“As the decree of God is eternal, so is his knowledge. And therefore to speak truly and properly, there is neither fore-knowledge nor after-knowledge in him. The knowledge of God comprehends all times in a point, by reason of the eminence and virtue of its infinite perfection. And yet I confess, that this is called fore-knowledge in respect of us. But this fore-knowledge doth produce no absolute necessity. Things are not therefore, because they are foreknown; but therefore they are foreknown, because they shall come to pass. If any thing should come to pass otherwise than it doth, yet God’s knowledge could not be irritated by it; for then he did not know that it should come to pass, as now it doth. Because every knowledge of vision necessarily presupposeth its object, God did know that Judas should betray Christ; but Judas was not necessitated to be a traitor by God’s knowledge. If Judas had not betrayed Christ, then God had not fore-known that Judas should betray him. The case is this: a watchman standing on the steeple’s-top, as it is the use in Germany, gives notice to them below, who see no such things, that company are coming, and how many; his prediction is most certain, for he sees them. What a vain correction were it for one below to say, what if they did not come, then a certain prediction may fail. It may be urged, that there is a difference between these two cases. In this case, the coming is present to the watchman; but that which God fore-knows, is future. God knows what shall be; the watchman only knows what is. I answer, that this makes no difference at all in the case, by reason of that disparity which is between God’s knowledge and ours. As that coming is present to the watchman, which is future to them who are below: so all those things which are future to us, are present to God, because his infinite and eternal knowledge doth reach to the future being of all agents and events. Thus much is plainly acknowledged by T. H. No. XI: that ‘fore-knowledge is knowledge, and knowledge depends on the existence of the things known, and not they on it’. To conclude, the prescience of God doth not make things more necessary than the production of the things themselves; but if the agents were free agents, the production of the things doth not make the events to be absolutely necessary, but only upon supposition that the causes were so determined. God’s prescience proveth a necessity of infallibility, but not of antecedent extrinsical determination to one. If any event should not come to pass, God did never foreknow that it would come to pass. For every knowledge necessarily presupposeth its object. ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE ANSWER TO NO. XXXVI.