Discovery of Jacksons Vanity

CHAP. VII.

I Do not affect to contend with you in point of Rhetoric, or to call you to an account for styling Time, a spectator of all things. If it be so, it is the more like unto a Philosopher by his account, who comparinge the world unto a market, ranged the people thereof into 3. sorts, buyers, sellers, and lookers on, and these were the Philosophers. Only I would desier that you would give other the like liberty to speak in theyre own phrase, and not to challenge them for affecting Poetical wit more then Metaphysical truth; as upon such like terms it was your pleasure to cry down that common adage Tempus edax rerum. For if you admit time to be a Spectator, you may by as good Rhetoric admit it to be a devourer, according to that of good authority Inspexit varias merces oculisque comedit. In like sort studious scholars are accounted Helluones librorum, devourers of books, though not for the reading of them only, but for the apprehension of them, and making them theyre own.

So Cassius Severus had devoured Labienus his works, his orations. For when an edicte came forth from the Emperor, for the burning of all his writings. (For as he was an admirable Orator, so he was of an high spirit, and as Seneca writes, qui in tantâ pace Pompeianos spiritus nondum deposuerat.) which edicte when it came to Cassius Severus ears; why then saith he, I must be burnt alive; for as much as I have learnt them without book. Yet I could be content to allow you any liberty of phrase, so you would be pleased to speak to our understanding; whereof you fail in your very first sentence, when you tell us, that all things wantinge place or time or being, present themselves anewe in theyre proper shape or form; for how any thing can present itself, wanting both place, and time, and being also, it is a riddle unto me.

I guess your meaning is, that the being of all things is produced in place and time, which before the time of theyre production were without both place and time, and being; which as it is a truth, so it is a moste vulgar truth, yet obscuerly delivered by you, and to no purpose that I can conceive. But be it so, & that every thing brought forth on this stage, you speak of, acteth one parte or other for the maintenance of the whole; and therefore is of some power; though in some you think it is to be accounted strength and power passive rather then active.

And yet you say the very earth, in that it sustains weights laid upon it, and resisteth contrary impulsions, is perhaps of active force or operation; As for the power of moving to the centers that you say is no more passive then active but a mean betwixt both. I presume you mean by way of participation, and not by abnegation of the extremes. Yet in my judgment to sway or move to the center is merely active, to be swayed or moved is merely passive. Yet other properties there are of the earth, though you pretermitt them. For it is commonly said, that it covers the errors of Physicians.

And I remember what a Sexton was wont to say, of all his sick neighbors; that when Physicians have done all they can, yet at length he must heal them, meaning by making their graves, and with the earth to cover them. I have heard a Mountebank report, that when a man's leg is stung with a viper, to put that leg into the cold earth is a present remedy.

I have heard also what use the Irishe sometimes have made of the cold earth, when they have overdrunke themselves with Vsquobath. Yet me thinks that power of the earth should not be pretermitted which the Holy Ghoste gives unto it, in saying, Let the earth bring forth, &c. But as for the power of assimilating other things to themselves, and of preservinge symbolizinge qualities, that you say is found in the dullest bodies. The active force and power motive of winds, vapors and exhalations is well known, as also of celestial bodies especially the Sun, theyre productive operation cannot be unknown to any. You conclude that all this power is but finite, and that no created thing is capable of power infinite, which you affirm only with a perhaps, and such cautions are very frequent with you, which in this place I take to be moste needless.

Now as time and place were as you said shadows of God's eternity and immensity, So, the power of the creature is a shadow of God's infinite power. Yet shadows we all know have proportions to the substances shadowed by them, but between finite and infinite we commonly say there is no proportion.

2. God, you say, is more infinite in every kind, then all the united powers of several natures, though they were for number infinite and each infinitely operative in its own kind. But let us not lie for God, as man doth for man to gratify him. True and natural beauty needeth no painting: And God's perfection needeth no Mountebank like amplifications to set him forth. The powers of the creatures are not formally in God, but eminently, that is, they are said to be in God in as much as he can produce them, and theyre effects also. As for example, though he be not hot, yet can he produce heat in greater measure then fire doth.

But consider I pray you; Can God produce a greater heat, then that which is infinite? or can he produce a greater number then that which is infinite? It is apparent that he cannot, not by reason of any defecte of power in God, but by reason that a greater then that which is infinite to be produced, is a thing utterly impossible. You are pleased to take notice of a former observation of yours, which was this, That things by nature most imperfecte, do oftentimes best shadow divine perfection.

You have already entreated of God's immensity and eternity; and therein you have told us, that no positive entity, no numerable parte of this vinverse, doth so well represent the immensity and eternity of God, as the negation of all things, which we describe by the name of Nothinge. I think there never dropt a more vile assertion from the pen of any wise man then this; yet you desire here again to commend it unto the Reader as some quainte observation. But what do you mean to repeat it under such form, as by calling it something though imperfect. Is Nothinge, or the negation of all things, to be accounted something though imperfect? yet the same observation you will have to have place here also. As if this which we call nothing were the most fit to represent God's immensity by, yea and his eternity, yea and his infinite power also.

How near draws this to the making of God to consist of nullities, since you say his natural properties are best resembled unto nullities? well, we have heard what that is which best representeth his immensity and eternity, now we are to expecte what that is which best represents his infinite power. And this after a long deduction, you express to be the center of the earth, which you say is matter of nothing.

And thus you maintain a just proportion of discourse concerning God's attributes; for still your wit serveth you to resemble them either to Nothinge, or to that which you call matter of (just) nothing. But herein you proceed by degrees. And first you seem to conceive, that this center of the earth, is in the language of the Holy Ghoste, made to be the foundation of the earth, as in that speech of the Lord to Job chap. 38. 4. 5 6. Where wast thou, when I laid the foundation of the earth? and whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened, who hath laid the corner stone thereof? And first you commend the phrase, as surmounting all poetical decorum, and will have the Majesty thereof consist therein, sufficiently testifying that it was uttered by God himself.

Now heretofore, you have made poetical wit to stand in opposition unto Metaphysical truth. But of poetical de corum, especially in this place, like enough you have a better opinion. For my part I am persuaded the Majesty of God's speech consists in the power of the Spirit, rather then the Wisdom of the words. Paul also spake by the Spirit of God, and some have observed great parts in his very language, but see what Castellio a friend to your opinions writes of Bezaas judgment concerning this in the defense of his translations upon the 2. Cor. 11. 6. Paulum (saith he of Beza) & grandiloquentiâ Platoni, & vehementia Demostheni, & Methodo Aristoteli atque Galeno anteponit: in quo mihi videtur Pictores imitari, qui Christi matrem dum honorare volunt, regio vestitu pingunt, & • idem tamen ita cogente historia praesepe in quo jaceat Christus infans appingunt nobili sane solaecismo. Quid enim mundanis regibus cum praesepibus? Mariae gloria est paupertas, & pictores eam divitiis exornant. Sic Pauli gloria & gloriatio est Sermons imperitia.

But lett the Majesty of the speech pass as nothing pertinent to our present purpose, where do you find the center of the earth to be mentioned or pointed unto in all this? doth the corner stone there mentioned, signify so much? or by the foundation there expressed, must we necessarily understand the center of the earth? The Holy Ghoste seems rather in this inquisition, to have reference to something without the earth that should uphold it or fasten it, and withal signifieth, that no such supporter can be found. Then you proceed to admiration at this that the center should bear up the earth and all things theron, which center is nobody or substance, no not so much as a mere Angle or corner, nay such as forth with you say is a matter of nothing.

And so in the issue it comes to this, that nothing bears it up, which is true, in the form of a negative; but not as an affirmative as if there were any power in the center to bear it up. And why should we conceive that the center of the earth should bear it up, more then the center of a tennis ball bears it up, which also might be the center of all if it lay in the middle of the earth? And if any side of the earth were removed from the center to the heavens, it would forthwith appear that the center of the earth bears not up the rest; for that which before was the center would now be driven ā great deal higher, and become the outside of the earth. So that the center of the earth will not serve your turn; will you then run to the center of vacuum or of the space imagined to contain the earth? Yet you distinguish not of centrum Physicum and centrum Mathematicum. For who doubts, but that one side of the earth may be heavier then another. Again it was wont to be a received Maxim that Terra non gravitat in loco suo; and therefore there is no need of anything to bear it up. For the middle of the world is the natural place of the earth, which when it hath gotten, it sways not, nor propendes not, nor can be swayed to weighe downwards; which indeed were to weighe upwards which way soever.

And have heavy things any need (think you) of supportance to keep them from weighing upwards? Yet we acknowledge, the whole world and every part of it is from the finger of God. For the very course of nature is the work of God. That fire doth burn, that the Sun and stars do enlighten the earth, that heavy things move downwards, and light things upwards, all this I say, we acknowledge to be the work of God.

And we wonder at the power of God in making all this by his word, and supporting all by his word. But being made and as wonderfully preserved by God, we wonder not at this, that heavy things move downwards, & light things upwards; or how it comes to pass, that the earth without a supporter continueth where it is, seeing if it did not continue where it is, it should move upwards towards the Heavens lighter then a feather, which is quite contrary to the nature of the earth. We well wonder at the power of God in this, that as he made it by his word, so with the turninge of an hand he could set an ende unto it, if it pleased him. And therefore to talk of chamberinge up sustentative force (in the center) multiplied according to the several portions or divisibilities of magnitude successively immensurable, to speak in proportion to your own language, is to affect more Rhetorical wit then Metaphysical truth, in plainer terms, is to multiply words without sense.

So then to amplify the infinite power of God, by surpassing the imaginary sustentative force of a center, which as yourself confess is a matter of nothing and consequently the sustentative force of it must be a matter of nothing, is a very poor amplification of the power of God. If the center were able to supporte the earth not where now it is, but in the hollowe of the moon, that were somewhat to magnify the sustentative power thereof. Yet I make no doubt, but God could do so by his power. Which case is of far greater force for the manifesting of his power, then in bearing up the earth where it is, which indeed being created, and preserved in being, hath no need of supportar • ō in his own place, where it can move no lower; and if it move by direct motion, it must needs move higher; which kind of motion is more proper for a feather thē for the heavy earth, whose womb is impregnated with stones and metals.

And therefore you do well to take this power of God into consideration as namely of his ability to toss this universe with greater case, then a Giant doth a tennis ball (yet I never read or heard before of Giants playing att tennis ball) through out the boundless courts of immensity. By the way your overlash, in talking of the Courts of immensity, wherein this motion should be. For as for the immensity of God, that is no fit space to toss the world in.

And as for the immensity corporal, that is a thing utterly impossible; the motion you devise must needs be in vacuo or not att all. Now the force of the center is no way fit whereby to illustrate this power of God. For certainly if the earth were placed in the hollowe of the Moon, it together with his center would tumble down again; as little congruous is it; for the illustration of that power of God, whereby he is able to dissolve Rocks of Adamant with the phillep of his finger, sooner thē bubbles of water with the breath of the Canon; In all which you seem to affect not Metaphysical truth only, but Rhetorical if not Poetical florishes also. We believe that God, as by his word he made all things out of nothing, so by his word he can return them into nothing; this is plain English neither hath his power need of any Pyrgopolinices bombast eloquence to illustrate the Majesty thereof or set it forth.

3. But from the breath of the Canon you fall congruously upon the consideration of the mother of it, which creature is commonly called gunpowder. And here you tell us first that our admiration of God's active power may be raised by calculating the imaginary degrees of active powers increase in creatures; that which followeth divisible as well in quantity as operation, is of no importance but only to fill up. The Canon sends forth his bullet with greater violence then the Sacher, like enough, and so every Ordinance exceeds other in force of Battery, according to the quantity of charge, or length of barrel, which I leave to the consideration of the Master of the Ordinance. To this you add that if the same quantity of steel or iron, were possible to be as speedily converted into a fiery vapor as gunpowder is, the blow would be 10. times more irresistible then it is. I do not think your meaning is to instruct the would in a new way of making Saltpeter, if it were, Saltpeter men should be your scholars, I would be none of them.

So much Philosophy I apprehend, that fire is most swifte in moving upwards, as the Element of earth is most swift in moving downwards. And like as the contraction of more parts of the earth together makes a body the heavier, so likewise the more fiery anything is, so much the more swift in motion upwards. But to say that the active force or vigor of motion, always increaseth according to the degrees of celerity which it accumulates, is an idle speech, & as much as to say the more swiftly it moves, the more vigorously it moves. It had more show of congruity to say the more vigorously it is moved (to wit in respect of the Agents force that moves it) the more swiftly it moveth.

Now you come to the accommodation of all this, unto the infinite power of God, in this manner, Though the moste active and powerful essence cannot be encompossed with walls of brass, nor chambred up in vaults of steel allbeit much wider then the Heavens, yet doth it everywhere more strictly girde it self with strength then the least or weakest body can be girte. For what bonds can we prescribe so strict so close or firm, as is the bond of indivisible unity, which cannot possibly burst, or admit eruption, wherein notwithstanding infinite power doth as entirely and totally encamp it self as in immensity. How incomparably then doth his active strength exceed all comparison? What a mad comparison is it in illustrating the infinity of God's power to say that God girds himself with strength more strictly, then the weakest body can be girt? Do weak persons girde themselves with strength; or is God's girdinge of himself with strength, like to our girding of our clothes about us? By that which followeth it seems that you have an allusion to God's girding of himself into a narrow compass, like Ladies that affect slender wastes. For to what other purpose do you tell us that God's girding is as strict, as is the bond of indivisible unity.

And before you told us that the greater force ariseth from the contraction of parts. Now hath God any parts to be thus contracted and united, that so his vigor might be greater? what base comparisons are these, to represent the infinite power of God by them? Then you roll in your wonted Rhetoric to amplify the vehemency of his motive power; in that it cannot be expressed by a motion that should bear levill from the Sunnesetting in the west, to the Moon rising in the East, which is a very fair mark I confess; for the case put, is in plenilunio, when the Moon is att full. Then to cast the fixed stars down to the center, (belike you mean one after another, otherwise there would be no room for them in the center;) and hoise the earth up to the Heavens within the twinkling of an eye, or to send both in a moment beyond the extremities of this visible world, into the womb of vacuity whence they issued, would not strain his power motive.

Yet all this you confess to be less then to bring nothing unto something, that is, to take not your words but rather your good meaning, to create out of nothing. Whereby nothing doth not become something, but something hath a being, which before it had not. But here you power out many wild conceits besides this: first as when you say, Essence swallows up infinite degrees of succession in a fixed instant. I had thought rather this had been the property of eternity, not of essence. You might as well say essence swallows up all places into an indivisible unity or point. Then how may eternity be said to swallow up that which it doth not contain; neither formally, (for certeynly there is no formal succession in eternity) nor eminently. For to contain eminently, is to be able to produce succession; but it is not God's eternity that denominates him able to produce time, or the existence of things in time, but his power. So neither his essence nor his eternity, swallows up motion for the same reason.

But as for the swallowing up of motion into a vigorous rest, to wit by moving the eighth sphere round in a moment; Of the nakedness and absurdity, that is shameful nak • dnesse of such an assertion, we have discoursed enough. Again, is it not enough for you to maintain motion in vacuo; but you must needs affirm that this visible world issued from the vacuum which now we imagine without the extremities of it? where now the world is, was a vacuum before the world was, but yet the world issued not from it, neither in the kind of a material cause, nor in the kind of a formal cause, nor in the kind of an efficient cause, much less did it issue from that vacuum, which you term without the extreamites of this world. Then again I know no measure of perfection derived unto the creature from God's immensity, but only from the counsel of his will, by his immensity he fills all places but distributes not the measure of perfections thereby.

When you call Nothinge the mother of God's creatures, tell me I pray, did you affect poetical wit or Metaphysical truth? I had thought Nothing had not afforded so much as the matter of any thing, as the Mother doth the matter (at least) of the child. It is true; we were not anything before God made us. And as sure I am that this which we call nothing, did not contribute any thing to the creation of men.

The baseness of man's original is a common place of another nature; Now your text is the Infinity of God's power, but you may squander from it as you please. Whatsoever implies not contradiction, the production thereof is within the compass of God's power, and whatsoever God can do, he can do with ease; His head aked not in the making of the World, neither doth it ache in providing for, and preserving all things. But to talk of the possibility of more worlds hand over head, under color of gratifying God in the amplification of his power, I leave unto them that are not satisfied with the demonstration of his infinite power in this. Yet as touching God's omnipotency, for the strengthening of our faith, we are promised something hereafter; as if all hitherto tended to the strengthening of our imagination, by comparing it first to the sustētative force of a center which is a matter of nothing, and then to the force of gunpowder which undoubtedly is a matter of something. Whether we are like to meet with a more wise discourse, concerning God's infinite Wisdom, if others know, yet I know not.

CHAP. VIII.

1. IN the first Section there is nothing that I mislike: we acknowledge God could not be infinite in power, unless he were infinite in Wisdom also. And that power ungoverned by Wisdom, would bring forth very enormous effects. But if a duble portion of wit matched with half the strength would effect more then a triple portion of strength with half so much wit, surely where the power is equal, & the Wisdom insinitly unequal, there the effects cannot be the like. Yet you have been bold to affirm in another treatise of yours, not yet extant I confess, that If a man had the same infinite power that God hath, he might well think he could dispose thus of things as God hath disposed, by the Wisdom which man already hath.

And you give this reason, for in things we can lay any necessity upon, we can tell well enough how to dispose of them to the end which we seek. As uncouth an assertion as hath passed from the mouth or pen of any man. For we manifestly perceive that the difference of artificial operations in the World, doth not arise from the difference of men's powers, but merely from the difference of their skill and Wisdom in several trades.

2. You do not well to confound power with strength; for strength is only power natural; but there is a civil power goeth beyond that. And there is no question to be made, but Wisdom is to be preferred before the strength of the body, by how much the qualities of the mind are to be preferred before the qualities of the body. But where civil power is supreme that ruleth over the wisest Counsaylers. No question God is as infinite in Wisdom as in power. But I take it to be very absurd to say that God's wisdom is greater then his power. For is it possible that God by his wisdom can think of any course fit to be done for the setting forth of his glory which his power were not able to effect? and seeing you confess his power to be infinite as well as his wisdom, what should move you to maintain the one to be greater then the other, I cannot devise. Princes have guides to govern them, which yet are not therefore greater thē they, but inferior by far. But in God, his wisdom and power, though different notions, yet the substance of them is all one and precisely one in God. The same is the proportion between infinite wisdom and power infinite, as between sinite wisdom and power finite. But finite wisdom doth not evacuate finite power; therefore neither doth infinite wisdom evacuate the necessity of infinite power.

But to salve the matter, you add that it evacuates the necessity of power distinct from it. It is true indeed, in God, though the notions of wisdom and power are distinct, yet the things signified are one essence in God. And look in what manner soever infinite wisdom doth infer the indistinction of power with it, after the same manner, doth infinite power infer the indistinction of wisdom with it. For as much as God is essentially wise and powerful, and therefore infinite in both, & both indistinct in him, whose essence is most simple and admitts no parts. That wisdom is the father and power the Mother of all God's works is such an assertion, that I do not think you can find any to father it, or mother it but yourself. Will you not give us leave to accommodate it unto the works of man and pronounce proportionably that his Wisdom is the Father, and his power the Mother of his actions? I take it to be absurd to inquire after a Father and Mother of works, save in case, the works themselves do admit these different sexes as being male or female; yet in such a case it hath a Father and Mother only in respect of univocall generations not equivocal.

And as for the proportion to justify your allegory, we are content rather to expecte your pleasure to acquaint us with it, then to trouble our wits about the deviseing of it. Yet Philo & the Platonics are a rub in your way, who (as you say; for I confess I am not so well seen in them,) make knowledge the mother of all God's works.

To remove this you acquaint us with your conjectural dictates. First that tis probable they dreamed of a created knowledge. A most improbable conjecture, that they should conceive, that God brought his works to pass by the knowledge of a creature not by his own knowledge; Yet that creature by whose created knowledge God is conjectured to have wrought by, in their opinion, being one of God's works, how could that creatures knowledge be possibly accounted his mother in creation. Your second conjecture is, that under these terms they covered some transformed notion of the second person in the Trinity. Such a person more fit by far to be the Author of all God's works in order under God the Father; But equally improbable it is that this second person in Trinity should be called by them, The Mother of God's works. Rather Sapientia in Latin, and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 in Greek being the feminine gender; in this gramatical notion they might account it 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 the Mother of all things created, which yet is more then my learning will encourage me to ascribe unto them. And Christ you deny not to be the wisdom of the Father, but you add that he is the wisdom personal; but you speak here not of the wisdom personal, but of the wisdom of the Godhead as it is essentially in the whole Trinity.

Danaus upon the 32. distinction of Peter Lumbards first book of sentences, professeth the Son to be called the wisdom of the Father, for as much as he maketh the Father known unto us. But though you speak of wisdom as it is essential, and not personal; yet you may remember, that even the essential attributes are severally appropriated unto the Person by divines; and in the course of this appropriation, power is attributed to the Father, Wisdom unto the Son, and goodness unto the Holy Ghost. How suitable this is of making wisdom the Father of God's actions, lett every intelligent Reader judge.

Agayne I find that Gabriel Vasquius proposeth a question, Whether the power of God doth any manner of way differ from God's knowledge and his will? And herein recites the opinion of Durand, maintaining that God's wisdom and his will, are but the remote causes of divine actions; and that the power of God is the immediate cause of all. The contrary whereunto he maynteynes, namely that power or execution is needelesly attributed unto God, as distinct from his knowledge and his will; and this he delivers according to the doctrine of Scotus, Bassolis, Ferrariensis, Cajetan, and Aquinas. Neither of these opinions as I conceive serves your turn in making wisdom the Father, and power the Mother of God's actions. These flashes of conceit are far distante from the conceits of any School divine, that I am acquainted with.

3. Wisdom (you say) as all agree, is the excellency of knowledge from which it differs not, save only in the dignity or usefulness of matters known or in the more perfect manner of knowing them. This promiseth no great depth, yet it passeth my slender capacity to comprehend your meaning herein, or to make any good sense thereof. You have so long inured yourself to a phrase of speech and expression beyond the capacity of your Reader; that I know not whether at length you may attain to such a faculty of speech as may transcende the Authors own comprehension. Who they are that agree in this, that Wisdom is the excellency of knowledge, I profess I know not.

And I wonder you proceed to discourse of wisdom without distinction; seeing it may be taken in some sense by Philosophers, in which it is not taken by Canonical writers. Agayne in some sense it may be taken by Canonical writers, in which it is not taken by Philosophers. There is a wisdom to salvation which the Scriptures communicate to the meanest of God's children, which kind of Wisdom was nothing known to Philosophers. And there is a Metaphysical wisdom in knowing Ens quà ens, where abouts Philosophers did busy their brains, which you shall hardly find notice taken of throughout the Scriptures. Again wisdom is sometimes taken for that knowledge, that rest in contemplation; sometimes tis taken for such a knowledge as is not commendable nor right unless it be referred to actiō. Solomon's Wisdom it seems comprehended both. For the Wisdom that he prayed for, was the wisdom of government, which respects action; but God gave him other wisdom also. For this is reckoned up as a parte of his wisdom, that he spake of trees, from the Cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even to the hyssop that springth out of the wall, he speak also of beast and of fowls and of creepeing things, and of fishes. And in this respect it seems, that he excelled the wisdom of all the Children of the East, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For of Moses it is said that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Act. 1. 22. And this wisdom I conceive to have been in sciences contemplative and not practical. Yet in Scripture phrase as I guess, it is most generally taken for wisdom practical, consisting in knowing how to bring about intended ends. And thus you seem to take it, when you profess that it differs not from knowledge save only in the dignity or usefullnes of matters known; which is an harshe manner of expression.

But I take your meaning to be this, that the difference is in the objecte, and that things of worth and of use are the special object of wisdom. For so a wise man by his wisdom discerns these things which are most behooveful, & advantageous unto him. So then wisdom seems to be (in your opinion) the knowledge of things useful and behoovefull, that is, the discerning of what is best to be done to the compassing of this or that ende. Yet by your leave if the ende be not good, such a wisard in Solomon's phrase, shall be accounted no better then a fool. And the Holy Ghoste hath discovered unto us both in the old Testament, that many Are wise to do evil, but to do well have no understanding, Ier. 4. 22. and in the New Testament, that the children of this World are wiser in theyre generation, then the children of light. And the unjust Steward had a commendable measure of wisdom in this kind. Luc. 16. 8. But take it at the best; why should you call this, the excellency of knowledge? Hath not Aristotle delivered the contrary, and professed that felicity of contemplation is more eminent then the felicity of action? And I know no reason to forsake him in this. Do not we believe that our happiness in the Kingdom of Heaven shall consist in the vision of God? The knowledge of God's law is knowledge practical, and is not this far inferior to the knowledge of God, and of the mystery of godliness revealed to us in the Gospel? I confess the knowledge that we have of God in this life doth confer to action, but that is not enough to make it practical; The knowledge of things to be practiced and put in execution, that and that alone denominates knowledge practical. Your last difference of wisdom from knowledge proposed disjunctively thus, or in the more perfect manner of knowing of them, I can hardly make any congruouse sense of.

At first I thought the same difference had been intended though variously expressed, that the Reader might satisfy himself with which expression he pleased; little thinkeinge that yourself who take upon you herein to instruct others, were to seek, whether wisdom differed from knowledge, in the object known, or in the manner of knowing things; yet upon seconde thoughts this seems to be your meaning. But suppose the truth of both concerning wisdom, namely that it knows things of worth and useful, and that it knows them in a perfect manner; yet I pray consider, what a mad thing is it to say, that herein it differs from knowledge. Doth the knowledge of things useful differ from knowledge? well you may say it differs from the knowledge of things less useful, or not useful at all, but surely it differs not from knowledge. So likewise the perfect manner of knowing things, may be said to differ from an imperfecte manner of knowing them, but surely it differs not from the knowing of them. For we do not use to say that the species is contradistinct from the genus, but rather one species from another. I profess I am touched with no small regret to consider how much time I am like to wast in correctinge such anomalies, if your book should be too frequent in them.

But to proceed, Though no man be wise without much knowledge, yet a man may know many things and not be wise. In this likewise I find so much confusion, that a man may very well be to seek in what sense to justify it. I have heard of a sage Counsaylor, that knew not a letter in his own Mother tongue. Comineus as I remember was no scholar, & yet a very wise Counsaylour. The Turks are usually accounted as ignorant people as live; yet no doubt the grand Signior hath a wise counsel. And wisdom of government (which now a days alone is usually accounted wisdom) is many times accompanied with little learning.

Ahithophel in his time was accounted as an Oracle of God, but of his learning or great knowledge we read not. And in my judgment this kind of wisdom seems to be rather a natural gift, then an habit acquired by knowledge. And it seems to consist in judginge of moste commodious means to compass ends intended, as in the counsayles of Ahithophel unto Absalom, as also it appears in Solomon's course that he took to discern the true mother of the Child which was in question; and because they may be crossed if they be known, therefore to discern how courses commodious for the compassing of designs may be closely carried undiscovered; as the two hundred men that Absalom took with him when he went to Hebron, are said to have accompanied him in the simplicity of their hearts knowing nothing; and thus they were engaged in his treason before they were aware. And the same Absalom by his pretence of payinge his vow at Hebron signified to his Father, prevented jealousy in his Father, and took away all suspicion of treason. On the other side, it is a great pointe of wisdom to discover the reaches of others in their courses; as Solomon, discerned the traiterous heart of Adonijah, by the motion which he made to have Abishag the Shunemite givē him to Wife, which Bathsheba perceived not, and was very willing to gratify him in the furtherance of his suite.

This was a natural perspicacy in Solomon; for at this time he was very young, and had not as yet sought the Lord for that spirit of wisdom in government, as afterwards he did; And whereas you say, A man may know many things, and not be very wise; It is a truth, but a very mean truth. For a man may know many things, and yet be a very fool; and that more ways then one. For first few and many are terms of respect; and few things are many in respect of fewer. And though a man know never so much as these things, that nothing at all conduce to wisdom; what wise man would expecte that he should be any thing the wiser thereby? Again, nothing denominates a man simply wise, but that which makes him a wise man. Now a man may not only know many things, but be also wise in many things, and yet not deserve the name of a wise man. He may be a wise painter, a wise graver, wise to work in handicrafts (which is accounted wisdom, both in the phrase of God, and phrase of Aristotle) and yet all this while be far enough from a wise man. For he only is a wise man that knows how to govern himself and provide for himself.

Now many times wit, & that in great measure, in trades, is found to be in a fools keepinge. Nay what will you say; may not a man be wise to do evil, Ier. 8. 22. wise to satisfy his lust, wise to compass their own wicked ends; but shall he be accounted the wiser man for this? Hath not Aristotle delivered, that Incontinens non potest esse prudens, An incontinent man cannot be a wise man? Last of all suppose that a man knows all that belongs to true wisdom, but will not practice it, like the Athenians, of whom it was said, sciunt quae recta sunt sed facere nolunt, shall not such a one be accounted one of Solomon's fools in his proverbs? For are not the Moral virtues and recta ratio knitt together indissolubly? But come we to the wisdom of God, Knowledge divine, as it comprehends all things, the name of wisdom best befits it, not as restrained to this or that particular. And why should it not be accounted wisdom, restrained to what particular you will, seeing he undoubtedly knows every particular, in most perfect manner▪ And but erst you profess that wisdom differs from knowledge only in the usefullnes of things known, or in the more perfect manner of knowing them. The knowledge of God which is of himself, is the wisdom of contemplation. His knowledge of other things to be produced and ordered by him to the setting forth of his glory is the wisdom of action.

And the Apostle breaks forth into admiration of the depthe of God's rich wisdom and knowledge. Piscator thinks that by wisdom and knowledge one thing is meant. I am not of his opinion. The text seems to me to make against that construction; For thus it runs O the depthe of the riches 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. In saying both it plainly intimates that wisdom and knowledge are considered as two, and therefore distinct. I take the meaning to be thus. God by his wisdom discerneth courses most convenient; but by his knowledge he comprehendeth all, whether convenient or inconvenient. And because a man may be so far wise as to discern of courses proposed to the compassing of a certain ende, which is the most convenient; Yet because he is not able to invent all courses, he may fail in wisdom, therefore I conceive it is said that God is rich both in wisdom and knowledge; because he doth not only judge what is fittest amongst few or many, but amongst all; For he knows all even the most inconvenient and disorderly courses; but by his wisdom he judgeth of the conveniency of them, and according to his good pleasure useth them. Your reason follows to show why the name of wisdom best besitts the knowledge of God, and that is; For though many things known by him, whilst compared with others more notable, seem base and contemptible; yet not the meanest, but may be the object of divine contemplation to a Christian, that considers not the mere matter or form or physical properties, but the Creators power or skill manifested in it. You undertook to prove that God's knowledge of all things might moste fittly be called wisdom; to which purpose, you should prove, that God may justly be accounted wise in knowing them; that is, that it might afford juste matter of such contemplation unto God, as might justly be called wisdom. But the reason you bring, meddles not at all with the contemplation of God, but with the contemplation of a Christian. For whereas in coherence you should say, it affords matter of wise contemplation unto God; you tell us tis an object of divine contemplation to a Christian.

And whereas you would not affirm that God's knowledge, as restrained to this or that particular, was to be accounted wisdom, but only as it comprehends all things; yet your reason makes show of provinge what you affirmed, of God's knowledge restrained to this or that particular, and not so only but as restrained to the meanest particular; though it ends (as I said) not in avouching that such particulars may be an object of divine contemplation unto God, but only in saying that it may be an object of divine contemplation to a Christian. What incongruities and most unscholasticall solecismes of discourse are these?

And all this while you confine God's knowledge to the particulars of his own making. But what think you of the particulars of man's or the divills making, in the most wicked, and sinful courses that have been, are, or shall be in the World.

Are not these also known unto God, and are these likewise matter of diyine contemplation in respect of the Creators power, or skill manifested therein: We acknowledge the wisdom of God to be excellent in the composition of the meanest worm. Of some likewise we see excellent use as of the be, & silkeworme; of others we do not, yet we believe that his wisdom being infinite, he doth nothing in vain; he hath use of everything, though we know it not. And we take notice of a double knowledge the one called scientia visions, whereby he knows all things that are, nor such only but even all such as have been, or shall be, the other called scientia simplicis intelligentiae, whereby he knows all things possible so far forth as they are knowable, and between these two knowledges, there is a great deal of difference, though you seem to confound them.

4. By useful knowledge as I take it, you mean the knowledge of useful things. Of this you say there are two offices, The one steadfastly to propose a right ende: The other to make, and prosecute a right, choice of means for effecting it. By this it appears that you speak only of that kind of wisdom which is referred to action, and whereby agents are accommodated ad • res gerendas. From the consideration of human wisdoms imperfection, you take a course the better to set forth the perfection of wisdom divine. Human wisdom (you say) is ofttimes blind in both, and usually lame in the latter.

I will endeavor to give some illustration of this. The end, we aim at, is our good. For Finis., & bonum convertuntur. Ethic. 1. 1. This good is either natural, or supernatural, both in respect of power to discern it, as also in respect of power to compass it. The natural good which everyone aims at, is the preservation of his esse, or natural being, and the acquiring of his been esse, or well being natural. In both these are found errors enough. For though nothing is a more natural object of man's desires then the preservation of his being, yet sometimes they are found most unnaturally to affect their destruction; sometimes through passion, (and that in divers kinds) in wonderful manner blinding reason, not only to avoid shame or rather the suffering of shame, or to avoid a worse kind of death, but sometimes out of miserableness, rather then they will part with a little, they are willfully set to part with all.

Ahithophel whose wisdom was as an oracle of God, went soberly this way, when he saw his counsel refused: For he went home & set his house in order and hanged himself; it seems his unsanctified wisdom urged him hereunto. For as it is written of Caesar that he alone came sobrius ad perdendam Rempublicam so Ahithophel accessi • sobrius ad perdendum seipsum.

As for the acquiring of well being, this is an end that all affect, but according to their several dispositions. For the good which they affect being bonum conveniens agreing to their affections, so it comes to pass, that as men are of different affections, so they propose unto themselves different ends. The luxurious person sets his wits on work for compassing the satisfaction of his lust; the covetous person he affecteth to grow rich; the ambitious person to grow great, the virtuous person to be good according to natures direction. And thus 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Look how every man is qualified, such is the end he aims at, but still natural. But in compassing, there is a great deal of difference; for some are wise to do evil as appears in Absalom's carriage of himself aspiring to the Kingdom; as also in Achitophells counsayles, which if Absalom had followed, it hath gone full ill with David. Nay generally they are found, even natural men, to be wiser in their courses though wicked (witness the un •• st • teward) then the children of God are in theyres, though honest, and Christian. The children of this world (saith our Savior) are wiser in their generation, then the children of light. Nay moral Philosophers, in their instructions unto virtuous courses, have advised their Disciples to set before their eyes the picture of vice, and to persuade them to take but the like course in prosecuting virtue, that the wicked do in prosecuting vice.

A manifest argument of the great corruption of man, whose wit serveth him so well in evil things, so ill in good things. Tho improvement whereof is in no small degree also imputable unto Satan, who is most forward to impregnate the fancies of men with suggestions unto evil. We have known heavy headed, and dull persons brought up at school amongst us, when afterwards they have taken other courses, & given themselves to Ruffianisme, they have been accounted amongst the wits of the time. But as for the discerning of true good, that power transcends the region of nature. God must first regenerate us, and translate us into a supernatural state, before we can discern the things of God, or these things that belong unto our own peace, which when God hath granted us, then our end is no longer the preservation of our temporal being, but the salvation of our souls in the world to come, and to this purpose to cleave unto God by faith and love usque ad contemptum nostri, even to the contempt of our selves, as touching this temporal life of ours. And to attain to this end, we need no consultatious with flesh, and blood; God in his word hath chalked out unto us a direct way unto this end, and therefore it is said to be a lantern unto our feet and a light unto our paths. But whatsoever the end be, you tell us that if it be much affected, the less choice of means is left, the more eagerly we apply our selves unto their use, and strive as it were to strain out success, by close embracing them. And for this reason ignorance, or want of reason to forecast variety of means, for bringing about our much desired ends, is the mother of self will, and impatience. For what is self will, if a man should define it, but a stiff adherence to someone, or few particular means, neither only, nor chiefly necessary to the main point. It seems you are in a straight, and therefore fetch about for matter, though aliene, and here we have met with a good phrase, of straininge out success by close embracing the means. Yet even in these unnecessary strains, your discourse is but loose in my judgment. For whether we discern many means, or few means, all is one as touching the close pursuing of that which we much affect; For if many, we will make choice of the fittest in our judgment, and as close embrace them as others do, that do not discern so great variety.

And as for success, that is not in our power to be strayned out, as you speak, by close embracing the means, Man is a resistible agent, and easily crossed in his courses; and the ends we aim at, in reference to our best means, are but of a conjectural nature, and so of uncertayne issue; Neither do I see any reason to the contrary, but that a man may be as self willed in the midst of variety of means discerned by him, as of few means, and if he be cr • st in them all, much more impatient. For surely the greater variety of means is represented, the more the way is open to take hold of that which is neither only, nor chiefly necessary, like as where many ways offer themselves, a travailer is in most danger to mistake the most direct way. Self will I confess is excercised in adherence to means unfit; as may be seen in the rude Irish, that will not be brought off from their rude courses, they will tie their ploughes or harrowes to their horse tales, say what the English will to persuade them to another course. But it is as well seen in following different ends. Many will not be takē off from their unclean conversation, from their riotous and intemperate courses, they count it pleasure, (as S. Peeter speaks) to live deliciously; these fruits of self-will are not in adhering to means so much, as in adhering to evil ends. But you proceed, and tell us in the next place, that Witts conscious of their own weakness for conqueing what they eagerly desire, presently call in power, wrath or violence as partial, or mercenary seconds to assist them. Whereas he that out of fertility of invention can furnish himself beforehand with store of likely means for accomplishing his purpose, cannot much esteem the loss or miscarriage of someone or two. These may seem pretty contemplations, and as pretily expressed.

But I had little thought that self will, and impatience joined with want of wit, had also been joined with consciousnes of self weakness. For the sluggard though but a fool as Solomon saith, is as wise in his own conceit as seven men that can give a reason. And certainly self will, and self conceyts are companions inseparable. And therefore such commonly make little question of accomplishing, or as you call it, of conquering their desires, by their own courses. And yet if they fail hereof, tis nothing strange, since the best means are but likely as yourself style them.

I can as hardly believe that fertility of invention is of power to keep men from impatience. In my opinion patience as all other moral virtues, depends rather upon judgment then invention, though formally it is a quality of the will as all moral virtues are, and not any habitt of the understanding. But suppose he miscarry in all, then a man's patience must needs bidd farewell to invention to support it, and it is high time to rely upon judgment. Yet I trust patience which must have her perfect work, (I am. 〈◊〉 .) may have course in this case also; though it be an hard matter you say to keep from fowl play, if the game whereat a man shoots be fair, and good, and most of his stringes already be broken. It is good they say to have two stringes to a man's bow. A virtuous man hath more then two, you suppose as much, for you suppose many to be broken yet not all. And surely virtue is not virtue if it keep not from foul play.

The Stoics maintained that a virtuous man might descend into Phalaris bull, without the interrup • ion of his happiness. We Christians are taught, and disciplined to rejoice even in tribulation, and mark well our bow stringes, because tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed in our hearts by the Holy Ghost that is given unto us. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 saith S. Paul, I am able to endure all things by the power of Christ that enables me, and herupon he exhorts Timothy to be partaker of the affliction of the Gospel, to wit by the power of God. The power of Christ, and the power of God are two such stringes to our blow of patience, as can never be broke. We know his grace to be sufficient for us, and when his power is made perfect in our weakness, we shall have cause to rejoice in our infirmities. For when we are weak, then are we strong. In a man's own strength no man shall be strong. But blessed art thou o people, who art the saved of the Lord, who is the shield of thy strength, and the sword of our glory. He can make us to be as a Giants sword, and he is a wall of fire round about Jerusalem. All that sight against it, their flesh shall consume away, though they stand on their feet, and their eyes shall consume in their holes, and their tongues shall consume in their mouths. But to return. The contingency of the issue is within the horizon of our fore sight.

As for horizons of contrivances, let such as fancy them make themselves merry with them. All this while the matter of your discourse being of God's infinite wisdom, and to that purpose preluding of the imperfect wisdom of man, I have wondered what you meant to enter upon the consideration of patience; unless it were to prepare your reader thereby with a more willing entertaynment of your discourse.

But now I perceive you desire to gratify God with a commendation of his patience, which that it might seem the more congruous, you pretend that the infiniteness of his wisdom carries him hereunto. And this patience consists in bearing with sinners which as you say, every minute of their life's violently thwart, and cross some particular means, ordained for his glory and their good. God's patience in forbearing us, and our sins in provoking him are great enough in their proper colors, they need no inconsiderate amplification to bombast them, by saying that every minute of life we violently cross them. For surely either you must suppose man, every minute of his life, to be waking, or else you delivered this as it were slumbering.

But to touch upon something more material, I pray remember, that you treat of the wisdom of God, as exercised in intending a right end, and prosecuting a right choice of means for the effecting of it. Now would you be so good as to consider, what is the end that God aims at in this, and particularly whether it be all one, in bearing thus with all, and that of an ambiguous nature, thus, that in case they do at length repent, and turn unto God, he may magnify his mercy in their salvation; if still they stand out, and die in impenitency he may magnify himself in their just condemnation? And withal I pray consider, whether this be the course of any wisdom finite or infinite, in God, or man to intend ends after this ambiguous manner. I mention no other end of God's patience, and long suffering, because I know no other end agreeable to your opinion. That which followeth tendes rather to the commendation of the goodness of God's will, then the wisdom of his understanding, & therefore so much the more heterogeneall, and extravagant; as when you say out of the Apostle that He is light and in him is no darkness; and that He distingvisheth the fruits of light from fruits of darkness before they are, even before he gave them possibility of being. An amplification partly idle, partly unsound. For God must either distinguish them before they are, or not at all; For there is no change in his understanding; unsound, in saying God gives them possibility of being. The being of things is from the gift of God, but not the possibility of being. But you proceed in the same stringe. As impossible it is for his will to decline from that which he disernes truly good, as for his infinite essence to shrink in being. God indeed cannot shrink, for he is indivisible, and you well know what thereupon you have wrought for the amplification of his power in the former chapter. But I would you had told us what is that truly good discerned by God, from which you say his will cannot decline. I cannot be satisfied with your concealments in this particular. What I pray is more truly good then the setting forth of God's glory either in his patience, and long suffering, or in ought else whatsoever? And is it impossible think you for God's will to decline this? If so then it were impossible that God should decline the making of the World.

Is not this a faite way to Atheism? Many things (you say) may and everything that is evil doth fall out against God's will, but nothing without his knowledge, or besides his expectation. In Scripture phrase we find that many things fall out not only besides, but contrary to God's expectation as Esa. 5. where God complaineth of the house of Israel, that while he looked for grapes they brought forth wild grapes. And Arminius urgeth this as if it were spoken in a proper speech.

By the proposition in this place it must be said, that God expects sour grapes, as well as sweet, for otherwise they should fall out besides his expectation which you here deny. So then God did expect that Shimei should rail on David, that Absalom should defloure his Fathers Concubines, that Judas should betray his Master, that David should defile his neighbors wife, and cause hir husband to be slain by the sword of children of Ammon, and that the Jews should crucify the Holy Son of God. Say also if you will that God did with patience, and long suffering expect all this. As for the knowledge of God there is no question about that, all confessing that all things are known to God not only at their falling out, but long before, as David professeth of his thoughts that they were known to God a far-off or long before. Psal. 139. 2. But to say that any thing falls out against the will of God, I had thought it had been generally received for a notorious untruthe. Aquinas I am sure is flatt against you, where he saith, Deus neque vult mala fieri, neque vult mala non fieri, sed vult permittere mala fieri, & hoc est bonum. God neither willeth that evils shall be, nor willeth that evils shall not be, but he will permit evils to be, & this is good. Part. 1. q. 19. art. 9. Arminius himself professeth • e minimum quidem fieri praeter Dei voluntatem, nempe vel volentem ut fiat, vel volentem non prohibere, sed permittere ut fiat.

You profess that all evil falls out against God's will, Arminius professeth that nothing falls out besides the will of God, at least willing not to prohibit it, but to permit it. And no merveyle, for the Apostle hath given us to understand that nothing can resist the will of God. It is true all evil falleth out against God's commandment, which usually is called also the will of God but improperly. For everyone knows that he is well able to sin, to transgress, and consequently to resist this will of God.

Further you tell us, that That which in its own nature (as being made such by his unalterable decree) is absolutely contingent, is not casual in respect of his providence or eternal wisdom. You are at lengh come to the wisdom of God from whence you digressed, but you seem to bring it in by the ears. For Casuall things are suchas fall out praeter intentionem, besides intention which is an action of the will not of the understanding where wisdom is stated. And how can those things be said to fall out, not besides God's intention, which fall out against his intention, namely against his will, as already you have professed of many things; that they do fall out against God's will, though not without his knowledge. I would you had given instance in those absolute contingents which (as you say) are made so by God's unalterable decree. But because you have neglected it, I will do it for you. Rayne tomorrow is a thing contingent, in this sense, it shall rain, or not rain. For me to walk abroad or ride forth to morrow is a thing contingent, that is I shall walk or not walk, ride foerth or not ride. And accordingly in other of your traditionary writings I have read a discourse of yours touching a certain disjunctive decree of God. But I pray be entreated to consider, whether such a contingent before specified, or such a disjunctive proposition be a fit object of God's decree. God's decrees I suppose you will say are all voluntary, and free, he could have either not decreed at all what he hath decreed, or decreed their contraries. Therefore things of their own nature impossible to be otherwise, are no fit object of God's decrees. Now a disjunctive proposition as above mentioned, is such as it is impossible it should be otherwise. For this disjunctive (it shall rain, or not rain; my walking shall be, or not be) is of necessary truth, and therefore no more decreable by God to be, then the Godhead it self is decreable by him to be.

Agayne may I not be bold to say, that it is too absurd to talk of his unalterable decree, if it proceed by way of distinction, to imply that some of God's decrees are alterable. All his decrees are more unalterable then the laves of Medes, and Persians; they are compared to brazen mounteynes Zach. 6. But here followeth a mistery in the next place, and a great mystery: In that he fully comprehendeth the number of all means possible, and can mixe the several possibilities of their miscarriage in what degree or proposition he list, he may, & ofttimes doth infallibly forecast the full accomplishment of his proposed ends, by multiplicity of means in themselves not inevitable but contingent. Add hereunto all that follows in this Section. The absurdities that you mixe in this mysterious sentence of yours I desire, and will endeavor to discover. Here we have three things to be considered.

First certain ends proposed by God to be accomplished. Secondly means appointed for the accomplishinge of these ends. Thirdly God's forecast of the accomplishment of these ends. Touching the first I desire some instance of those ends you speak of. One instance you give in the sequence of his action, and it is the apprehension of a Traitor which you suppose to be ordained by God. Yet is this as absolute a contingent as ought else. And contingents are no otherwise ordained by God, then to be contingents. For you have already signified that it is by God's unalterable decree; So then God hath decreed them to be contingents. Therefore this action also to wit the apprehension of a Traitor, God hath ordained to be of a contingent nature.

The meaning whereof is no more then this, it may come to pass, it may not come to pass. It shall be, or it shall not be, and accordingly in other treatises of yours you have discoursed of a disjunctive decree of God, so called from the disjunctive object thereof, as to say, God hath decreed that such a Traitor either shall be apprehended, or shall not be apprehended. Now there is no need of any means to procure the accomplishment of such an ende thus determined. For any man is able to avouch that a Traitor shall be apprehended, or no, and nothing at all to fail in the truth hereof; much less need is there of such variety of means, and those mixed with such possibility of miscarriage, as you treat of, to bring to pass such a decree, such an intention of this. But let the end pass as you have shaped it; this being of a contingent nature, and yet absolutely intended by God; for you neither express, nor intimate the signification of any condition, it will hence follow, that anything of the like nature may be absolutely ordained by God notwithstanding the contingency thereof. That is, be it never so contingent and free, as the apprehension of a Traitor is a free act of man (for you do not suppose him to be apprehended by dogs or catts but by men rather) yet notwithstanding God is able absolutely to ordain that such a thing shall come to pass. Therefore God is as well able to ordain that at such a time a man shall believe, shall repent, yea or do any thing though never so free, notwithstanding the contingent nature thereof. Now I can nowhere find (though I have perused thoroughly divers of your treatises) that you like of this. Yet here ere you are aware (as it seems) you are fallen upon it, and take upon you to acquaint us with mysterious conceits of yours, concerning the means whereby God doth inevitably accomplish such ends, you may as well say that God can bring to pass inevitably that man shall believe and repent though I have found you elsewhere to abhor this. To the consideration of which means we are now to proceed. Concerning these means you give us to understand, 1. that they are many possible, 2. that God comprehendes the number of them all. 3. That he can mixe the several possibilities of their miscarriage, in what degree, or proportion he list. 4. That in themselves these means are not inevitable, but contingent. I nothing doubt, but the same ende God can bring to pass by divers means, and that all these means are known to God but what you mean by mixing their several possibilities of miscarriage in what degree he list. I understand not. One kind of means is possible to miscarry, so is another, so is everyone, for so you acknowledge them all to be in themselves not inevitable, but contingent; the meaning whereof I conceive to be this, they do not inevitably, but contingently accomplish the end proposed, this I take to be the meaning though incongruously delivered. But how can God be said to mixe these possibilities, unless you mean hereby God's comprehending of them all, which is a truth. For God comprehends them all in his mind, but without mixing of them. But you seem to project a farther meaning, by the last words as when you say in what degree, and proportion he list. I take the meaning obscurely delivered to be this; God knows every degree of their possibility to miscarriage, or rather God makes the possibility either of each his miscarriage, or of all their miscarriage in what degree he list; yet it seems you acknowledge no degree of possibility of the miscarriage of them all. For you maintain it as a thing necessary, that all shall not miscarry in the words immediately following. Have you not such a conceit as his? God hath ordained the apprehension of a Traitor, either by this means or by that means, or by a third means or by a fourth? if it be I would you had spoken out, and told us your mind plainly, yet we may take also that into our consideration in the end. But by the way I see no grounds of these degrees of possibility which you fancy. For all of the means being as you confess contingent, and evitable as you speak, I see no reason, but everyone should be equally possible to miscarry. If you had talked of degrees of probability of miscarriage, I should not have excepted against it, but I seem to have just reason to except against the degrees of possibility.

Let us come to the third, & that is God's inevitable forecast of the full accomplishment of his proposed ends by this multiplicity of means. Now this as it is plain enough, so it seems as manifestly to be untrue. For that God should foreknow the issue of things by the means which have only a contingent operation, is generally disclayned by School-divines the Jesuits themselves, and Frarius by name in his Opuscula; as that which would infer an uncertayne, and not infallible knowledge in God. For as much as nothing can lay a better ground of certainty, then the nature of it can afford.

Secondly either you suppose that all this multiplicity of means you speak of, shall be used or no. If all be not used, then God doth not forecast the full accomplishment of his proposed end by this multiplicity of means possible, you speak of, but only by some of them, namely so many as were used. And indeed it is very strange, that all means possible to be used should be used to the accomplishment of every proposed end, or indeed of any proposed end. But if all be used, and all fail save the last, upon what ground can you say that the end proposed must necessarily be accomplished by this last, which is as possible to miscarry as the former; for you have not signified that God always useth this course, as to use the courses first that are most possible to miscarry, and such as are least possible in the last place; nay yourself profess all the means to be alike possible, and probable. To this you seem to answer in the sentence following, that it comes to pass by the rules of eternal wisdom. Namely that if an hundred means be appointed for the apprehension of a Traitor, and ninety and nine do amiss, the hundredth, and last by the rules of eternal wisdom must of necessity take. But where these rules of eternal wisdom are to be found, that you do not tell us, and therefore we take liberty to discourse against it thus; was it not possible for God to have used this means in the first, or second, or third, or middle place, or in the place last save one which he useth in the last? you have not manifested the least likelihood to deny this. Now if used in the first place, or in the last place save one it might have miscarried, why not in this, seeing the nature of it is not altered but continueth the same still, working only contingently unto the producing of the end proposed, and not necessarily? Agayne all other means failing this takes effect (you say) by the rules of eternal wisdom. Now I demand if none other had been appointed but this, why could not this alone being used have taken effect by rules of eternal wisdom as well, as now it doth, that is why could not God ordain that by this means only used, the effect intended should be brought to pass, as well as by this means used after, the use of many other, seeing still the effect coms to pass by his means alone and not by any other: For if God can ordain that after other means have failed, this means alone shall bring about the end intended by God, why could he not as well ordain that this means alone should do it, without using of any other means before it.

Last of all, what needs God's forecast run out to these means for a ground of its certeynty, when God himself cannot be ignorant of his own determinations? and therefore having ordained such an end, as suppose the apprehension of such a Traytour, upon this ground he may be most certain that such a Traitor shall be apprehended. By the way I will take leave to observe some positions that have dropped from your pen in this Section. 1. That God can ordain such a thing to come to pass, which is of a contingent nature, as for example the apprehension of a Traitor. 2. That upon such an ordination of God success to the means used hereunto is absolutely necessary, you add and immutably also, committing a great indecorum therein, immutability being a congruous attribute only to the ordination of God, and not to the success of things. 3. That means of contingent operation only shall necessarily take effect. 4. This necessity of taking effect is not absolute but gotten merely by casual miscarriage of the possibilities of the former means, so you express it, whereas indeed the possibilities miscarry not; for the means are in their nature possible, yea and probable too, to produce the end intended as yourself profess. 5. Though this necessity in the effectual working of the means be not absolute, yet the success of them is absolutely necessary. I say no more but this, the Theses that Picus Mirandula proposed at Rome were many of them paradoxicall enough but I do not find that any of these had place amongst them.

5. There is a fallacy (you say) though the simplest one that ever was set to catch any wise man, wherein many excellent wits of these latter ages with some of the former have been pitifully entangled, you that have discerned the simplicity thereof in all probability, are not like to be entangled therein, for then you were not any wiser then they; yet it seems all these excellent wits are but woodcokes in comparison to yourself; well let us consider it. The more, wherein it were not possible for any besides themselves to catch them, they thus (you say) frame and set. Whatsoever God hath decreed must of necessity come to pass; But God hath decreed everything that is, therefore everything that is, comes to pass of necessity. All things are necessary at least in respect of God's decree, The extract or Corollary whereof in brief is this. It is impossible for ought that is not, to be, for ought that hath been, not to have been, for ought that is not, to be, impossible for ought to be hereafter that shall not be. I promise you, you have engaged yourself very far not only to look to it that yourself be not found to be entangled herein, but for the performance of a very easy, and clear solution of this which you term a fallacy, least yourself be not found as wise as they which were entangled herein. Yet I am not ignorant of such a trick of wit, as first to cry down an argument by disgracing it, and pouring contempt upon it, & thereupon presuming that any answer shall serve the turn, when the Reader is before hand awed with such a censure as to forfete the reputation of a scholar, and to be Metamorphosed into a woodcocke, if he do not applaud it, and persuade himself to see a clear solution of the former argument, which is proclaimed base, and sufficient to discreditt all that favor it. Yet some wit is required to catch a woodcocke. But this is so simple a fallacy as the like was never set to catch a wise Man. Now a man would have thought yourself had been one of those excellents wits that had been taken in this snare, if it be a snare; seeing you come but freshly frō professing that God decreeth such a contingent, as the apprehension of a Traytour. In which case, it is absolutely necessary that it shall come to pass. Now why may not God as well decree every contingent thing, for ought the contingency can hinder it. For what is more contingent then the apprehension of a Traytour, yet this you say God may ordain, and in this case it is absolutely necessary that it shall come to pass. But let us consider what you have to say to it. I hope you will remember your own interpretation of it, namely that it must necessarily come to pass in respect of God's decree, and so by your own profession not only a contingent thing, but a free action, may be said to come to pass necessarily, to wit in respect of God's decree, as for example, the apprehension of a Traitor which is as free an action as any, you might have been pleased to have framed the proposition thus, whatsoever God hath decreed to come to pass, must necessarily come to pass. For you cannot be ignorant that God doth as well decree that some things shall not come pass, as that other things shall come to pass. As for example Ezek. 20. 31. O house of Israel as I live saith the Lord God I will not answer you when I am asked 32. Neither shall that be done that cometh into your mind: for ye say we will be as the heathen and serve wood, and stone, and Isaiah. 37. 33. Thus saith the Lord concerning the coming of Assur. He shall not enter into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a mount against it. Now we are ready to attend the discovery of this fallacy, this simple fallacy.

First you tell us of an extract or Corollary hereof thus; It is impossible for ought that is not to be, &c. Is this the way you take to discover the simplicity of this fallacy? this savoreth strongly of your fallacious dealing; in as much as by callecting consequences you labor to discredit the syllogism, this surely is not to answer it. Besides not one of your consequences are sound, there is no ingenuity in the collection of them. For the conclusion of the former syllogism being this therefore, everything that is comes to pass of necessity, yourself have acknowledged this necessity to proceed in respect of God's decree. And therefore what necessity of things soever you do infer herence, you must accordingly understand it in respect of God's decree not otherwise. Now this necessity is but necessity secundum quid not simpliciter as the learned call it, and such as may stand with contingency, and possibility to the contrary. Like as the apprehension of a Traitor is a thing possible not to be and in its own nature merely contingent, but upon supposition that God hath ordained that such a Traitor shall be apprehended by certain means, you profess that the success of those means is absolutely necessary, which is as much as to say that the apprehension of that Traytour upon God's ordaining it, is absolutely necessary; which is more then the divines whom you impugn as overlashing do use to say, or can in any sobriety of speech be justified. For if it must necessarily come to pass only upon supposition of God's decree, then not absolutely but upon supposition.

But consider we your extracts apart; the first is this. It is impossible for ought that is, not to be; Now this proposition cannot at all be deduced out of the former syllogism, or out of any part thereof. It depends manifestly upon another proposition which is not at all mentioned in the former syllogism and the proposition is this, whatsoever God hath decreed that it shall not be, it is impossible, that should be or come to pass. Now let every sober Reader judge, with what ingenuity you call this first proposition of yours an extract of the former syllogism, or of the conclusion thereof; whereas it is nothing necessary that he who affirms, that All things which God hath decreed shall necessarily come to pass, must also affirm the other, namely that whatsoever God hath not decreed, it is impossible that it should come to pass, wherhēce alone is derived the first abstract you speak of. Nay rather if we consider the analogy of propositions aright, we shall find that these propositions are only proportional; Whatsoever God hath decreed to come to pass, the same shall necessarily come to pass; Whatsoever God hath decreed that it shall not come to pass, it is impossible that it should come to pass. These are suitable indeed, and accordingly we profess that it is impossible that any thing which is not, because God hath decreed that it shall not be, I say it is impossible that it should be. So likewise as touching the second extract we say that everything which hath been, so far forth as God hath decreed the being thereof, it is impossible not to have been.

Your third extract is of the same nature with the first, and so admitts the same answer. Well I still attend the discovery of the fallacy; It may be we shall meet with it in that which followeth, and that is this, But if it be (as I suppose) very consonant to infinite wisdom, altogether consonant to infinite goodness and to decree contingency as well as necessity a conclusion quite contradictory to that late inferred, will be the only lawful issue of the former Maxim or Major proposition matched with a Minor proposition of our own choosing, &c. Is this to discover the fallacy of the former syllogism? Or are you to seek in the solution of a fallacy? If it be not concluded in mood and figure, you might have signified so much; but indeed no exception can that way be taken against it. If any term had been aequivocall, the answer had been by distinction. But no color of any such just exception; so that every way the form is unquestionable. And therefore no exception is here to be taken but against the truth of one of the premises.

And I verily believe there is one of the premises that disliketh you, though you are ashamed plainly, and directly to manifest so much. For so the answer had been fair, and facile by denying it, if not the Major because thereof you make use in your own syllogism, wherewith you do as it were requite this, yet at least the Minor which was this, But God hath decreed every thing that is. For I verily believe this is such a dish of lettice as fits not your lips. This you say you might have done, but now the liberty hereof is taken from you, and that by yourself. For although the Pope never binds his own hands, yet you have bound your tongue, and sealed up your own lips from taking any such exception as this. For you call the syllogism a fallacy, and that a simple one. Now fallacies are such forms of argumentation, as offend only in form of argumentation, which kind of exception is to justify the matter of it, and the truth of the premises, especially whereas you do not profess that it offendes both in form, and matter, nor show any forwardness to deny either of the propositions. Well we gave you a syllogism to answer, in steed of answering it, you think to make us amends with another syllogism. I have read that when one presented Augustus with verses looking for a reward, Augustus in steed of a reward gave him verses of his own making. The Poet hereupon very liberally bestowed a reward upon Augustus. We expected at your hands not another syllogism, but the answearinge of our own. But though you fail to answer ours, I will not fail to do my best in accommodating an answer unto yours. You undertake to infer the contradictory to our conclusion, which is to outface your opposites, and to cry a syllogism down without answering it.

Yet let us see how well you perform that you undertake. Your syllogism is this. Whatsoever God hath decreed must of necessity come to pass, but God hath decreed contingency as well as necessity, therefore of necessity there must be contingency. And for the better strengthening of your discourse or argumentation, you make a motion that an additional to the Major which is this, Nothinge can come to pass otherwise then God hath decreed it shall or may come to pass. Now the judge, or Chancellor in Logical Courts to whom such a motion should be made, would cry out shame upon it. For that proposition is an universal affirmative, and you desire that an universal negative should be added to it to make up an entire Major proposition, which were like a sixth finger upon an hand. And indeed in that case it were neither Categoricall nor Hypotheticall. For though two propositions with a copulative have place in some Hypotheticall syllogisms, yet it is always by way of negation thus, Non & dies est, & nox: sed dies est, ergo non nox, Again upon a second consideration, the motion would be rejected as being altogether without wit. For as much as the conclusion intended is well enough inferred without it, and this additional confers no strength to improve the inference. I appeal to every scholars judgment in this.

Thirdly the proposition it self as touching the latter clause of the disjunctive, hath as little wit as the motion made for the admittance of it. As where it is said that God hath decreed that things may come to pass, you might as well say that God hath decreed that the World may come to pass. For the possibility of the event of things is not from God's decree, but rather from God's omnipotency. For because he is able to produce every thing that implies no contradiction, therefore they are denominated possible.

Lastly this proposition which you crave to be admitted is like a Troian horse, it will do you more harm then good, as ere we part from this section shall be made manifest. Yet what need you desire more, your conclusion is granted you, namely that of necessity there must be contingency, supposing God's decree. For God's decrees are only of doing, or suffering some things, as it is free for God whether he will do them, or suffer them, yea or no. And therefore though God had not at all decreed contingency, yet decreing any thing, of necessity there must be contingency, though he had decreed nothing else, but such things as we count most necessary, in the course of nature. But we grant also that God did decree contingency, and decrees necessity in respect of second causes; as for example God did decree to make fire of such a nature as to heat or burn necessarily, the Sun of such a nature as to enlighten the air necessarily, heavy things to move downwards, and light things upwardes, and all this necessarily. Necessarily I say in respect of second causes, though this necessity was mere contingency, in respect of the will of God. For he could have chosen whether there should have been any fire, or world at all, yea and can hinder the fire from burninge if it please him, as he did hinder it from taking hold of the three noble children in the furnace of Babylon. And as God hath decreed many things to come to pass necessarily, so hath he decreed many things to come to pass contingently, as in course of nature many things there are that come to pass contingently by the will of God, and especially the actions of men and Angels.

And as for that additional of yours which you craved to be admitted, Nothing can come to pass otherwise then God hath decreed, it shall come to pass, we are so far from disliking it, that we cannot believe that you do believe it, and therefore you have taken a course to confound it, as in due time shall appear. We willingly profess that all things beside God, are created entities, and such as whose being must necessarily depend or God, or have no being at all. And not only do we subject res ipsas to the will and decree of God, but also modos rerum. And these modi rerum are necessity, and contingency.

Nothing (we say) comes to pass, but what God hath decreed shall come to pass. Again nothing comes to pass after any manner whatsoever, but that God hath decreed, it to come to pass after that manner; whether it come to pass necessarily, God hath decreed it shall come to pass necessarily; or whether contingently, God hath decreed it shall come to pass contingently. In a word that which you deliver faultringly we say plainly Nothing comes to pass otherwise, then God hath decreed it shall come to pass. So then I say we grant your conclusion. But how doth it appear that this conclusion of yours contradicteth our former conclusion which was this, therefore Every thing comes to pass of necessity. You will say, if every thing comes to pass of necessity, then nothing comes to pass contingently. I confess this consequence is plausible, but to whom? to none but ignorants. Of which number you are not. For your very conclusion it self in the very outward face of it utterly contradicteth this consequence. For is not your conclusion this, therefore of necessity there must be contingency, which manifestly justifieth that necessity and contingency may stand together, and are nothing oppositie. And how, I pray, is this necessity, but in respect of the decree of God? And did our conclusion proceed in any other sense? Your self have acknowledge that it doth not, though therein somewhat faultring also, as it is your usual course, in taking notice of any truth that makes against your tenets. For are not these your words in interpreting our conclusion, All things are necessary in respect of God's decree? Only you add at least in this respect as if you would fain draw it to another meaning. Now our meaning is plain. All things come not to pass necessarily, nor all things contingently, but some things come to pass necessarily as works of nature, some things contingently as the actions of men. But by your own received Maxim Nothing can come to pass otherwise then God hath decreed they shall come to pass, therefore God hath decreed that some things shall come to pass necessarily, some things contingently. But by your own received principle, whatsoever God hath decreed to come to pass, that must of necessity come to pass, therefore of necessity it must come to pass that some things shall come to pass necessarily, some things contingently. Now give me leave to represent your own ill carriage, to your own eyes. The Major proposition in our syllogism, and the Major proposition in your syllogism are all one as yourself acknowledge in these words, Let the Major proposition stand as it did before. Now if they be all one why do you not propose them after one manner? do you practice to gull your Reader presuming this legier du main of yours shall not be discovered?

The Major proposition in both is all one I confess as touching each part, both the middle term, and the greater extreme. But when the greater extreme comes to be repeated in the conclusion, it is repeated in a far different manner in our conclusion then in yours. For in the Major proposition of each syllogism it runs thus, must of necessity come to pass, but in our conclusion it is corrupted thus, must come to pass necessarily. But in your conclusion it is mended thus, of necessity there must be contingency; which is as much as to say, of necessity it must come to pass. I say in ours it is corrupted; for whereas in these words must of necessity come to pass, the word necessity is indifferently to be referred to that which goes before, or that which comes after; and indeed ought to be referred to that which goes before; in the conclusion it is put in the last place, so that it cannot be referred but to the words come to pass. And it is mended in yours, for in the conclusion it is put in the first place of the greater extreme, and so takes away all danger of referring it to the last words, come to pass. As for example, had our conclusion been shaped like yours as touching the majus extremum which is the same in both, the harshnes of it had been qualified, thus, ergo all things of necessity must come to pass, which hath a fair, and facile construction thus; though some things come to pass necessarily, and some things contingently, yet all things as being decreed by God, must of necessity come to pass, both those things that come to pass necessarily, and those things that come to pass contingently. In like sort had your conclusion been shaped by you as ours is, as touching the greater extreme, as indeed it ought, the greater extreme being all one in both, then your conclusion would have seemed as harsh as ours thus, ergo Contingency must come to pass of necessity or thus some effects shall be contingent of necessity, for so runs the Minor, God hath decreed contingency, or that some effects shall be contingent as well as some are necessary. And as for the consequences which hence you make they are nothing contradictory to those extracts you made from our conclusion. For all those impossibilities deduced from our conclusion, were only secundum quid and upon supposition of God's decree, which kind of impossibility is always joined with a simple and absolute possibility to the contrary, secluding God's decree. For even those things which God decreeth to come to pass contingently as the actions of men, must necessarily by the virtue of God's decree come to pass, in such a manner as joined with a possibility of not coming to pass, otherwise it were impossible they should come to pass contingently. About which truth, namely that God decreeth some things to come to pass contingently, why do you faulter in this fowl manner? If you like it not, why do you not in plain terms contest against it, if you do approve of it, why do you not plainly profess it, but carry yourself in the clouds of generality and ambiguity? As first, when you say, God hath decreed contingency, here a man might be apt to conceive, that you do believe that God hath decreed that some things shall come to pass contingently. Especially if he understand that God decreeth not only necessity, but also that some things shall necessarily come to pass, which may seem to urge you in like sort to maintain that God decreeth contingency, so he should also decree that some things shall come to pass contingently.

Most of all considering what here you seem to approve of in your additional, namely that Nothing can come to pass otherwise then God hath decreed. Now the case is clear that many things come to pass contingently, therefore it followeth that God also hath decreed, that even those things shall come to pass contingently; But I have had experience of your opinion to the contrary in another treatise of yours, wherein though you confess that God hath decreed the necessity of things, & the things themselves that necessarily come to pass, and grant that it cannot be otherwise, yet on the other side though you grant that God decreeth contingency, yet you deny that God decreeth the things themselves that do contingently come to pass. A most prodigious opinion, as if God did bring to pass the contingency of a thing (which is but modus rei, and contains no reality different from the thing it self) yet doth not bring to pass the thing it self; for if he did he must decree it also. And as directly opposite to the word of God, plainly testifying a multitude of contingent things to have been decreed by God. The like ambiguity you content yourself withal, when you say that God hath decreed that some effects shall be contingent, or as otherwise you express it, that some contingent effects shall be, which seems manifestly to imply as well the being or existence of them to be decreed by God as the contingent manner of their being.

Yet I say, in another discourse of yours you fly of from this acknowledgement, but withal deliver yourself with as much confusion and perturbation, as any adversary could expect in an opposite maintaining erroneous points, and crying down the truth of God. Thus have I taken pains to answer your syllogism, but as for the discovery of the fallacy of ours we have hitherto found nothing tending thereunto: What is to come we are to expect. Yet hereupon as if you had performed some great service, very gravely and magisterially you tell us, that As ill weeds grow apace, so the late mentioned error once conceived, was quickly delivered of a second which derived the infallible certainty of God's foreknowing things future, from an infallible necessity (as they conceived it) laid upon them, (before they had being) by his immutable decree. But every wise decree presupposeth wisdom, and wisdom essentially includeth knowledge. It seems you think you have sufficiently discharged yourself of that you undertook, namely the discovery of the fallacy of our syllogism, you proceed to the censure of another error, and that both obscurely and unsoundly expressed. It is about the ground of God's fore-knowing things to come. Now the opinion you tax for an error, is the opinion of those that maintain that God foreknowes all things to come, by seeing the determination of his own will to the producing of every action. This you express after your manner thus, God foreknowes them from an infallible necessity laid upon them by his immutable decree. I do not think you can produce any Author of this opinion, that expresseth his opinion in this manner. Besides, it is notoriously untrue. For the Authors of this opinion maintain, that God by his decree, layeth contingency upon some things, as well as necessity upon others. And that as he will have the fire to burn, the Sun to enlightē necessarily, so he will have, Angels and men produce their actions contingently and freely. Nay which is more, even they that openly profess, that God doth determine the will of man unto every actiō as touching the substance of the action; do withal maintain that God determines the will of man and Angels to work contingently and freely in all their actions, and consequently neither doth he decree any other wise to determine them, which doctrine maintaynes that God's will and decree doth lay upon all reasonable creatures a contingent manner of operation rather then any necessity. Yet upon supposition of God's decree, they maintain that of necessity such things as God hath decreed shall come to pass, and that after that manner as God hath decreed it to come to pass, that is, either necessarily as all the operations of natural agents, or contingently and freely, as all the actions of reasonable creatures. But this opinion you dislike, and upon what reason? Vndoubtedly it seems they had need be weighty ones, considering that this question hath been abundantly canvassed, by the most learned and subtilest among School-divines. And indeed it is one of the first points whereabout I have been acquainted with School divinity: Scotus proposeth this questiō, to wit; Now God doth foreknowe future contingents; for thus they in their wisdom thought fit to propose it, to wit, of future contingents in special not as you do, of future things in general. And he proposeth two opinions hereabouts which he impugneth. The first, is the opinion of Bonaventura, who maintained that God did foreknowe future contingents, by the Ideaes of them in the mind of God. The second is the opinion of Aquinas, who made the ground of God's foreknowing of future contingents, to be Their real existence in eternity. Both these Scotus impugneth with such excellent arguments to my judgment at that time, and withal so clear, that as I remember this brought me first in love with School divinity. The third opinion is his own, which there he maintayneth, & that is this, which you invade, namely, That God knows all future contingents by knowing his own will and purpose to produce them. And as touching your objection that God foreknowes the sins of men as well as their good actions, which yet undoubtedly he did not decree to produce, his answer is, that this also is foreknown by God in as much as he knows the determination of his will to produce every sinful act as touching the substance of it, and to permit the obliquity of it. The opinion of Calvin maintaining no other ground of God's foreknowledge of future contingents but this, & that out of Valla is apt to be exposed to scorn nowadays, not only amongst Papists but amongst English Protestants also. But as for Scotus who is known to maintain the same opinion, he is reputed to be of sufficiency to bear the brunt of any adversary that in point of Metaphysical, and School divinity shall encounter him. Yet consider a little farther. The Thomists and Dominicans who stand much upon the terms of defense for the credit and reputation of their great Master Aquinas, they are apt enough to meet with Scotus his arguments opposing his opinion in laying the ground of God's foreknowledge upon the real existence of all things in eternity. But mark how Didacus Alvarer a great School-man carrieth himself in this. Aquinas saith he did never deny Scotus his way of God's foreknowing future contingents, to wit, by knowing the determination of his own will. But besides this he devised another, and that was by the real existence of all future things in eternity. Agayne, in maintaining the opinion of Aquinas concerning the actual existence of all future things in eternity, he first presupposeth the determination of God's will for the producing of them, and thereupon makes future contingents to have their real existence, & not otherwise. So that for this opinion which you do very magisterially censure, as an ill weed hath not only poor Calvin for the patron of it, and Valla alleged by him; but Scotus also the Father of the Realls, yea and Didacus Alvarer a Thomist, a sect of School-divines commonly opposite to the Scotists, yet herein professedly concurring with Scotus himself, and avouching also Aquinas himself to be of the same opinion. You had need therefore look well to your tackling in opposing such who I tell you never were reputed Babies, but tall fellows.

But yet I confess they were but men and may have their matches. But leave your censures, and trust to your sword and dint of arguments, & do not think that words or phrasos or figures (much less imperious censures) will carry it.

And here it would be required, not only to argue your own Tenet, but to make answer to their Arguments. But you Eagle like and as if they were but flies keep your state, and will not fly at such inferior gain. Wherein your proselyte shall be little beholding to you, whē being possessed with your opinion, he shall find himself left to himself to sink or swim without any help from you to answer their arguments, that have maintained the contrary; They had need be of Chrisippus temper, who was wont to pray his Master to give him principles and let him alone to maintain them; Yet it may be I am deceived and it was not Chrisippus but Carneades. Yet with one argument you are content to help your reader here. Belike it is some clear demonstration, such as it is, this it is. Every wise decree presupposeth wisdom, and wisdom includeth knowledge, and what of this? Nay if any man desires to fare better in the endoctrinating himself in this point, he must go to the Cooks, you have no better entertainment for him. A very short dispatche (in a controversy of great moment) and a quick; Never was Schoolman so simple as to doubt, whether wisdom includeth knowledge or a wise decree presupposeth wisdom; yet never any one of them was found to discern any such inference as you imply herhence, as if herhence it did so evidently follow that God's foreknowing of future things doth not depend upon the determination of his will. For you take no pains to clear this inference. But let us examine this a little. When we say the foreknowledge of future contingents depends upon the determination of God's will, the meaning is, therefore God foreknowes them because he purposeth to produce them, so far as they are good, or to permit them in case they are evil. Now you in opposition to this, tell us, that God's knowledge goeth before his decree, and because you do not specify what knowledge, we have reason to expound it of the knowledge spoken of, that is of the knowledge of future contingents. In like sort because you specify not of what decree you speak, we have reason to understand it of the decree before spoken of, whereupon those divines, whom you impugn, do ground the foreknowledge of things to come. So then your meaning must be this in opposition to the Tenet which you censure for an error or weed in opinion. Whereas some think that God's foreknowledge of things to come is grounded upon God's decree, as if God ergo did foreknow them, because he purposeth to produce them. You are of a contrary opinion, namely, that God's foreknowledge doth go before his decree, that is, first God foreknowes things to come, and then secondly he purposeth to produce them. For if you meant it of another decree, then that which was spoken of, what an absurd thing is it for you not to specify it, especially seeing you propose this by way of contradiction to the former opinion? which unless it proceeds of the same things is no contradiction. For if I say God doth first decree to produce things, and hereupon he knows them; and you shall as it were by way of opposition say; No this is not so; but God doth first foresee the actions of men, and thereupon decree to save or damn them, here is no contradiction at all, but an unlearned and foolish show of opposition, without any substance of contradiction. Wherefore if you speak to the purpose in this, and that by way of opposition, your meaning must be this; God doth not first decree them and afterwards foreknowe them, but rather he first foreknowes them and then decreeth them; which is as much as to say, that God foreknowing that they will be, doth hereupon decree that they shall be. So that God's decree of things future contingent proceedeth in this manner, Seeing they will be, they shall be. But to consider your reason more closely, Every wise decree (you say) presupposeth wisdom. Now this being delivered in opposition to our opinion which maintain that the foreknowledge of future contingents followeth God's decree; and you saying plainly that wisdom rather goeth before God's decree then followeth after it, (which indeed is a truth, for God worketh all things according to the counsel of his will) this discourse of yours (I say) doth imply that this foreknowledge of future contingents, which we make consequent to God's decree is by us accounted the wisdom of God. For otherwise here again were no contradiction, though you make show of contradicting us; as whereas we say foreknowledge of future things is subsequent to God's decree, you as it were contradicting us reply, Nay rather God's wisdom goeth before his decree, otherwise it were no wise decree. So that herein you do manifestly suppose that we by God's foreknowledge of future things did understand the wisdom of God. It seems you conceive it to be so, but as for us we take it to be so foul an absurdity that we desire, though you please your own lips with such lettice, yet until you have better ground for it you will not charge it upon us. For even for a man to foreknowe what he meaneth to do is no part of wisdom. For the ve • yest fool that is may know and be privy to what he meaneth to do. Every man is privy to his own thoughts and purposes. No man knoweth the things of man but the Spirit of Man. 1. Cor. 2. 8. So then the spirit of man is well enough acquainted with the purposes of man. But the wisdom that directeth the will of God is that which the learned call Scientia simplicis intelligenti • , whereby God knows what is most fit to be done for the compassing of his proposed ends, which yourself confess to be the part of wisdom in the beginning of the former Section. Where also you made not the least mention of any such part of wisdom as to foreknowe what one meaneth to do. Now God's decree of producing future things in their season is a decree of the, means tending to the end which God h • intended, namely the setting forth of his glory. For God makes all things for himself. And this wisdom includeth knowledge, it is true the knowledge of all means whereby his glory may be set forth, and God makes choice of what he thinks fit, and all this knowledge is not the knowledge of what shall be, but only the knowledge of what may be, or is fi • t to be, which all the learned acknowledge to be scientia simplicis intelligentiae. and they make it distinct from scientia visions which is the knowledge of what shall be. And these knowledges all acknowledge to be so far different as that the one to wit scientia simplicis intelligentiae is precedent to God's decree, the other to wit scientia visions is subsequent which two knowledges in God, how judiciously and learnedly in the course of your magisteriall censure you are pleased to confound let the Reader judge. But to proceed, hereupon you betake yourself • o interrogatories.

The first is, Shall we then grant that God's knowledge is antecedent, and his foreknowledge consequent to his decrees? To this out of that which hath been formerly delivered may be answered. There is a knowledge goes before God's will, called scientia simplicis intelligentiae th • knowledge of what may be, or is fit to be, there is another knowledge called scientia visions, that is the knowledge of what shall be, and thi • followeth after the will of God; and I know no tolerable divine that did deny it, until the opinion of scientia media rose up; which the Authors themselves confess to be a new invent • on; And here as if this opinion were both Law and Gospel unto you, you • ise up in grave and supercilious manner to censure the contrary.

Now as for the term of foreknowledge; I answer the knowledge of what may be, or is fit to be, goes before the will of God, and so may be called the foreknowledge of God; but the knowledge that things shall be, though it followeth God's will, yet may it be called foreknowlege in respect of the event of the things themselves. For the things exist in time, but God did know, that they should be, from all eternity, like as from all eternity he did decree the futurition of them. Your second interrogatorie is this, Or shall we say God did inevitably decree the obliquity of Jewish blasphemy against his Son because he did most certainly foreknowe it? You never shown your teeth till now, by this I perceive what you aim at, which hitherto you have been ashamed to profess in plain terms, namely, that future contingents which come to pass in the World are not decreed. But what mean you to deny that, in this cunning manner, which you durst not deny openly. For the syllogism you proposed to answer contained this, in plain terms in the Minor thus, All things that come to pass are decreed to come to pass: which if you had but in plain terms denied, your solution had been plain and brief, whereas you neglecting that course did fetch a great compass instead of answering to requite us with another argument whereby to infer a proposition contradictory to our conclusion.

Secondly though then you might have denied it, yet now you cannot without contradicting yourself. For you justified the truth of the premises in that syllogism, in as much as all the exception you took against it was against the form • and not against the matter. For you told us, it was a fallacy, a very simple one. Now every Scholar knows that where no other exception is taken against a syllogism, but this, that it is a fallacy, this is as much as to justify the truth of each proposition contained therein.

Thirdly, I give another reason why you have prejudiced yourself from denying this. For you have professed that Nothing can come to pass otherwise, then God hath decreed it to come to pass, Jewish blasphemy against the Son of God came to pass contingently and freely, therefore God hath decreed, that that very Jewish blasphemy against the Son of God should come to pass contingently and freely, &c. what followeth hereupon but that therefore God ordeyneth it to come to pass, for to come to pass contingently and freely, is no terminus diminuens of coming to pass. You have nothing at all that I know to help you at this dead lift, but to fly to the confused manner of expressing that former proposition of yours, whereupon I take advantage, if so be your heart serve you to take hold thereof, whereof I much doubt. For it is true indeed that that proposition was not proposed categorically thus, Nothing shall come to pass otherwise then God hath decreed, it shall come to pass; whereupon I have taken advantage ag • inst you; but disjunctively thus Nothing can come to pass otherwise then God hath decreed it shall or may come to pass. If you will help yourself with this disjunctive you may; but I will be bold to tell you, it is like to prove a shameful help, and such as seems to be thrust in only to charm the dangerous issue of it (whereof it seems you had a glimpse) if it were left out. For consider, is it a sober speech to say that God hath decreed that things may come to pass? The possibility of things is known to God before ever his decrees go forth. He knows what he is able to bring to pass before he resolves what shall come to pass: And therefore too too absurd it is, to make the possibility of anything the object of God's decree. Sticke rather to this, and say, that though God did ordain, the Jewish blasphemy against his Son should come to pass contingently & freely, yet therhence it follows not that he did ordain it should come to pass: Whereabouts when we know your mind e renatâ consilium capiemus, we will think of a convenient answer, in the mean time I will proceed. Therefore in the fourth place why should it seem so uncouthe that God should decree this very blasphemy, as to be cried down at the very hearing of it, especially by Christians who know and believe the oracles of God, and acknowledge that passage. Act. 4. 27. 28. amongst the rest to be dictated by the Spirit of God wherein the Apostles jointly profess in their meditations unto God in this manner, Doubtless against thy holy Son Jesus whom thou hast anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and people of Israel gathered themselves together, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel had determined before to be done. Judas that betrayed him, the High-Priests that hired Judas to betray him, the witness that testified against him, the people that cried away with him, were of the people of Israel; The soldiers that scourged him, crowned him with thorns, spate in his face, crucified him, pierced him with a spear & were of the Gentlis, yet all these together with Horod and Pontius Pilate, are avouched by the Holy Ghost to have gathered themselves together to do what God had determined to be done; and was there not both Jewish and Gentilish blasphemy against the Son of God to be found in all this? and shall we fear to profess that they did in all this what God had decreed to be done, when the Holy Ghost professeth that they did what God had determined to be done? Could you be ignorant of this passage? and dare you in so apparent terms draw your Reader to contradict it, as some blasphemous assertion, without taking any pains to interpret the place, and so free yourself from manifest contradiction thereunto, as at first sight is obvious to every Reader, that will but compare this of yours with that of the Acts? Had you ventured upon an interpretation, I would have taken pains to consider it. I have shaken in pieces the rotten interpretation of Bellarmine and Arminius, different each from other. I would have tried what I could have performed upon yours also. And throughout the Scriptures we may perceive how jealous God is over the maintaining of his providence throughout, even in the most sinful things that come to pass, and that in such phrases, which when they are used by us, they are cried down for blasph • my; but in the mean t • me they consider not, that if they be the phrases of the Holy Ghost, ere th • y are aware they are found to charge the Holy Ghost with blasphemy. And the truth being rightly uttered, is far enough off even from harshness also, as well as from error, yea from harshness unto men's affections, though never so corrupt. As for example, what good soever there is found in such actions, we acknowledge God to be the author of it, but not of the the malice or evil that cleaves to it; yet that also we say God will have come to pass, but only by his permission. For, Non aliquid sit nisi volente Deo, Not anything comes to pass (saith Austin) but God willing it; and he comprehends both good and evil, as appears by that which follows, vel sinendo vt siat, as in case it be evil, vel ipse faciendo, as in case it be good. But of both these he pronounceth that not anything comes to pass but God willing it. The like may be manifested to have been acknowledged by Anselmus, Hugo de Sancto Victore, and Bradwardine, yea and our greatest adversaries. For Bellarmine even in the midst of his heat against us, professeth, that Bonum est esse malum, Deo permittente: It is good that there should be evil by God's permission: and if it be good, I pray you why is it not lawful for GOD to will it, see • ng upon the same ground it was affirmed long ago by St. Austin that God doth will it. But as for Arminius, never any man was known to be smitten with the spirit of giddiness in opposing this truth more then he; for sometimes he professeth, It was God's will that Ahab should fill up the measure of his sins, and how I pray could that be, but by adding sin unto sin? Again, he professeth that it was God's will that the Jews should proceed so far as they did proceed in their ignominious handling of Christ; and every man knows that they proceeded to a very foul degree of blasphemy and impiety therein. Last of all, it is true that Aquinas and Durand both oppose this, but herein Aquinas manifestly opposeth Austin, though he names him not. And again, I desire no better trial of this truth then their oppositions. For if I do not make it appear that their arguments are merely sophistical, and manifestly unsound, let me be accounted a blasphemer in the maintaining of this Tenet. All which I have already performed, and taken in Valentianus his more copious and frothy exceptions also, but in another language. Lastly, yet were it tolerable if you did only deny that sins of men were decreed by God; but you will have nothing that comes to pass contingently and freely to be decreed by God; contingency you say is decreed, but not the things that fall out contingently: whence it followeth that by your opinion, God did decree no man's faith, no man's repentance, no man's obedience, but only did decree the contingency of this. This is the mysterious iniquity of your doctrine which you conceal, and make choice rather to give instance in sin and blasphemy, and to represent the harshness of maintaining that to be decreed by God, only that you may the better insinuate the approbation of your unlearned Tenets, into vulgar and popular affections. Yet you give me cause to guess that you would have your reader believe more herein, then you believe yourself. You would have your Reader believe that God did not decree the Jewish blasphemy against his Son, but your belief is only that God did not decree the obliquity of it, and yet forthwith you doubt whether the obliquity may be distinguished from the act. Again, you would have your Reader believe that God did not decree the Jewish blasphemy against his Son, but your belief here expressed is only this, that God did not inevitably decree the Jewish blasphemy, implying that God did decree it, but not mevitably. And not any of our Divines that I know ever said anymore, then that God did decree it.

You add another absurd error hereunto concerning God's decrees; that forsooth some of them are evitable, some inevitable. Now the meaning of our Divines in saying that God did decree any obliquity, is only this; God did decree that such an obliquity should come to pass by his permission, directly answering to the prof • ssing of Austin; Non aliquid fit nisi Omnipotens fieri velit, vel sinendo ut siat, vel ipse faciendo. It is true, Arminius disputes, and that acutely as he thinks, that in some actions the obliquity cannot be distinguished from the actions themselves. I have dealt with him in this point; I am ready to deal with you also. But it is enough for you to show your affection to Armenius his Tenets; as for your sufficiency to maintain them, that you do dispense very sparingly, as if you affected state in this. Further you tell us, to admit your former conclusion, that the eternal foreknows all things because he decreeth them, or that they are absolutely necessary in respect of his decree, (the disjunctive here should be a copulative, for that which followeth is not verified of either of them disjunctively, but copulatively of them both,) were to imprison his infinite wisdom in his self-fettered power, to restrain the Aeternall Majesty from using such liberty in his everlasting decrees as some earthly Monarchs usurp in causes temporal or civil. For the Pope never tyes his hand by any grant, which is a fault in him. But in that Holy One the reservation of such liberty is a point of high perfection. A little before you told us very gravely, that weeds grow apace, and the former error which you minced, as loath to declare your mind thereon plainly, touching God's decreeing all things, was soon delivered of a second, to wit, the ground of God's foreknowing things to come to be the determination of his will. You rather think, that God foreknowes things to come, before, and without the determination of his will. Whether this opinion of yours be a tare or good corn, let the Reader judge. And of what nature not a second is, but seconds are, whereof it seems you are soon delivered, which now we come to examine. To say that God foreknowes all things, because he decreeth them, is (you say) to imprison his infinite wisdom in his power. Why it is nothing so: for God's decree is God's will, not his power: yet how is God's wisdom imprisoned in his will, more then his power? For as God knoweth more things possible to be done, and fit to be done then he doeth, so he can do more then he doeth, and therefore his wisdom is no more imprisoned thereby then his power. But besides this, you take your aim quite amiss. For the foreknowledge of what things God will bring to pass, is no part of wisdom. For, for a man to be privy to his own purposes, is no part of wisdom, for it is incident even to silly creatures. Again, to know what I mean to do, what a senseless thing it is to say that this is to imprison my knowledge? and as like senseless a thing it is to say that God's knowledge or wisdom is imprisoned, by being privy to his own purposes? Again, how is God's power fettered by his will? Seeing the power of every creature is to be ordered by his will without fettering of it? you signify that his liberty is hereby restrained; wherein? in his everlasting decrees. A most senseless speech. Is it possible that by making an everlasting decree, God's liberty of making an everlasting decree shall be restrained? Perhaps you may say, by making it he cannot alter it. I answer, if he should alter it after he hath made it, this decree by way of alteration should not be everlasting: but you suppose the contrary, namely, that God's decrees are everlasting. Or if God should for a while suspend his decrees, and not make them with the first, how is it possible they could be everlasting? This savoreth strongly of an affection to maintain that God's decrees may be not everlasting with Vorstius, though you are ashamed to profess it, and therefore hand over head you thrust in the denomination of everlasting upon the decrees though quite contrary to your intention. For you would have God still ind • fferent to decree this or that, as the Pope is who by no grant binds his hands.

And why so? is it, that upon emergent occasions, God might decree a new as he thinks fit? why but consider, all these emergent occasions were from everlasting known to God. So that if God at th • s time were indifferent to decree, he would decree no otherwise then he hath from everlasting. For from everlasting he knew all that now he doth, and at this present his will is no otherwise then from everlasting it was. For with him is no variableness nor shadow of change.

The wilderness of your inventions, I well perceive, is not at an end. I wonder whither the wantonness of our wits would bring us in the end. Neither are God's judgments yet at an end in giving men over to illusions to believe lies, and that for not embracing his truth with love. And who can look for better from them who shamefully oppose the g • ace of God. Is it marva • le if God infatuate them?. As for the being of things absolutely necessary by reason of God's decree, this is your language, not ours, in the last period of your former Section. We say, look what God hath decreed, that of necessity must come to pass, but how, not always necessarily, but sometimes contingently. Only the works of nature do by the decree of God come to pass necessarily; but as for the actions of men they come to pass by the decree of God contingently and freely. But whether works of nature, or actions of men, they of necessity must come to pass, if God hath decreed them, and that after such a manner as God hath decreed them to come to pass, that is, necessary things necessarily, contingent things contingen • lie.

6. As a man or Angel having free power to do this or that, by producing anything subject to the freedom of his will, doth therewithal produce contingency without decreeing it, (for in as much as he works freely the work must needs be freely wrought, that is contingently,) In like so • t God being free to produce any work without him, upon the producing of such a work doth produce contingency without decreeing it. For the work cannot be wrought by God but freely, and consequently it must needs come to pass contingently.

To produce this or that, is the object of God's decree, because he can choose whether he will produce this or tha • ; but to work contingently is no object of God's decree • for it is not in God's power to choose whether he will work contingently or necessarily. If he doth work at all ad extra he must needs work freely that is contingently. For as it is of the perfection of the divine nature to be necessarily, so it is the perfection of divine nature to work not necessarily in the producing of ought without him, but freely & contingently. But the divine nature differeth from the nature Angelical and human, that he not only worketh freely, but also is able to create creatures herein like himself, that can work freely as namely Angels and men; like as he can and hath produced other creatures that work in all things necessarily.

Agayne, considering that necessity and contingency are but modi rerum certain manners of bringing things to pass, & therefore cannot exist without the things themselves wh • ch are said to exist and to be brought to pass either necessarily or contingently. Therefore it cannot be said that God doth produce the necessity or contingency of this or that particular, unless he produceth the particular it self; neither can he be said to decree the contingency or necessity of this or that particular, except he decree the thing it self. So that for God to decree the necessity or contingency of this or that particular, is nothing else then to decree that this particular shall necessarily come to pass, or such a particular shall contingently come to pass.

Neither is it reasonable to affirm, that God doth decree necessity or contingency in general, but not the necessity of this particular, or the contingency of this particular. For like as generals cannot exist but in particulars, so neither can generals be otherwise produced then by producing particulars. So it is impossible that God should decree the producing of generals otherwise then by producing of particulars. Now there is a contingency taken in another sense, which doth not accompany the existence of anything but only the essence of it, and denominates it before it doth exist, as when we say rain tomorrow is contingent, it is as much as to say it is possible to rain, it is possible not to rain. So touching the actions of men, of any action we may say it is contingent, for as much as it is in the power of man to do it or no. Now this kind of contingency is not always the object of God's decree. For in this sense the continuation of the World is a contingent thing; for it may continue or no. So before the World was made, it was possible to be and not to be, and so the making of it contingent, but not by the decree of God. For nothing is such by the decree of God but it might be altered, for God's decree is a free act. But it was impossible that the World should not be of a contingent nature, like as it is impossible that God should not have power to make the World, or not to make it according to his will. Nay the very works of men and Angels in this kind of contingency are not the object of God's decree; for in as much as they are said to be possible to be or not to be, this is not from the decree of God but rather from the nature of God, as all necessary truths are derived therefrom.

Neither is it in the power of God to make that the works of men and Angels should not be possible to be or not to be. But if the possibility were the object of God's decree, it might be otherwise. For God's decree passeth forely upon everything where upon it passeth, so that if he decree them to be possible, he might have decreed them not to be possible. Yet you seem to speak of contingents in no other sense then this, as when you say, God hath decreed that some effects shall be contingent, although I confess it is so obscurely delivered that a man can hardly discern your meaning. But for farther discourse hereof you put us over to the article of creation. So likewise for the contingency of human actions as decreed by God; your confirmation thereof we must expect, when you come to treat of man's fall. This, thus by fetching compass expressed by you, I doubt will prove no more then this, that God decreed to make man a free agent; yet you deliver it as if the demonstration hereof did require, and promise some exquisite performance. And I am verily persuaded you have a reach at such a kind of freedom, as to make it good, will surpass the performance of any School divine that ever was, from the days of Anselmus to the days wherein we live.

But of the nature of your perfourmances we have had reasonable experience. You may remember what he said while he was shearing his hogs, Here is a great deal of cry and a little wool. In the next place you dictate your parallells wherein it seems you take great pleasure. That God's wisdom is infinite we nothing doubt; but to make it consist in knowing what he is able to do, we take to be a very hungry description of it. For is either man or Angel anything the wiser for knowing what he is able to do? God's immensity consists in filling all places which are but finite, neyth • r is it possible they should be infinite, yet beyond things that are, this immensity is not extended. And you have already denied precisely that God is in vacuo. But as for God's eternity that doth not only coexist with all time, but had existen • e before it actually and that without all beginning. In a word God's immensity is not in respect of any quantitas molis, quantity of extension, but only in respect of quantitas virtutis. And what is this different from his infinite power. And indeed God is not in place after the manner of being contained in anything, but only after the way of containing and supporting all things. And look by what quantity he made all things, by the same quantity he supports all things, and that is the quantity of his power.

A very weak amplification it is in my judgment of God's incircumscriptible presence, (which yet is nothing else but his immensity) to say it is not circumscribed by the coexistence of his creatures. For coexistence is of no apt nature to circumscribe. For the thing circumscribed coexists with that which circumscribes it, as well as that which circumscribes it, coexists with that which is circumscribed by it.

As for your Mathem • ticall conceyts of center and circumscrence, I have already discovered in their places the vanity of them. To say that eternity is more then commensurable to time, is to grant that it is commensurable thereunto, which is very absurd. And how is it possible, that should be commensurable to a thing mensurable, which indeed is immensurable as being without beginning and without end. You say it is in all durations; not as contained in them (I hope) if as containing them, this also is untrue. For like as it is not God's eternity whereby he made the World but by his power, so it is not by his eternity that he maintayneth the duration of it but by his power. What noon tide is we know and acknowledge to be something, but as for fluent instants we know none. For fluent is as much as succedent▪ and succession is not but in respect of parts, and an instant hath no parts. Yet if we give way to such imaginations, like as sluxus puncti in Longitudinem is not contained in the line, but is the line; so sluxus instantis is not contained in a set time, but is the very set time it self. Nor is it a part of it as noon-tide is of the day; And a most absurd thing it is to make the duration of the creature in respect of God's eternity, to resen • ble the proportion that is between the part of time and the whole time, you may say as well the World is contained in God's immensity, like as half the yard is contained in the whole yard. Your last position is more sober in all the parts of it then the rest; the proportion of the least beam of light, to the light of the World may be expressed; the proportion of things that are, to the things that God is able to produce cannot, the first is finite, this is infinite. Yet by your leave, there is no greater disproportion between God's wisdom manifested and manifestable, then between his power manifested and manifestable. In a word, God hath so far manifested his power and wisdom, that we plainly discern both of them to be infinite; and do you think God can so manifest either of them, or both of them, that we may discern them to be more then infinite? And if his wisdom manifestable doth but so far exceed his wisdom manifested, as his power man • festable doth exceed that which is already manifested, &c. what meant you to say that Least of all may his infinite wisdom be comprehended within those effects produced. For if there be but a pa • ity of proportion, then no disproportion. You proceed to amplify the wisdom of God above all that can be gathered by this Universe, after your manner.

But I pray consider, was it possible for God to take a more wise and convenient course for the salvation of the world then he hath done? I am sure Austin flatly denies it, Aug. de Trinit. lib. 13. cap. 10. Ostendamus non alium modum possibilem Deo desuisse cujus potestati cuncta aequaliter subjacent, sed sanandae nostrae miseriae convenientiorem modum alium non suisse, nec esse oportuisse. I am apt enough to conceive, that God could have made and governed the world after another manner then he hath done, and that after as wise a manner as he hath done, but I dare not say that he could do it after a wiser manner then he hath done. Many other particulars might be instanced in, that might stagger the course of your amplifications, which yet sometimes are wondrous vulgar, as when you say, God knows what might have been and what may be, as perfectly as he knows the things that are. Which is as much as to say, God knoweth as well what he can do, as what he doth. Now is this strange in a silly man to know what he doth, or what he can do? And it were a vain exception to say that God knows as well things done by others as by himself; seeing not only their power of doing is from God, but the very doing it self is by you acknowledged to be by the concourse of God. As for the manner of God's concourse, if you conceit it to be upon supposition of God's foresight of man's endeavor first, you do not well to propose your errors or any other Jesuitical paradoxes for principles and grounds to build upon.

7. The incomprehensible wisdom of God doth appear more you say, in the harmony or mixture of necessity and contingency. And this you say is most conspicuous in moderating the free thoughts of men or Angels, and ordering them to the certain accomplishment of his glory. In the fou • th Section you told us that the parts of wisdom were two; the one in intending the right end, the other in ordering right means. So then the prescription of right means is a part of wisdom, but why it should affect the mixture of necessity with contingency in accomplishing the end intended I see no reason. Nay rather I find that wisdom always affecteth the most certain means that can be had for the compassing of the end intended. As for example, all manual Arts do express their wisdom by means used by them which are altogether of necessary operation. In the art of physic also the means used by physicians as all sorts of medicines do all work by necessity of nature. In the Art of Oratory, the end is wholly conjectural, and the means they use being arguments of persuasion, there no necessity at all hath place. No where do I find that any wisdom affecteth the mixture of necessity with contingency, as you speak. Come we to the consideration of the wisdom of God. How is God's wisdom seen in the contexture of a man's body, and every part thereof? Who knoweth the breeding of young bones? saith Solomon. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, saith David. Galen in consideration of the body of man anatomized, was driven to acknowledge the Divine providence. Now what mixture of necessity with contingency did God affect in this? The fashioning of the body in the womb being merely an operation of nature, not of any free agent. Yet even this necessary operation of nature is contingent I confess unto God; for as much as he could either suspend the course of nature, or after it, or set an end unto it. So on the contrary the most free actions of men do of necessity come to pass in their kind and after their manner, as well as works of nature in their kind and after their manner. For to abstain from the breaking of Christ's bones was a free action of the Soldiers; so was Josiah's action in burning the Priests bones upon the Altar; so was Cyrus his action in restoring the Jews unto their country; so was the crucifying of Christ Jesus, and other foul actions committed against him by Jews and Gentiles, yet were all these decreed and determined by God, as the Scriptures plainly testify; and therefore as yourself acknowledge, of necessity they come to pass. Yet how God doth moderate the thoughts of men and Angels, you are not over hasty to communicate unto us. Solomon speaks plainly when he saith, The hearts of the Kings are in the hands of God, and he turneth them, &c. and both the preparations of the heart, and answer of the tongue are from the Lord: and that many seek the face of the Ruler, but every man's judgment cometh of the Lord. But in what sense you say God moderates men's thoughts, and ordains them for the accomplishment of his glory, you do not love to discover: and I doubt all this will desinere in piscem in the end, and come to nothing. But although the means which man may use may be successively infinite, yet the ends (you say) which God doth forecast in their creation shall by any course which they take be inevitablely brought to pass; what these ends are which God did forecast in their creation, you come very soberly to express, or rather leave to the Reader to collect out of these words, the award of every thought is determined by God's eternal decree, that is to bring you to plain terms either Salvation or Damnation. These then are the ways whereby they shall accomplish God's glory in the end, what course soever they take; And herein consists the infinite wisdom of God.

Now let us examine the sobriety of all this. First you told us of courses infinite, by which notwithstanding all theyre varieties and inconstancies, God's ends should be accomplished. Now all these courses in reference unto the issue of damnation or salvation whereby God's glory shall be • llostrated, (whereof you speak as of the end that shall be accomplished.) I say all these courses in reference hereunto are but two: good, and bad answerablely to Hercules his bivium, and Pythagoras his Y; according to that of Isaiah. Say ye surely it shall be well with the just, for they shall eat the fruit of theyre works; woe be to the wicked, it shall be evil with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him. Esa. 3. 10. 11.

Secondly, if this be all the fruit of God's wisdom, wherein doth this exceed the wisdom of every Magistrate; who ordeynes rewards for the good and punishment, for the wicked? Agayne what need is there of moderatinge men's thoughts unto this end; whereas though he never moderates any man's thoughts, yet his wisdom shall appear never a white the less in setting forth his glory in punishing the one and rewarding the other.

Consider yet farther what I pray you, was the end of Judas, which God did forecast in his creation? No doubt the setting forth of his own glory, but I desire to know whether he did intend to set it forth in Judas his salvation, or damnation. So likewise I desire to know what end God did forecast of Paul the Apostle in his creation? his glory I doubt not, but whether in his salvation or damnation. It seems by the genius of your Tenet, that God did neither intend the salvation of the one, nor the damnation of the other in their creation; but indifferently intended each of them should be saved or damned accordingly as they departed this life, either in impenitency or in repentance. Now if God did not intend the salvation of Paul, nor the condemnation of Judas at the time of their creation. I pray when did he begin to intend it? Say what you will, it followeth that these intentions of God were not eternal, and consequently neither the decrees of God are eternal; yet commonly you profess of God's decrees that they are eternal and everlasting. Yet here I confess you may play fast and loose, and say they are eternal so far forth as they are without end, but they are not eternal so far forth as to be without beginning. But what mean you so directly to contradict the word of God, as you do if this be your opinion? For the Apostle professeth that man's election was made before the foundation of the world: yea and touching the wicked, King Solomon professeth, that God made him against the day of evil.

As for the similitude, you use to represent unto us the wisdom of God by comparing of him unto a bird catcher, though you father it upon Augustine, yet in this case it is nothing worth. For though it be more then human after many birds formerly caught to catch them all again; yet for God it is nothing, who is everywhere, and in whom everything hath that being, that life, that motion which they enjoy. The hairs of our head we know are numbered; and therefore nothing strange that our thoughts should be, considering that our thoughts shall come into judgment, but our hairs shall not. And if we shall give an account of every idle word, as our Savior hath professed unto us, why not as well of every idle thought? He shall make the counsels of the heart manifest, 1 Cor. 4. 5. but that the award of every thought is defined by God, I cannot tell how to believe: my reason is, because evil thoughts are not fit to be rewarded; and as for the evil thoughts of God's children, shall not they be pardoned as well as their evil words and outward actions are, to wit, upon their repentance? For if we acknowledge our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, 1 John. 1. 9. And Peter signified as much to Simon Magus conceiving evil thoughts also, when he said unto him, Repent of this thy wickedness, and pray unto God, that if it be possible the thought of thine heart might be forgiven thee, Act. 8. 22.

8. Free it was for you to have done something the last year, which you did not, and every minute thereof, in case every minute thereof you were waking. For that a man hath free will in his sleep I never heard. But how thereby the whole frame of your cogitations or actions might have been altered, is a mystery unto me. Yet I doubt not but the whole frame of your cogitations and actions this year might have been altered. For actions free and contingent could not justly be accounted free and contingent, were they not accompanied with a possibility of being otherwise. And God you acknowledge to be the cause of this alteration, and of every thought and deed thus altered. So then if there had been another course of your thoughts and actions, God had been the cause of it, and of every thought and deed. What think you of that course which hath been of your thoughts and actions; is God the true and princ • pall cause of this also, and of every thought and deed of yours this year? I see no reason to the conttary, but it stands you upon to justify this also, as well as the former; and as of yourself, so as concerning the actions of all o • her both men and Angels: and if for one year, why not for every year from the beginning unto this day? And so I see no color of reason why you should not as freely acknowledge that all things are decreed by God; for if God hath decreed all the thoughts and actions of men, it will be no hard matter to grant that God hath decreed all things that in their times and seasons do successively come to pass. And if God be the true and principal cause of them, did he not decree that he would be the true and principal cause of them? that is, that he would in due time indeed and principally produce them, not withstanding all the evil that doth accompany them? For I do not think that you take upon you so much perfection as to avouch that amongst all your thoughts and actions for a year together, there was no evil thought, no evil action among them. For if you stand upon it that God cannot be the true and principal cause of any evil thought or action, we must not yield unto you that God was the true and principal cause of all the thoughts and actions that were conceived in you, or derived from you that year or years wherein you were hatching this book of yours, which I take to be a fardell of erroneous conceits both in Philosophy and Divinity.

Neither if you did maintain that God is the true and principal cause of every free action, would we object that then you make God's will to depend on ours; for there is no color for any such objection; there is color for the contrary, as namely, if he be the principal cause, then his will doth not depend on mine, but rather mine on his: and consequently our liberty seems to be infringed by making God the principal cause of all our actions. Yet you take no notice of this objection, (much less take pains to answer it) but go on desperately (in show and that against your own tenet) to maintain, that our will is necessarily subject unto his. But whether you mean in producing thoughts & actions, (which alone is to the purpose) or in some other sense and respect you betray not.

Yet by the way what mean you to say that our will is contingently free; seeing this is as much as to say, it is possible that the will of man should not be free. But you give a reason and it is worthy our consideration if perhaps thereby, we may perceyve to what issue of tolerable sense your present discourse may be brought. And the reason is this: For unto every cogitation possible to man or Angel he hath everlastingly decreed a proportionate end: to every antecedent possible, a correspondent consequent, which needs no other cause or means to produce it but only the reducing of possibility (granted by his decree) into act. For what way soever (of many equally possible) man's will doth incline, God's decree is a like necessary cause of all the good or evil that befalls him for it. I looked for an elucidation of a former assertion or two of yours, namely, that God is the true and principal cause of every action, and deed that hath passed from you this year, like as he had been the cause (as you say) of every thought and action that might have passed from you, if the frame of your thoughts and actions had been altered.

The other assertion was that our will is necessarily subject unto God's will, which also is delivered in reference to the former assertion. I say I looked for an elucidation of these by this following sentence wherein you pretend to give a reason of the former. But this performs nothing less. If you had done something the last year which you did not as you might, then the whole frame of your thoughts and actions this year had been altered, and God had been the cause of this alteration and of every thought and action therein. And the reason is this, For unto every cogitation possible God hath decreed, a determinate end. But I pray you consider, are the thoughts and actions of men this year the proportioned end of something that you did the last year? Or are they correspondent consequents to our antecedent actions the last year? Many man the last year was an opposite unto goodness, he is reformed this year and become a proselyte. Is grace the proportionate end of the state of sin? The last year many a man was a formal professor; this year it may be he is turned Papist, or Turk, is this a correspondent consequent to that antecedent? Yet many continue formal professors still, wi • hout any such alteration; some have changed their formality into reality. It may be some man the last year hath satisfied another's filthy lust, and this year is advanced by it.

Call you this a correspondent consequent destined by God? Some have prospered by impoysoning of others and proceeded in their sinful courses so much the more, without control. In a word by the last Clause it appears that by proportionate end, & correspondent consequents, you mean only the good and evil, that do befall men according to their former works, according to that God will reward every man according to his works. But by your leave this hath no proportion to prove that God is the Author of every thought and action of man this year, which you made to be consequent to something done the last year; and God to be the true and principal cause of everyone of those thoughts, and actions. For what? Are men's thoughts and actions this year, the rewards and punishments of the same men's actions the other year? What a ridiculous conceit in this? Well; still we hold you engaged to maintain, that, which you have plainly avouched, namely that God is the true and principal cause of every action, and thought of man for a year together, yea and of every thought and action of yours for the year past; which you have delivered without any explication. I have manifested the incongruity of your whole discourse, in general. In particular consider further: you say that man's will is necessarily subject unto God; this we understood in respect of operation in proportion to what you delivered in the sentence before going; but you understand it in respect of rewards or punishments succeeding, proportionably unto former actions whether good, or bad. But by your leave it is not man's will, but his person rather that herein is necessarily subject unto God. For no wise man useth to say that man's will is rewarded or punished, but his person rather. Agayne, suppose God decreeth not the actions of men, but the rewards of them, yet you have not explicated how in this case God's will depends not upon the will of man, the true explication whereof that I know is only this; that the execution of his will may depend upon man's will to wit in rewarding, or punishing, but not the will of God himself: Yet if good or evil actions of men be foreseen by God before he hath decreed either to reward or punish; neither have you offered to clear God's will in this case from dependence upon the will of man, neither are you able to perform it. Agayne it is false to say that God hath decreed a proportionate end to every cogitation possible. For many cogitations are possible which shall never be; And it is absurd to say God hath decreed an end to that which shall never be. Agayne by this proportionate end and correspondent consequent, you understand rewards, or punishments; But it is false to say that God hath ordained to every cogitation a reward or punishment. For to the evil thoughts and words, and deeds of God's children he hath ordained neither reward nor punishment to befall them, but his purpose is to pardon them.

Agayne punishments for the sins of men are many times inflicted by the sins of men; So Sennacherib that blasphemer of the God of Israel, was slain by the sword of his own children; David's adultery was punished by the fil • hy actions of his own Son Absalom deflowering his fathers Concubines.

If these were proportionate ends to former sins, and correspondent consequents, and everlastingly decreed by God, what hindereth but that in your opinion, actions notoriously sinful may be said to be decreed by God? You say the producing of these consequents and proportionate ends, needsno other cause or means but only the reducing of possibility (granted by his decree) into act: Which is plain gibrish; you instance in nothing for illustration sake, not as if your discourse were so plain that it needed it not, but rather it is so unsound, that you might well fear it: And darkness is fittest for them that hate the light: I will give instance for you; Absalom's deflowering his fathers Concubines was a disproportionate end, and correspondent consequent to David's defiling his neighbors wife; for God punished David hereby; and Arminius acknowledgeth that this fact of Absalom Inserviit castigand • Davidi: Now this fact of Absalom by your doctrine in this place, needed no other cause or means to produce it, but only the reducing of possibility (granted by God's decree) into act. Now what possibility do you mean? the possibility of David's defiling Bathsheba? It is manifestly untrue: first in general, that to produce a reward, and punishment, no cause is required but the producing of the fact, which is to be rewarded or punished, Consequents natural follow I confess upon antecedents natural, but it is not so with consequents moral, such as are rewards and punishments. And in particular the case is clear, that something else was required to Absalom's defiling David's Concubines, then David's defil • ng of Bathsheba. For both the counsel of Achitophel, and Absalom's corruption in yielding thereto, and the p • nishing hand of God herein, were found in this; and none of all these was found in David's sin.

Or do you mean this of the possibility of Absalom's sinning as he did? so that to the punishing of David no other thing was required but Absalom's reducing his power of defiling his father Concubines into act. Now this I confess is a truth, but such a truth as might make any wise man ashamed to accommodate himself to the grave profession of it, though he did not affect any singularity of conceit therein▪ For tis as much as to say, that to defile David's Concubines no other thing was required then to defile them; for this is to reduce possibility granted (as you say) by God's decree into act, and that is enough. But by your leave, it is not enough to salve your credit, to say that a possibility hereof was granted by God's decree. For you have plainly professed that God hath decreed not a possibility of a proportionate end, or correspondent consequent to every cogitation, but a proportionate end, and correspondent consequent. And therefore if the defiling of David's concubines by Absalom, was a proportionate end, or correspondent consequent to David's former cogitations and actions, then by your doctrine this deiling of David's concubines by Absalom his son, was everlastingly decreed by God, and not the possibility of it. And how absurd a thing it is to say, that God decreed the possibility of anything, whereas all contingent things are possible in their own nature without the decree of God, as the whole world was possible, and that not by the decree of God? But it seems you have reference to the possibility, not of the punishment, but of the time, for which correspondent punishment is decreed, as appears by that which follows: as when you say, Did we that which we do not, but might do, many things would immediately follow, which now do not: which though it be granted you, yet herehence it would not follow, that No other cause should be required to the producing of them, then our producing of the antecedent. But by this you justify that upon David's adultery, Absalom his defiling David's concubines; and upon Sennacherib's blasphemy against the God of Israel; Ad • amelech and Sharezar his sons slaying him with the sword in the Temple of Nisroch his god, did inevitably follow. For these things did befall them, and those things which do befall you and us do come to pass, as you profess in the next place, though not as absolutely decreed by God, and in the first place, yet because he decreed them as the inevitable consequents of some things which he knew he would do. By all which it cannot be avoided but that Absalom defiling his fathes concubines in special, and all the sins of man whereby God doth punish former sins in general, are by this your opinion decreed by God as inevitable consequents of some things which God kn • w would be done.

Now let us examine this a little further. You speak indifferently of good and evil that doth befall men; And these indifferently you prosesse to be ordained by God upon the foresight of something in man; So then like as the damnation of any man is ordained by God not absolutely, and in the first place but upon the foresight of some evil thing in the person damned; so the salvation of any man is not decreed absolutely by God, and in the first place, but upon the fore sight of some good in the person, saved or to be saved, which good must be either faith or good works or both; or which is worst of all something which is less evil (as suppose natural humility) in the state of nature. Yet you will not seem to be an abetter of their opinion, that maintain election to be upon the foresight of faith or works.

Yet let me have one bout with you more in the point of reprobation also. God foreseeing some evil in man (say you) doth purpose to condemn him: Now because like as no evil can exist without God's permission; so God could not fo • see evil but upon presupposall of his purpose to permit it, it followeth that the decree to permit sin, is before the decree of God to damn for sin, therefore permission of sin is in God's intention before damnation, and consequently it must be after it, in execution, as much as to say; God doth first damn men for sin, and afterwards permit them to sin. Hereupon you will refl • ct upon us with an interrogatorie saying; Will you maintain that God did first decree to damn men for sin, and secondly to permit them to sin? I answer; If I did maintain this, I should look to be confuted by reason, and not to be cried down without reason, or contrary to all reason. Nay I had rather maintain an harsh opinion according unto reason, then a plausible opinion in contradiction unto manifest reason.

Secondly, I answer by negation; For I do not maintain either of these to be subordinate unto other in God's intention, but rather coordinate; because neither of these things decreed is the end of the other, but both jointly make up an integral means tending to the manifestation of God's glory in the way of justice, according to that of Aquinas, who professeth that reprobation includeth the will of God of permitting sin, and of inferring damnation for sin. Now let us proceed to that which follows. It is absurd to say we have a possibility to do what we do not; but rather you should say we have an ability to do what we do not. For possibility is of a passive signification, not active: And ability to obey God, I confess we had in Adam, and in Adam we have lost it. That which you call the absolute necessity of God's decres, is not in respect of God's act in 〈◊〉 . For his decrees are most free, but in respect of the event ensuing upon supposition of God's decree. So then things freely decreed upon this supposition must necessarily come to pass. Both that which should and that which doth befall us floweth alike (you say) from the absolute necessity of God's decree. Now because your present discourse is not of God's power, but of his wisdom that you might not seem beside the text, you tell us in the close, that herein is seen God's incomprehensible wisdom, that nothing falls out without the circumference of it; whereas that all things fall out as God hath decreed, it is rather the fruit of his power then his wisdom. And if you refer it to God's knowledge, yet it is no parte of God, wisdom. For what wisdom is it to know what he hath decreed, or what he meaneth to bring to pass, whereas any man though simple may know what himself meaneth to do? But to know what is fit to be done for the setting forth of his own glory, and to direct all things most conventently hereunto, herein consists the wisdom of God. You content not yourself with ascribing, a Circumference unto God's wisdom, within which all things fall out, but you call it actual, also as if there were two sortes of circumferences, the one potential, the other actual.

9. It seems you do not please yourself so well in this Argument of God's infinite wisdom, as in the former; neither is it your happiness to light upon such quaint strains of invention, and expression here, as in the point of God's immensity, and eternity: It may be the matter will not afford it; For if it did, why should not you that seek after it, be acquainted With it as soon as another? Therefore, I guess, it is that you break forth into such a profession: the Christian writers are more able and apt both to conceive right, and to speak more consequently to what they rightly conceive concerning other branches of divine absolute infiniteness, then concerning his infinite knowledge. And because you are bold by a confident supposition to put this out of question, (whereas yet I know no reason, save that you find no place in this argument for such Chimaericall fictions as you vented in other points, especially in the point of God's immensity and eternity) you take upon you to give certain reasons hereof. Now because to my understanding God's immensity and • ternity are far more obscure to treat of then God's wisdom, I am very willing to weigh well the weight of these your reasons. They are in number two. The first is this: All creatures are participant of God's other attributes besides his wisdom and knowledge; but of his knowledge and wisdom men and Angels are of all his creatures the only participants: and those rules are always the most clear and certain, and most easily gathered, which are gathered from an uniform idenditie of particulars in variety of subjects: Those universal rules are hardly gathered, or are less certain, which can be experienced only in someone or sewer subjects. In this argument there is little or nothing sound. For (as touching the main) though creatures inferior unto man do not work by wisdom and knowledge of their own, yet the wisdom of God appears no less in their works then in the works of man, even to the admiration of man himself.

What art, what industry is found in the little Be in the gathering of his wax, in the fashioning of his combes, in the gathering of honey of divers sorts, everyone following and plying his proper and peculiar flower, and afterwards tempering it, the liquid stuff brought in their bottles, with the grosser stuff brought upon their thighs, and bringing it to that perfection which we see and use both for dainty food, and wholesome physic: then their government under one King as the Ancients conceived, but indeed under one Queen rather, as later writers even of these days have elegantly observed, and the exquisite manner of a common wealth among them. Is not the wisdom of God observable in this? And as it was said of such as suddenly became Prophets, But who is their father? so may we ask concerning these, Who is their father, or who their Schoolmaster that instructed them, and bred them up in this occupation? I say the wisdom of God doth appear more in these then in the actions of men. For we know by what means men usually attain to wisdom, as namely, by instruction and by observation, but no such thing to be found in Bees; therefore this wonderful work being a work of nature, must necessarily be ascribed to the God of nature. But suppose the wisdom of God were to be observed nowhere but in the actions of men, is not the world of men sufficient to afford particulars sufficient for induction thereupon to conclude general rules?

The wisdom of Arts and liberal professions are grown nowadays to great perfection, and all these what are they but the searching out, and by searching the discovery of the wisdom of God, even in those creatures which are not participants of the wisdom and knowledge of God?

The science of Astronomy, how hath it displayed unto the world the wisdom of God in the various motions of the heavens? and still they are searching, as having not yet attained to the full discovery thereof. So likewise the natural Philosopher in search • ng out the nature of the whole world; what is this but an inquiry after the wisdom of God in the whole and parts of this Universe? and albeit still there is enough to be discovered, yet that which is discovered, is it not sufficient to draw us to adore the wisdom of God, and that so much the more, because that though God hath set the world in man's heart, yet can he not find out the works that he hath wrought from the beginning to the end?

The Physician, what d • vine wisdom doth he find in the contexture of the body of man? Was not Galen hereupon driven to acknowledge a divine providence? Then in searching after the nature of Herbs and other simples, and considering the power and virtuous operation of them, both of each apart, and of severals together in composition fitting for the cure of every malady and disease of the body of man: what report can they make unto us of the wisdom of God even in those things which are not participants of the wisdom and knowledge of God? But come we to Arts manual, of man's invention, and wherein indeed we are more apt to derogate from God, then to give him the glory of them; yet both from the wisdom of man we may the better ascend to the contemplation of the wisdom of God, and also the wisdom of man is from God, who as we are taught instructeth all, as well the mean husbandman, Isaiah 28. 26. as the most curious artificer, Exod. 31. In the Turkish History I read of a present sent to the Grand Signiour Achmat that Turkish Emperor; all the particulars (save three Birds of Paradise of rare and precious plumes, wonderful goodly to behold, and valued at 800. pound sterling,) were handicrafts work, as namely, two vessels of Cristall, wonderful rich and beautiful: four other vessels made of fishes bones, whereas the art seemed miraculous in the graving: forty pieces of cloth of gold of diverse colors; five pieces of silk; five of Damaske; five of silk watered and five plain; A staff of an Elephants tooth graven with admirable industrye; A Parret set in a cage of Cristall so artificially done as no man could discern the entry; And many fair and rich table clothes of Holland cloth most parte poudred with flowers to the life, and wrought in their lively colors. The which (it is said) the Sultan did accept with admiration. The Author adds in the close: All these things show sufficiently that the Estates from the beginning, or soon after have raised handy works as well as trafique and navigation to the highest point of perfection. This calls to my remembrance the rich presents, which the same Estates presented the Lady Elisabeth in her entertainment at the Hage, in her way out of England, unto the Palatinate being most of curious handicraft. First a Carcanet enriched with 36. Diamonds all of facet stones. 2. Two great hanging pearls weighing 35. Carals, and one grayne. 3. A chain of pearls of 52. pieces, orientall water. 4. A gold needle enriched with a great Diamand, in form of a table, having 4. Diamants round about, whereof the three out hanging were facet stones. All this laid in a little trunk of cloth of gold, betwixt a perfumed cushion. 5. A great looking glass enclosed in a silver quilted brim enriched with fair inlaid works. 6. Ten pieces of Tapestry of Francis Spierick, whereof two pieces were to be sent after unto her highness. 7. Six pieces moreover of Tapistry for a Cabinet of the same Master, whereof two were to be sent after to her highness. 8. Diverse sorts of linen Damas works pacted up in cases, rated numero. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. according to the works laid in every case. 9. Works of Spanish wax made according to the fashion of the East-Indies, whereof were diverse particulars. 1. A cover of a bed standing on 4. pillars not plain but round. 2. A Cupboorde. 3. A Table. 4. Two great trunkes, 5. A middle trunk. 6. Five little trunkes. 7. Two casket standishes. 8. Four and twenty middle dishes. 9. Nine and twenty little dishes. 10. Twelve fruit dishes. 11. Six Saucers. But come we from the wisdom of Manual arts, to wisdom moral and political. David was wise as an Angel of God. 2. Sam. 14. 17. Yet he feared the wisdom of Ahithophel, whose counsel was accounted as an Oracle of God in those days. 2. Sam. 16. 23. And David prayed unto God to turn his counsel into foolishness, and the Lord heard him, and shown his wonderful wisdom in making that counsel of Ahithophel, (which had soon dispatched David if it had binne followed) seem foolishness in the judgment of Absalom, by the means of Hushai sent only to cross Achitophel. Yet Solomon was wiser then they both, and it was God that gave him a large heart, like unto the sand of the Sea shore; So that his wisdom excelled all the wisdom of the children of the East, and all the wisdom of Egypt. Wise heads there were, many it seems in those days both in Egypt, and in the East, yet Solomon was wiser then they all; And the Queen of the South came from the uttermost part of the earth to hear the wisdom of King Solomon. Since there have binne men famous in this kind, that have boasted.

Tiberius his governments had it binne matched with as much honesty as wisdom it had binne admirable. It was wont to be said that the French got more upon us by parle then by the sword: Yet Henry the IV, of France was wont to say, he feared but two men in the World, and that was for their wits; the one was (as he called him) the fox of the mountains; the other was the lack an apes of the Isles. Yet some say the Spaniards herein outreach the French, and the Italian the Spaniards. And that of all the Italians the Florentines have been most cunning; and of all the Florentines the house de Medices. And indeed Laurentius de Medices was accounted the chiefest ballancer of States in his time, if News from Parnassus speak true. But the world of men (as you complain) are not sufficient to give presidents of wisdom fit to raise us to the contemplation of the infinite wisdom of God. Yet if you were acquainted with all the wisdom of the world, you might find matter enough of admiration thereat, and of adoration of the wisdom of God, that goeth infinitely beyond it.

But whereas you say that all creatures are participants of God's other attributes, in as much as they have some being, some power, some duration, some quantity; and therefore the knowledge of them confers something to the knowledge of those attributes of God. Neither the antecedent is true, nor the consequent sound. For what doth the quantity of a gnat confer to the knowledge of God's immensity? or what doth the duration of creatures that live but a day or a year confer to the knowledge of God's eternity? or the b • ting of a flea, to the discerning of the power of God? Again, the antecedent is st •• ke false. No creature that hath quantity is partaker of God's immensity. For the quantity of a creature is quantitas •• lis▪ quantity of extension; but God's quantity is quantitas virtutis, quantity of spiritual and immaterial perfection, and it is impossible that one should be a part of the other: nay God's immensity hath no parts, so neither hath his eternity, nor his almighty power, and therefore no creature can partake of any of these. It is true, God produceth the being, and maintaineth the duration of all things, but it is not by his essence he produceth their being, nor by his eternity he maintaineth their duration, but all is done by the power and counsel of his will.

We come to your second reason; Why we cannot conceive and speak so right concerning God's knowledge, as concerning other attributes, and that is, say you, because we want fit terms to express it. But how do you prove that we have more fit terms to express God's other attributes then this? you do not once go about to prove this; the instance you give is in the prescience of God, concerning which Gregory makes a question how it can be attributed unto God; seeing nothing but future things are said to be foreknown, and unto God nothing is future, but all things present. And for the same reason Augustine (you say) would have God's knowledge of things to come to be termed rather science then prescience, seeing all things are present unto God. Now if this change of terms will serve the turn to avoid incongruity concerning the right apprehension of God's knowledge, what cause is there to complain of the unfitness of terms, when as with so little ado the unfitness we speak of, may be corrected? It is like enough upon such conceits as these, some have entertained an opinion that all things are actually existent in eternity, not only things present, but things past also still are, and things future already are existent in eternity: and you yourself also have already manifested your approbation of this Tenet in the Chapter of eternity: The more I wonder to read you except against this doctrine of Gregory's and Augustine's, as neither clear, nor accurate enough: And here first you tell us that we may not say, nor did Saint Augustine, or Saint Gregory think that God doth not, or cannot know a distinction between times past, present, or to come. Neither indeed do I see any color why any man should entertain a conceit of any such meaning of Augustine or Gregory; neither do they deny that God knows all these things and consequently the differences of them, one from another; Only Gregory makes a doubt how the knowledge of future things in God should be called prescience. And Augustine (as you say) had rather call it Science. But then you demand how it is said by Gregory that nothing to him is future, nothing past. Your self have heretofore laid down that which may answer this; as when you said all things are coexistent in eternity, but not in time: And therefore God may know things to be so differenced in respect of such a course of eternity. In a word, that God knows the things that are past, present and to come, so called in respect of man who is measured with time, but not so called in respect of God who is measured with eternity. But though they are altogether present unto God, yet it follows not herhence that they are all one (as you infer) much less that they are so in respect of God's eternal knowledge, as if God's knowledge did make them one, which in themselves and in their own natures are not. As God himself, so his knowledge is before all worlds, as worlds do exist in time. But you may remember what you have formerly maintained, that both all worlds which have an existence successively in time, and time it self is actually existent in eternity, and so not only present in respect of God's knowledge of them which ever was, but also in respect of their own existence (as you have accounted it) in eternity, which Aquinas makes the ground of God's knowledge of them. Then you dispute, and prove that foreknowledge is to be attributed unto God; because he forknowes them before they are, which is as much as to say, while they are yet to come. To this I answer out of your own doctrine thus; Allbeit God's knowledge be before them, yet if the same also be to come, and that as much after them as before them, what reason, why it should be called foreknowledge, rather then together knowledge, or after knowledge.

But what knowledge soever we attribute to God, it can no more be said to be past, than to come according to your doctrine pag. 77. your words are these. Whatsoever can be more properly said or conceived to be past than to be yet to come, or to be in every moment of time designable, can have no property of eternity. And in very truth God's knowledge is not altered, but one and the same knowledge it is which God hath of things without him, before they were, when they are, and after they were. In the things themselves an alteration is found, but not in God's knowledge of them: And therefore the knowing of all things that are, were, and are to come is commonly called Scientia visions, in distinction from Scientia simplicis Intelligentiae, whereby God knows all necessary truths, and all things possible.

Your conclusion is, that God foreknowes, and Man foreknowes but with a difference, such as, you say, is oftentimes not well expressed by Teachers, nor duly considered by Readers; the identity of the word whereby we express both God's foreknowledge, and man's foreknowledge making us apt to confound the different meaning of them. Which confusion of things arising from communion of the same term, you say is a fertile nursery of many errors in this Argument. And is it not, I pray, as well in other Arguments as in this? But I bear with you, for if you had professed so much, you had utterly broken the neck of your second Argument. Yet we are like to be beholding to you in good time. For the displanting of these errors. For you promise to endeavor this, and therein to imitate Heralds, who give the same Coat to diverse parties, but always which a difference.

Thùs we have gained a flourish of allusion unto the pracctise of Heralds, and with this Kickeshewes we must be merry till more substantial provision cometh. As for my opinion, I acknowledge no ex • stence of things in eternity, nor coexistence with eternity until the time of their actual production cometh. And so accordingly their coexistence with eternity first was to come, then is, afterwards is past, and ceaseth to be; and so accordingly foreknowledge, coknowledge, and after-knowledge of the same things may be attributed to God, all which are external denominatives attributed unto the knowledge of God, from the various condition of things known by him, who looks not out of himself for the knowing of anything. For how could he, before anything was? yet then he knew all things that were to come, as well as now he doth, yet without any change: For with him is no variableness, nor shadow of change.

10. Here you enter upon the explication of the difference between man's knowledge and God's. Our knowledge (say you) of things to come is many ways imperfect (and foreknowledge only) because the duration neither of our knowledge, nor of ourselves as yet can reach unto that point of time wherein things so known get first existence. No soundness of truth in all this.

For first our foreknowledge of things to come, is not foreknowledge only, save so long as the things themselves are to come; but when they come, we know them never a whit the less, and after they are gone and past. As the Eclipse of the Sun and Moon is known by us before it comes, when it comes, and after it is past. It is true, before they come, the knowledge of things is only foreknowledge, and not in man only, but God also. When they do coexist with God, then God's knowledge is no longer foreknowledge, but till they do coexist with God, his knowledge of them is foreknowledge of them, as well as ours. For it is before them, and only before them; for it is neither with them, nor after them. Not with them, for then they should coexist with God, and that from all eternity, which is most untrue. For if they did coexist with God, then they did exist, and that from all eternity, which is most untrue. Much less is it after them. For if so, then their coexistence with God were past, but we suppose it to be to come. And impossible it is that the same things should at once be both past, and also to come. And as for the duration of our knowledge, whereas you say it doth not reach to the things that are to come; I say neither doth the duration of God's knowledge reach thither. For if the duration of God's knowledge did reach unto things to come, then God's knowledge should in this present coexist with things to come, which is untrue. For if God's knowledge did coexist with things to come, at this present, then things to come at this present should co • exist with the knowledge of God, and consequently they should exist, that is, they should be present, and not to come. It is no way required to knowledge to coexist with things known. In like sort neither doth God's duration at this present reach unto things to come anymore thē ours. For if God did at this present coexist with things to come, then at this present things to come should coexist with God; for coexistence includes existence on both sides. But things to come do not at this present coexist with God, for if they did coexist, then they should exist, and consequently they should be said to be present, and not to come. And in a word, to maintain that God coexists with all things to come, is to maintain by just consequence, that the world did exist from all eternity. It is true, God shall coexist with things to come, because his years cannot fail, they endure forever: but our years and days are as swift as a post, in comparison. But this makes no difference in the point of foreknowledge. But with such like wild conceits of yours as touching God's eternity, we are now reasonably well acquainted, they do so much the less move us, or trouble us. We have continuance of being for a time, God hath continuance of being forever. God hath the continuance of his being from none, we have the continuance of our being from God. But as God by continuing doth not get continuance of being, so neither do we. Only we have it so, as that God coulds • t an end to it every day and hour; but it is impossible any end should be set to the continuance of God's being, because he is of necessary being. But this is it that deceiveth you; we get many things by continuance, as growth and strength of body, increase of knowledge, and grace, and this maketh you affirm that we get continuance. Whereas indeed we get not continuance, but we get something else by continuing. Yet we may continue the same that we were; sure I am we shall so continue in the world to come.

Sometimes again we lose by continuance both health and strength, and memory, and so grow towards our graves; and this is Alteration, so that we are still in motion. But God getts nothing by continuance, for there is no motion, no change in God. And where motion and change is not, there time is not, but either Aevum or Eternity. It is true, contingent things are not foreknown by us; and herein is a great difference between God's foreknowledge and ours. But this is a material difference only, but now we dispute of the form of foreknowledge, whereof hitherto you have shown no sound difference. No question but God precisely knows future contingents, we do not; And it is as true, that this is just nothing to the present purpose. Yet now you are fallen upon it, we must give due regard to your carriage in this. Of the ground of God's foreknowing future contingents questions, have been ventilated amongst School-divines for many hundred years continuance.

The most flourishing opinion at this day, and wherein the Sects in other points very opposite of Scotists and Thomists do agree, is, that God foreknowes them by seeing the determination of his own will, touching their coming to pass; this you invade both elsewhere and here; how well and scholastically you have carried yourself herein heretofore we have considered; now what else you have to vēt against this tenent, we are ready to entertain as it shall deserve.

But in the first place you fall upon it to my judgment very indecently, as when you say: If we shall mould the manner of God's foreknowglede of things future in our own conceit or foreknowledge of them, we shall erroneously collect, that seeing we cannot infallibly foreknow future contingents so neither could they be infallibly foreknown by God, if to him or in respect of his decree they were contingent, and not necessarily predetermined. For first the question only was, whether foreknowledge might be properly attributed unto God in respect of things to come. Now I see no reason but it may, as well as it is attributed unto man; which question is only about the formal denomination of it, not at all as touching the extent of God's foreknowledge in comparison unto man's foreknowledge, or in respect of the ground of it.

Secondly, the comparison made by you hath no congruity in the members of it. For the first member is proposed absolutely, the second conditionally; whereas in reason, either both should be proposed absolutely thus. Seeing we cannot infallibly foreknowe future contingents, so neither could they be infallibly foreseen by God: which is so absurd an Argument, that any sober man might be ashamed to obtrude upon any adversary.

If I would feine, I would feine things probable at the least. Or both should run conditionally, thus: Seeing we cannot infallibly foreknow future contingents, if in respect of our decree they be contingents, and not necessarily determined, so neither can they be infallibly foreknown by God, if to him, or in respect of his decree they were contingents, and not necessarily predetermined. Yet if the comparison had run thus, it load been incongruous enough; For Mans foreknowledge is not usually accounted in respect of things determinable by his will, Sometime it may be, as I remember Erastus observes that Bellantius Senensis prophesied of Savanarola his death, but it was after notice was taken of him at Rome, as of an Heretic. So likewise I have read that the fruits of the Gunpowder Treason was prophesied of in a certain Liturgy, then of purpose prescribed for the use of Papists, but it was after those English boute-feux were known to have been engaged in that conspiracy.

But usually man's foreknowledge of things to come is accounted in respect of things natural, and such as are out of the power of the determination of his own will. And as for such things as are subject to his will, it is an undoubted truth, that he cannot infallibly foreknowe such things upon the knowledge of his purpose to produce them; and that for two reasons. First, because his will is mutable from within. Secondly, because his power is resistible from without. But give we you leave to proceed.

In the next place you tell us, That some push our proneness to this error forward, by another, not distinguishing between contingency and uncertainty; who argue thus, That which is in it self uncertain, cannot certainly be known. Every future contingent is in it self uncertain, Ergo it is not possible that a future contingent should certainly be known. Thus another Hare is started by the way, which hindereth the pursuing of our first game, where we might have experience of your performance in opposing the ground of God's foreknowing future contingents, laid in the determination of his will, whereof God cannot be ignorant. And first you address yourself to the removing of this new rub, by a distinction of a twofold uncertainty, one formally relative, another only denominative or fundamental. And, as if these terms needed no explication, you proceed to a resolution thus; That which is relatively uncertain, cannot be certainly known, for so it should be certain to him, to whom it is uncertain: But a future contingent, as it is contingent, doth not necessarily or formally include this relative uncertainty, although it usually be in part the foundation or cofounder of it. By relat • ve uncertainty you understand uncertainty in relation to knowledge, in which sense to be uncertain, is to be such as whereof there cannot be certain knowledge. In which sense if the proposition proceeded, it were very idle, and indenticall, as if it were expressed thus; That which cennot certainly be known, cannot certainly be known: And they undoubtedly are very prone to error, that suffer themselves to be pushed forwards thereinto by such arguments as these, and thus interpreted. But we were wont to distinguish of Certitudo scientiae, & certitudo rei scitae, or scibilis; and you intimate such a distinction. For the relative uncertainty you speak of is the uncertainty of the knowledge, and the fundamental uncertainty is the uncertainty of the thing it self, and indeed the foundation of the uncertainty of knowledge. Now the argument proceeds manifestly from the one to the other, and the Medius terminus man fests its own meaning to be of fundamental uncertainty, whence it doth infer uncertainty of knowledge, for it proceeds thus: That which is uncertain in it self cannot be certainly known. Now that which is uncertain in it self, is not relatively uncertain, but rather absolutely. For whereas the most certain thing that is may be relatively uncertain, that is uncertain unto some; yet this shall never be called uncertain in it self.

So then the syllogism corruptly interpreted by you, and the truth of it obscured by a preposterous distinction, take it in its proper vigor and force, is thus; That which in it self hath no foundation of certainty, cannot be certainly known. But every future contingent hath in it self no foundation of certainty: therefore it cannot certainly be known. Therefore if you will answer aright, show what foundation of certainty is found in future contingents, if you please to deny the Minor; or if you please to deny the Major, profess your mind plainly, and say, that That which hath no foundation of certainty in it self, may nevertheless be certainly known, which indeed is your course. For you profess plainly, that future contingents cannot be certainly known, of a sinite and imperfect knowledge, but they may be known by an infinite knowledge; such as is the knowledge of God.

And thus you might have answered the former syllogism plainly, without the help of your former distinction, in this manner: That which is in it self uncertain, cannot be certainly known. It is true in respect of a finite knowledge, such as is the knowledge of man; but it is not true in respect of knowledge infinite, such as is the knowledge of God. But whereas you put it indifferent to answer by way of distinction, either of knowledge finite and infinite, or of knowledge fallible and infallible; herein you are very wide. For a very absurd issue would be of this latter distinction, after this manner: That which is uncertain in it self, cannot be certainly known by knowledge fallible, but it may be certainly known by knowledge infallible: which were as much as to says It cannot be certainly known by knowledge that may err in knowing it, but it may be certainly known by knowledge that cannot err in knowing it. And yet it will not serve your turn neither; For, though God's knowledge be infallible, yet it will not follow that God knows this infallibility; because, though he infallibly knows whatsoever he knows, yet perhaps this is a thing not knowable at all. for to know that such a thing certainly shall be, which in its own nature is no more certain to be than not to be, is not to know, but rather to err: and so the argument still holds good, 'and no way' answered by you, but boldly outfaced by a mere begging of that which is in question. Yet nothing possible shall be uncertain unto God, for he knows it to be possible, and that most certainly. But with what color can you infer, that because it is possible to be, therefore God most certainly knows that it shall be? For, consider, is it not as well possible not to be? and may not I by the same liberty of argumentation, which you usurp unto yourself, conclude, therefore God most certainly knows that it shall not be? In a word, things must be to come, before they can be known to be to come. But seeing future contingents are in their own nature only possible, and indifferent to be to come, or not to come; I pray consider by what activity or operation, they have passed from the condition of things possible, to the condition of things future? for if they have not passed into this condition, they are not as yet knowable to be future; and no infallibility of knowledge can make the knowledge extend to the comprehending of such things as are not knowable. Possible they are, and are most certainly known of God that they are possible. But as yet future they are not, (unless by some alteration they have been translated from the condition of things merely possible to the condition of things future, which it stands you upon to show, if you maintain it,) therefore as yet they are not knowable to be future.

That which you add concerning the nature of God's knowledge, as being without succession, is nothing to the purpose. For though our knowledge be subject to succession, yet this nothing hindereth us from foreknowing things to come, so they be knowable, whether by natural reason, or by divine revelation. On the other side, though God's knowledge be not capable of succession, yet things not knowable he cannot know; things impossible he cannot know to be possible, and things which are only possible, and not future he cannot know to be future. And such a manner of knowledge, is no knowledge indeed, but error rather.

And as for your terms of interposed, and expiring acts, and interminable knowledge; well they may serve to conjure your Reader from understanding you, but they have no force either of illustration, or probation of ought. In the close you acquaint us with a new mystery, as if God's knowledge were like the suspending of a man's judgment, for as much as the act of knowledge in God doth not expire. A vile conceit and ridiculous, were it not concerning the nature of God. For what? because God's knowledge and judgment doth not expire, but continueth without alteration, shall he therefore be said to suspend his judgment? Belike Daniel was cast into the Lions den not by judgment, but by suspension of judgment; For the Laws of the Medes and Persians were unalterable.

So likewise the judgment, and counsel, and purpose of God, concerning the salvation of his elect, because it continueth without expiration, therefore it is suspended. In the same proportion of piety you say our ignorance resembles God's knowledge best, as heretofore you professed, that In respect of immensity and eternity, nothing was so like to God as nothing. But it may be Ioverlash, and upon better consideration, The imperfection of our knowledge or judgment while it is in suspense is rather ignorance, (you say) than Error. And this imperfection taken away it shall better resemble divine knowledge, than our actual resolutions and determinations do. But then, I pray, what is this that shall resemble the divine knowledge? is it our knowledge while it is in suspense? why, but if I am in suspense, how am I said to know? O, but you will have this imperfection taken away, but then I say, if the suspension be taken away, how shall it be in suspense, which you suppose? Agayne, how can suspension of judgment be taken away, but by resolution this way or that way? but this you deny to be that which resembles divine knowledge.

The truth is, the sentence is so perplex, that I can divise no issue out of it. Yet I have reason to conceive that your opinion is, that ignorance best resembles the knowledge of God. For the comparison is between resolution and the opposite thereunto? and you plainly signify that the opposite to resolutiō doth better resemble God's knowledge, than resolution. Now what is opposite to resolution but suspension of judgment; and this suspension of judgment you plainly profess is to be called ignorance, rather than error. Wherefore ignorance consisting in suspension of judgment by your doctrine in this place, doth better resemble the wisdom of God than our actual resolutions and determinations do; yet out actual resolutions and determinations may be sound both in knowledge natural, and knowledge Theological, whereas ignorance or suspension of judgment is no knowledge at all. Only whereas you positively affirm, that Without the interposition of some determining or expiring acts there can be no error, I understand that plainly to be a notorious untruth. For determining or expiring acts are no more required unto error, than unto truth.

And if a man continue, as many do, to their lives end in Popery, in Mahumetisme, in Heathenism, their errors are never a whit the less.

It is true indeed that we can understand but one thing at once, and therefore the consideration of one thing must expire before we can pass to the consideration of another. This is the condition of Mans knowledge in general, not of an erroneous apprehension in special.

11. What you discourse of knowledge conjectural which man may have of things contingent, cannot have of things casual, I leave it as I find it, I come to the cause why we cannot foreknow future contingents, and this you say is because our essence, and knowledge are but finite; so that things contingent are not so contained in us, that if we could perfectly know our selves we might perfectly know them; Thus you are content to dictate at pleasure, without affording one mite of reason, for the establishing of your proselytes faith in this. As finite as our knowledge is, we know contingents to be contingents. But to know that a thing merely contingent which denomination includes only a possibility of coming to pass, or not coming to pass, I say to know that such a thing shall come to pass, exceeds the reach of knowledge infinite. For infinite knowledge doth extend no farther than to things knowable. But, for a contingent, which both in his own nature, and from without doth yet continue indifferent to be or not to be, is not a thing, at all knowable, that it shall come to pass. For it must be a thing future, before it can be known to be future. But the contingents, you speak of, are supposed both in their own nature to be only possible, that is indifferent to be or not be, and as yet determined by no outward agent to be. In which case they still continue under the condition of things n • eerly possible. And so far they are knowable, and no farther. And accordingly so far they are ind • ed known by God, by that knowledge which is commonly called Scientia simplicis intelligentiae. But the knowledge of thigs future is called Scientia visions. And things merely possible, till some determination doth come unto them from wihout, are not as yet future, and consequently cannot be known, to be future, yet notwithstanding you are bold to say, that In the divine essence, all real effects, all events possible, whether necessary, casual or contingent, are eminently contained; The perfect knowledge of his own essence, necessarily includes the perfect knowledge, not only of all things, that have been, are, or shallbee, but of all things that might have been, or possibly may be. A most rid • culous amplification? For it is as much, as to say, that God knows not only all contingent truths, but all necessary truths also. As if it were a harder matter to know things necessary, than to know things contingent. Whereas it is in the power of the Creature to know things necessary, and perhaps all things that are of necessary truth; but to know those things whose existence is only of a contingent nature, that belongs only unto God.

Now what is possible, and what is not, we have a general rule to know that, as namely, whatsoever implieth no contradiction is possible, that which doth imply contradiction is impossible. And were it a sober speech for a divine to affirm; that God not only knows all things that have been, are or shall be, but also he knows what implies contradiction, & what doth not? you seem to fumble here at the novel doctrine of the Jesuits concerning God's foreknowledge of future contingents conditionate; and you do but fumble at it.

Secondly you say that in the divine essence all real effects are contained eminently; Now heretofore you told us, that For all things to be in God, is no more than that he alone can produce them. Ch. 4. num. 2. If this be your meaning in this place, as it seems, when you say they are in him eminently, for so we say that heat is in the Sun eminently, for as much as he doth produce heat in bodies capable; Then, I say, we deny not but all real effects are in God.

But how doth this agree with your tenet, seeing herhence it follows that God can produce any act of Mans freewill, any casual thing and if he can so do, what hind • h but that he could from everlasting decree to produce them? Yet not alone as formerly you have interpreted what it is for things to be in God. For it is impossible that God should produce the act of man's will without man. For if without man, then it is not the act of man's will, which is an immanente act of the will.

Thirdly, it is false to say that the perfect knowledge of God's essence, necessarily includes the perfect knowledge of all things that have been, are, or shall be. It includes I confess the knowledge of all necessary truths, and of all things possible; but as for the knowledge of contingent truths, and of these to come, it includes not that; unless under the essence of God, you comprehend the will of God. And so to distinguish as to say that all necessary truths God knoweth by necessity of nature, but all contingent truths he knoweth by the determination of his own will; which indeed is a truth, but flatt opposite to your opinion. But that things contingent cannot be known to be future, but upon the determination of God's will, I prove thus. Things cannot be known to be future until they are future; (for to apprehend or conceive things to be future, when they are not future, is not to know, but to err,) but contingent things, and only possible to be or not to be, do not become future till the determination of God's will hath made them future. Therefore contingent things cannot be known to be future but upon the determination of God will.

The minor I prove thus: Of their own nature they are not future, but only possible; and they cannot pass from the condition of things merely possible, to the condition of things future, without a cause from without. And no cause of this translation can be devised, but the will of God. Which I prove thus. If some other cause, then either without God, or within God; not without God, for these things were future from everlasting; but from everlasting there was no cause at all existent without God; Therefore the cause hereof, if anywhere to be found, must be found within God. We say it is his will; which if you deny, you must show what else can be the cause: you commonly flee to God's knowledge, and the infinity thereof, but in vain, for already they are supposed to be future before God knoweth them. And indeed it belongs to knowledge to know all things that are to come, not to make them to be to come.

Fourthly, it is possible that Antichrist shall fall in the year 1630, it is possible that he should fall the year before, it is possible he should fall the year after: it was possible he should have fallen ten years ago; it is possible he should fall ten years hence: all these being real effects possible, must by your doctrine be found eminently in the divine essence, and God knowing his divine essence, must know them all, and not only that they are possible, but that they shall all come to pass: For in this sense you speak of God's knowledge of future contingents, namely, of knowing that they shall come to pass, and when they shall come to pass.

Again, set we the fall of Antichrist at an hundred different points of time, whereof let us suppose one to be true, and the other false; yet all in their own nature alike possible: why should the fall of Antichrist in the true point of time be included in God's essence more then the other, all being alike possible; and that very instant wherein the fall of Antichrist shall be, it being as possible that it should not be, and that possibility also being included in the essence of God, as well as any other? Perhaps you will say that this being a truth is included in the essence of God, and not the others, being untruths. But then I demand how this became to be a truth, that Antichrist should fall at such a time, rather then at another, it being as possible to fall out at any other time as at this, and as possible not to fall out at this time as at any other, and all these possibilities equally included in the essence of God I say again, how came this to be a truth, answer me, not of its own nature, for the contrary hereunto is supposed on both sides, namely, that of his own nature it was only possible: therefore you must assign some cause from without; and because you like not to acknowledge the determination of God's will to be the cause hereof, you must allege some other cause. I see you usually fly to the infinity of God's knowledge, but in vain; for God's knowledge is to know truths, and not to make them.

Lastly, by this doctrine of yours it will follow that God knew the world would be made, before ever God determined to make •• , to wit, by virtue of his infinite knowledge. Now what a fair way this openeth unto Atheism, let the wise and learned Reader judge indifferently. Heretofore I confess you seemed to maintain the existence of all things from everlasting in eternity; which if it were true, then this might minister an apparent ground of God's knowledge of all things, be they never so contingent, for as much as they are supposed to exist before him. But here you have assigned nothing for the ground hereof hitherunto, but only the infinity of God's knowledge. But in the next sentence I think you cast about for this also. As Balaam did many ways to serve his turn in the course of his divinations; and all is fish that comes to your net; so it may serve your turn to oppose in this question, the determination of God's will. Well, thus it is: For as God's essence is present in every place as it were an ubiquitarie center, (for indeed if a body were infinite, everywhere might be imagined a center: and you do much affect to compare the nature of God to impossibilities, and sometimes prefer him so far, as to compare him to just nothing,) so is his eternity or infinite duration coexistent to every part of succession, and yet withal is round about. He it is that drives things future upon us, being from eternity as well beyond as on this side of them. We have been acquainted with these absurd paradoxes of yors heretofore, so that now we cease to admire them. But first we do deny the comparative coherence So, which hath force of an argument by way of comparison: but it hath no force here, because there is no proportion betwixt the things compared. God's presence is in every place, no marvel; for all places do ex • st together. And so if all times did exist together, God eternity should coexist with all times: But it is impossible that all times should exist together, because time consists in succession of parts: But as one time and the things therein shall exist after another, so God shall coexist with them. So then God's presence is in every place, and God's eternity coexists with every time, and that indivisibly: but with a great difference: for God all at once coexists with every place, but not all at once doth he coexist with every time, but successively; for as much as time doth not otherwise exist then successively. Nay the comparison is flat against you. For like as God not only coexisteth at this present with every place that is existent, but shall coexist with a world ten times as big, whensoever by the will of God such a world shall have existence, but for the present coexisteth only with the places that are: In like sort God for the present coexisteth only with time present, and with all things in time present, but shall by virtue of eternity coexist also with all times to come, and all things therein ten times longer then the world shall last, if so be that by the will of God the world should last ten times longer then it shall: but for the present he doth coexist only with the time present, and the things contained therein.

Yet this a • seth not from any divisible succession in God, in whom as there is no shadow of change, so there can be no succession; but only from the divisible succession of things without God, both time and motion, & things subject thereunto, with all which God doth and still shall coexist in their courses of succession, without succession in himself; Like unto a Pole fixed in a river that coexisteth with several parts of water succeeding one another it self being immovable. Now that God doth not coexist at once by virtue of his eternity with all parts of time and the things therein, I demonstrate thus. If God at this time present did coexist with all parts of time, then all parts of time should at this present coexist with God, both time past and time to come; And by the same reason, before ever the World was, you might say that the whole course of time did coexist with God, And if coexist, then surely it did exist; and so time had an eternal existence as well as God's eternity it self. It is true some have conceited that eternity doth ambire tempus, but only in this sense, that as it was before it, so it is after it; If they had said so it shall be after it, it were tolerable. For we believe the World shall have an end. But I never yet heard or read of any but yourself that made eternity to be round about it, so to make way for your circular duration: For in this sense time shall not only have two ends but two sides also, or rather neither end nor side as if it were round as a tennis ball.

In the prosecution of the same w • ld phrase, you tell us that God, by virtue of his eternity, is as well beyond all thing • s to come, as on this side of them. Belike as the Heavens are on either side of the earth, so eternity is on either side of time. And indeed if the parts of time were coexistent as the parts of heaven and earth are, it were to the purpose; but the succession of time in the parts thereof mars the play and discovers the wildness of this fiction. That which we call beyond in space of place applied to time is rather longe before then longe after; & the reason is, because to be beyond, doth suppose existence either being as in place, or having been as in time. But as for things that are to come hereafter, they neither have existence at this present, nor ever had. But let it be applied as you will, so you speak plainly, that so we may encounter men and not shadows. Say that God is after all things to come; I say this is false, and thus I prove it. To be after another is to suppose the existence of that other thing precedent. But things to come have not yet had • hiero existence, therefore God cannot be said to be after them. It is true to say that God shall be after all things to come in this World, for as much as after they are come and gone, God's existence shall continue.

It is true as you say, Though God should create other creatures without the circumference of this World, they should be all within his presence. In like sort though the World should last ten times longer then God hath appointed it, yet should God by virtue of his eternity coexist with it: Herein the comparison holds with good congruity. But like as God's presence is not with a greater circumference till such a circumference doth actually exist; in like sort God's duration doth not coexist with any duration to come, until it existeth. And in each case it is true that he gains not any new existence, but only takes a denomination of coexistence with them; But not until they do exist; for till they exist they cannot be said to have any existence with him, which before they had not. And this yourself make the ground of denomination of God's coexistence with them. We do not only acknowledge that things when they come to pass, do fall within the Sphere of God's actual knowledge, but also before they come to pass, we say, they are known to God, and the precise time when everything shall come to pass. I have already shown the absurdity of that conceit of yours of environing succession. Now I say it is directly false to say that God's knowledge is coexistent to every successive act. And the reason is not far off but at hand. For if God or his knowledge were coexistent to every successive act thē every successive act were also coexistent to God's knowledge and to God himself; and if coexistent, then existent; and so both time past and time to come and all things in them should at this present be existent. And but erst yourself professed that God takes the denomination of coexistence with his creatures upon their existence in him, which before they had not: which is manifestly contradictious to those wild assertions which you have so often scattered, namely, that God is coexistent with every successive act, and with all times.

Likewise in the next sentence you acknowledge that the creature gets coexistence with eternity anew; therefore it had not always coexistence with it, nor it with the creature: God's knowledge is still the same, and therefore not so much as in this respect is there any motion or change in God; and consequently no succession, though the things that are known may succeed in their coexistence to one another, and consequently in their coexistence with God.

The Scripture without distinction professeth that God both is, and was, and is to come: which yet is not to signify any priority or posteriority in him in respect of any things succeeding in him, but only in respect of things succeeding without him. For as much as the things that are past did coexist with God at the time of their being, and things long before them also were not before God. In like sort things to come, whensoever they come shall find God coexistent with them, and whensoever they vanish, shall leave God's existence still continuing the same behind them. It is true, God's knowledge may be said to contain our knowledge, in as much as he knows all that we know, and much more: but it is absurd to say that his knowledge resembles ours; for there is no likeness between them.

But whereas you touch by the way that things to come to us are only to come, thereby you imply one of your well known paradoxes, that things to come are not only to come unto God; the meaning is, that they are not only to come to him, but present to him also. It is enough for you to dictate mysteries. By the same proportion of truth, things past, which are only past to us, are not so only to him, but unto him they are not only past, but present also; this is good hobgoblin stuff, whether you count it Philosophy or Divinity. In the next place you tell us that For us to apprehend a thing past as contingent, is not impossible. About the coherence I will not question you; you take liberty to discourse at pleasure. In the very next page you say that it is in our power to make a thing necessary tomorrow, which is truly contingent this day. As I take it, it proceeds in congruity to that Maxim, Quicquid est quando est necesse est esse. And therefore if once I do that which is in my power to do, when I once have done it, it is necessary, whereas before it was contingent. 〈◊〉 on the contrary you will have it not impossible to apprehend a thing as contingent after it is done and past, whereas this was wont to be held impossible to God himself to make undone that which was already done. In a word it is held flat contradiction. For to be contingent is to be indifferent to be or not to be. But that which is, neither is nor possibly can be indifferent to be or not to be. Yet herehence it followeth not, that it came to pass necessarily there is no color for any such inference. For what? doth nothing come to pass but necessarily? but whether it comes to pass necessarily or contingently, being once come to pass the contingency of it is at an end, and past irrecoverably. For it is no longer indifferent to be or not to be. And your caution is very idle that you put in, lest upon the passing of a contingent thing we should conceive it to come to pass necessarily. Yet notwithstanding that which comes to pass contingently in respect of the manner of existence, may of necessity come to pass upon supposition of God's decree, as the calling of the Jews, the destruction of Antichrist which we look for. So the restoring of the Jews out of the captivity of Babylon, the burning of the Prophets bones upon the Altar by Josiah, the killing of Sennacherib by his own children, the taking of Zedekiah and carrying him into Babylon, yet so as he could never see it, for his eyes should be pulled out first.

Again, though they come to pass contingently, yet why should you deny, or would not have us conceive that they fall out certainly? though uncertainly to man, yet undoubtedly whatsoever comes to pass, comes to pass most certainly unto God: yet no doubt but the production of it was contingent, yea and sometimes casual in respect of second causes. The event is not necessary in respect of the manner of producing it. But being produced, now it must needs be produced, and it is impossible it should be otherwise.

Neither doth our knowledge of anything change the nature of it. Neither is our knowledge necessary (though you say so) of things past or present but merely contingent in the generation thereof also; Though as of all other contingents, so of our knowledge also, it is true that when once it is, it is imimpossible it should not be, or not have been at all. In a word upon the existence thereof, the indifferency thereof, to be or not be, is utterly vanished. But herhence to infer the like, not of God's foreknowledge only but of his decrees also, is a very wild inference. Yet we willingly grant that God's knowledge of things doth no way alier the nature of them, or of the manner of their ex • stence. No nor his decree neither. For though he decreed to make the World, yet the World we say came to pass never a whit the lesle contingently. And though God hath decreed the fall of Antichrist, and that Babylon shall be burnt with fire: yet these shall come to pass never a whit the less contingently. For God decrees not only res ipsas, but modus rerum, to wit that some things shall come to pass necessarily, and some things contingently. And so the effectual will of God in Aquinas his judgment is the rate of all contingency. But yet notwithstanding even from the foreknowledge of God there riseth a necessity of consequence as thus: If God foreknowes such a thing shall come to pass, then it is necessary it shall come to pass, though perhaps he knows it shall come to pass not necessarily but contingently. How much more doth such a necessity arise from the decree of God as thus. If God hath decreed the World should have an end, it is necessary the World should have an end, yet not necessarily but contingently. For as God did work freely in making the World, so shall he work as freely in setting an end unto it. So far are we from saying that God's decrees take away contingency from anything, as that rather we aver that it doth maintain it.

And you show either a great deal of ignorance in not understanding aright your adversaries tenets which you impugn, or that which is a great deal worse in dissembling and corrupting it. But I bear with you, it may be you fashion it in such a kind as may best give way to some conceytes of yours, and very few arguments. Yet by your leave the more infallible any knowledge is, either of God, Angel or man, the more fit it shall be to found a necessity of consequence thereupon thus; It is infallibly foreknown, ergo it is necessary that it should be. Here followeth another extravagant of yours, for instead of opposing that opinion which maintaynes the ground of God's foreknowledge of future contingents to be the determination of his will, you leave that and oppose the derivaiton of God's infallibility from the absolute necessity of the event. An opinion that I never knew any man patronize; but it seems you would draw their opinion unto this, who maintain that God foreknowes all things by seeing the determination of his own will concerning the futurition of them. Now, I pray you, of those that take this course whoever said that the events decreed by God were of absolute necessity? Yourselfe I have observed to profess, that upon God's decree touching the futurition of a contingent thing, as namely, the apprehensiō of a Traytour, the success of the means tending thereunto is absolutely necessary as in this very chapter in the end of the first Section. But never was I acquainted with any of our divines that said so much. We profess that the producing of contingents is absolutely contingent, only this contingent production they hold to be necessary upon supposition of the will of God. And Durand wondereth that any should conceive things to fall out necessarily in respect of the will of God, whereas on the contrary he conceaves it to be a clear thing, that not only contingent things but even necessary th • nges also (as we call them) do come to pass, all contingently in respect of the will of God.

They that ground God's foreknowledge of future contingents upon things without God, do usually ground it not upon any absolute necessity of the events themselves, as upon the causes producing them, which though they work contingently and not necessarily, yet this they th • nke nothing hindereth the infallibility of God knowledge, because he is able to comprehend all failings possible, and to discern in what case they take place, and in what not; which in effect is to rest upon the condition of God's knowledge in it self, as you here do: and because it is infinite therehence to conclude that it is infallible. An invention of late years, and brought in by the Jesuits, together with their doctrine concerning scientia media.

For whereas before there was only a double knowledge found in God, the one antecedent to his will which they called scientia simplicis intelligentiae, whereby he understood his own essence, and therewithal all necessary truths, and all things possible; the other subsequent to the will of God, which they called scientia visions, and hereby he knoweth all things past, present, and to come, all which they acknowledge to be dependant upon the will of God; the Jesuits have of late years devised a middle knowledge between th • se two, and it consists in know • ng not things necessary, nor th • ngs contingent, that have been, are, or shall be, but in knowing what would be in such or such a case; as for example, what a man in such a case, thus or thus moved and induced unto good or evil, would do or not do

And the ground hereof they make the infinity of God's knowledge, as I remember Vasquius expressly professeth so much, and so (as well they may) make this infinity of God's knowledge the ground of knowing all future contingents. For although Suarez takes upon him to confute Palatius, who as he hath maintained that God knows future contingents by reason of the efficacy of his knowledge, yet judge I pray, whether himself differ from him when he come to prove his own opinion, which is this: In Deo sola essentia ejus est sufficiens ratio cujuscunque cognitionis possibilis, cum in virtute & efficacitate intelligendi sit simpliciter infinita. In God his essence alone is a sufficient cause of all knowledge possible, considering that virtue and efficacy of knowing it is simply infinite. So Vasquez; Deus, quae sua est infinitas, efficacitate sui intellectus omnia intelligibilia intellectu suo penetrat: and again, Quia divinus intellectus infinitae virtutis est, quicquid intelligible est necessario debet amplecti & intelligere. Nam si aliquid ab ipso infinito intellectu non posset intelligi, à quo alio posset? And indeed were future contingents intellig • ble, there were no further question to be made, but that his knowledge were sufficient to comprehend them. But it is apparent that no such contingent is knowable as a thing to come, more th • n as a thing not to come in its own nature, and consequently God can no more know that it is to come, then that it is not to come; unless that which in its own nature is only possible be determined this way or that way, and consequently made future or not future.

This objection Suarez foreseeth and proposeth: Sicut divina potentia non potest facere id quod de se non est factibile, ita nec scientia divina scire potest id quod ex se scibile non est, neque certum judicium ferre de eo quod in se omnino incertum est: Nam neque scientia potest ferri extra objectum suum, neque potest suo modo non commensurari illi in certitudine, & infallibilitate, quia requirit adaequationem. And to this purpose he alledgeth Thomas, saying; Scientiam non posse esse necessariam, nisi objectum sub aliqua ration qua attingitur, necessitatem habeat. Et hoc modo dici potest requiri ex parte objecti certitudinem objectivam, id est, talem modum veritatis, quae apta sit, ut certum & infallibile judicium feratur, quod sane habet omnis veritas hoc ipso quod determinata est. In which latter words he gives in brief a better and fairer answer, then in the whole distinction following, if he be able to make good what he saith. For indeed every truth determinate is a sufficient object of knowledge.

But I would know of him or you, how comes it to be true that such a contingent shall exist, whereas in his own nature it is only possible to exist, and indifferent as well not to exist as to exist. As for example, how is it true that tomorrow it shall rain, rather then that tomorrow it shall not rain, seeing in it self it is no more inclinable to the one then to the other. If the one were true and the other false, then there were no question, but God should know the one to be true and the other to be false. But seeing there is no reason given by Suarez, why the one should be true rather then the other; there is no reason why one should be known of God to be true more then the other. And therefore Suarez layeth for a ground that future contingents have from all eternity a determinate truth, but shows not how they come to have their truth; nor how things merely possible in themselves come to be future, which as it is apparēt, could not possibly be without a cause. But had he gone about this work, which indeed was most necessary, the truth would soon have appeared in his colors. For it will soon be found that nothing could be the cause hereof but the will of God. Which was the opinion as he professeth both of Ricardus, and of Scotus, and in effect of Cajetan and of many of the Thomist; and that Alexander of Hales favoreth it.

Neither could he be ignorant that Alvarez maintaynes it to have been the opin • on of Aquinas also. To the same opinion Durand not only inclines as Vasqu us writes in 1. disp. 65. cap. 1. but to it only adheres as the same Vasquius notes in the sa • e disputation, cap. 2. Durands words are plain; Not only God's prescience of a thing to come is joined with his will to have t • come, in 1. dist. 35. q 3. num. 25. Deum prescire, A fore, coexigit. Deum velle, A fore. But also that his prescience is built hereupon ibidem dist. 39. q. 1. num. 10. in these words. Repraesentatur res fore vel non fore per essentiam divinam, non ut est solum essentia virtualiter rem omnem continens, sed ut est volens rem possibilem sore, & quia libere vult rem fore. And Vasquius himself not only acknowledgeth that from the decree of God's will may sufficiently be gathered the certainty of knowledge which God hath of future contingents, in 1. disp. 65. cap. 4. but also proposing the same objection that Suarez doth above mentioned, answereth it not as Suarez doth by saying, Things contingent have a determinate truth, as touching their being for the the time to come, whereof we nothing doubt, but shows whence they have it, which point Suarez declined wholly tanquam praecipitium as a breaknecke to his own opinion.

But Vasquius deals more plainly, and professeth that future things of merely possible become future by virtue of the decree of God. Observandum est (saith he) futurum ita esse objectum scientiae Dei infallibilis eo ipso quod re ipsa futurum est, ut tamen nostro modo intelligendi supponat decretum Dei, tan quam causam ante quam nihil intelligitur vere esse futurum. And again, Quia nulla res ex se futura est, sed ex voluntate & omnipotentia Dei, ideo antequam intelligantur futura, supponitur Dei voluntas ut causa illius non quidem durationis ordine sed rationis, & num. 23. Sicut creatura nondum possibilis est, donec Deus intelligatur esse, qui est primum omnium ens, sic etiam creatura nondum est futura donec decretum voluntatis esse intelligatur, ex quo ut ex causa futura est. Thus Vusquius maintaining the infinity of God's knowledge to be the ground of his knowledge of future contingents, as well as you do, yet doth not make use of this his opinion to oppose the forgoing of the determination of God's will as you do. Yet what have you conferred to the overthrow of that opinion which you impugn, that deserves to be named the same day with the least part of the meanest of those that have maintained it. You only show your teethe, and proceed confidently in dictating what pleaseth you without any evidence of reason to confirm what you so boldly propos • . I long to come to an end of this.

In the next place you give some reason for your assertion. As when you say, We are able by God's permission to lay a necessity upon contingents and so to foreknowe them, yet our knowledge still is but finite. Hence you seem willing to infer that therefore God seeing his knowledge is infinite is able to know future contingents without laying any necessity upon them, by the determination of his will. I am very glad to hear you reason, because it is so rare with you herein like to Hector Naevianus, Qui Philosophari volebat sed paucis.

Henry the seventh of England was wont to say he desired to look his dangers in the face: so I desire to know what my opposite hath to say against the truth I defend. I have been so long exercised in these points, and encountered such champions, that I have no cause to fear your colors, nor powder and shot neither: wherefore in the first place I answer, that the difference between knowledge finite and infinite doth not require that infinite knowledge should extend so far as to know things unknowable, for that were to extend beyond his object. But rather herein they differ, of things knowable, finite knowledge takes notice only of some; infinite knowledge comprehends all. Now things contingent till they are determined to come to pass, or not to come to pass, are not knowable that they shall come to pass, nor are knowable that they shall not come to pass; and consequently cannot be known that they shall come to pass, or known that they shall not come to pass.

For if the understanding of man doth apprehend a thing as future which is not future, herein he cannot be said to know but to err rather. Now that which in its own nature is only possible, cannot pass from this condition into the condition of a thing future, without some cause. Now you have shown no cause of this alteration, nor you list not to inquire into it, it is too hot for your fingers. For by inquiry it would be found that no cause hereof can be assigned, but only the will of God.

Secondly, I deny that God by determining things contingent, and in their nature merely possible, making them future, doth lay any necessity upon them, but rather decreeth a contingent manner of production unto them, answerable unto their natures. For as he decreeth that necessary things shall come to pass necessarily, so he decreeth that contingent things shall come to pass contingently.

Thirdly, as touching your antecedent, I desire to know what things contingent those are, whereupon we can lay any necessity, whereby to foretell them, for it passeth my imagination to divine. This may well go for your own. I have been acquainted with many disputants in this argument, I never met with any argument of any kin to this. Certainly there is some exquisite curiosity in it. For you suppose men may doubt of this, and therefore you undertake to prove it: but when? In your treatise of the divine providence, that I hear is newly printed, we shall hear of it belike ere long, in case you do not forget what you promised: and the reason why I may doubt hereof is this; In the end of the fifth Section of this Chapter you told us that you were anon to intimate, that the reservation of such liberty unto God himselse, (as never to pass any decree whereby to bind his own hands) is a point of high perfection. Now this anon of yours is yet to come, for hitherto since we parted from that section we have received no intimation hereof. But be it, that you will be as good as your word, what is that which you undertake to demonstrate? That some events which are today truly contingent, may by our industry become tomorrow truly necessary. But this needs no demonstration. For whatsoever I do, by doing it, I make that necessary, which before was contingent. For every Sophister knows out of Aristotle, and out of common sense also, that Omne quod est quando est necesse est esse. But this is nothing to your purpose. For you speak of such a necessity laid upon contingents, as whereby we might foreknow them. But by doing things I cannot fo •• know them; for knowledge of things upon the doing of them, is rather after-knowledge then fore knowledge.

And therefore though heretofore I thought of no other meaning of these words of yours then this, yet now by pondering better upon it I conceive you have a farther reach, and that of a mysterious nature: for as much as you are loath to utter it, and give an instance of that which you deliver. Yet why should you be loath to utter that which you presume no intelligent Christian will deny? This makes me look back again upon your words, to try whether I can start the mystery. And hereupon I discover other mysteries, though not the main; as when you say, We are able (after this necessity laid upon them by ourselves) infallibly to foreknow and foretell. Now this speech is mysterious and imperfect: for you do not tell us what we may foreknowe and foretell whether it be the things themselves whereupon we have laid the necessity spoken of, or rather some things else; but neither of these things do you acquaint us with here. For if you had I should make no question, but if we might foreknowe them, whatsoever they be, we might without anymore ado foretell them, if we were not tonguetied.

Now no necessity can we lay upon anything but by doing it, and such a thing cannot be said hereupon to beforeknowne, therefore undoubtedly your meaning is, that by doing something before contingent, and thereby laying a necessity upon, it we may foreknowe another thing. Now this may prove nothing to your present purpose; and yourself in this argumentation quite besides the cushion. For God's foreknowledge which you impugn is the foreknowledge of a thing contingent, by willing it.

But this foreknowledge of man, shall be the foreknowledge of one thing by willing and doing of another; now these are no more suitable then the hares head and the goose gibletts. And to proceed a little further in my conjectures, because your concealments put me to it, I say your concealment is most unseasonable. For as much as you conceal that whereupon your argument depends, like unto a Physician that giving a Medicine to his patient, he should tell him there is one necessary ingredient more belonging to it, and he must suspend the taking of it, until he goeth to the East-Indies to ferche it. In which case his patient may have his green cap on his head before he return.

Suppose faith and repentance be those contingent things upon which I may lay a necessity by believing and repenting; will you say hereupon I may foretell my salvation? If this be it, this again is nothing to the purpose in a second respect. For the assurance of my salvation is not so much built upon my faith and repentance, as upon my perseverance in faith and repentance unto the end. And I cannot hereupon foreknowe or foretell my salvation until I am dead, which is not to foreknowe it, much less to foretell it.

Agayne my assurance of salvation depends not so much upon my faith and repentance, and perseverance in both, as upon the revelation that God hath made, that as many as finally believe and repent shall be saved; and also that if once I believe and repent truly I shall continue therein to the end; which I have cause to doubt whether you believe. Agayne do you think indeed, that it is by God's permission only that men do believe and repent? and do you think good to deny that God doth effectually work them unto faith and repentance? You must needs take this course. For if God be indeed the Author of faith & repentance, thē he did decree to give men faith & repentance, & so contingents should be decreed by God, and God should foreknowe them by seeing the purpose of his own will to bestow them.

Thus I have ventured to boult out the mysteries which you conceal. If I have missed of the mark, I will aim at it no more and give it over with a mysterium quaere, as Schoolmen sometimes when they have hunted themselves out of breathe they have ended their discourse with a Responsionem quaere. Yet we have not finished this Section. The very next sentence is a Crevecoeur unto me, I can make no sense of it: Succession is a scroule (as we imagine it) containing several columnes of contingency or indifferent possibilities, of which only so many or so much of any as in revolution of time take ink and are unfolded become visible to men and Angels. Alas, what disaster hath befallen me, that I should divert from other studies wherein I fought the Lord's battayles against foreign enemies, and encountered with errors plainly set forth nothing involved with affected phrases, or streynes of expression in far fetched Metaphors, but strengthened with such arms as wit could afford without Rhetorical painting, their manner of fight well known unto me, and in confuting whereof I profited myself and gained increase of knowledge and of ability in maintaining the truth of God. And now to be cast upon such discourses the opening of the meaning, whereof in one sentence sometimes costs me more pains then the answering of their best argument, and all this without any profit redounding unto myself, my time wasted, my knowledge no whit bettered: well, jacta est alea, we must proceed, and since our hand is put to this plo • gh, though oftentimes I look back, and come to a parle about not intermission only but interruption also, yet I must not break off. Succession is as much as time, and this you compare to a scroule containing possibilities. Out upon the shallowness of my wits, that can comprehend no analogy in this comparison. For though all changeable things are said to be in time, yet nothing like unto writing which is in a scroule, as in the subject of it. For time is rather an antecedent to things durable, then things durable an antecedent to time. But to say that time contains possibilities, is a wilder speech then the former. For before ever any time was, possibilities were as many as now, and more also. For the world was possible, and every part of it, and everything that since hath been, or shall be, even before the world was, was possible like as the world was. Aga • ne, the duration of possibilties hath no succession; for if it had, then time should have been before the world was.

By unfolding of these possibilities, I think you intend the bringing of them into act, and this is to take ink, as you phrasifie it. Now I had thought the scroule had contained only those things that are written in it, and so the things brought forth in it, and not those things that are not written, and so accordingly neither time is to be accounted to contain possibilities. Yet all things that are brought forth, surely are not visible to men, howsoever they are to Angels. So that when the painting with a great deal of intention of spirit and consideration, is washed off, the face of the sentence is but this. In time many things before possible are brought forth into act: what is mine understanding the better for this, or my readers either?

Then you return to your former mad paradoxes, and tell us again, (to inure us to your bugbeares, that hereafter we might be the less affrighted with them,) that the Almighty looks on all things as well from that end of time which is to come, as from that which is past; and that his infinite and eternal wisdom doth not only encompass all things that come to pass, as the circumference doth the center, but penetrates the whole scroule of succession from end to end, more clearly then the Suns brightness doth the perspicuous air. To this I answer, that it is indifferent unto man in the course of his knowledge, to take notice of things that have been either from the beginning of the world to Noah's flood, or from Noah's flood to the beginning of the world. So likewise it is indifferent unto us to take notice of things done from this day upwards to the beginning of the world, or from the beginning of the world to this day.

As for things to come they are unknown unto us. But if they were known unto us, as by revelation they may, it were as easy for us to take notice of them successively from the end of the world, rising upwards unto this day, or proceeding from this day unto the end of the world. As for notice of them all at once, it is impossible to be taken by us, our nature disposeth us to understand things only successively one after another. Now it is without question that all things are known to God that have been from the beginning of the world unto this day, and that shall be from this day to the end of the world. And therefore if God were to take notice of them, and that in a successive manner as we do, it were indifferent for him to take into consideration first the things that have been the first year of this world, then those things that came to pass the next year, and so forwards unto this present year, and so successively to take notice of what shall be the next year, and so onwards unto the end of the world. Or otherwise he might begin to take notice of those things that shall come to pass the last year of the world, then what shall come to pass the year before it, and so upwards unto this year, and thence proceed to consider what hath been the last year, and so upwards unto the first year of the world.

But albeit this kind of successive consideration be incident unto man, yet it is not so with God. He hath from everlasting known what from the beginning of the world unto the end should come to pass, and that not successively but all at once. For his whole knowledge and every part of it is everlasting. And therefore it is absurd to say that God knows things from the beginning of the world unto the end, unless in this sense, God knows all things, which things come to pass from the beginning of the World unto the end, thereby denoting the succession of things in the World, not in the knowledge of God. But much more absurd is it to say that God knows all things from the end of the World to the beginning of it: because this speech can admit no tolerable congruity of explication, like the former, namely by applying it, not to any succession in the knowledge of God, but to the succession of things in the World. For albeit that we may well say that things do succeed in course from the beginning of the World to the end; yet it were absurd to say that things do succeed in course from the end of the World to the beginning. You may as well say, A man's life hath continued not only from the beginning to the end, but also from the end unto the beginning, which is as much as to turn a man's heels upwards, and place them where the head should be.

As for God's incompassing of time as the circumference doth the center (whereunto you may add the circular duration formerly spoken of) and the penetrating of the whole scroll of succession from end to end, wherein you so much please yourself as in rare notions, I take them to be no better then sick men's dreams: we have nauseated enough upon them, you needed not to have repeated them, yet you will have these conceyts of yours to be received for precious truths, as Mountebanks commend their oils and balms, and not so only, but to be as clear as the Sun also. It is well that paper blusheth not. Every man seeth how the brightness of the Sun doth pierce the air, doth every man acknowledge God to incompasse time by his eternity? Sure I am Durand censures this conceit as absurd. Yet I deny not but that others might dote upon it as well as yourself, taking it upon trust without examination.

And the corruptnes of man's mind may appear in this very vanity, that he pleaseth himself many times in such notions as he understands not. Again, doth every man that clearly sees how the same pierceth the air, as clearly see how God's eternity doth penetrate all time both all that is past and that which is to come, in such sort as indivisibly (for eternity is indivisible) to coexist with it? For hitherto tends the reach of your me • ning. A most absurd conceit. For therhence it would follow that all parts of time past, and all parts of time to come do coexist together at this present; For if eternity doth now coexist with them, then at this present they must needs coexist with it, and consequently they must exist at this present, (otherwise how could they coexist) whence it followeth that both time past should be present, and also time to come, As absurd and void of all reason is that speech of yours, whē you say that God's finger hath drawn columus of possibilities. God knows things possible, I confess, but his finger hath not drawn these possibilities, no more thē he hath drawn himself and his own omnipotent nature. For nothing is required to the denomination of the possibility of anything, but this, that God is armed with almighty power, whereby he is able to bring it to pass. Now amongst possible things some are brought forth immediately by God, some by second causes, whether by God or by second causes, they are all known to God, and who doubts nowadays of this? yet this is the whole contents of your last sentence, which you have commended unto us so embroidered with art, and with the needle work of quilting eloquence, as if you travayled in childbirth to be delivered of words and phrases, which many times vent untruths, commonly deliver but vulgar sense, and sometimes end in no sense. Yet when a man or ox or asse brings forth anything that is possible; you say it is like the embroyderer who fills the drawers obscure pattern with conspicuous branches of silk, gold, or silver, which yet notwithstanding is fulfilled in bringing forth that which is accounted the eight deadly sin among the Irishe; were ever quaint terms and silken similitudes worse bestowed? by the way forgetting that the Embroiderer himself is a second cause in bringing forth things possible into act, as well as a boy doth in playing at Top and scourge. And you may as well compare the Embroiderer to a boy playing at Top and scourge, as a boy playing at top and scourge to an Embroiderer. Turpe est difficiles habere nugas: If any man prove an ounce the wiser for this, he may soon prove as wise as Paul's steeple. I remember in the beginning you called this discourse of yours a paradise of contemplation, and I confess I find many flowers of Rhetoric growing therein, and especially pre • ty similitudes, but by applying them they are utterly cast away, for commonly they serve either for the illustration of untruths, or very vulgar truths. And great pity but they should find a place among the toys in London.

12. In the last place for a congruous explication of Augustine's and Gregory's meaning, in passages before mentioned, you commend unto us certain observations as necessary extracts of what hath hitherto been delivered. This necessity I presume was no impeachment to the liberty of your will in broaching them, for my part I see no necessity at all of them, nor of this whole discourse of yours. In like sort as little necessary it was that my brains should be surbeaten so often in hunting after the involved sense of many sentences, thorough the thickets of wild phrases and figures, and affected obscure expressions.

As touching the perfection of God's knowledge uncapable of addition, therein we argue with you. Your next position is worthy of consideration; As God's knowledge doth not make things to be, so neither doth the immutable or absolute certainty of his knowledge make things so known by him to be immutable, or absolutely necessary either in themselves, or in respect of his eternal knowledge. To this I answer, first to the first member of your sentence, that great Divines from Augustine's days to these days have maintained that the knowledge of God is the cause of things. And the reason they give is th • s; because the knowledge of God is scientia artificis, the knowledge of a craftsmaster. Now the case is clear, that craftsmasters by their knowledge do work and cause things. Yet I am content to help you with a distinction, if you will be pleased to accept of it. That the knowledge of God which is the knowledge of an artificer, is the scientia simplicis intelligentiae, whereby he knows all things possible, and how to order all things most conveniently to their ends. But the knowledge you speak of here proceeds of scientia visions, whereby God ever knew what should come to pass: and this knowledge indeed is not the cause of things. But as for the later member of this your sentence, it might have been • so carried as to give yourself satisfaction (if I be not deceived) and us also: as thus, So the certainty of God's knowledge doth not make things certain; or if you would add the word necessary we could have bo • with it, though it marreth the proport • on; which precisely is this, As knowledge doth not make things to be, so certain knowledge doth not make things certainly to be. But you leaving out the word certainly, take away all evidence of proportion. Belike you would acknowledge that certain knowledge doth make things certainly to be. But I do not like the proposition, and the genius of your argument drawn from proportion, if it hath any force any way, hath force against it.

Now if I do not acknowledge that certain knowledge makes things certainly to be, much less would I acknowledge that it makes things necessarily to be. There is so manifest reason against it, considering that all those things that fall our contingently, are as certainly known to God, as those things that come to pass certainly. Yet you (as • imorous men never think themselves sure enough,) are not content with this, but clog your inference with other needless circumstances, as in saying, absolutely necessary, and that not in respect of themselves, but of God's knowledge also: whereas without these the comparison was incongruous enough. And these circumstances I say are needless, because I would grant what you desire without these. But by your addition of these I perceive your meaning: for hereby you imply that it is necessary that things known by God shall come to pass: for though knowledge doth not make them to be, much less to be necessary, yet upon supposition of God's knowledge, it followeth necessarily by way of argument, that such things as God foreknows shall come to pass. This is of an undoubted truth, which kind of necessity is not any necessity of being in the things themselves, but only of external denomination upon supposition of God's foreknowledge. And you do in vain seem to strive against this; For can you deny this argument? God foreknowes that Antichrist shall be destroyed; therefore it is necessary that Antichrist shall be destroyed according to the time foreseen by God, neither will it herhence follow, that therefore it is absolutely necessary that Antichrist should be destroyed, as you very weakly suppose. For necessity upon suppositiō only, commonly called necessity of consequence was never yet taken for absolute necessity by any that I know. I medle not with the term immutable, because it is nothing congruous in the application. For applied to God's knowledge, it signifieth that knowledge which havinge being cannot be altered, but applied in this sense to the event that cometh to pass is untrue. For no event, especially contingent, after it comes to pass is immutable. If applied to the manner of coming to pass, yet it is not congruous. For God knowing that it shall come to pass in a mutable manner (that is in a contingent manner, for if that be not your meaning, I know not what is) the immutability of God's knowledge doth rather confirm the contingency of the event, then diminish it.