About a year ago, Triabloguer Paul Manata tried to take Vincent Cheung to task for asserting that God immediately and directly causes people to believe everything they believe. In spite of the fact that Vincent Cheung states that God causes men to know in this way; I do not find in the quotes provided by Manata that Cheung believes that God causes men in this way to believe all they believe. In other words, when knowledge is gained, Cheung is quoted as asserting God acts immediately and directly upon the mind. Yet, as Cheung knows, not all beliefs constitute knowledge; so without further evidence I cannot take Cheung to mean that God acts immediately and directly when one believes that which he does not know. Cheung may believe that but I do not believe that he does, which does not mean I disbelieve that he does. I have no basis for either belief. Nonetheless, let us assume with Mr. Manata that when Cheung says that "God causes people to believe lies as he wishes (and as Scripture teaches)..." that Cheung means that God does so immediately and directly.

Now for Manata's criticism of Cheung's epistemology:
"God immediately and directly causes people to believe everything they believe. Lie or truth. At this point I would like to know how Cheung knows anything? How does he know that God is not deceiving Cheung? If he replies that he has deductively valid arguments, deduced from scriptural premises, he doesn't escape. This is because the argument is only good if the premises are true. Cheung takes his understanding of verses and this understanding he has was immediately conveyed to his mind by God. Could God be deceiving Cheung? How would Cheung know?... So, when those divines who argued for an infralapsarian position, from the texts of Scripture, their understanding of those texts was wrong, according to Cheung, and their understanding, according to Cheung, was immediately conveyed by God on the occasion that they read those texts. Is Cheung better than those men? ...Cheung would need to show in a non-question begging manor that he was not deceived in this instance..."
I will break-up and interact with Manta's quotes in more manageable pieces below.
For Cheung, sufficient and necessary conditions for knowledge are justified true belief, where justification is maximal warrant and, therefore, excludes inductive inference.
What is not being considered in the above criticism of Vincent Cheung’s epistemology is that although God can cause one to believe a lie; God cannot cause one to know a lie. Accordingly, Cheung, like Paul Manata or anyone else, can have reason to believe false propositions but such false beliefs can never entail the same confirmation that accompanies knowledge, since by the nature of the case what is falsely believed is contrary to truth and, therefore, the consistency that accompanies knowledge. How does Cheung know anything? Well, by the same way anyone else knows anything – by possessing true belief due to maximal warrant, which does not occur when one believes anything false (like a lie).
One cannot be deceived into knowing something false. One can only be deceived into believing something false. False beliefs can even be rational. In fact, we often do well to think falsely about many things. For instance, if my wife calls me on my cell phone and our home number appears on the caller-ID, then I should believe she is calling from home; although it is possible that the caller-ID is not functioning properly and that she did not make the call from home. In such a case, I should believe something false.

Deceptive-beliefs fall into the more general category of inference since one cannot be deceived into knowing something false. Accordingly, our query need not be limited to how one knows he is not being deceived but rather can be expanded to: how one knows that he knows. In other words, how can men who can believe falsely know anything and know that they know?

How one knows is discussed above. In the like manner, one knows that he knows in the same manner in which one knows anything – by way of belief due to maximal warrant, which always entails truth.
In the final analyes, one can believe false propositions either due to deception or carelessness, or even rationally. One can even believe they know when they don’t. Such error can take many forms, including elevating rational inference to maximal warrant, or being deceived over the truth of premises in a deductive argument. However, if one is deceived about the truth of premises, he doesn’t have maximal warrant. The only question at this juncture is whether God when deceiving men through a lying spirit or “immediately” gives men the same confirmation as when he grants men maximal warrant. Manata seems to think that Cheung thinks so. I, however, do not assume that since it is not deducible from what I have read in Cheung. I would argue that God does not grant men such maximal warrant because it would be impossible to do so! There are no isolated truths that do not impinge upon other truths. Accordingly, for God to grant maximal warrant to a false proposition would mean that God could contradict himself, given what maximal warrant entails. Consequently, when God causes men to believe a lie - He does just that. He causes men to believe, not know, a lie. Such a truth could entail men believing that they know something when they don’t, but doesn’t Manata’s own epistemology allow for that?

Manata reasons by false disjunction. That one can believe he knows something that is false, does not imply that one cannot know that he knows when he knows. It doesn't matter who or what is the cause of deception or error because even when God causes the error He does not do so by granting maximal warrant for the false belief. Roman Catholic apologists make the same category of mistake when they allege that fallible men who can mistakenly believe cannot infallibly know gospel-truth contained in God’s word apart from an infallible magisterium. Romanists compound the error (and even introduce a new inconsistency to their position) by introducing the need for an infallible magisterium; yet the intitial mistake is the same, which proceeds upon the premise that fallible men cannot acquire knowledge directly from God. Now obviously Manata does not think his position entails such an error - hence his criticism of Cheung's position. Manata’s criticism is faulty but if he is to apply it to occasionalists and scripturalists he might as well apply it any epistemology that allows for knowledge and false-beliefs, even his own I would imagine.

"So, when those divines who argued for an infralapsarian position, from the texts of Scripture, their understanding of those texts was wrong, according to Cheung, and their understanding, according to Cheung, was immediately conveyed by God on the occasion that they read those texts. Is Cheung better than those men?"
If correct doctrine means “better than those men,” then yes, the high-Cavlinists were better. Cheung can know that infralapsarianism is false and that his position is true yet while believing he knows things he doesn’t.
Why must Cheung be able to persuade someone else that he knows something in order to know something? Moreover, that Cheung can be wrong does not mean he cannot know he knows. It only means that he is capable of believing he knows when he does not know. Either Manata must consign himself to skepticism or claim perfect knowledge if he doesn’t allow for fallible men to know while being capable of being deceived.

Finally, I would argue that one can know that God would never deceive him, which is not to say that God does not deceive men; He does.

I would hope these Reformed thinkers are speaking by each other.
"Cheung would need to show in a non-question begging manor that he was not deceived in this instance."

"If he replies that he has deductively valid arguments, deduced from scriptural premises, he doesn't escape. This is because the argument is only good if the premises are true. Cheung takes his understanding of verses and this understanding he has was immediately conveyed to his mind by God. Could God be deceiving Cheung? How would Cheung know?"

"How does he know that God is not deceiving Cheung?"

"God immediately and directly causes people to believe everything they believe. Lie or truth. At this point I would like to know how Cheung knows anything..."