I am therefore to give an account of the meaning of the aforesaid objurgations and expostulations; not of the end for which God said, _Hast thou eaten of the tree, &c._, but how those words may be taken without repugnance to the doctrine of necessity. These words, _Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded that thou shouldst not eat_, convince Adam that, notwithstanding God had placed in the garden a means to keep him perpetually from dying in case he should accommodate his will to obedience of God’s commandment concerning the tree of knowledge of good and evil, yet Adam was not so much master of his own will as to do it. Whereby is signified, that a mortal man, though invited by the promise of immortality, cannot govern his own will, though his will govern his actions; which dependence of the actions on the will, is that which properly and truly is called _liberty_. And the like may be said of the words to Eve, _Why hast thou done this?_ and of those to Cain, _Why art thou wroth? &c._ and to Israel, _Why will ye die, O house of Israel?_ But the Bishop here will say _die_ signifieth not _die_, but live eternally in torments; for by such interpretations any man may answer anything. And whereas he asketh, “Doth God reprehend him for doing that which he hath antecedently determined him that he must do?” I answer, no; but he convinceth and instructeth him, that though immortality was so easy to obtain, as it might be had for the abstinence from the fruit of one only tree, yet he could not obtain it but by pardon, and by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ: nor is there here any punishment, but only a reducing of Adam and Eve to their original mortality, where death was no punishment but a gift of God. In which mortality he lived near a thousand years, and had a numerous issue, and lived without misery, and I believe shall at the resurrection obtain the immortality which then he lost. Nor in all this is there any plotting secretly, or any mockery or derision, which the Bishop would make men believe there is. And whereas he saith, that “they who talk here of a twofold will of God, secret and revealed, and the one opposite to the other, understand not what they say:” the Protestant doctors, both of our and other Churches, did use to distinguish between the secret and revealed will of God; the former they called _voluntas bene placiti_, which signifieth absolutely his will, the other _voluntas signi_, that is, the signification of his will, in the same sense that I call the one his _will_, the other his _commandment_, which may sometimes differ. For God’s commandment to Abraham was, that he should sacrifice Isaac, but his will was, that he should not do it. God’s denunciation to Nineveh was, that it should be destroyed within forty days, but his will was, that it should not. (_b_) “I dare not insist upon it, I hope his meaning is not so bad, as the words intimate, and as I apprehend; that is, to impute falsehood to Him that is truth itself,” &c.