to come. For which cause it is not called praevidence or foresight, but
rather providence, because, placed far from inferior things, it
overlooketh all things, as it were, from the highest top of things. Why,
therefore, wilt thou have those things necessary which are illustrated
by the divine light, since that not even men make not those things
necessary which they see? For doth thy sight impose any necessity upon
those things which thou seest present?" "No." "But the present instant
of men may well be compared to that of God in this: that as you see some
things in your temporal instant, so He beholdeth all things in His
eternal present. Wherefore this divine foreknowledge doth not change the
nature and propriety of things, and it beholdeth them such in His
presence as they will after come to be, neither doth He confound the
judgment of things, and with one sight of His mind He discerneth as well
those things which shall happen necessarily as otherwise. As you, when
at one time you see a man walking upon the earth and the sun rising in
heaven, although they be both seen at once, yet you discern and judge
that the one is voluntary, and the other necessary, so likewise the
divine sight beholding all things disturbeth not the quality of things
which to Him are present, but in respect of time are yet to come. And so
this is not an opinion but rather a knowledge grounded upon truth, when
He knoweth that such a thing shall be, which likewise He is not ignorant
that it hath no necessity of being. Here if thou sayest that cannot
choose but happen which God seeth shall happen, and that which cannot
choose but happen, must be of necessity, and so tiest me to this name of
necessity, I will grant that it is a most solid truth, but whereof
scarce any but a contemplator of divinity is capable. For I will answer
that the same thing is necessary when it is referred to the Divine
knowledge; but when it is weighed in its own nature that it seemeth
altogether free and absolute. For there be two necessities: the one
simple, as that it is necessary for all men to be mortal; the other
conditional, as if thou knowest that any man walketh, he must needs
walk. For what a man knoweth cannot be otherwise than it is known. But
this conditional draweth not with it that simple or absolute necessity.
For this is not caused by the nature of the thing, but by the adding a
condition. For n