Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/11

 result of his own mechanical contrivances. And this must be so, no matter what be the mechanism (if I may use such a word) employed by the Almighty Creator. In a word, if a part of this mechanism be what is termed free will, that is, a power vested by its Maker in the creature of acting according to or against His own Divine will, which power, He assures us, was granted to the creature for a moral purpose, namely, for rendering it fit or unfit to be hereafter associated with Himself; if such a power, as this were part of the mechanism employed by the Almighty Creator in the construction of the rational creature, that would no more hinder the Creator from certainly foreknowing the consequences and results of His own mechanism, than any mechanism invented by a human artificer could baffle the accuracy of the inventor's calculations.

God, then, knows all things, whether past or future; man is ignorant of the future, but he feels himself urged on to the consideration of it. What is he to do? From the earliest moments of human history God Himself has given us an answer to the question, in