A44687:92
The reconcilableness of God's prescience of the sins of men with the wisdom and…The reconcileableness of God's prescience of the sins of men with the wisdom and…
The reconcilableness of God's prescience of the sins of men with the wisdom and sincerity of his counsels, exhortations, and whatsoever other means he uses to prevent them / in a letter to the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq.The reconcileableness of God's prescience of the sins of men with the wisdom and sincerity of his counsels, exhortations, and whatsoever other means he uses to prevent them / in a letter to the Honorable Robert Boyle Esq.
London: printed for Brabazon Aylmer, 1677
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
§. VIII.
Wherefore waving that unfeasible, unnecessary, and unenjoyned task, of defending God's predeterminative concourse unto sinful actions; Our encounter must only be of the more superable difficulty, to reconcile his Prescience of them, with his provisions against them, i. e. how ⟨p. 51⟩fitly the Wise and Holy God can have interposed his precautions and dissuasions, in their own nature, aptly tending to withhold and divert men, from those evil actions, which he yet foresees they will do.
And it is, in the first place, evident, there can be no pretence to allege, that there is any such repugnancy in the matter, as shall amount to a contradiction, so much as virtual, or which the things signified, on the one part and the other, can be understood any way to import, That indeed there should be a direct and explicit contradiction between foreknowing and dehorting, we may, at first sight, perceive the terms cannot admit; For there is nothing enuntiated (affirmed or denied) in either. But let the sense ⟨p. 52⟩of both be resolved into Propositions, capable of being confronted to one another, And all that can be made of the former, will only come to this] you will do such a thing] and of the latter, no more but this [you ought not to do it] These are at as great distance, as can be imagined, from grating upon, or jarring with one another.
And it is, in the first place, evident, there can be no pretence to alledg, that there is any such repugnancy in the matter, as shall amount to a contradiction, so much as vertual, or which the things signify'd, on the one part and the other, can be understood any way to import, That indeed there should be a direct and explicite contradiction between foreknowing and dehorting, we may, at first sight, perceive the terms cannot admit; For there is nothing enuntiated (affirmed or denied) in either. But let the sense