But why am I so mightily mistaken? Did not God foreknow that Uriah in particular, should be murdered by David in particular? And what God foreknoweth shall come to pass, can that possibly not come so to pass? And that which cannot possibly not come to pass, doth not that necessarily come to pass? And is not all necessity from God? I cannot see this great mistake. “The general power,” saith he, “to act is from God, but the specification to do this act upon Uriah, is not from God, but from free-will.” Very learnedly. As if there were a power that were not the power to do some particular act; or a power to kill, and yet to kill nobody in particular. If the power be to kill, it is to kill that which shall be by that power killed, whether it be Uriah or any other; and the giving of that power, is the application of it to the act; nor doth power signify anything actually, but those motions and present acts from which the act that is not now, but shall be hereafter, necessarily proceedeth. And therefore this argument is much like that which used heretofore to be brought for the defence of the divine right of the bishops to the ordination of ministers. They derive not, say they, the right of ordination from the civil sovereign, but from Christ immediately. And yet they acknowledge that it is unlawful for them to ordain, if the civil power do forbid them. But how have they right to ordain, when they cannot do it lawfully? Their answer is, they have the right, though they may not exercise it; as if the right to ordain, and the right to exercise ordination, were not the same thing. And as they answer concerning right, which is legal power, so the Bishop answereth concerning natural power, that David had a general power to kill Uriah from God, but not a power of applying this power in special to the killing of Uriah from God, but from his own free will; that is, he had a power to kill Uriah, but not to exercise it upon Uriah, that is to say, he had a power to kill him, but not to kill him, which is absurd. (_e_) “But if the case be put why God doth punish one more than another, or why he throws one into hell fire, and not another, which is the present case between us; to say with T. H., that it is because God is omnipotent, or because his power is irresistible, or merely because it is his pleasure, is not only not warranted, but is plainly condemned by St. Paul in this place.”