494 A BRIEF SCHEME' OF ONTOLOGY. some causes imperceptible to us. Yet the heathens have made this chance and fortune a fort of deities too, for want of their knowledge of the train of second causes, and a due regard to the first cause. Events in the moral world which arise from the were free will and choice of intelligent beings, are called contin- gent, because they are not brought 'into existence in a necessary manner by any natural connection of causes ; yet they are never ascribed to chance, for chance stands as much in opposition to design and freedom, as it (loth to fate and necessity. We might here just take occasion to observe, that not only with regard to existence are beings said to be necessary or con- tingent, but with regard to the manner of their existencealso. God is necessary in this respect as well as in the other, and therefore his being and his attributes are unchangeable, but crea- tures are changeable things, because their manner ofexistence is contingent, as well as their existence itself. Note 1. All the future events which arise from natural and necessary causes will not only certainly but necessarily exist ; and though we call many of them contingenciesbecause they are un- certain to us, yet they are not so to God who knows all things. So we say, it may or it may not rain to-morrow. 2. All the future actions of free agents and the events ari- sing from thence (both which are properly contingent) may be certainly foreknown by God ; and therefore we may say, they will certainly exist, though there be no such determination of them as to make them properly necessary ; for the great and un- searchable God, who has foretold many free actions of men, may have ways of knowing things certainly, which we cannot so mach as guess at. It is too audacious for man to assert that God can- not know things, merely because we cannot find out a medium for his knowledge of them. See some further considerations of necessity in chap. VI. where we treat of freedom. CÌlAP. IV. Of Duration, Creation, and Conservation. DURATION is merely a continuance inbeing, and this has commonly been divided into permanent and successive. Perma- nent duration belongs to God alone, and implies not only his con- tinuance in existence, but an universal, simultaneous and endless possession of all the same properties and powers without change. Successive duration belongs to creatures, and implies the conti- nuance of the same being with changeable and changing modes, powers, properties and actions one after another. It is only successive duration which is most properly divided into past, present, and future. The present taken in a strict sense is only the moment that now exists, and divides the hours or ages past from those which are to come. It is very hard for
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