(_e_) “Then he betakes himself to his old help, that God may punish by right of omnipotence, though there were no sin. The question is not, now what God may do, but what God will do, according to that covenant which he hath made with man, _Fac hoc et vives_, _do this and thou shalt live_.” It is plain (to let pass that he puts punishment where I put affliction, making a true sentence false) that if a man do this he shall live, and he may do this if he will. In this the Bishop and I disagree not. This therefore is not the question; but whether the will to do this, or not to do this, be in a man’s own election. Whereas he adds, ‘he that wills not the death of a sinner, doth much less will the death of an innocent creature’; he had forgot for awhile, that both good and evil men are by the will of God all mortal; but presently corrects himself, and says, he means by death, eternal torments, that is to say, eternal life, but in torments; to which I have answered once before in this book, and spoken much more amply in another book, to which the Bishop hath inclination to make an answer, as appeareth by his epistle to the reader. That which followeth to the end of this number, hath been urged and answered already divers times; I therefore pass it over. NO. XVIII. [Sidenote: The Bishop’s reply.] _J. D._ “But the patrons of necessity being driven out of the plain field with reason, have certain retreats or distinctions which they fly unto for refuge. First, they distinguish between Stoical necessity and Christian necessity, between which they make a threefold difference. “First, say they, the Stoics did subject Jupiter to destiny, but we subject destiny to God. I answer, that the Stoical and Christian destiny are one and the same; _Fatum, quasi effatum Jovis_. Hear Seneca: _Destiny is the necessity of all things and actions depending upon the disposition of Jupiter_, &c. I add, that the Stoics left a greater liberty to Jupiter over destiny, than these stoical Christians do to God over his decrees, either for the beginnings of things, as Euripides, or for the progress of them, as Chrysippus, or at least of the circumstances of time and place, as all of them generally. So Virgil: _Sed trahere et moras ducere_, &c. So Osyris in Apuleius, promiseth him to prolong his life, _ultra fato constituta tempora_, beyond the times set down by the destinies.