland; however, since he was a royalist, at the time of writing this he was in exile. He was something of a fighter, and a very competent one; he defended the Church of England against both Puritans and Catholics, and wrote several works, like the one from which I quote above, against Hobbes's determinism.
