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

Let us for Clearness sake suppose, that God had at the Beginning made two Globes, each of an Inch Diameter, both perfect Spheres, and perfectly solid without Pores, and perfectly alike in every Respect, and placed them near one to another, one towards the right Hand, and the other towards the left, without any Difference as to Time, Motion or Rest, past or present, or any Circumstance, but only their Place; and the Question should be asked, Why God in their Creation placed 'em so? Why that which is made on the right Hand, was not made on the left, and vice versa? Let it be well considered, ⟨p. 245⟩whether there be any Sense in such a Question; and whether the Enquiry don't suppose something false and absurd. Let it be considered, what the Creator must have done otherwise than he did, what different Act of Will or Power he must have exerted, in order to the Thing proposed. All that could have been done, would have been to have made two Spheres, perfectly alike, in the same Places where he has made them, without any Difference of the Things made, either in themselves, or in any Circumstance; so that the whole Effect would have been without any Difference, and therefore just the same. By the Supposition, the two Spheres are different in no other Respect but their Place; and therefore in other Respects they are the same. Each has the same Roundness: it is not a distinct Rotundity, in any other Respect but it's Situation. There are also the same Dimensions, differing in nothing but their Place. And so of their Resistance, and every Thing else that belongs to them.

Let us for Clearness sake suppose, that God had at the Beginning made two Globes, each of an Inch Diameter, both perfect Spheres, and perfectly solid without Pores, and perfectly alike in every Respect, and placed them near one to another, one towards the right Hand, and the other towards the left, without any Difference as to Time, Motion or Rest, past or present, or any Circumstance, but only their Place; and the Question should be ask'd, Why God in their Creation placed 'em so? Why that which is made on the right Hand, was not made on the left, and vice versa? Let it be well considered, ⟨p. 245⟩whether there be any Sense in such a Question; and whether the Enquiry don't suppose something false and absurd. Let it be considered, what the Creator must have done otherwise than he did, what different Act of Will or Power he must have exerted, in order to the Thing proposed. All that could have been done, would have been to have made two Spheres, perfectly alike, in the same Places where he has made them, without any Difference of the Things made, either in themselves, or in any Circumstance; so that the whole Effect would have been without any Difference, and therefore just the same. By the Supposition, the two Spheres are different in no other Respect but their Place; and therefore in other Respects they are the same. Each has the same Roundness: it is not a distinct Rotundity, in any other Respect but it's Situation. There are also the same Dimensions, differing in nothing but their Place. And so of their Resistance, and every Thing else that belongs to them.