The fact of volition comes to exist contingently; that is, by a power which in giving it existence, is under no law of necessity, and at the moment of causation, is conscious of ability to withhold the causative _nibus_. Now all volitions which have already come to exist in this way, have both a certain and contingent existence. It is certain that they have come to exist, for that is a matter of observation; but their existence is also contingent, because they came to exist, not by necessity as a mathematical conclusion, but by a cause contingent and free, and which, although actually giving existence to these volitions, had the power to withhold them. Certainty and contingency are not opposed, and exclusive of each other in reference to what has already taken place. Are they opposed and exclusive of each other in reference to the future? In the first place, we may reason on probable grounds. Contingent causes have already produced volitions--hence they may produce volitions in the future. They have produced volitions in obedience to laws of reason and sensitivity--hence they may do so in the future. They have done this according to a uniformity self-imposed, and long and habitually observed--hence this uniformity may be continued in the future. A future contingent event may therefore have a high degree of probability, and even a moral certainty. But to a being endowed with prescience, what prevents a positive and infallible knowledge of a future contingent event? His mind extends to the actual in the future, as easily as to the actual in the past; but the actual of the future is not only that which comes to pass by his own determination and _nibus_, and therefore necessarily in its relation to himself as cause, but also that which comes to pass by the _nibus_ of constituted wills, contingent and free, as powers to do or not to do. There is no opposition, as Edwards supposes, between the infallible divine foreknowledge, and the contingency of the event;--the divine foreknowledge is infallible from its own inherent perfection; and of course there can be no doubt but that the event foreseen will come to pass; but then it is foreseen as an event coming to pass contingently, and not necessarily.