Edwards does not distinguish between the certainty of the mere _fact_ of existence, and the necessity by which anything comes to exist. Foreknowledge, after-knowledge, and concomitant knowledge,--that is, the present knowledge of events, future, past, or present,--proves of course the reality of the events; that they will be, have been, or are: or, more strictly speaking, the knowledge of an event, in any relation of time, is the affirmation of its existence in that relation; but the knowledge of the event neither proves nor affirms the necessity of its existence. If the knowledge of the event were the _cause_ of the event, or if it _generically_ comprehended it in its own existence, then, upon strict logical principles, the necessity affirmed of the knowledge would be affirmed of the event likewise. That God foreknows all volitions is granted; that as he foreknows them, they will be, is also granted; his foreknowledge of them is the positive affirmation of their reality in time future; but by supposition, God's foreknowledge is not their cause, and does not generically comprehend them; they are caused by wills acting in the future. Hence God's foreseeing how the wills acting in the time future, will put forth or determine their volitions, does not take away from these wills the contingency and freedom belonging to them, any more than our witnessing how wills act in the time present, takes away from them their contingency and freedom. God in his prescience, _is the spectator of the future, as really as we are the spectators of the present_. Edwards's reasoning is a sort of puzzle, like that employed sometimes for exercising the student of logic in the detection of fallacies: for example, a man in a given place, must _necessarily_ either stay in that place, or go away from that place; therefore, whether he stays or goes away, he acts necessarily. Now it is necessary, in the nature of things, that a man as well as any other body should be in some place, but then it does not follow from this, that his determination, whether to stay or go, is a necessary determination. His necessary condition as a body, is entirely distinct from the question respecting the necessity or contingency of his volitions. And so also in respect of the divine foreknowledge: all human volitions as events occurring in time, are subject to the necessary condition of being foreknown by that Being, "who inhabiteth eternity:" but this necessary condition of their existence neither proves nor disproves the necessity or the contingency of their particular causation.