This, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter. The prescience of God does not _make_ our volitions necessary; it only _proves_ them to be certain. This is conceded by Edwards. It proves them to be certain, just as present knowledge proves them to be certain. This also is admitted by Edwards. But present knowledge proves an act of the mind to be certain, because it is infallibly connected with that knowledge, and not because it is necessitated by the influence of a cause. It proves it to be certain, because it is impossible for a volition, or any thing else, not to exist at the time of its existence, and not because it is impossible for it to come to pass without being necessitated. In short, it proves an _axiomatical_ and a _logical_ necessity, but not a _causal_ necessity; that is to say, it proves nothing to the point in dispute. The necessitarian can connect his conclusion with the thing he has undertaken to prove, in only one of two ways: he may say, that if an event is certain, it cannot come into existence without a producing cause; or he may allege, that God cannot foresee them, unless he is determined to bring them to pass. If he takes the former position, he really discards the argument from foreknowledge, and returns for support to the old argument, that every effect must have a cause. And if he assumes the latter, maintaining that God cannot foreknow future events unless he reasons from producing causes to effects, he builds his argument, not upon foreknowledge alone, but upon this in connection with a most unwarrantable flight of presumption, without which the argument from prescience is good for nothing. And besides, the bringing in of the divine prescience, only serves to blind, and not to illuminate. For God foreknows only what is future; and all future things will come to pass just as infallibly, without being foreknown, as they will with it. If we assume them to be future, it is just as much a contradiction to deny that they will come to pass; as it is to assume that they are foreknown and yet deny it. Nothing can be proved in this way, except what is assumed or taken for granted; and the foreknowledge of God is only a plausible way of begging the question, or concealing a sophism. In conclusion, the necessitarian takes the wrong course in his inquiries, and lays his premises in the dark. To illustrate this point:--I know that I act; and hence, I conclude that God foreknew that I would act. And again, I know that my act is not necessitated, that it does necessarily proceed from the action, or influence of causes; and hence, I conclude that God foreknew that I would thus act freely, in precisely this manner, and not otherwise. Thus, I reason from what I know to what I do not know, from my knowledge of the actual world as it is, up to God's foreknowledge respecting it.