he knows mutable things with an immutable and firm knowledge, {a437}
so he knows future things with a present knowledge;[707] not that the
things which are produced in time, were actually and really present
with him in their own beings from eternity; for then they could not
be produced in time; had they a real existence, then they would not be
creatures, but God; and had they actual being, then they could not be
future, for future speaks a thing to come that is not yet. If things
had been actually present with him, and yet future, they had been made
before they were made, and had a being before they had a being; but
they were all present to his knowledge as if they were in actual being,
because the reason of all things that were to be made, was present
with him. The reason of the will of God that they shall be, was
equally eternal with him, wherein he saw what, and when, and how he
would create things, how he would govern them, to what ends he would
direct them.[708] Thus all things are present to God’s knowledge,
though in their own nature they may be past or future, not in
_esse reali_, but in _esse intelligibili_, objectively, not actually
present;[709] for as the unchangeableness and infiniteness of God’s
knowledge of changeable and finite things, doth not make the things
he knows immutable and infinite, so neither doth the eternity of his
knowledge make them actually present with him from eternity; but all
things are present to his understanding, because he hath at once a
view of all successions of times; and his knowledge of future things
is as perfect as of present things, or what is past; it is not a
certain knowledge of present things, and an uncertain knowledge of
future, but his knowledge of one is as certain and unerring as his
knowledge of the other;[710] as a man that beholds a circle with
several lines from the centre, beholds the lines as they are joined
in the centre, beholds them also as they are distant and severed from
one another, beholds them in their extent and in their point all at
once, though they may have a great distance from one another. He saw
from the beginning of time to the last minute of it, all things coming
out of their causes, marching in their order according to his own
appointment; as a man may see a multitude of ants, some creeping one
way, some another, employed in several businesses for their winter
provision. The eye of God at once runs through the whole circle of
time; as the eye of man upon a tower sees all the passengers at once,
though some be past, some under the tower, some coming at a farther
distance. “God,” saith Job, “looks to the end of the earth, and sees
under the whole heaven” (Job xxviii. 24); the knowledge of God is
expressed by sight in Scripture, and futurity to God is the same
thing as distance to us; we can with a perspective‑glass make things
that are afar off appear as if they were near; and the sun, so many
thousand miles distant from us, to appear as if it were at the end of
the glass: why, then, should future things be at so great a distance
from God’s knowledge, when things so far from us may be made to
approach so near to us? God considers all things in his own simple
knowledge, as if they were now acted; and therefore some have
chosen to call the knowledge of things to come, not prescience, or
foreknowledge, but knowledge; {a438} because God sees all things in
one instant, _scientiâ nunquam deficientis instantiæ_.[711] Upon this
account, things that are to come, are set down in Scripture as present,
and sometimes as past (Isa. ix. 6): “Unto us a child is born,” though
not yet born; so of the sufferings of Christ (Isa. liii. 4, &c.): “He
hath borne our griefs, he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
taken from prison,” &c., not shall be; and (Ps. xxii. 18): “they part
my garments among them,” as if it were present; all to express the
certainty of God’s foreknowledge, as if things were actually present
before him.
(6.) This is proper to God, and incommunicable to any creature.
Nothing but what is eternal can know all things that are to come.
Suppose a creature might know things that are to come, after he is
in being, he cannot know things simply as future, because there were
things future before he was in being. The devils know not men’s hearts,
therefore cannot foretel their actions with any certainty; they
may indeed have a knowledge of some things to come, but it is only
conjectural, and often mistaken; as the devil was in his predictions
among the heathen, and in his presage of “Job’s cursing God to his
face” upon his pressing calamities (Job i. 11). Sometimes, indeed,
they have a certain knowledge of something future by the revelation
of God, when he uses them as instruments of his vengeance, or for
the trial of his people, as in the case of Job, when he gave him a
commission to strip him of his goods; or, as the angels have, when
he uses them as instruments of the deliverance of his people.
(7.) Though this be certain, that God foreknows all things and
actions, yet the manner of his knowing all things before they come, is
not so easily resolved. We must not, therefore, deny this perfection
in God, because we understand not the manner how he hath the knowledge
of all things. It were unworthy for us to own no more of God than we
can perfectly conceive of him; we should then own no more of him than
that he doth exist. “Canst thou,” saith Job, “by searching, find out
God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?” (Job xi. 7).
Do we not see things unknown to inferior creatures, to be known to
ourselves? Irrational creatures do not apprehend the nature of a man,
nor what we conceived of them when we look upon them; nor do we know
what they fancy of us when they look wistly upon us; for ought as I
know, we understand as little the manner of their imaginations, as
they do of ours; and shall we ascribe a darkness in God as to future
things, because we are ignorant of them, and of the manner how he
should know them?[712] shall we doubt whether God doth certainly know
those things which we only conjecture? As our power is not the measure
of the power of God, so neither is our knowledge the judge of the
knowledge of God, no better nor so well as an irrational nature can be
the judge of our reason. Do we perfectly know the manner how we know?
shall we therefore deny that we know anything? We know we have such a
faculty which we call understanding, but doth any man certainly know
what it is? and because he doth not, shall he deny that which is plain
and evident to him? {a439} Because we cannot ascertain ourselves of
the causes of the ebbing and flowing of the sea, of the manner how
minerals are engendered in the earth, shall we therefore deny that
which our eyes convince us of? And this will be a preparation to the
last thing.
Fifthly, God knows all future contingencies, that is, God knows all
things that shall accidentally happen, or, as we say, by chance; and
he knows all the free motions of men’s wills that shall be to the
end of the world. If all things be open to him (Heb. iv. 13), then
all contingencies are, for they are in the number of things; and as,
according to Christ’s speech, those things that are impossible to
man, are possible to God, so those things which are unknown to man,
are known to God; because of the infinite fulness and perfection of
the divine understanding. Let us see what a contingent is. That is
contingent which we commonly call accidental, as when a tile falls
suddenly upon a man’s head as he is walking in the street; or when
one letting off a musket at random shoots another he did not intend to
hit; such was that arrow whereby Ahab was killed, shot by a soldier at
a venture (1 Kings xxii. 39); this some call a mixed contingent, made
up partly of necessity, and partly of accident; it is necessary the
bullet, when sent out of the gun, or arrow out of the bow, should fly
and light somewhere; but it is an accident that it hits this or that
man, that was never intended by the archer. Other things, as voluntary
actions, are purely contingents, and have nothing of necessity in
them; all free actions that depend upon the will of man, whether to
do, or not to do, are of this nature, because they depend not upon a
necessary cause, as burning doth upon the fire, moistening upon water,
or as descent or falling down is necessary to a heavy body; for those
cannot in their own nature do otherwise; but the other actions depend
upon a free agent, able to turn to this or that point, and determine
himself as he pleases. Now we must know, that what is accidental in
regard of the creature, is not so in regard of God; the manner of
Ahab’s death was accidental, in regard of the hand by which he was
slain, but not in regard of God who foretold his death, and foreknew
the shot, and directed the arrow; God was not uncertain before of
the manner of his fall, nor hovered over the battle to watch for
an opportunity to accomplish his own prediction; what may be or not
be, in regard of us, is certain in regard of God; to imagine that
what is accidental to us, is so to God, is to measure God by our
short line. How many events following upon the results of princes in
their counsels, seem to persons, ignorant of those counsels, to be a
haphazard, yet were not contingencies to the prince and his assistants,
but foreseen by him as certainly to issue so as they do, which
they knew before would be the fruit of such causes and instruments
they would knit together! That may be necessary in regard of God’s
foreknowledge, which is merely accidental in regard of the natural
disposition of the immediate causes which do actually produce it;
contingent in its own nature, and in regard of us, but fixed in
the knowledge of God. One illustrates it by this similitude;[713] a
master sends two servants to one and the same place, two several ways,
unknown to one another; {a440} they meet at the place which their
master had appointed them; their meeting is accidental to them, one
knows not of the other, but it was foreseen by the master that they
should so meet; and that in regard of them it would seem a mere
accident, till they came to explain the business to one another; both
the necessity of their meeting, in regard of their master’s order, and
the accidentalness of it in regard of themselves, were in both their
circumstances foreknown by the master that employed them. For the
clearing of this, take it in this method.
1. It is an unworthy conceit of God in any to exclude him from the
knowledge of these things.
(1.) It will be a strange contracting of him to allow him no greater
a knowledge than we have ourselves. Contingencies are known to us
when they come into act, and pass from futurity to reality; and when
they are present to us, we can order our affairs accordingly; shall we
allow God no greater a measure of knowledge than we have, and make him
as blind as ourselves, not to see things of that nature before they
come to pass? Shall God know them no more? Shall we imagine God knows
no otherwise than we know? and that he doth, like us, stand gazing
with admiration at events? man can conjecture many things; is it fit
to ascribe the same uncertainty to God, as though he, as well as we,
could have no assurance till the issue appear in the view of all? If
God doth not certainly foreknow them, he doth but conjecture them;
but a conjectural knowledge is by no means to be fastened on God;
for that is not knowledge, but guess, and destroys a Deity by making
him subject to mistake; for he that only guesseth, may guess wrong;
so that this is to make God like ourselves, and strip him of an
universally acknowledged perfection of omniscience. A conjectural
knowledge, saith one,[714] is as unworthy of God as the creature is
unworthy of omniscience. It is certain man hath a liberty to act many
things this or that way as he pleases; to walk to this or that quarter,
to speak or not to speak; to do this or that thing, or not to do it;
which way a man will certainly determine himself, is unknown before to
any creature, yea, often at the present to himself, for he may be in
suspense; but shall we imagine this future determination of himself is
concealed from God? Those that deny God’s foreknowledge in such cases,
must either say, that God hath an opinion that a man will resolve
rather this way than that; but then if a man by his liberty determine
himself contrary to the opinion of God, is not God then deceived?
and what rational creature can own him for a God that can be deceived
in anything? or else they must say that God is at uncertainty,
and suspends his opinion without determining it any way; then he
cannot know free acts till they are done; he would then depend
upon the creature for his information; his knowledge would be every
instant increased, as things, he knew not before, came into act;
and since there are every minute an innumerable multitude of various
imaginations in the minds of men, there would be every minute an
accession of new knowledge to God which he had not before; besides,
this knowledge would be mutable according to the wavering and {a441}
weathercock resolutions of men, one while standing to this point,
another while to that, if he depended upon the creature’s
determination for his knowledge.
(2.) If the free acts of men were unknown before to God, no man
can see how there can be any government of the world by him. Such
contingencies may happen, and such resolves of men’s free‑wills
unknown to God, as may perplex his affairs, and put him upon new
counsels and methods for attaining those ends which he settled at
the first creation of things; if things happen which God knows not
of before, this must be the consequence; where there is no foresight,
there is no providence; things may happen so sudden, if God be
ignorant of them, that they may give a check to his intentions and
scheme of government, and put him upon changing the whole model of it.
How often doth a small intervening circumstance, unforeseen by man,
dash in pieces a long meditated and well‑formed design! To govern
necessary causes, as sun and stars, whose effects are natural and
constant in themselves, is easy to be imagined; but how to govern the
world that consists of so many men of free‑will, able to determine
themselves to this or that, and which have no constancy in themselves,
as the sun and stars have, cannot be imagined; unless we will allow
in God as great a certainty of foreknowledge of the designs and
actions of men, as there is inconstancy in their resolves. God must
be altering the methods of his government every day, every hour, every
minute, according to the determinations of men, which are so various
and changeable in the whole compass of the world in the space of one
minute; he must wait to see what the counsels of men will be, before
he could settle his own methods of government; and so must govern
the world according to their mutability, and not according to any
certainty in himself. But his counsel is stable in the midst of
multitudes of free devices in the heart of man (Prov. xix. 21), and
knowing them all before, orders them to be subservient to his own
stable counsel. If he cannot know what to‑morrow will bring forth in
the mind of a man, how can he certainly settle his own determination
of governing him? His decrees and resolves must be temporal, and
arise _pro re nata_, and he must alway be in counsel what he should do
upon every change of men’s minds. This is an unworthy conceit of the
infinite majesty of heaven, to make his government depend upon the
resolves of men, rather than their resolves upon the design of God.
2. It is therefore certain, that God doth foreknow the free and
voluntary acts of man. How could he else order his people to ask of
him things to come, in order to their deliverance, such things as
depended upon the will of man, if he foreknew not the motions of their
will (Isa. xlv. 11)?
(1.) Actions good or indifferent depending upon the liberty of man’s
will as much as any whatsoever. Several of these he hath foretold; not
only a person to build up Jerusalem was predicted by him, but the name
of that person, Cyrus (Isa. xliv. 28). What is more contingent, or is
more the effect of the liberty of man’s will, than the names of their
children? Was not the destruction of the Babylonish empire foretold,
which Cyrus undertook, not by any {a442} compulsion, but by a free
inclination and resolve of his own will? And was not the dismission
of the Jews into their own country a voluntary act in that conqueror?
If you consider the liberty of man’s will, might not Cyrus as well
have continued their yoke, as have struck off their chains, and kept
them captive, as well as dismissed them? Had it not been for his own
interest, rather to have strengthened the fetters of so turbulent a
people, who being tenacious of their religion and laws different from
that professed by the whole world, were like to make disturbances more
when they were linked in a body in their own country, than when they
were transplanted and scattered into the several parts of his empire?
It was in the power of Cyrus (take him as a man) to choose one or the
other; his interest invited him to continue their captivity, rather
than grant their deliverance; yet God knew that he would willingly
do this rather than the other; he knew this which depended upon the
will of Cyrus; and why may not an infinite God foreknow the free acts
of all men, as well as of one? If the liberty of Cyrus’ will was no
hindrance to God’s certain and infallible foreknowledge of it, how
can the contingency of any other thing be a hindrance to him? for
there is the same reason of one and all; and his government extends
to every village, every family, every person, as well as to kingdoms
and nations. So God foretold, by his prophet, not only the destruction
of Jeroboam’s altar, but the name of the person that should be the
instrument of it (1 Kings xiii. 2), and this about 300 years before
Josiah’s birth. It is a wonder that none of the pious kings of Judah,
in detestation of idolatry, and hopes to recover again the kingdom
of Israel, had in all that space named one of their sons by that name
of Josiah, in hopes that that prophecy should be accomplished by him;
that Manasseh only should do this, who was the greatest imitator of
Jeroboam’s idolatry among all the Jewish kings, and indeed went beyond
them; and had no mind to destroy in another kingdom what he propagated
in his own. What is freer than the imposition of a name? yet this he
foreknew, and this Josiah was Manasseh’s son (2 Kings xxi. 26). Was
there anything more voluntary than for Pharaoh to honor the butler
by restoring him to his place, and punish the baker by hanging him
on a gibbet? yet this was foretold (Gen. xl. 8). And were not all the
voluntary acts of men, which were the means of Joseph’s advancement,
foreknown by God, as well as his exaltation, which was the end he
aimed at by those means? Many of these may be reckoned up. Can all
the free acts of man surmount the infinite capacity of the Divine
understanding? If God singles out one voluntary action in man as
contingent as any, and lying among a vast number of other designs
and resolutions, both antecedent and subsequent, why should he not
know the whole mass of men’s thoughts and actions, and pierce into
all that the liberty of man’s will can effect? why should he not know
every grain, as well as one that lies in the midst of many of the same
kind? And since the Scripture gives so large an account of contingents,
predicted by God, no man can certainly prove that anything is
unforeknown to him. It is as reasonable to think he knows every
contingent, as that he knows some that lie as much hid from the eye of
any creature, {a443} since there is no more difficulty to an infinite
understanding to know all, than to know some.[715] Indeed, if we deny
God’s foreknowledge of the voluntary actions of men, we must strike
ourselves off from the belief of scripture predictions that yet remain
unaccomplished, and will be brought about by the voluntary engagements
of men, as the ruin of antichrist, &c. If God foreknows not the
secret motions of man’s will, how can he foretel them? if we strip
him of this perfection of prescience, why should we believe a word of
scripture predictions? all the credit of the word of God is torn up by
the roots. If God were uncertain of such events, how can we reconcile
God’s declaration of them to his truth; and his demanding our belief
of them to his goodness? Were it good and righteous in God to urge
us to the belief of that he were uncertain of himself, how could
he be true in predicting things he were not sure of? or good, in
requiring credit to be given to that which might be false? This would
necessarily follow, if God did not foreknow the motions of men’s wills,
whereby many of his predictions were fulfilled, and some remain yet to
be accomplished.