(_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.