life, to give with it sickness, pain, torments, and death; nor in him that giveth life twice, to give the same miseries twice also. And thus much in answer to the inconveniences that are pretended to follow the doctrine of necessity. On the other side from this position, that a man is free to will, it followeth that the prescience of God is quite taken away. For how can it be known beforehand what man shall have a will to, if that will of his proceed not from necessary causes, but that he have in his power to will or not will? So also those things which are called future contingents, if they come not to pass with certainty, that is to say, from necessary causes, can never be foreknown; so that God’s foreknowing shall sometimes be of things that shall not come to pass, which is as much to say, that his foreknowledge is none; which is a great dishonour to the all-knowing power. Though this be all the inconvenient doctrine that followeth _free-will_, forasmuch as I can now remember; yet the defending of this opinion hath drawn the Bishop and other patrons of it into many inconvenient and absurd conclusions, and made them make use of an infinite number of insignificant words; whereof one conclusion is in Suarez, that God doth so concur with the will of man, that _if man will, then God concurs_; which is to subject not the will of man to God, but the will of God to man. Other inconvenient conclusions I shall then mark out, when I come to my observations upon the Bishop’s reply. And thus far concerning the inconveniences that follow both opinions. The attribute of God which he draweth into argument is his _justice_, as that God cannot be just in punishing any man for that which he was necessitated to do. To which I have answered before, as being one of the inconveniences pretended to follow upon the doctrine of necessity. On the contrary, from another of God’s attributes, which is his _foreknowledge_, I shall evidently derive, that all actions whatsoever, whether they proceed from the will or from fortune, were necessary from eternity. For whatsoever God foreknoweth shall come to pass, cannot but come to pass, that is, it is impossible it should not come to pass, or otherwise come to pass than it was foreknown. But whatsoever was impossible should be otherwise, was necessary; for the definition of _necessary_ is, that which cannot possibly be otherwise. And whereas they that distinguish between God’s _prescience_ and his _decree_, say the foreknowledge maketh not the necessity without the decree; it is little to the purpose. It sufficeth me, that whatsoever was foreknown by God, was necessary: but all things were foreknown by God, and therefore all things were necessary. And as for the distinction of foreknowledge from decree in God Almighty, I comprehend it not. They are acts co-eternal, and therefore one.