Matthew 1:22

22. Now all this was done All this includes the whole narrative (from Matthew 1:18) of the events of the miraculous birth. That it might be fulfilled But did the entire train of events take place in order to fulfil that one prophecy? To obviate so absurd a meaning some learned men have shown that the phrase might be translated: All this was done SO THAT it was fulfilled. But the present translation leads to no absurd result. All these things did transpire, in order, among other and more direct purposes, to the fulfilment of that prophecy, inasmuch as the fulfilment of that prophecy was at the same time the accomplishment of the Incarnation of the Redeemer, and the verification of the divine prediction. Nor is there any predestinarian fatalism in all this. God predicts what he foresees that men will freely do; and then men do freely in turn fulfil what God predicts, and so unconsciously act in order to verify God’s veracity. Moreover there is no fatalism in supposing that God has high plans, which he does with infinite wisdom carry out through the free, unnecessitated, unpredestinated, though foreseen wills of men. Such is his inconceivable wisdom, that he can so place free agents in a free system of probation, that whichever way they freely turn they will but further his great generic plans and verify his foreknowledge. So that it may in a right sense be true that all things are done by free agents, in order to so desirable an end as to fulfil the divine foresight.