Indeed, there is no need of lugging the foreknowledge of God into the present controversy, except it be to deceive the mind. For all future events will certainly and infallibly come to pass, whether they are foreknown or not; and foreknowledge cannot make the matter any more certain than it is without it. We may say that God foreknows all things, and we may mix this up with all possible propositions; but this will never help the conclusion, that "all future things will certainly and infallibly come to pass." If God should cease to foreknow all future volitions, or if he had never foreknown them, they would, nevertheless, just as certainly and infallibly come to pass, as if he had foreknown them from all eternity. The bare naked fact, that they are future infers all that is implied in God's foreknowledge of them; and it is just as much a contradiction in terms, to say that what is future will not come to pass, as it is to say, that what God foreknows will never take place. Hence, by bringing in the prescience of Deity, we do not really strengthen or add to the conclusion in favour of necessity. It only furnishes a very convenient and plausible method of begging the question, or of seeming to prove something by hiding our sophisms in the blaze of the divine attributes. It only serves as a veil, behind which is concealed those sophistical tricks, by which both the performer and the spectator are deceived. This whole argument from the foreknowledge of God, is, indeed, a grand specimen of undesigned metaphysical jugglery, by which the mind is called off in one direction, whilst it is deceived, perplexed, and confounded, by not seeing what takes place in another. It appears from these things, that those persons who have endeavoured to clear up this matter, by supposing that some things are not foreknown to God; have only got rid of one of the divine attributes, and not of their difficulty. It appears also, that Edwards might have made his argument far more simple and direct, by leaving out the long section in which he proves that God really foreknows all _future_ things; and confining himself to the simple proposition, "that all future events will certainly and infallibly come to pass;" that "it is a contradiction in terms to say that a thing is future and yet that it will not come to pass"; or, in other words, "if a thing is future, _it is impossible it should be otherwise than true_," that it will come to pass. And how unreasonable are those, who have imagined that we are free-agents, because God has chosen not to foresee our free actions; as if the supposition that he might have foreseen them, does not infer necessity just as much as the fact that he does foresee them. Indeed, these reasoners seem to have expected to see one truth, by shutting their eyes upon another!