Pages 100-151
pp. 100–15168 passagespart 1 of 2
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.
All that ever I could hear in Answer to this, was only, that Gods Knowledge is Infinite: And though we cannot comprehend, how that which is uncertain can be certainly known; yet an Infinite Understanding can reach it, and have the certain Knowledge of that which is Uncertain.
But this makes it more evidently impossible: For the more perfect any Knowledge is, the farther it is from Error and Mistake. So Infinite Knowledge must be farthest of all from erring; but to know that as certain, which is not certain, is not to Know, but to Err; not to apprehend things as they are, but to mistake and misapprehend them, to have false and erroneous apprehensions of them. As they state the Freedom of the Will, God can have no certain foreknowledge of those things, without false and erroneous Conceptions thereof. They leave him nothing ⟨p. 101⟩here but Conjectures, or nothing but Mistakes and Error.
3. It Impeaches the Truth and Faithfulness of God; overthrows the Truth and Certainty of his Word, in all the parts of it; leaves no certainty of his Truth and Faithfulness in Prophecies, Promises, Threatenings, Assertions, contained in Scripture. It cannot be certain, by their Principles, that the Prophecies will be accomplished, the Promises fulfilled, or the Threatenings executed; and so it must be uncertain, whether they are true or false: There is no certainty that they will prove true, they may as well prove false. The same must be said of many Assertions too; there is no Necessity, no Certainty, that they will prove true, v. g. Can. 1. 4. Jer. 31. 18. Lam. 5. 21.
3. It Impeaches the Truth and Faithfulness of God; overthrows the Truth and Certainty of his Word, in all the parts of it; leaves no certainty of his Truth and Faithfulness in Prophecies, Promises, Threatnings, Assertions, contained in Scripture. It cannot be certain, by their Principles, that the Prophecies will be accomplished, the Promises fulfilled, or the Threatnings executed; and so it must be uncertain, whether they are true or false: There is no certainty that they will prove true, they may as well prove false. The same must be said of many Assertions too; there is no Necessity, no Certainty, that they will prove true, v. g. Can. 1. 4.