CHANCE A term we apply to events to denote that they happen without any necessary or foreknown cause. When we say a thing happens by chance, we mean no more than that its cause is unknown to us, and not, as some vainly imagine, that chance itself can be the cause of any thing. "The case of the painter," says Chambers, "who, unable to express the foam at the mouth of the horse he had painted, threw his sponge in despair at the piece, and by chance did that which he could not do before by design, is an eminent instance of what is called chance. Yet it is obvious all we here mean by chance, is, that the painter was not aware of the…

FATE Denotes an inevitable necessity depending upon a superior cause. The word is formed a fando, "from speaking," and primarily implies the same with effatum, vis. a word or decree pronounced by God, or a fixed sentence whereby the Deity has prescribed the order of things, and allotted to every person what shall befal him. The Greeks called it as it were a chain or necessary series of things indissolubly linked together. It is also used to express a certain unavoidable designation of things, by which all agents, both necessary and voluntary, are swayed and directed to their ends. Fate is divided into physical and divine. 1. Physical fate is an order and series of natural causes, appropriated to their effects; as, that fire warms;…

FOREKNOWLEDGE Is his foresight or knowledge of every thing that is to come to pass, Acts 2:23. This foreknowledge, says Charnock, was from eternity. Seeing he knows things possible in his power, and things future in his will, if his power and resolves were from eternity, his knowledge must be so too; or else we must make him ignorant of his own power, and ignorant of his own will from eternity, and consequently not from eternity blessed and perfect. His knowledge of possible things must run parallel with his will. If he willed from eternity, he knew from eternity what he willed; but that he did will from eternity we must grant, unless we would render his changeable, and conceive him to be made in…

PRESCIENCE OF GOD Is his foreknowledge, or that knowledge which God has of things to come. The doctrine of predestination is founded on the prescience of God, and on the supposition of all futurity being present to him. Properly speaking, indeed, prescience follows that of predestination; for if we allow that God from all eternity foresaw all things, he must thus have foreseen them in consequence of his permitting or fore-appointing them. Hence events are not certain merely because foreknown; but foreknown because antecedently certain on account of pre-determining reasons.

NECESSITY Whatever is done by a cause or power that is irresistible, in which sense it is opposed to freedom. Man is a necessary agent, if all his actions be so determined by the causes preceding each action, that not one past action could possibly not have come to pass, or have been otherwise than it hath been, nor one future action can possibly not come to pass, or be otherwise than it shall be. On the other hand, it is asserted, that he is a free agent, if he be able at any time, under the causes and circumstances he then is, to do different things; or, in other words, if he be not unavoidably determined in every point of time by the circumstances…