  Whereas the creation of true and immutable natures was the work of God’s freewill (not dictated according to his Wisdom, as Malebranche and other critics held), once created, they were necessary. In order to tie this necessity to the immutability of God’s will without limiting God in any way, Le Grand drew on a Scholastic distinction between antecedent and consequent necessity. He argued that true and immutable natures, such as mathematical truths, only possessed a consequent necessity. God did not will that 6+4=10 because he saw it could not be otherwise, but in virtue of his free will, 6+4 [necessarily] = 10; therefore it could not be otherwise. As Descartes put this same point, “And even if God has willed that some truths should be necessary, this does not mean that he willed them necessarily; for it is one thing to will that they be necessary, and quite another to will this necessarily, or to be necessitated to will it.” [1985–91c, p. 235]. For nothing outside of God, not even the eternal truths or immutable essences, necessitate that God act in one way or another, but rather, they are themselves eternal and immutable in virtue of the fact that God, whose existence is necessary and immutable, willed them in their essence and existence. Eternal truths and immutable essences are necessary only in that they presuppose and are consequent to the act of God who caused them. (Easton, 2009)