"“... all propositions whether positive or negative are either true or false . . . so if one man affirms that an event of a given character will take place and another denies it, it is plain that the statement of the one will correspond with reality and that of the other will not.

[T]o say that neither the affirmation nor the denial is true, maintaining, let us say, that an event neither will take place nor will not take place, is to take up a position impossible to defend. ... if an event is neither to take place nor not to take place the next day ... it would be necessary that a sea-fight should neither take place nor fail to take place on the next day.”

“Having proved that God has a certain prescience of the act of the will of moral agents, I come now, in the second place, to show the consequence; to show how it follows that these events are necessary.

I would observe the following things:

1. I observed before, in explaining the nature of necessity, that in thins which are past, their past existence is now necessary: having already made sure of existence, it is too late for any possibility of alteration in that respect …

2. If there be any such thing as a divine foreknowledge of the volitions of free agents, that foreknowledge … is a thing which already has, and long ago had, existence; and so, now its existence is necessary ….

3. It is also very manifest, that those things which are indissolubly connected with other things that are necessary, are themselves necessary. …

4. It is no less evident, that if there be a full, certain, and infallible foreknowledge of the future existence of the volitions of moral agents, then there is a certain infallible and indissoluble connection between those events and that foreknowledge.”

“Although contingent things become actual successively, nevertheless God knows contingent things not successively, as they are in their own being, as we do, but simultaneously. The reason is because His knowledge is measured by eternity, as is also His being; and eternity being simultaneously whole comprises all time, as said above ... Hence all things that are in time are present to God from eternity ... because His glance is carried from eternity over all things as they are in their presentiality.”