y?"

'Surely not.'

'True, for the Divine vision anticipates all that is coming, and
transforms and reduces it to the form of its own present knowledge, and
varies not, as thou deemest, in its foreknowledge, alternating to this
or that, but in a single flash it forestalls and includes thy mutations
without altering. And this ever-present comprehension and survey of all
things God has received, not from the issue of future events, but from
the simplicity of His own nature. Hereby also is resolved the objection
which a little while ago gave thee offence--that our doings in the
future were spoken of as if supplying the cause of God's knowledge. For
this faculty of knowledge, embracing all things in its immediate
cognizance, has itself fixed the bounds of all things, yet itself owes
nothing to what comes after.

'And all this being so, the freedom of man's will stands unshaken, and
laws are not unrighteous, since their rewards and punishments are held
forth to wills unbound by any necessity. God, who foreknoweth all
things, still looks down from above, and the ever-present eternity of
His vision concurs with the future character of all our acts, and
dispenseth to the good rewards, to the bad punishments. Our hopes and
prayers also are not fixed on God in vain, and when they are rightly
directed cannot fail of effect. Therefore, withstand vice, practise
virtue, lift up your souls to right hopes, offer humble prayers to
Heaven. Great is the necessity of righteousness laid upon you if ye will
not hide it from yourselves, seeing that all your actions are done
before the eyes of a Judge who seeth all things.'

FOOTNOTES:

[S] Plato expressly states the opposite in the 'Timaeus' (28B), though
possibly there the account of the beginning of the world in time is to
be understood figuratively, not literally. See Jowett, vol. iii., pp.
448, 449 (3rd edit.).

EPILOGUE.

Within a short time of writing 'The Consolation of Philosophy,' Boethius
died by a cruel death. As to the manner of his death there is some
uncertainty. According to one account, he was cut down by the swords of
the soldiers before the very judgment-seat of Theodoric; according to
another, a cord was first fastened round his forehead, and tightened
till 'his eyes started'; he was then killed with a club.

_Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London_

REFERENCES TO QUOTATIONS IN THE TEXT.

Bk. I., ch. iv., p. 17, l. 6: 'Iliad,' I. 363.

" ch