Voetius' disputants: two states of the object of God's knowledge but three moments; conditionals belong to free knowledge
To set out their view on the matter more distinctly, those very learned men say that in the object of God's knowledge they consider two states, possibility and futurity, but three moments. In the first, God, looking at his own omnipotence, saw what he could do without contradiction. In the second, by an absolute decree he fixed beforehand within himself the modes, connections and sequences of everything that could be made: what would or would not be cause, effect, means and end, what would come before, together or after. He did this with one proviso: if he willed them to be future.
In the third, among the things fixed beforehand under that condition, he made a distinction. For some he left the condition standing and added the decree 'I do not will them to be future.' For others he removed the condition and put in its place the decree 'I will them to be future.'
Only in the third moment, they say, is a thing finally brought out of the state of possibility into the state of futurity. In the first two it stays in the state of possibility. The difference is that God knows things in the first moment by nature, before any act of his will, and in the second after an act of his will. These too are their words, in that third section, number 13.
Their words make it plain that they treat contingent futures under a condition not as truly future but as merely possible. Yet they want the knowledge of them to belong not to God's natural knowledge but to his free knowledge.
Latin
XXXIII. Atque ut viri illi Doctissimi mentem suam ea de re distinctius explicent, aiunt, Se considerare in objecto scientiae divinae duos status, possibilitatis & futuritionis, sed tria momenta. Primum, quando Deus intuendo suam omnipotentiam vidit quid absque contradictione a se fieri possit. Alterum, quando omnium fieri possibilium modos, connexiones, & concatenationes apud se decreto absoluto praefinivit, id est, quid causa, quid effectum, quid medium, quid finis, quid prius, quid simul, quid posterius foret, aut non foret; Sed cum hac cautione, si vellet eas futuras. Tertium, quando inter illas res, sub conditione tali praefinitas, discrimen statuit, relicta quibusdam conditione illa, & superaddito tali decreto, Nolo futuras, ab aliis sublata conditione, ejusque in locum substituto tali decreto, Volo futuras. In tertio momento, rem demum extrahi ex statu possibilitatis in statum futuritionis: in prioribus duobus manere in statu possibilitatis; hoc tamen discrimine, quod eas in primo per naturam, & ante omnem voluntatis actum cognoscat, in secundo post actum voluntatis. Quae sunt quoque eorum verba tertia illa sectione, num. 13. Ex quibus verbis patet eos futura contingentia sub conditione non habere pro vere futuris, sed pro mere possibilibus, & tamen velle ut eorum cognitio, non ad scientiam Dei naturalem, sed ad liberam pertineat.