A discourse of the saving grace of God

But if this destroy the Liberty of the Will, their own Doctrine overthrows it: For they Teach, that God, from Eternity, ⟨p. 119⟩before any Act of his Will, foresaw which way every Mans Will, in such and such Circumstances, would incline. He foreknows certainly and infallibly, that in those Circumstances it will incline this way, and not the other. Now if he know that certainly, it must be Certain and of Necessity: For to know that as certain, which is not certain, is not to know but to mistake, to apprehend a thing otherwise than it is. And if the Will might or could incline otherwise than he foresaw, his Foreknowledge would not be Infallible: For that excludes, not only actual Error, but a possibility of it.

If then it be true from Eternity, that the Will must incline this one way, it is not indifferent to incline that way or another; and so its indifferency, its freedom from a necessity to incline but this one way, is gone by their own Principles. They must either grant, that the Liberty of Mans Will is consistent with a Necessity of inclining one way and not another, or yield that their own Doctrine destroys its liberty.

Whether they will be so ingenuous or no, it is very certain that some Necessity may very well consist with Liberty in ⟨p. 120⟩the freest Agents. God is Necessarily good, and yet Freely: So are the Saints and Angels in Heaven; they cannot but be Holy, and act holily, yet they are so, and do so freely. The Devils and Damned in Hell are necessarily Wicked, they cannot be other; and yet they are so, and act Wickedness freely: Wicked men on Earth, that are habitually and judicially hardened in Wickedness, they are necessarily evil, and cannot but sin, and yet they sin freely. So that this Conceit, though it be a fundamental Doctrine with them, and the main weight of their Cause lies on it, that Liberty is inconsistent with Necessity; is against the sense, reason and experience of Heaven, and Earth, and Hell.