o necessity maketh him to go that goeth of his own
accord, although it be necessary that he goeth while he goeth. In like
manner, if providence seeth anything present, that must needs be,
although it hath no necessity of nature. But God beholdeth those future
things, which proceed from free-will, present. These things, therefore,
being referred to the divine sight are necessary by the condition of the
divine knowledge, and, considered by themselves, they lose not absolute
freedom of their own nature. Wherefore doubtless all those things come
to pass which God foreknoweth shall come, but some of them proceed from
free-will, which though they come to pass, yet do not, by coining into
being, lose, since before they came to pass, they might also not have
happened. But what importeth it that they are not necessary, since that
by reason of the condition of the divine knowledge they come to pass in
all respects as if they were necessary? It hath the same import as those
things which I proposed a little before--the sun rising and the man
going. While they are in doing, they cannot choose but be in doing; yet
one of them was necessarily to be before it was, and the other not.
Likewise those things which God hath present, will have doubtless a
being, but some of them proceed from the necessity of things, other from
the power of the doers. And therefore we said not without cause that
these, if they be referred to God's knowledge, are necessary; and if
they be considered by themselves, they are free from the bonds of
necessity. As whatsoever is manifest to senses, if thou referrest it to
reason, is universal; if thou considerest the things themselves, it is
singular or particular. But thou wilt say, 'If it is in my power to
change my purpose, shall I frustrate providence if I chance to alter
those things which she foreknoweth?' I answer that thou mayest indeed
change thy purpose, but because the truth of providence, being present,
seeth that thou canst do so, and whether thou wilt do so or no, and what
thou purposest anew, thou canst not avoid the divine foreknowledge, even
as thou canst not avoid the sight of an eye which is present, although
thou turnest thyself to divers actions by thy free-will.

But yet thou wilt inquire whether God's knowledge shall be changed by
thy disposition, so that when thou wilt now one thing, and now another,
it should also seem to have