nished.
That destroys justice and religion, and the fear of God. LAUR.--God foresaw
sin; but he did not compel man to commit it; sin is voluntary. ANT.--That
will was necessary, since it was foreseen. LAUR.--If my knowledge does not
cause things past or present to exist, neither will my foreknowledge cause
future things to exist.

408. ANT.--That comparison is deceptive: neither the present nor the past
can be changed, they are already necessary; but the future, movable in
itself, becomes fixed and necessary through foreknowledge. Let us [367]
pretend that a god of the heathen boasts of knowing the future: I will ask
him if he knows which foot I shall put foremost, then I will do the
opposite of that which he shall have foretold. LAUR.--This God knows what
you are about to do. ANT.--How does he know it, since I will do the
opposite of what he shall have said, and I suppose that he will say what he
thinks? LAUR.--Your supposition is false: God will not answer you; or
again, if he were to answer you, the veneration you would have for him
would make you hasten to do what he had said; his prediction would be to
you an order. But we have changed the question. We are not concerned with
what God will foretell but with what he foresees. Let us therefore return
to foreknowledge, and distinguish between the necessary and the certain. It
is not impossible for what is foreseen not to happen; but it is infallibly
sure that it will happen. I can become a Soldier or Priest, but I shall not
become one.

409. ANT.--Here I have you firmly held. The philosophers' rule maintains
that all that which is possible can be considered as existing. But if that
which you affirm to be possible, namely an event different from what has
been foreseen, actually happened, God would have been mistaken. LAUR.--The
rules of the philosophers are not oracles for me. This one in particular is
not correct. Two contradictories are often both possible. Can they also
both exist? But, for your further enlightenment, let us pretend that Sextus
Tarquinius, coming to Delphi to consult the Oracle of Apollo, receives the
answer:

_Exul inopsque cades irata pulsus ab urbe._
A beggared outcast of the city's rage,
Beside a foreign shore cut short thy age.

The young man will complain: I have brought you a royal gift, O Apollo, and
you proclaim for me a lot so unhappy? Apollo will say to him: Your gift is
pleasing to me, and I will do that which you ask of me,