I now proceed to let you know from Dr. Sanderson's own hand,[1] which was never printed, (and which you can hardly know from any, unless from his son, or from myself,) that, when that Parliament was broken up, and the convocation therewith dissolved, a gentleman of his acquaintance, by occasion of some discourse about these points, told him of a book not long before published at Paris, (A.D. 1623,) by a Spanish Bishop,[2] who had undertaken to clear the differences in the great controversy _De Concordia Gratiæ et Liberi Arbitrii_. And because his friend perceived he was greedily desirous to see the book, he sent him one of them, containing the four first books of twelve which he intended then to publish. "When I had read," says Dr. Sanderson, in the following words of the same letter, "his Epistle Dedicatory to the Pope (Gregory XV.), he spake so highly of his own invention, that I then began rather to suspect him for a mountebank, than to hope I should find satisfaction from his performances. I found much confidence and great pomp of words, but little matter as to the main knot of the business, other than had been said an hundred times before, to wit, of the co-existence of all things past, present, and future [Latin] _in mente divina realiter ab aeterno_, which is the subject of his whole third book: only he interpreteth the word _realiter_ so as to import not only _præsentialitatem objectivam,_ (as others held before him,) but _propriam et actualem existentiam_; yet confesseth it is hard to make this intelligible. In his fourth book he endeavours to declare a twofold manner of God's working _ad extra_; the one _sub ordine prædestinationis_, of which eternity is the proper measure: the other _sub ordine gratia_, whereof time is the measure; and that God worketh _fortiter_ in the one (though not _irresistibiliter_) as well _suamter_ in the other, wherein the free will hath his proper working also. From the result of his whole performance I was confirmed in this opinion; that we must acknowledge the work of both grace and free will in the conversion of a sinner; and so likewise in all other events, the consistency of the infallibility of God's foreknowledge at least (though not with any absolute, but conditional predestination) with the liberty of man's will, and the contingency of inferior causes and effects. These, I say, we must acknowledge for the [Greek: hoti] but for the [Greek: to pos], I thought it bootless for me to think of comprehending it. And so came the two _Acta Synodalia Dordrechtana_ to stand in my study, only to fill up a room to this day." [Sidenote: "Vindiciæ Gratiæ" discussed]