(_a_) “‘He could add’, he saith, ‘other arguments, if he thought it good logic,’ &c. There is no impediment in logic, why a man may not press his adversary with those absurdities which flow from his opinion.” Here he misrecites my words; which are, ‘I could add, if I thought it good logic, the inconvenience of denying necessity; as that it destroys both the decrees and prescience of God Almighty’. But he makes me say I could add other arguments; then infers, that there is no impediment in logic, why a man may not press his adversary with the absurdities that flow from his opinion, because _argumentum ducens ad impossibile_ is a good form of reasoning; making no difference between _absurdities_, which are impossibilities, and _inconveniences_, which are not only possible but frequent. And though it be a good form of reasoning to argue from absurdities, yet it is no good form of reasoning to argue from inconveniences; for inconvenience may stand well enough with truth. (_b_) “But let us view his argument: ‘If a man have liberty from necessitation, he may frustrate the decrees of God, and make his prescience false’. This is his decree, that man should be a free agent. If he did consider God as a most simple act, without priority or posteriority of time, or any composition, he would not conceive of his decrees as long since enacted, but as coexistent with ourselves”. Here again he would have me conceive eternity to be _nunc stans_, that is, an instant of time, and that instant of time to be God; which neither he nor I can conceive, nor can without impiety say, as he doth here, that the decrees of God are God. In which consisteth all the rest of his answer to this Number, saving that he putteth in sometimes, that “the foreknowledge of God produceth not necessity”, which is granted him; but that anything can be foreknown which shall not necessarily come to pass, which was not granted, he proveth no otherwise than by his assertion, “that every instant of time is God”; which is denied him. NO. XXXVII. _T. H._ This is all that hath come into my mind touching this question, since I last considered it. And I humbly beseech your Lordship to communicate it only to J. D. And so praying God to prosper your Lordship in all your designs, I take leave, and am, my most noble and obliging Lord, Your most humble servant, T. H. [Sidenote: The Bishop’s reply.]