felves, through fomething that they have not, because they have nothing valuable in themfelves to recommend them; and this difpofes them to embrace the most palpable errors, and to close their eyes that they cannot, or will not, fee the most obvious truths. I fhall conclude this discourse with a very melancholy reflexion, namely, that as the Christian Religion is too much become a mere faction, the votaries to which have a party and an intereft to fupport; fo this becomes a powerful, and, it is to be feared, that fometimes it proves a prevailing temptation, to some of them, to turn the truth of God into a lie. A N ANSWER ΤΟ Α PRIVATE LETTER FROM A STRANGER to the AUTHOR, Ο Ν The Subject of GOD's Foreknowledge. 1 An ANSWER to a PRI- SIR, C. Received your Letter, but whether it will be in my power' to 'contribute any thing towards a removal of that perplexity you complain of, I cannot fay. In the cafe you refer to, you feem to me, to prefume a point, without offering a fufficient reafon to ground that prefumption upon. The point prefumed, is, that God does certainly foreknow every thing that will be; and the reafon you ground it upon, is, that the want of fuch foreknowledge implies an imperfection, which, you think, cannot be the cafe with refpect to God, and therefore, you prefume as above. To which, I think, it will be fufficient to answer, that if the actions of free beings are not in the nature of the thing foreknowable; then, it cannot poffibly be an imperfection in God for him not to foreknow what is not foreknowable in nature; because fuch foreknowledge is impoffible. So that this point must first be proved, viz. that the actions of free beings are in the nature of the thing foreknowable, before the want of fuch prefcience can justly be deemed an imperfection. God is actually prefent to every thing that is, in every part of space; and, hereby, he has a perfect |
