Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (Foote).djvu/59

 which cannot be conceived possible of any being, and is contrary to this self-evident, truth that whatever has a beginning must have a cause. But if things are not indifferent to him, he must be necessarily determined by what is best. Besides, as he is a wise being, he must have some end and design, and as he is a good being, things cannot be indifferent to him, when the happiness of intelligent and sensible beings depend on the will he has in the formation of things. With what consistency, therefore, can those advocates of Liberty assert God to be a holy and good being, who maintain that all things are indifferent to him before he wills anything, and that he may will and do all things which they themselves esteem wicked and unjust?

I cannot give a better confirmation of this argument from the consideration of the attributes of God than by the judgment of the late Bishop of Sarum, which has the more weight as proceeding from a great assertor of Liberty, who by the force of truth is driven to say what he does. He grants that infinite perfection excludes successive thoughts in God, and therefore that the essence of God is one perfect thought, in which he views and wills all things. And though his transient acts, such as creation, providence, and miracles, are done in a succession of time; yet his immanent acts, his knowledge and decrees, are one with his essence. And as he grants this to be a true notion of God, so he allows that a vast difficulty arises from it against the Liberty of God. For, says he, the immanent acts of God being supposed free, it is not easy to imagine how they should be one with the divine essence; to which necessary existence does most certainly belong. And if the immanent acts of God are necessary, then the transient must be so likewise, as