A44687:98
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.
§. IX.
And, that we may consider the matter more narrowly; Would the supposition of such foreknowledge, in God, make that cease to be Man's duty, which had otherwise been so? and take away the differences of good and evil? ⟨p. 55⟩Would it nullify the obligation of God's Law, and make Man's own inclination his only rule? Or, if it be said, because it is foreknown, Man will do such a thing, therefore he may, where is the connection? For what influence can foreknowledge have, to alter, or affect, any way, either the nature of the thing foreknown, or the temper of the person that shall do it; any more than the present knowledge of the same thing, now in doing? Which knowledge none would deny to God: And which, when it occurs to a man, is no more understood to make an evil action innocent, than the action makes the eye guilty, of him that beholds it only, and detests it at once. Surely what is, in its own nature, whether, good, or evil, can never not be so, be it ⟨p. 56⟩foreknown or not foreknown.
And, that we may consider the matter more narrowly; Would the supposition of such foreknowledg, in God, make that cease to be Man's duty, which had otherwise been so? and take away the differences of good and evil? ⟨p. 55⟩Would it nullifie the obligation of God's Law, and make Man's own inclination his only rule? Or, if it be said, because it is foreknown, Man will do such a thing, therefore he may, where is the connection? For what influence can foreknowledg have, to alter, or affect, any way, either the nature of the thing foreknown, or the temper of the person that shall do it; any more than the present knowledg of the same thing, now in doing? Which knowledg none would deny to God: And which, when it occurs to a man, is no more understood to make an evil action innocent, than the action makes the eye guilty, of him that beholds it only, and detests it at once. Surely what is, in its own nature, whether, good, or evil, can never not be so, be it