many times. He
would then prevent sin by something worse than all sins.

132. XVII. 'It is all the same whether one employ a necessary cause, or
employ a free cause while choosing the moments when one knows it to be
determined. If I imagine that gunpowder has the power to ignite or not to
ignite when fire touches it, and if I know for certain that it will be
disposed to ignite at eight o'clock in the morning, I shall be just as much
the cause of its effects if I apply the fire to it at that hour, as I
should be in assuming, as is the case, that it is a necessary cause. [203]
For where I am concerned it would no longer be a free cause. I should be
catching it at the moment when I knew it to be necessitated by its own
choice. It is impossible for a being to be free or indifferent with regard
to that to which it is already determined, and at the time when it is
determined thereto. All that which exists exists of necessity while it
exists. [Greek: To einai to on hotan ei, kai to me einai hotan me ei,
ananke.] "Necesse est id quod est, quando est, esse; et id quod non est,
quando non est, non esse": Arist., _De Interpret._, cap. 9. The Nominalists
have adopted this maxim of Aristotle. Scotus and sundry other Schoolmen
appear to reject it, but fundamentally their distinctions come to the same
thing. See the Jesuits of Coimbra on this passage from Aristotle, p. 380
_et seq._)'

This maxim may pass also; I would wish only to change something in the
phraseology. I would not take 'free' and 'indifferent' for one and the same
thing, and would not place 'free' and 'determined' in antithesis. One is
never altogether indifferent with an indifference of equipoise; one is
always more inclined and consequently more determined on one side than on
another: but one is never necessitated to the choice that one makes. I mean
here a _necessity_ absolute and metaphysical; for it must be admitted that
God, that wisdom, is prompted to the best by a _moral_ necessity. It must
be admitted also that one is necessitated to the choice by a hypothetical
necessity, when one actually makes the choice; and even before one is
necessitated thereto by the very truth of the futurition, since one will do
it. These hypothetical necessities do no harm. I have spoken sufficiently
on this point already.

133. XVIII. 'When a whole great people has become guilty of rebellion, it
is not showing clemency to pardon the hundred thousandth part, and to kill
all the