With many, God’s foreknowledge binds free-will; He knows the future, how each man will act, And man can never change from what God knows. They reason thus, that prescience is decree, And what God knows will happen, must take place. That God may know the future of _free_-will I prove by this. Suppose two worlds alike, And governed by two Gods. Each one can see, And foresee all transpires in both the worlds, Yet each o’er th’ other’s world exerts no power. A man in one does wrong; the other God May have foreseen the action for an age, Yet had not slightest power to cause or stop. Does his foreknowledge qualify the act? If thus you can suppose, why not believe, When errors flow from opposite belief? God in the future stands, and waits for man, Who works the present, only gift of Time. There is no future save in God’s own mind. Man’s future means continued present time; God’s future is but present time to Him, In which He lives, not will live when it comes. Man’s acts He sees as done, not to be done. And God compels not more than Man does Man, Who sees his fellow’s deeds, not causes them. Man only knows Man’s present acts; but God The future sees, as present to His mind. To end with perfect proof, you know you’re free. This all the world attests, and each believes. How subtle soe’er may his reasoning be, He contradicts it throughout all his life; And all his plans, and all the right and wrong Of self and friends he bases on free-will. If disbelief no inconvenience prove, Few men believe what is not understood; And yet the most familiar things of life Are far beyond their comprehensions’ power. Who understands the turning of the food To sinew, muscle, blood, and bone? yet who Will starve because he knows not how ’tis done? Who understands the mystery of birth, And when and where the soul originates? And yet a million mothers bend, to-day, O’er tender babes, and know that they exist; A billion people know they once were born. Who understands the mystery of death, And how the soul is severed from its clay? Yet who has not wept o’er departed ones, Received the dying clasp, the dying look, And known, full well, Death’s bitter, bitter truth? None comprehends the movement of a limb, Yet many boast the powers of their’s might. Then why doubt freedom of the will, when life, In every phase, but proves its certain truth? The edifice of shallow theorists Before the sweeping blade of practice falls.