epresentation of the terms, we have to inquire, where lies the
alleged incompatibility of prescience and freedom? Between freedom
and necessity there is, we admit, an absolute and irreconcilable
discrepancy and opposition; for the assertion of the one is a direct
negation of the other. What is free cannot be necessitated, and what
is necessitated cannot be free. But _prescience_ involves no such
opposition. For simple knowledge is not coercive; it is not impulse;
it is not influence of any kind: it is merely acquaintance with
truth, or the mind's seeing a thing as it is. If I know the truth of
a proposition of Euclid, it is not my knowledge that makes it true.
It was a truth, and would have remained a truth, whether I knew it
or not, yea, even, if I had never existed. So of any fact in
history; so of any occurrence around me. My mere knowledge of the
fact did not make it fact, or exercise any influence in causing it
to be fact. So in reference to the Divine prescience; it is mere
knowledge, and is as distinct from force, constraint, or influence
as any two things can be distinct one from the other. It is force
which constitutes necessity, and the total absence of force which
constitutes liberty; and as all force is absent from mere knowledge,
it is evident that neither foreknowledge nor afterknowledge involves
any necessity, or interferes in the least degree with human freedom.
Man could not be more free than he is, if God were totally ignorant
of all his volitions and actions" (_Deity_, p. 293). Calvinists
sometimes entrench themselves behind God's foreknowledge as behind a
rampart of granite, but it gives in reality no support to their
system. That God knows the possible, and the contingent, was
illustrated in the case of David at Keilah. He had taken up his
temporary residence in this town. Saul was out on the war path, and
David wished to know if he would visit Keilah, and if so, whether
the men of Keilah would deliver him up. The answer was that Saul
would come, and the people would deliver him up. Receiving this
answer from God, he left. This shows that God's knowledge does not
necessitate an event (see 1 Sam. xxiii.)

He knows what might be, but which never will be. He saw how men
would act in regard to David, but His knowledge did not make them do
it. And He knows how men will act regarding the rejection of
salvation, but this does not necessitate them to ruin their souls.
He is certain that they might have bee