responded, as to leave no place for doubt or cavil. Instances are so plain and well known that they need not be mentioned. And surely what was so expressly foretold could not but have been foreknown. It seems then an attempt also equally hopeless and unrelieving, as it were adventurous and bold, to offer at the protection of his wisdom and sincerity, by assaulting his prescience or certain foreknowledge of whatsoever shall come to pass. And that their defence is not to be attempted this way, will further most evidently appear from hence, that it is not impossible to assign particular instances of some or other most confessedly wicked actions; against which God had directed those ordinary means of counselling and dehorting men, and which yet it is most certain he did foreknow they would do. As, though it was so punctually determined even to a day,' and was (though not so punctually) foretold unto Abraham, how long, from that time, his seed should be strangers in a land that was not theirs; yet how frequent are the counsels and warnings sent to Pharaoh to dismiss them sooner; yea, how often are Moses and Aaron directed to claim their liberty, and exhort Pharaoh to let them go, and at the same time told, he should not hearken to them.* Nor indeed is it more seldom said that the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, lest he should. Though it may be a doubt whether those passages be truly translated; for the gentler meaning of the Hebrew idiom being well known, it would seem more agreeable to the text,

1 Exod. xi. 41.

2 Gen. xv. 3.

3 What there is of difficulty or doubt about this prophecy, see fully cleared in the late letter to the Deist.

4 Exod. iv. &c.

C

to have expressed only the intended sense, than to have strained a word to the very utmost of its literal import, and manifestly beyond what was intended. After the like manner is the prophet Ezekiel sent to the revolted Israelites, and directed to speak to them with God's own words, the sum and purport whereof was to warn and dehort them from their wicked ways, lest they should die; when as yet it is plainly told him, 'but the house of Israel will not hearken to thee, for they will not hearken to me.' Unto which same purpose it is more pertinent, than necessary to be added, that our Saviour's own plain assertions that he was the Son of God, the many miracles by which he confirmed it, and his frequent exhortations to the Jews to believe in him thereupon, had a manifest tendency to make him be known and believed to be so, and consequently to prevent that most horrid act of his crucifixion; for it is said, and the matter speaks itself, that, if they had known they would not have crucified the Lord of glory notwithstanding that it was a thing which God's hand and counsel had determined before to be done. That is, foreseeing wicked hands would be prompted and ready for this tragic enterprise, his sovereign power and wise counsel concurred with his foreknowledge so only, and not with less latitude, to define or determine the bounds and limits of that malignity, than to let it proceed unto this execution; and to deliver him up (not by any formal resignation, or surrender, as we well know, but permitting him) thereunto. Though the same phrase of delivering him hath, elsewhere, another notion, of assigning or appointing him to 3 Acts, iv. 28.

Ezek. iii. 7.

3

2 1 Cor. ii.

be a propitiation for the sins of men, by dying; which was done by mutual agreement between both the parties, him that was to propitiate, and him who was to be propitiated. In which respect our Saviour is also said to have given himself for the same purpose; which purpose it was determined not to hinder prepared hands to execute in this way.

Now if it did appear but in one single instance only, that the blessed God did foreknow, and dehort from the same act, it will be plainly consequent, that his warnings, and dehortations from wicked actions in the general, can with no pretence be alleged as a proof against his universal prescience. For if the argument he dehorted from the doing such an action, therefore he did not foreknow it, would be able to conclude any thing, it must be of sufficient force to conclude universally; which it cannot do, if but a single instance can be given, wherein it is apparent he did both dehort and foreknow. It can only pretend to raise the doubt which we have in hand to discuss, how fitly, and with what wisdom and sincerity, he can be understood to interpose his counsels and monitions in such a case.

SECT. VI. Wherefore nothing remains but to consider how these may be reconciled, and made appear to be no way inconsistent with one another. Nor are we to apprehend herein so great a difficulty, as it were to reconcile his irresistible predeterminative concurrence to all actions of the creature, even those that are in themselves most

Tit. ii. 14.

malignantly wicked, with the wisdom and righteousness of his laws against them, and severest punishments of them according to those laws. Which sentiments must, I conceive, to any impartial understanding, leave it no way sufficiently explicable, how the influence and concurrence, the holy God hath to the worst of actions, is to be distinguished from that which he affords to the best; wherein such inherently evil actions are less to be imputed to him who forbids them, than to the malicious tempter who prompts to them, or the actor that does them; or wherein not a great deal more; and leave it undeniable, that the matter of all his laws, in reference to all such actions that ever have been done in the world, was a simple and most natural impossibility. Nothing being more apparently so, than either not to do an action whereto the agent is determined by an infinite power; or to separate the malignity thereof, from an intrinsically evil action; and that this natural impossibility of not sinning was the ineluctable fate of his (at first) innocent creatures: who also (as the case is to be conceived of with the angels that kept not their first station) must be understood irreversibly condemned to the suffering of eternal punishment, for the doing of what it was (upon these terms) so absolutely impossible to them to avoid.

SECT. VII. This too hard province the present design pretends not to intermeddle in, as being neither apprehended manageable, for those briefly mentioned considerations, and many more that are wont to be insisted on in this argument: nor indeed at all necessary. For though many considerations have been, with great subtlety,

alleged and urged to this purpose, by former and some modern writers, (which it is besides the design of these papers severally to discuss,) these two which seem the most importunate and enforcing, will, I conceive, be found of little force; and then the less strength which is in others, will be nothing formidable viz. that it necessarily belongs to the original and fountain being, to be the first cause of whatsoever being; and consequently that what there is of positive being in any the most wicked action, must principally owe itself to the determinative productive influence of this first and sovereign cause. Otherwise it would seem there were some being that were neither primum nor a primo. And again, (which we are more concerned to consider, because it more concerns our present subject,) that it were otherwise impossible God should foreknow the sinful actions of men, (many whereof, as hath been observed, he hath foretold,) if their futurition were a mere contingency, and depended on the uncertain will of the subordinate agent, not determined by the supreme. But neither of these seem able to infer the dismal conclusion of God's concurring by a determinative influence unto wicked actions. Not the former; for it may well be thought sufficiently to salve the rights and privileges of the first cause, to assert that no action can be done but by a power derived from it; which in reference to forbidden actions, intelligent creatures may use or not use as they please, without over-asserting, that they must be irresistibly determined also, even to the worst of actions done by them. Besides that it seems infinitely to detract from the perfection of the ever-blessed God, to affirm he was not able to make a creature, of such