This opinion, I think, should not be adopted. Prescience does not determine future events, for the mere knowledge of the future makes not the future. It is not prescience which necessitates the actions of men, because it does not change the natural order of things; but all future events are fixed, whether foreseen or not; for constraint and liberty conduct equally to a positive term: thus, all that will happen is as immutable as that which is past, since the present was the future of yesterday, and will be to morrow the past. It is then abstractedly certain, that an event, either foreseen or not, will take place some time; but if liberty is not contrary to this inevitable certainty, how would it be more so, because their exists a Being who is acquainted previously with the precise nature of events? We may then say, with truth, that the knowledge of the future is no more an obstacle to liberty, than the remembrance of the past; and prophecies, like histories, are only recitals, whose place is not the same in the order of time; but not having any influence on events, do not constrain the will, cannot enslave the sentiments, or subject men to the law of necessity. We will confess, however, that if prescience was founded on the possibility of calculating the actions of men, like the movements of an organized machine, liberty could not exist; but then it would not be prescience which opposed this liberty, it would be because we are automatons; for with such a constitution we should be without liberty, were even the Supreme Being not to have any knowledge of futurity.