A careful and strict enquiry into the modern prevailing notions of that freedom of…

1. It has been already shown, that all certain Knowledge proves the Necessity of the Truth known; whether it be before, after, or at the same Time.— Tho' it be true, that there is no Succession in God's Knowledge, and the Manner of his Knowledge is to us inconceivable, yet thus much we know concerning it, that there is no Event, past, present, or to come, that God is ever uncertain of; He never is, never was, and never will be without infallible Knowledge of it; He always sees the Existence of it to be certain and infallible. And as he always sees Things just as they are in Truth; hence there never is in Reality any Thing contingent in such a Sense, as that possibly it may happen never to exist. If, strictly speaking, there is no Foreknowledge in God, 'tis because those Things which ⟨p. 128⟩are future to us, are as present to God, as if they already had Existence: and that is as much as to say, that future Events are always in God's View as evident, clear, sure and necessary, as if they already were. If there never is a Time wherein the Existence of the Event is not present with God, then there never is a Time wherein it is not as much impossible for it to fail of Existence, as if it's Existence were present, and were already come to pass.

God's viewing Things so perfectly and unchangeably as that there is no Succession in his Ideas or Judgment, don't hinder but that there is properly now, in the Mind of God, a certain and perfect Knowledge of the moral Actions of Men, which to us are an Hundred Years hence: yea the Objection supposes this; and therefore it certainly don't hinder but that, by the foregoing Arguments, it is now impossible these moral Actions should not come to pass.

We know, that God knows the future voluntary Actions of Men in such a Sense before-hand, as that he is able particularly to declare, and foretell them, and write them, or cause them to be written down in a Book, as He often has done; and that therefore the necessary Connection which there is between God's Knowledge and the Event known, does as much prove the Event to be necessary before-hand, as if the divine Knowledge were in the same Sense before the Event, as the Prediction or Writing is. If the Knowledge be infallible, then the Expression of it in the written Prediction is infallible; that is, there is an infallible Connection between that written Prediction and the Event. And if so, then it is impossible it should ever be otherwise, than that that Prediction and the Event should agree: And this is the same Thing as to say, 'tis impossible but that the Event should come to pass: and this is the same as to say, that it's coming to pass is necessary.— So that it is manifest, that there being no proper Succession in God's Mind, makes no Alteration as to the Necessity of the Existence of the Events which God knows. Yea,