Freewill, then, being an indisputable reality, how can it be reconciled with foreknowledge? There can be no more conclusive way of showing that the two things are capable of co-existing than to point to an example of their actual co-existence, and such an example is afforded by the idea of Infinite Power. Omnipotence, which by its nature implies freewill, comprehends also Omniscience. Omnipotence can do anything whatsoever which does not involve a contradiction; but even Omnipotence can do nothing which Omniscience does not foresee. It can, indeed, do whatsoever it pleases; but Omniscience foresees precisely what it will be pleased to do. With unbounded liberty to choose any course of action, it can yet choose no course which has not been foreseen; but its freedom of choice is evidently not affected by the fact that the choice which it will make is known before hand. Neither is that of man. An eager aspirant to ecclesiastical preferment is not the less at liberty to refuse a proffered mitre, because all his acquaintances have a well founded assurance that he will accept. A wayfarer, with a yawning precipice before his eyes, may or may not, as he pleases, cast himself down headlong. Whether he will do so or not must always have been positively foreknown to Omniscience; but that fact in no degree affects his power of deciding for himself. If arguing on the notion that what is to be must be, he decide on moving forward to his destruction, then what has been foreseen is simply that he will so argue and be self-deceived, and will consequently perish. But the foreknowledge which simply perceives what direction will be taken by the will is a very different thing from an over-ruling destiny, which should compel the will to take some special direction. Still it is obvious that, in this instance also, foreknowledge is based entirely on causation. It is solely because human volitions take place as inevitable effects of antecedent causes that Omniscience itself can be conceived as capable of foreseeing them.