Baron: like a wise builder, God deliberated what would follow, including free causes given their occasions
He states his own and Fonseca's view on the matter like this. 'Those who wisely undertake a great work first consider what will follow from it before they decide absolutely and definitely to do it. In the same way God, best and greatest, before he willed with an absolute and definite will to create the world, considered, as if deliberating with himself (to speak in our human way), what would follow if he set up heaven and earth and everything in them in the very manner and order in which he later actually arranged them.
By a kind of hypothetical knowledge he knew which events would come about, and of what kind, if all things were arranged in the manner and order in which they are now arranged. God knew not only what would happen if natural causes were set up in the order and manner in which they are arranged. He also knew what would happen if free causes were offered the opportunities to act or not act that they now have, or that free causes which existed earlier had.
For God, whose judgements are beyond understanding, knew with certainty what would happen if these or those opportunities were offered to men or angels. For example, by this conditional knowledge God knew what would happen if Adam's wife, led astray by the serpent, persuaded Adam to eat the apple.'
General Metaphysics adapted to the use of theology, section 12, disputation 2, numbers 55 and 56, and many other places in the same disputation.
Latin
XXVII. Atque sic suam & Fonsecae mentem ea de re declarat. Nempe Quemadmodum illi qui sapienter magnum aliquod opus moliuntur, prius apud se cogitant quid ex eo consequuturum sit, quam absolute & determinate illud facere decernant; ita Deum Opt. Max. more nostro intelligendi, priusquam absoluta determinataque voluntate vellet mundum condere, quasi apud se deliberantem cogitavisse quid esset secuturum, si coelum & terram, & ea omnia quae in iis continentur, hoc ipso modo & ordine quo actu ea postea disposuit, constitueret, & scientia quadam hypothetica scivisse qui & qualis eventus evenirent, si res omnes eo modo & ordine disponerentur, quo jam dispositae sunt: neque Deum scivisse tantum quid eveniret, si causae naturales hoc ordine ac modo quo dispositae sunt, constituerentur: sed etiam quid eveniret si causae liberae haberent has occasiones agendi, aut non agendi oblatas, quas jam habent, aut quas causae liberae quae prius existebant habuerunt: Deum enim, cujus judicia incomprehensibilia sunt, certo cognovisse quid esset eventurum, si hae aut illae occasiones hominibus, vel Angelis offerrentur: exempli causa, Deum per scientiam hanc conditionatam novisse quid esset eventurum, si Adami uxor seducta a Serpente Adamo suaderet ut pomum ederet. In Metaphysica generali ad Theologiae usum accommodata sect. 12. disp. 2. num. 55, & 56. & pluribus aliis locis in eadem disputatione.