to say that our will is contingently free seeing this is as much as to say it is possible that the will of man should not be free But you give a reason and it is worthy our consideration if perhaps therby we may perceyve to what issue of tolerable sense your present discourse may be brought And the reason is this For unto every cogitation possible to man or Angell he hath everlastingly decreed a proportionate end to every antecedent possible a correspondent consequent which needes no other cause or meanes to produce it but only the reducing of possibility granted by his decree into act For what way soever of many equally possible mans will doth encline Gods decree is a like necessary cause of all the good or evill that befalls him for it I looked for an elucidation of a former assertion or two of yours namely that God is the true and principall cause of every action and deede that hath passed from you this yeere like as he had beene the cause as you say of every thought and action that might have passed from you if the frame of your thoughts and actions had beene altered The other assertion was that our will is necessarily subject unto Gods will which also is delivered in reference to the former assertion I say I looked for an elucidation of these by this following sentence wherin you pretend to give a reason of the former But this performes nothing lesse If you had done something the last yeere which you did not as you might then the whole frame of your thoughts and actions this yeare had beene altered and God had beene the cause of this alteration and of every thought and action therin And the reason is this For unto every cogitation possible God hath decreed a determinate end But I pray you consider are the thoughts and actions of men this yeare the proportioned end of somethinge that you did the last yeare Or are they correspondent consequents to our antecedent actions the last yeare Many man the last yeare was an opposite unto goodnes he is reformed this yeare and become a proselyte Is grace the proportionate end of the state of sinne The last yeare many a man was a formall professour this yeare it may be he is turned Papist or Turke is this a correspondent consequent to that antecedent Yet many continue formall professours still wiâ—hout any such alteration some have changed theyr formalitie into realitie It may be some man the last yeare hath satisfied anothers silthy lust and this yeare is advanced by it Call you this a correspondent consequent destined by God Some have prospered by impoysoning of others and proceeded in their sinfull courses so much the more without controll In a word by the last Clause it appeares that by proportionate end correspondent consequents you meane only the good and evill that doe befall men according to their former workes according to that God will rewarde every man according to his workes But by your leave this hath no proportion to prove that God is the Authour of every thought and action of man this yeare which you made to be consequent to some thing done the last yeare and God to be the true and principall cause of every one of those thoughts and actions For what Are mens thoughts and actions this yeare the rewardes and punishments of the same mens actions the other yeare What a ridiculous conceyte in this Well still we holde you engaged to maintayne that which you have plainely avouched namely that God is the true and principall cause of every action and thought of man for a yeare together yea and of every thought and action of yours for the yeare past which you have delivered without any explication I have manifested the incongruity of your whole discourse in generall In particular consider further you say that mans will is necessarily subject unto God this we understood in respect of operation in proportion to what you delivered in the sentence before going but you understand it in respecte of rewardes or punishments succeeding proportionably unto former actions whether good or bad But by your leave it is not mans will but his person rather that herin is necessarily subject unto God For no wise man useth to say that mans will is rewarded or punished but his person rather Agayne suppose God decreeth not the actions of men but the rewards of them yet you have not explicated how in this case Gods will depends not upon the will of man the true explication whereof that I know is only this that the execution of his will may depend upon mans will to witt in rewarding or punishing but not the will of God himselfe Yet if good or evill actions of men be foreseene by God before he hath decreed either to reward or punish neither have you offered to cleare Gods will in this case from dependance upon the will of man neither are you able to performe it Agayne it is false to say that God hath decreed a proportionate end to every cogitation possible For many cogitations are possible which shall never be And it is absurde to say God hath decreed an end to that which shall never bee Agayne by this proportionate end and correspondent consequent you understand rewardes or punishments But it is false to say that God hath ordayned to every cogitation a reward or punishment For to the evill thoughts and words and deeds of Gods children he hath ordayned neither reward nor punishment to befall them but his purpose is to pardon them Agayne punishments for the sinnes of men are many times inflicted by the sinnes of men So Sennacherib that blasphemer of the God of Israel was slayne by the sword of his owne children Davids adultery was punished by the filâ—hy actions of his owne Sonne Absolon deflouring his fathers Concubines If these were proportionate ends to former sinnes and correspondent consequents and everlastingly decreed by God what hindereth but that in your opinion actions notoriously sinnefull may be sayd to be decreed by God You say the producing of these consequents and proportionate ends needsno other cause or meanes but only the reducing of possibilitie granted by his decree into acte Which is plaine gibrish you instance in nothing for illustration sake not as if your discourse were so plaine that it needed it not but rather it is so unsound that you might well feare it And darkenesse is fittest for them that hate the light I will give instance for you Absalons deflouring his fathers Concubines was a disproportionate end and correspondent consequent to Davids defiling his neighbours wife for God punished David hereby and Arminius acknowledgeth that this fact of Absolon Inserviit castigandâ— Davidi Now this fact of Absolon by your doctrine in this place needed no other cause or meanes to produce it but onely the reducing of possibilitie granted by Gods decree into act Now what possibility doe you meane the possibility of Davids defiling Bethsheba
But in God his wisedome and power though different notions yet the substance of them is all one and precisely one in God The same is the proportion betweene infinite wisedome and power infinite as betweene sinite wisedome and power finite But finite wisedome doth not evacuate finite power therfore neyther doth infinite wisdome evacuate the necessitie of infinite power But to salve the matter you adde that it evacuates the necessitie of power distinct from it T is true indeede in God though the notions of wisedome and power are distinct yet the thinges signified are one essence in God And looke in what manner soever infinite wisedome doth inferre the indistinction of power with it after the same manner doth infinite power inferre the indistinction of wisedome with it For as much as God is essentially wise and powerfull and therefore infinite in both both indistinct in him whose essence is most simple and admitts no parts That wisedome is the father and power the Mother of all Gods workes is such an assertion that I doe not thinke you can finde any to father it or mother it but your selfe Will you not give us leave to accommodate it unto the workes of man and pronounce proportionably that his Wisedome is the Father and his power the Mother of his actions I take it to be absurd to inquire after a Father and Mother of workes save in case the workes themselfes doe admitt these different sexes as being male or female yet in such a case it hath a Father and Mother only in respect of univocall generations not equivocall And as for the proportion to justifie your allegorie we are content rather to expecte your pleasure to acquainte us with it then to trouble our witts aboute the deviseing of it Yet Philo the Platonicks are a rubbe in your way who as you say for I confesse I am not so well seene in them make knowledge the mother of all Gods workes To remoove this you acquainte us with your conjecturall dictates First that t is probable they dreamed of a created knowledge A most improbable conjecture that they should conceave that God brought his works to passe by the knowledg of a creature not by his owne knowledge Yet that creature by whose created knowledge God is conjectured to have wrought by in theire opinion being one of Gods workes how coulde that creatures knowledge be possibly accoumpted his mother in creation Your second conjecture is that under these termes they covered some transformed notion of the second person in the Trinitie Such a person more fitt by farre to be the Author of all Gods works in order under God the Father But equally improbable it is that this second person in Trinitie should be called by them The Mother of Gods workes Rather Sapientia in Latine and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Greeke being the feminine gender in this grammaticall notion they might accoumpt it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Mother of all thinges created which yet is more then my learning will encourage me to ascribe unto them And Christ you deny not to be the wisedome of the Father but you adde that he is the wisedome personall but you speake here not of the wisedome personall but of the wisedome of the Godhead as it is essentially in the whole Trinitie Danaeus upon the 32. distinction of Peter Lumbards first booke of sentences professeth the Sonne to be called the wisedome of the Father for as much as he maketh the Father knowne unto us But though you speake of wisedome as it is essentiall and not personall yet you may remember that even the essentiall attributes are severally appropriated unto the Person by divines and in the course of this appropriation power is attributed to the Father Wisedome unto the Sonne and goodnesse unto the Holy Ghost How suitable this is of makeing wisedome the Father of Gods actions lett every intelligent Reader judge Agayne I finde that Gabriell Vasquius proposeth a question Whether the power of God doth any manner of way differ from Gods knowledge and his will And herein recites the opinion of Durand mainteyning that Gods wisedome and his will are but the remote causes of divine actions and that the power of God is the immediate cause of all The contrary wherunto he maynteynes namely that power or execution is needelesly attributed unto God as distinct from his knowledge and his will and this he delivers according to the doctrine of Scotus Bassolis Ferrariensis Caietan and Aquinas Neyther of these opinions as I conceave serves your turne in making wisedome the Father and power the Mother of Gods actions These flashes of conceyte are farre distante from the conceites of any Schoole divine that I am acquainted with 3. Wisedome you say as all agree is the excellency of knowledge from which it differs not save only in the dignitie or usefullnesse of matters known or in the more perfect manner of knowing them This promiseth no greate depth yet it passeth my slender capacitie to comprehend your meaning herein or to make any good sense therof You have so long inured your selfe to a phrase of speech and expression beyond the capacitie of your Reader that I knowe not whether at length you may attaine to such a facultie of speech as may transcende the Authours owne comprehension Who they are that agree in this that Wisedome is the excellency of knowledge I professe I know not And I woonder you proceede to discourse of wisedome without distinction seing it may be taken in some sense by Philosophers in which it is not taken by Canonicall writers Agayne in some sense it may be taken by Canonicall writers in which it is not taken by Philosophers There is a wisedome to salvation which the Scriptures communicate to the meanest of Gods children which kinde of Wisedome was nothing knowne to Philosophers And there is a Metaphysicall wisedome in knowing Ens quà ens where abouts Philosophers did busie theire braynes which you shall hardly finde notice taken of throughout the Scriptures Againe wisedome is sometimes taken for that knowledge that rest in contemplation sometimes t is taken for such a knowledge as is not commendable nor right unlesse it be referred to actiō Solomons Wisedome it seemes comprehended both For the Wisedome that he prayed for was the wisedome of government which respects action but God gave him other wisedome allso For this is reckoned up as a parte of his wisedome that he spake of trees from the Cedar tree that is in Lebanon even to the hyssope that springth out of the wall he speake allso of beast and of foules and of creepeing thinges and of fishes And in this respecte it seemes that hee excelled the wisedome of all the Children of the East and all the wisedome of Aegypt For of Moses it is sayde that hee was learned in all the wisedome of the Aegyptians Act. 1. 22. And this wisedome I conceave to have bene in sciences contemplative and not practicall Yet
handes shall be given him Esa. 3. 10. 11. Secondly if this be all the fruite of Gods wisdome wherin doth this exceede the wisedome of every Magistrate who ordeynes rewards for the good and punishment for the wicked Agayne what need is there of moderatinge mens thoughts unto this end whereas though he never moderates any mans thoughts yet his wisedome shall appeare never a white the lesse in setting forth his glory in punishing the one and rewarding the other Consider yet farther what I pray you was the end of Iudas which God did forecast in his creation No doubt the setting forth of his owne glory but I desire to know whether he did intend to set it forth in Iudas his salvation or damnation So likewise I desire to know what end God did forecast of Paul the Apostle in his creation his glory I doubt not but whether in his salvation or damnation It seemes by the genius of your Tenet that God did neither intend the salvation of the one nor the damnation of the other in their creation but indifferently intended each of them should be saved or damned accordingly as they departed this life either in impenitency or in repentance Now if God did not intend the salvation of Paul nor the condemnation of Iudas at the time of their creation I pray when did he begin to intend it Say what you will it followeth that these intentions of God were not eternall and consequently neither the decrees of God are eternall yet commonly you professe of Gods decrees that they are eternall and everlasting Yet here I confesse you may play fast and loose and say they are eternall so farre forth as they are without end but they are not eternall so farre forth as to bee without beginning But what meane you so directly to contradict the word of God as you doe if this be your opinion For the Apostle professeth that mans election was made before the foundation of the world yea and touching the wicked King Solomon professeth that God made him against the day of evill As for the similitude you use to represent unto us the wisdome of God by comparing of him unto a bird catcher though you father it upon Austine yet in this case it is nothing worth For though it be more then humane after many birds formerly caught to catch them all againe yet for God it is nothing who is everywhere and in whom every thing hath that being that life that motion which they enjoy The hayres of our head we know are numbred and therefore nothing strange that our thoughts should bee considering that our thoughts shall come into judgement but our haires shall not And if wee shall give an account of every idle word as our Saviour hath professed unto us why not as well of every idle thought Hee shall make the counsels of the heart manifest 1 Cor. 4. 5. but that the award of every thought is defined by God I cannot tell how to beleeve my reason is because evill thoughts are not fit to be rewarded and as for the evill thoughts of Gods children shall not they bee pardoned as well as their evill words and outward actions are to wit upon their repentance For if wee acknowledge our sinnes God is faithfull and just to forgive us our sinnes 1 Ioh. 1. 9. And Peter signified as much to Simon Magus conceiving evill thoughts also when he said unto him Repent of this thy wickednesse and pray unto God that if it bee possible the thought of thine heart might be forgiven thee Act. 8. 22. 8. Free it was for you to have done something the last yeare which you did not and every minute thereof in case every minute thereof you were waking For that a man hath free will in his sleepe I never heard But how thereby the whole frame of your cogitations or actions might have beene altered is a mystery unto mee Yet I doubt not but the whole frame of your cogitations and actions this yeare might have beene altered For actions free and contingent could not justly bee accounted free and contingent were they not accompanied with a possibility of being otherwise And God you acknowledge to be the cause of this alteration and of every thought and deed thus altered So then if there had beene another course of your thoughts and actions God had beene the cause of it and of every thought and deed What thinke you of that course which hath beene of your thoughts and actions is God the true and princâ—pall cause of this also and of every thought and deed of yours this yeare I see no reason to the conttary but it stands you upon to justifie this also as well as the former and as of your selfe so as concerning the actions of all oâ—her both men and Angels and if for one yeare why not for every yeare from the beginning unto this day And so I see no colour of reason why you should not as freely acknowledge that all things are decreed by God for if God hath decreed all the thoughts and actions of men it will bee no hard matter to grant that God hath decreed all things that in their times and seasons doe successively come to passe And if God be the true and principall cause of them did hee not decree that he would be the true and principall cause of them that is that he would in due time indeed and principally produce them not withstanding all the evill that doth accompany them For I doe not thinke that you take upon you so much perfection as to avouch that amongst all your thoughts and actions for a yeare together there was no evill thought no evill action among them For if you stand upon it that God cannot be the true and principall cause of any evill thought or action we must not yeeld unto you that God was the true and principall cause of all the thoughts and actions that were conceived in you or derived from you that yeare or yeares wherein you were hatching this booke of yours which I take to be a fardell of erroneous conceits both in Philosophy and Divinity Neither if you did maintaine that God is the true and principall cause of every free action would wee object that then you make Gods will to depend on ours for there is no colour for any such objection there is colour for the contrary as namely if he be the principall cause then his will doth not depend on mine but rather mine on his and consequently our liberty seemes to be infringed by making God the principall cause of all our actions Yet you take no notice of this objection much lesse take paynes to answere it but goe on desperately in shewe and that against your owne tenet to maintayne that our will is necessarily subject unto his But whether you meane in producing thoughts actions which alone is to the purpose or in some other sense and respect you betray not Yet by the way what meane you
willingly enter upon so flat a contradictiō to such a discourse of Kinge Iames in the dayes of Kinge Charles and that so soone after his death If you write only concerning men of ripe yeares you must have a care to limit your propositions accordingly and not to give them longer wings then is fitt In the next place you touch upon a distinction much talked of and as much advanced by some as cryed downe by others Yet both Scotus and Durandus give a tolerable and Aquinas with the Dominicans after him an orthodoxe interpretation therof though neyther suitable to the minde of Damascen commonly reputed the Father of it Yet looke what in this kind is wanting in them is supplyed by Arminiensis who gives both an orthodoxe construction thereof and that also in conformity to the opinion of Damascene of whose text he gives a very sound and orthodoxe interpretation and the more orthodoxe the more opposite to theire constructions who with greate cry of words draw it to the countenancing of theire Arminian Tenets without cause Love you say is the fruite of Gods antecedent will wrath and severity are the proper effects of his consequent will Fruite and effect you make all one as with good reason you may Now what I pray you is this effect which you call love You seeme to intimate that they are the effects of creation as when you say Every particular faculty of soule or body is a pledge undoubted of Gods love Yet faculties of soules and bodyes are found in beasts but Gods antecedent will in Damascene is referred wholly unto men Neyther doth Damascene at all referre it to the worke of creation but makes it to be that wherby God will have all to be saved Liberty of will is proper to man in distinction from beasts but who seeth not that this indifferently makes him obnoxius unto damnation as well as capable of salvation Then when you say wrath and severity is the effect of Gods consequent will what doe you meane by wrath Is it eyther a resolution to take vengeance or the execution of vengeance it selfe I think you take it for the execution of vengeance it selfe Now there is an execution of reward also properly opposite unto this which whether it be the same love you speake of it became you to expresse so much or whether you conceave it to be different yet it were fit you should take notice of it and acknowledge that this is a fruite of Gods consequent will as well as wrath that as effectually presupposing obedience as this disobedience and that love in rewarding is every way as infallibly consequent to the obeying of Gods will revealed as wrath is of our neglecting and despising it A full explication of this distinction you promise in good time how well you performe it we may in good time consider with Gods helpe Next you enter upon another forme of the same distinction as you pretend and you suffer it to fly with one winge For you talke of Gods absolute will which you seeme to confound with Gods antecedent will but as touching the member congruously opposite you leave us to seeke for that But as it is we are to consider it Gods absolute will was you say to have men capable of Heaven and Hell of joyes and miseryes immortall This cannot be understoode of Gods consequent will for this absolute will is indifferent to end in the bestowing of reward or punishment and is immediately terminated only in making man capable of eyther but his consequent will is not so indifferent For the only effect thereof you mention to be wrath and severity and this presupposeth rather then causeth capablenesse Neyther can this absolute will be the antecedent will of God according to Damascens meaning For the antecedent will in Damascene is only referred to the will of God wherby he wills mans salvation but this absolute will is you say to have men capable of Heaven and Hell To helpe this you tell us That this absolute will whose possible objects are two is in the first place set on mans eternall joy But you doe not proceede to shew on what it is set in the next place as if by such like incongrueties you desired rather to confounde your reader then to satisfie him Yet by the tenour of your discourse you leave it to us to guesse that in the second place to witt upon the dispising of Gods love it is set upon a mans damnation So that by this your doctrine both Gods antecedent will and consequent will is all one and that is Gods absolute will But no such thinge is founde in Damascene from whome such as you are doe usually take this distinction of will antecedent in God and will consequent And indeed you doe well to make one as absolute as another for like as wrath the fruite of this will of God in the second place as you imply hath not its course but upō presuppositiō of disobedience so in like manner the proper opposite to wrath on the other side the fruite of this will of God in the first place hath not its course but upon presupposition of obedience And that you may know what this fruite I speake of is I say as wrath is taken for the execution of vengeance so the proper opposite herunto must be love as it is taken for the execution of reward And let any man judge whether this doth not every way presuppose obedience as well as the other presupposeth disobedience And thus shall God as truly be sayed absolutely to wish a mans damnation as his salvation and no more conditionally will the one then the other And like as if God be absolutely sayd to will a mans salvation it shall not herhence follow he shall so will it as to contradict himselfe by frustrating the contrary possibilitie which unto man he had appointed so though God be sayd absolutely to will a mans damnation yet it will not follow that God doth so will it as to contradict himselfe by frustrating the contrary possibility which unto man he had appointed Only it is absurd to call this possibility a contrary possibility It is I confesse a possibility to the contrary but not a contrary possibility Like as liberty unto good and liberty unto evill are liberties unto things contrary in the way of manners but yet they are no contrary liberties so the possibilities of obtaining salvation or damnation which are consequent upon the use of this liberty though they are possibilities to contrary things yet are they not contrary possibilities And as Gods anger signifying the execution of vengeance doth never rise up but upon the dispising of his love alluringe unto good so Gods love signifying the execution of reward doth never rise up but upon the embracing of his love alluring unto good But if you take Gods wrath for his will to punish I say that looke by what reason Gods wrath as it signifies his will to punish doth not arise in God
to be angry But if you take it for voluntas vindicandi this must needs be as everlasting as Gods will and if you deduce any cause herof from the creature you were as good to derive from the creature the cause of Gods will which Aquinas professeth never any man was so madde as to doe And Gods hatred of Esau is in Scripture made suitable to Gods love of Iacob and if this love be the will of election then hatred must be the will of reprobation And if the everlasting purpose of God to give both grace and glory be deservedly accoumpted Gods love why should not the everlasting purposu of God to deny unto others both grace and glory be as deservedly accoumpted Gods hatred You undertake to shew how Love and anger being passions or linkt with passions are rightly conceaved to be in God but I hope you will not attribute them unto God either a◠passibus or linkt with passions For albeit love and joy mans formally be attributed unto God because they include no imperfection yet not as passions saith Aquinas in the place lately alleaged out of him CHAP. XXI How Anger Love Compassion Mercy or other affections are in the divine nature II is true some Schoolemen thinke that distributive justice may be properly enough attributed unto God but not commutative not because this includes rationem dati accepti but rather because it includes aequalitatem dati accepti Yet others are of opinion that justice distributive can be attributed unto God with no greater propriety then justice commutative as may be seene in Vasque 1. in 1. part disput 86. Likewise I know none that thinke mercy is more properly to be attributed unto God then anger For voluntas vindicandi as properly and formally belongs to God as voluntas miserandi that being as easily abstracted from greife as this from compassion As for revenge there is no colour why that should not in greatest propriety be attributed unto God like as also reward To say that affections or morall qualities may be contayned in the divine essence eminently is a very poore justification of them to be the attributes of God For to be eminently in God is no more as your selfe heretofore have explicated it chap. 4. sect 2. then God to be the Author of them and produce them Now in this sense you may attribute the name of any body or beast unto God and say God is such or such a thing is God to wit eminently But who can doubt but voluntas miserandi and voluntas vindicandi are in God not eminently but formally Yet notwithstanding the very will of God is infinitly different from the will of man No passion as a passion is in God though that name which signifieth a passion in man may be truely verified of Gods signifying the nature of God in a certayne reference unto his creatures without all passion So there is a will and understanding in God but nothing like to the will and understanding of man For will and understanding in man are accidents they are not so in God Our anger at the best as being displeased only with such things that displease God though in some litle thing it be like Gods anger yet in many things it is very unlike For it is a passion in us not in God it riseth in us which before was not no such innovation in God Gods anger is vindicative ours ought not to be so but only in case we are his ministers For vengeance is myne I will repay sayth the Lord. I cannot justifie you in so speaking when you say that mercy is more reall and truly affectionate in God then his anger For taking them sequestred from theire imperfections each is formally attributed unto God though not as passions and not eminently only as you have delivered it As for the execution of each more or lesse that receaveth moderation merely from the pleasure of Gods will For he hath mercy on whom he will and whom he will he hardneth and farre more hath he made vessels of wrath amongst the nation of men then vessells of mercy though it be reputed otherwise amongst the nation of Angelis Mercy consists in pardoning sinnes and saving sinners and no passion at all is required unto this in the nature of God but passion enough even unto death upon the crosse in the nature of man person of the Sonne of God The better use men have of reason the lesse are they subject to perturbation but no whit lesse doe they participate of affection for vertues are not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle hath taught us but the right ordering of them Christs soule was heavy unto the death at the approaching of his passion and wept often before this yet had he never a whit the worse use of reason For all this But no passion at all can be in God for passions rise and fall upon new occasion but no such alteration is incident unto God I know not what you meane by devouring affections They may be concealed or restrained not in a vertuous manner but vitious only to keepe the rankor of theire hearts from discovery as Absolon a long time sayd nor good nor bad to Amnon after he had defloured his sister Thamar he was not any whit the more charitable in that but playd the foxe in waiting opportunity to doe mischeife Likewise when Haman saw Mordecai in the Kings gate that he stood not up nor mooved for him then was hee full of indignation at Mordecai Neverthelesse Haman refrayned himselfe though hee had plotted the destruction both of him and all his natiō To say that passions are moderate in matters which men least affect is as much as to say that affections are moderate in matters which men least affect And indeede affections must needes be moderate when they are least in motion But perpetuall minding of a thing should argue strength of passion in my judgement rather then moderation To my thinkinge now you are in a vaine of writing essayes Yet I find no greate substance of truth in them How secret cariages can be violently opposed I conceave not For if opposed then no longer secret And the more cunning men are the more notice I should thinke they take of violent opposition unlesse they doe apparently see such opposites are like to overshoote or come short which is a very race case and comes ofter into a schollars fancy then into reall practise I finde no greate passion in Achitophel but rather as Caesar came soberly to the ruinating of his country So Achitophel proceeded soberly to the destroying of himselfe To have the mastery of his passions like enough is a greate poynt of pollicy undoubtedly to have a gracious mastery of them is true Christianity not allwayes to restraine them but even profusely to enlarge them whatsoever the World thinkes of them As Moses in the cause of God was mooved so farre as to breake the
did this opinion growe common there Did that Kingdome consist of more Protestants then Papists Or amongst the Protestants was the number of Calvinists more then of Lutherans Speake playnly say the choosing of a Calvinist to be their King was the ruine of the State of the Provinces which were as members incorporate therinto say Calvinisme was the ruine of the upper the lower Palatinate And herupon let your Almanacke of Prognostications proceede be bolde to tell the States of the Lowe Countreys that this Tenet is a forerunner of their ruine allso unles they we foorthwith turne Arminians we are like to be lost fall into the handes of Papists But of what Papists Not such as Thomists the Dominicans the most learned Divines in the Church of Rome for they maynteyne that God determineth the will of Men Angells to every act of theirs whether good or evill as touching the substance of the act by influence generall over above allso unto every good gracious act such as faithe is repentance by influence speciall And as he dothe thus determine the wills of all his creatures so from everlasting he did decree thus to determine them Belike the Iesuites are they into whose handes we are like to fall unles with speede we turne Iesuits that so herafter we may comfort our selves as Themistocles did with Periissemus nisi periissemus we had bene undone if we had not bene undone that vtterly both body and soule Happy are the Lutheran Arminian party that they are acquainted with no such forerunner of their ruine They are like to holde their owne while they acknowledge a sweete disposition of the Allseeing and unerringe providence leave out All deorecing providence out of their Creede But let the Dominicans looke to it least their ruine be not at hand allso as well as ours For there is to be found such an oracle in some Mens writings that whosoever shall embrace the doctrine of Gods Alldecreeing providence let them knowe this opinion is the forerunner of ruine ito most floorishing States Kingdomes where it growes common or comes to full light And the experience of the course of these times especially in the ruine of the Palsgrave of so many Christian Provinces with him For certeinly 〈◊〉 no time or part of the world besides was any such experience to be founde so conveniently to serve your turne Is it not great pitie but that the Kinges majestie his Counsell both houses of Parliament should be acquainted with this mystery of State for why shoulde I doubt but that God will heare the affectionate prayers of his people in good time establishe a perfect vnion betweene the King his people In the meane time we will wayt upon the Lord who hath hid his face from the house of Iacob we will looke for him Yea we will give him no rest untill he restore Ierusalem the prayse of the world This I confesse is a way to supplant your Adversary opinions but of any power you have to confute them and therby to praevent the growthe of them I have founde litle evidence in other of your writings by the generall survey I have allready taken I have small hope to finde any great satisfaction in this But let us examine this point a little more narrowly You suppose that some in opposition to Arminius doe maynteyne that all thinges were so decreed by God before the Creation of the world that nothing since the Creation coulde have fallen out otherwise then it hath done and nothing can be amended that is emisse But I knowe none of any such opinion nay rather they whome I concenve you doe most ayme at doe directly teache the contrary We are willinge to professe with Austin that Non aliquid sit nisi quod omnipotens fieri velit velsinendo ut siat vel ipse faciendo Nor ought commeth to passe but that which the Allmighty will have to come to passe eyther by suffering it to come to passe or himselfe working it And with the Articles of Ireland confirmed by our State in the dayes of King Iames that God from all aeternitie did by his unchangeable counsayle ordeyne whatsoever in time shoulde come to pusic Now whatsoever God willethe he willed eternally For in God there is no variablenes nor shadowe of change And supposing the will of God that such a thing shall come to passe eyther by his operation or by his permission it is impossible in sensu compositâ— in a compound sense that it shoulde not come to passe But this impossibility is not absolute but only secundum quid in respect of somewhat to witt of Gods will decreeing it is allwayes joyned with an absolute possibility of comming to passe otherwise in sensu diviso in a divided sense As for example it was absolutely possible that Christs bones shoulde be broken as well as any of the theeves bones that were â—rucified with him For bothe his bones were breakable the souldiours had power freewill to breake them as well as the others bones but supposinge the decree of God that Christs bones shoulde not be broken vpon this supposition I say it was impossible they shoulde be broken Nay further we say that unles thinges impossible to come to passe otherwise then God hathe decreed them upon supposition of Gods decree be notwithstanding absolutely possible to come to passe otherwise it were not possible for God to decree that some thinges shall come to passe contingently For to come to passe contingently is to come to passe in such sort as joyned with an absolute possibility of comming to passe otherwise Thus we say with Aquinas that the efficacious nature of Gods decree is the cause why contingent things come to passe contingently necessary thinges necessarily his wordes are these Cum voluntas divina sit efficacissima non solum sequitur quod si antea quae Deus vult fieri sed quod eo modo fiant quo Deus ea fieri vult Vult autem quaedam Deus sieri necessario quaedam contingenter ut fit ordo in rebus ad complementum universi Seing the will of God is most effectuall it followeth not only that those thinges come to passe which God will have come to passe but allso that they come to passe after the same manner that God will have them come to passe Now God will have somethinges come to passe necessarily somethinges contingently that there may be an order amongst thinges to the complete perfection of the Universe And accordingly God hath ordeyned all sorts of second causes bothe contingent causes to worke contingently as the willes of men Angells necessary causes to worke necessarily as fire in burninge the Sunne in giving light heavy things in mooving downewards light thinges in moovinge upwardes And as he hath ordeyned them to be such kindes of Agents thus distinct so he hathe ordeyned
speciall manner in the third Heaven as the Author of glory communicating himselfe in glorious manner unto his Angells and Saints all which diversities of being are rather in respect of his power then of his essence For how is God sayde to be in any thinge as conteyned by no meanes but rather as conteyninge which conteyning is a transient operation of God proceeding from his power his will Thus saythe the Apostle God is not farre from every one of us for as much as in him we live moove have our beinge And marke but the particulars of explication proposed by Vasquius according to the best opinion in his judgment to witt according to that of Aquinas God is in all things by his essence because his substance is not distant this is most true I confesse for certeinly he is no more distant in place from a mouse then from an Angell but he is joyned with the things themselfes whether in respect of himselfe or of his operation So then if Gods operation be joyned with the thinges themselves it suffizeth by this opinion to maynteyne that God is present with them by his essence yet if you consider it well you shall finde that this is all one with his presence in respect of his power for that was expounded thus God is in the whole Vniverse by his power because his operation reacheth unto every thing Next consider how God is in every thing by his presence First to say that God is in every thing by his presence seemes a very absurde manner of speeche for it is as much as to say that God is present in every thing by his presence Then consider the explication of it He knowethe all thinges therfore he is present with all things Now this seemes very absurd For we read that God revealed to Elishah what was done in the King of Arams privy Chamber might therfore Elishah justly be sayde to have bene present in the Kings privy Chamber We knowe the number of the Starres what therfore are we present with them God foreknowes things to come is he therfore present with them allso which yet are not Vasquius himselfe professed before in confuting the opinion of Durand that Nothing is sayde to be present with another unles that other thing were conscious therof and he prooved it out of the digests and out of the lawe Coram Coram Titio aliquid fecisse jussus non videtur praesente eo fecisse nisi is intelligat allso out of the 112. epistle of Austin plane sorsitan satis est si praesentia hoc loco intelligamus quae praesto sunt sensibus sive animi sive corporis unde etjam ducto vocabulo praesentia nominantur As if praesens were as much as prae sensibus To this I may adde that of Aeneas in Virgill when the cloud wherwith his mother Venus had covered him vanished away then he breakes out into these wordes Coram quem quaeritis adsum Troius Aeneas But now consider according to this interpretation of the word praesent God shall be sayde to be present with none but with intelligent creatures for such alone can knowe him and take notice of him and because but fewe of them take notice of him therfore he can be sayde to be present but with a fewe of them allso Yet Aquinas his explication of Gods beinge in all thinges by his presence is quite of a contrary nature to witt because God knowes them and not because they knowe or take notice of him Last of all to be every where by his power is sayde to be in this respect that his operation reacheth to every thinge Now who seethe not that this presence is rather in respect of his operation and actuall workinge then of his power to worke And if we ascend to the caâ—se of his operation we must ascend not only to the power of God but even to his wisedome and goodnes as which is the cause of his operation as well as his power And if we looke for some thing more proper to admitt this denomination then other we must take notice of his will rather then of his power as which is the most immediate cause of his operation For infinite power to be able to reache every possible effect is no more then to be able to produce it or being produced to preserve it or to worke in it or by it whatsoever it pleasethe which is nothing pertinent to the being of it therein as in a place which belongs to essence rather then unto power For when I am sayde to be here and there the meaning is not my power is here or there but my person which is properly sayde of me because I am a body to which kinde or natures place properly belongethe But as touchinge the essence of God that being spirituall infinite it is not capable of any place to conteyne it but rather it conteynes every thinge in which respect your selfe have allready observed that by the Hebrewes he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 place it selfe Nowe Iudge whether God may be sayde in any congruitie to conteyne bodies by his essence or Spirits eyther created and whether that were not to signify that bodies and Spirits created were of the essence of God Neyther is it proper to say that God by his essence dothe worke eyther the creation or the conservation of outward things but rather by his understanding power and will For to worke by essence is to worke in the way of naturall Agents necessarily but to worke by wisedome will is to worke after the way of free Agents freely If God were every where according to the sayinge reported and avouched by you before there was any distinction of times then surely God allso was every where before there was any distinction of place For certeinly distinction of time and distinction of place beganne together And must you not herby be driven to the acknowledgement of a Vacuum before the World was and that conteyning distinction of parts in such sort as to make way for the denominations of here and there and every where and that God was therein and every where therein before the World was which opinion your selfe in this very section have impugned To discourse of the effects of Gods infinite power in case his knowledge were not infinite or of the effects of his infinite knowledge in case his power were not infinite I judge to be a very vayne thinge because it is impossible that the one shoulde be infinite without the other For seing many things cannot be brought to passe without knowledge like as without knowledge none of such thinges can be brought to passe at all so likewise without sufficiency of knowledge such things coulde not be brought to passe as require such a proportion of sufficient knowledge to performe them And if God had but a finite power he coulde foreknowe no more thinges then coulde be brought to passe by that finite power
that the greater force ariseth from the contraction of parts Now hath God any parts to be thus contracted and united that so his vigour might be greater what base comparisons are these to represent the infinite power of God by them Then you roule in your woonted Rhetorick to amplifie the vehemency of his motive power in that it cannot be exprest by a motion that should beare levill from the Sunnesetting in the west to the Moone riseing in the East which is a very faire marke I confesse for the case put is in plenilunio when the Moone is att full Then to cast the fixed starres downe to the center belike you meane one after another otherwise there would be no roome for them in the center and hoyse the earth up to the Heavens within the twinkling of an eye or to send both in a moment beyond the extreamities of this visible world into the wombe of vacuity whence they issued would not straine his power motive Yet all this you confesse to be lesse then to bring nothing unto something that is to take not your words but rather your good meaning to create out of nothing Wherby nothing doth not become something but something hath a being which before it had not But here you power out many wilde conceits besides this first as when you say Essence swallowes up infinite degrees of succession in a fixed instant I had thought rather this had bene the property of eternity not of essence You might as well say essence swallowes up all places into an indivisible unitie or point Then how may eternitie be sayde to swallow up that which it doth not contayne neyther formally for certeynly there is no formall succession in eternitie nor eminently For to conteyne eminently is to be able to produce succession but it is not Gods eternitie that denominates him able to produce time or the existence of thinges in time but his power So neyther his essence nor his eternitie swallowes up motion for the same reason But as for the swallowing up of motion into a vigorous rest to witt by mooving the eighth spheare round in a moment Of the nakednesse and absurditie that is shamefull nakâ—dnesse of such an assertion we have discoursed enough Againe is it not enough for you to maynteyne motion in vacuo but you must needes affirme that this visible world issued from the vacuum which now we imagine without the extreamities of it where now the world is was a vacuum before the world was but yet the world issued not from it neyther in the kinde of a materiall cause nor in the kind of a formall cause nor in the kind of an efficient cause much lesse did it issue from that vacuum which you terme without the extreamites of this world Then againe I know no measure of perfection derived unto the creature from Gods immensitie but only from the counsayle of his will by his immensitie he fills all places but distributes not the measure of perfections therby When you call Nothinge the mother of Gods creatures tell mee I pray did you affect poeticall witt or Metaphysicall truth I had thought Nothing had not afforded so much as the matter of any thinge as the Mother doth the matter at least of the childe It is true we were not any thing before God made us And as sure I am that this which we call nothinge did not contribute any thinge to the creation of men The basenes of mans originall is a common place of another nature Now your text is the Infinity of Gods power but you may squander from it as you please Whatsoever implyes not contradiction the production therof is within the compasse of Gods power and whatsoever God can do he can doe with ease His head aked not in the makeing of the World neyther doth it ake in providing for and preserving all things But to talke of the possibilitie of more worlds hand over head under colour of gratifying God in the amplification of his power I leave unto them that are not satisfied with the demonstration of his infinite power in this Yet as touching Gods omnipotency for the strengthening of our faith we are promised somethinge hereafter as if all hitherto tended to the strengthening of our imagination by comparing it first to the susteÌ„tative force of a center which is a matter of nothing and then to the force of gunpowder which undoubtedly is a matter of something Whether we are like to meete with a more wise discourse concerning Gods infinite Wisedome if others know yet I know not CHAP. VIII Of the Infinitie of divine Wisedome That it is as impossible for ought to fall out without Gods knowledge as to have existence without his power or essentiall presence 1. IN the first Section there is nothing that I mislike we acknowledge God could not be infinite in power unles he were infinite in Wisedome allso And that power ungoverned by Wisedome would bring forth very enormous effects But if a duble portion of witt matched with halfe the strength would effecte more then a triple portion of strength with halfe so much witt surely where the power is equall the Wisedome insinitly unequall there the effects cannot be the like Yet you have bene bold to affirme in another treatise of yours not yet extant I confesse that If a man had the same infinite power that God hath he might well thinke he coulde dispose thus of thinges as God hath disposed by the Wisedome which man allready hath And you give this reason for in thinges wee can lay any necessitie upon wee can tell well enough how to dispose of them to the end which we seeke As uncouth an assertion as hath passed from the mouth or penne of any man For we manifestly perceave that the difference of artificiall operations in the World doth not arise from the difference of mens powers but merely from the difference of theire skill and Wisedome in severall trades 2. You doe not well to confounde power with strength for strength is only power naturall but there is a civill power goeth beyond that And there is no question to be made but Wisedome is to be preferred before the strength of the body by how much the qualities of the minde are to be preferred before the qualities of the body But where civill power is supreame that ruleth over the wisest Counsaylers No question God is as infinite in Wisedome as in power But I take it to be very absurd to say that Gods wisedome is greater then his power For is it possible that God by his wisedome can thinke of any course fitt to be done for the setting forth of his glory which his power were not able to effect and seing you confesse his power to be infinite as well as his wisdome what should move you to maynteine the one to be greater then the other I can not devise Princes have guides to governe them which yet are not therfore greater theÌ„ they but inferior by farre
affirme the other namely that whatsoever God hath not decreed it is impossible that it should come to passe wherhēce alone is derived the first abstract you speake of Nay rather if we consider the analogy of propositions aright we shall find that these propositions are onely proportionall Whatsoever God hath decreed to come to passe the same shall necessarily come to passe Whatsoever God hath decreed that it shall not come to passe it is impossible that it should come to passe These are suitable indeede and accordingly we professe that it is impossible that any thinge which is not because God hath decreed that it shall not be I say it is impossible that it should be So likewise as touching the second extract we say that every thing which hath beene so farre forth as God hath decreed the being thereof it is impossible not to have beene Your third extract is of the same nature with the first and so admitts the same answere Well I still attend the discovery of the fallacy It may be we shall meete with it in that which followeth and that is this But if it bee as I suppose very consonant to infinite wisedome altogether consonant to infinite goodnes and to decree contingency as well as necessity a conclusion quite contradictory to that late inferred will be the onely lawfull issue of the former Maxime or Major proposition matched with a Minor proposition of our owne choosing c. Is this to discover the fallacy of the former syllogisme Or are you to seeke in the solution of a fallacy If it be not concluded in moode and figure you might have signified so much but indeede no exception can that way be taken against it If any terme had beene aequivocall the answere had beene by distinction But no colour of any such just exception so that every way the forme is unquestionable And therefore no exception is here to be taken but against the truth of one of the premises And I verily beleive there is one of the premises that disliketh you though you are ashamed plainly and directly to manifest so much For so the answere had beene fayre and facile by denyinge it if not the Major because thereof you make use in your owne syllogisme wherewith you doe as it were requite this yet at least the Minor which was this But God hath decreed every thinge that is For I verely beleeve this is such a dish of lettice as fitts not your lipps This you say you might have done but now the liberty hereof is taken from you and that by your selfe For although the Pope never bindes his owne handes yet you have bound your tongue and sealed up your owne lippes from taking any such exception as this For you call the syllogisme a fallacy and that a simple one Now fallacies are such formes of argumentation as offend onely in forme of argumentation which kind of exception is to justify the matter of it and the truth of the premises especially whereas you doe not professe that it offendes both in forme and matter nor shew any forwardnes to deny either of the propositions Well we gave you a syllogisme to answere in steede of answering it you thinke to make us amends with another syllogisme I have read that when one presented Augustus with verses looking for a reward Augustus in steede of a reward gave him verses of his owne making The Poet hereupon very liberally bestowed a reward upon Augustus We expected at your handes not another syllogisme but the answearinge of our owne But though you fayle to answeare ours I will not fayle to doe my best in accommodating an answere unto yours You undertake to inferr the contradictory to our conclusion which is to outface your opposites and to cry a syllogisme downe without answearing it Yet let us see how well you performe that you undertake Your syllogisme is this Whatsoever God hath decreed must of necessity come to passe but God hath decreed contingency as well as necessity therefore of necessity there must be contingency And for the better strengthning of your discourse or argumentation you make a motion that an additionall to the Maior which is this Nothinge can come to passe otherwise then God hath decreed it shall or may come to passe Now the judge or Chancelour in Logicall Courts to whome such a motion should be made would cry out shame upon it For that proposition is an universall affirmative and you desire that an universall negative should be added to it to make up an entire Maior proposition which were like a sixt finger upon an hand And indeed in that case it were neither Categoricall nor Hypotheticall For though two propositions with a copulative have place in some Hypotheticall syllogismes yet it is alwayes by way of negation thus Non dies est nox sed dies est ergo non nox Againe upon a second consideration the motion would be rejected as being altogether without witt For as much as the conclusion intended is well enough inferred without it and this additionall conferres no strength to improve the inference I appeale to every schollars judgment in this Thirdly the proposition it selfe as touching the latter clause of the disjunctive hath as little witt as the motion made for the admittance of it As where it is sayd that God hath decreed that thinges may come to passe you might as well say that God hath decreed that the World may come to passe For the possibility of the event of thinges is not from Gods decree but rather from Gods omnipotency For because he is able to produce every thinge that implyes no contradiction therfore they are denominated possible Lastly this proposition which you crave to be admitted is like a Troian horse it will doe you more harme then good as ere we part from this section shall be made manifest Yet what neede you desire more your conclusion is granted you namely that of necessity there must be contingency supposing Gods decree For Gods decrees are onely of doing or suffering some thinges as it is free for God whether he will doe them or suffer them yea or no. And therefore though God had not at all decreed contingency yet decreing any thinge of necessity there must be contingency though he had decreed nothing else but such thinges as we count most necessary in the course of nature But we graunt also that God did decree contingency and decrees necessity in respect of second causes as for example God did decree to make fire of such a nature as to heate or burne necessarily the Sunne of such a nature as to enlighten the aire necessarily heavy thinges to move downewards and light thinges upwardes and all this necessarily Necessarily I say in respect of second causes though this necessity was mere contingency in respect of the will of God For he could have chosen whether there should have beene any fire or world at all yea and can hinder the fire from burninge if it
perfect knowledge of all thinges that have beene are or shall bee It includes I confesse the knowledge of all necessary truthes and of all thinges possible but as for the knowledge of contingent truthes and of these to come it includes not that unlesse under the essence of God you comprehende the will of God And so to distinguish as to say that all necessary truthes God knoweth by necessity of nature but all contingent truthes he knoweth by the determination of his owne will which indeed is a truth but flatt opposite to your opinion But that thinges contingent cannot be knowne to be future but upon the determination of Gods will I prove thus Things cannot be knowne to be future untill they are future for to apprehend or conceive things to be future when they are not future is not to know but to erre but contingent things and onely possible to be or not to be doe not become future till the determination of Gods will hath made them future Therefore contingent things cannot be knowne to be future but upon the determination of God will The minor I prove thus Of their owne nature they are not future but onely possible and they cannot passe from the condition of things meerly possible to the condition of things future without a cause from without And no cause of this translation can be devised but the will of God Which I prove thus If some other cause then either without God or within God not without God for these things were future from everlasting but from everlasting there was no cause at all existent without God Therefore the cause hereof if any where to be found must be found within God Wee say it is his will which if you deny you must shew what else can be the cause you commonly flee to Gods knowledge and the infinity thereof but in vaine for already they are supposed to bee future before God knoweth them And indeed it belongs to knowledge to know all things that are to come not to make them to be to come Fourthly it is possible that Antichrist shall fall in the yeare 1630 it is possible that he should fall the yeare before it is possible he should fal the yeare after it was possible he should have fallen ten yeares agoe it is possible hee should fall ten yeares hence all these being reall effects possible must by your doctrine be found eminently in the divine essence and God knowing his divine essence must know them all and not onely that they are possible but that they shall all come to passe For in this sense you speake of Gods knowledge of future contingents namely of knowing that they shall come to passe and when they shall come to passe Againe set we the fall of Antichrist at an hundred different points of time whereof let us suppose one to bee true and the other false yet all in their owne nature alike possible why should the fall of Antichrist in the true point of time bee included in Gods essence more then the other all being alike possible and that very instante wherein the fall of Antichrist shall be it being as possible that it should not be and that possibility also being included in the essence of God as well as any other Perhaps you will say that this being a truth is included in the essence of God and not the others being untruths But then I demand how this became to be a truth that Antichrist should fall at such a time rather then at another it being as possible to fall out at any other time as at this and as possible not to fall out at this time as at any other and all these possibilities equally included in the essence of God I say againe how came this to be a truth answer mee not of its owne nature for the contrary hereunto is supposed on both sides namely that of his owne nature it was onely possible therefore you must assigne some cause from without and because you like not to acknowledg the determination of Gods will to be the cause hereof you must alledge some other cause I see you usually flye to the infinitie of Gods knowledge but in vaine for Gods knowledge is to know truths and not to make them Lastly by this doctrine of yours it will follow that God knew the world would be made before ever God determined to makeâ—â— to wit by vertue of his infinite knowledge Now what a faire way this openeth unto Atheisme let the wise and learned Reader judge indifferently Heretofore I confesse you seemed to maintaine the existence of all things from everlasting in eternity which if it were true then this might minister an apparent ground of Gods knowledge of all things be they never so contingent for as much as they are supposed to exist before him But here you have assigned nothing for the ground hereof hitherunto but onely the infinity of Gods knowledge But in the next sentence I thinke you cast about for this also As Balaam did many wayes to serve his turne in the course of his divinations and all is fish that comes to your net so it may serve your turne to oppose in this question the determination of Gods will Well thus it is For as Gods essence is present in every place as it were an ubiquitarie center for indeed if a body were infinite everywhere might be imagined a center and you doe much affect to compare the nature of God to impossibilities and sometimes preferre him so farre as to compare him to just nothing so is his eternity or infinite duration coexistent to every part of succession and yet withall is round about Hee it is that drives things future upon us being from eternity as well beyond as on this side of them Wee have beene acquainted with these absurd paradoxes of yors heretofore so that now wee cease to admire them But first we do deny the comparative coherence So which hath force of an argument by way of comparison but it hath no force here because there is no proportion betwixt the things compared Gods presence is in every place no marvell for all places doe exâ—st together And so if all times did exist together God eternity should coexist with all times But it is impossible that all times should exist together because time consists in succession of parts But as one time and the things therein shall exist after another so God shall coexist with them So then Gods presence is in every place and Gods eternity coexists with every time and that indivisibly but with a great difference for God all at once coexists with everie place but not all at once doth he coexist with every time but successively for as much as time doth not otherwise exist then successively Nay the comparison is flat against you For like as God not onely coexisteth at this present with everie place that is existent but shall coexist with a world tenne times as big whensoever by the will of God such
it to be a cleare thing that not only contingent thinges but even necessary thâ—nges also as we call them doe come to passe all contingently in respect of the will of God They that ground Gods foreknowledge of future contingents upon things without God doe usually ground it not upon any absolute necessity of the events themselves as upon the causes producing them which though they worke contingently and not necessarily yet this they thâ—nke nothing hindreth the infallibility of God knowledge because hee is able to comprehend all failings possible and to discerne in what case they take place and in what not which in effect is to rest upon the condition of Gods knowledge in it selfe as you here doe and because it is infinite therehence to conclude that it is infallible An invention of late yeares and brought in by the Iesuits together with their doctrine concerning scientia media For whereas before there was onely a double knowledge found in God the one antecedent to his will which they called scientia simplicis intelligentiae whereby hee understood his owne essence and therewithall all necessary truths and all things possible the other subsequent to the will of God which they called scientia visionis and hereby he knoweth all things past present and to come all which they acknowledge to be dependant upon the will of God the Iesuits have of late yeares devised a middle knowledge betweene thâ—se two and it consists in knowâ—ng not things necessary nor thâ—ngs contingent that have beene are or shall be but in knowing what would be in such or such a case as for example what a man in such a case thus or thus moved and induced unto good or evill would doe or not doe And the ground hereof they make the infinitie of Gods knowledge as I remember Vasquius expresly professeth so much and so as well they may make this infinitie of Gods knowledge the ground of knowing all future contingents For although Suarez takes upon him to confute Palatius who as he hath maintained that God knowes future contingents by reason of the efficacy of his knowledge yet judge I pray whether himselfe differ from him when he come to prove his owne opinion which is this In Deo sola essentia ejus est sufficiens ratio cujuscunque cognitionis possibilis cum in virtute efficacitate intelligendi sit simpliciter infinita In God his essence alone is a sufficient cause of all knowledge possible considering that virtue and efficacy of knowing it is simply infinite So Vasquez Deus quae sua est infinitas efficacitate sui intellectus omnia intelligibilia intellectu suo penetrat and againe Quia divinus intellectus infinitae virtutis est quicquid intelligibile est necessario debet amplecti intelligere Nam si aliquid ab ipso infinito intellectu non posset intelligi à quo alio posset And indeed were future contingents intelligâ—ble there were no further question to be made but that his knowledge were sufficient to comprehend them But it is apparent that no such contingent is knowable as a thing to come more thâ—n as a thing not to come in its owne nature and consequently God can no more know that it is to come then that it is not to come unlesse that which in its owne nature is onely possible be determined this way or that way and consequently made future or not future This objection Suarez foreseeth and proposeth Sicut divina potentia non potest facere id quod de se non est factibile ita nec scientia divina scire potest id quod ex se scibile non est neque certum judicium ferre de eo quod in se omnino incertum est Nam neque scientia potest ferri extra objectum suum neque potest suo modo non commensurari illi in certitudine infallibilitate quia requirit adaequationem And to this purpose he alledgeth Thomas saying Scientiam non posse esse necessariam nisi objectum sub aliqua ratione qua attingitur necessitatem habeat Et hoc modo dici potest requiri ex parte objecti certitudinem objectivam id est talem modum veritatis quae apta sit ut certum infallibile judicium feratur quod sane habet omnis veritas hoc ipso quod determinata est In which latter words he gives in briefe a better and fairer answer then in the whole distinction following if he be able to make good what he saith For indeed every truth determinate is a sufficient object of knowledge But I would know of him or you how comes it to bee true that such a contingent shall exist whereas in his owne nature it is onely possible to exist and indifferent as well not to exist as to exist As for example how is it true that to morrow it shall rayne rather then that to morrowe it shall not rayne seeing in it selfe it is no more inclinable to the one then to the other If the one were true and the other false then there were no question but God should knowe the one to be true and the other to be false But seeing there is no reason given by Suarez why the one should be true rather then the other there is no reason why one should be knowne of God to be true more then the other And therefore Suarez layeth for a ground that future contingents have from all eternitie a determinate truth but shewes not how they come to have their truthe nor how thinges merely possible in themselvs come to be future which as it is appareÌ„t could not possibly be without a cause But had he gone about this worke which indeede was most necessary the truth would soone have appeared in his colours For it will soone be found that nothing could be the cause hereof but the will of God Which was the opinion as he professeth both of Ricardus and of Scotus and in effect of Cajetan and of many of the Thomist and that Alexander of Hales favoureth it Neither could he be ignorant that Alvarez maintaynes it to have bene the opinâ—on of Aquinas also To the same opinion Durand not only inclines as Vasqu us writes in 1. disp 65. cap. 1. but to it only adheres as the same Vasquius notes in the saâ—e disputation cap. 2. Durands words are playne Not only Gods prescience of a thing to come is joyned with his will to have tâ— come in 1. dist 35. q 3. num 25. Deum prescire A fore coexigit Deum velle A fore But also that his prescience is built hereupon ibidem dist 39. q. 1. num 10. in these words Repraesentatur res fore vel non fore per essentiam divinam non ut est solum essentia virtualiter rem omnem continens sed ut est volens rem possibilem sore quia libere vult rem fore And Vasquius himselfe not only acknowledgeth that from the decree of Gods will may sufficiently be
gathered the certeintie of knowledge which God hath of future contingents in 1. disp 65. cap. 4. but also proposing the same objection that Suarez doth above mentioned answeareth it not as Suarez doth by saying Things contingent have a determinate truth as touching their being for the the time to come whereof we nothing doubt but shewes whence they have it which point Suarez declined wholy tanquam praecipitium as a break-necke to his owne opinion But Vasquius deales more plainly and professeth that future things of merely possible become future by vertue of the decree of God Observandum est sayth he futurum ita esse objectum scientiae Dei infallibilis eo ipso quod re ipsa futurum est ut tamen nostro modo intelligendi supponat decretum Dei tan quam causam ante quam nihil intelligitur vere esse futurum And agayne Quia nulla res ex se futura est sed ex voluntate omnipotentia Dei ideo antequam intelligantur futura supponitur Dei voluntas ut causa illius non quidem durationis ordine sed rationis num 23. Sicut creatura nondum possibilis est donec Deus intelligatur esse qui est primum omnium ens sic etiam creatura nondum est futura donec decretum voluntatis esse intelligatur ex quo ut ex causa futura est Thus Vusquius mainteyning the infinity of Gods knowledge to be the ground of his knowledge of future contingents as well as you doe yet doth not make use of this his opinion to oppose the forgoing of the determination of Gods will as you doe Yet what have you conferred to the overthrowe of that opinion which you impugne that deserves to be named the same day with the least part of the meanest of those that have mainteyned it You only shewe your teethe and proceede confidently in dictating what pleaseth you without any evidence of reason to confirme what you so boldly proposâ— I long to come to an end of this In the next place you give some reason for your assertion As when you say We are able by Gods permission to lay a necessitie upon contingents and so to foreknowe them yet our knowledge still is but finite Hence you seeme willing to inferre that therefore God seeing his knowledge is infinite is able to know future contingents without laying any necessitie upon them by the determination of his will I am very glad to heare you reason because it is so rare with you herein like to Hector Naevianus Qui Philosophari volebat sed paucis Henry the seventh of England was wont to say he desired to look his dangers in the face so I desire to know what my opposite hath to say against the truth I defend I have beene so long exercised in these points and encountred such champions that I have no cause to feare your colours nor powder and shot neither wherefore in the first place I answer that the difference betweene knowledge finite and infinite doth not require that infinite knowledge should extend so farre as to know things unknowable for that were to extend beyond his object But rather herein they differ of things knowable finite knowledge takes notice onely of some infinite knowledge comprehends all Now things contingent till they are determined to come to passe or not to come to passe are not knowable that they shall come to passe nor are knowable that they shall not come to passe and consequently cannot be knowne that they shall come to passe or knowne that they shall not come to passe For if the understanding of man doth apprehend a thing as future which is not future herein he cannot be said to know but to erre rather Now that which in its owne nature is onely possible cannot passe from this condition into the condition of a thing future without some cause Now you have shewed no cause of this alteration nor you list not to inquire into it it is too hot for your fingers For by inquirie it would be found that no cause hereof can be assigned but onely the will of God Secondly I deny that God by determining things contingent and in their nature meerly possible making them future doth lay any necessity upon them but rather decreeth a contingent manner of production unto them answerable unto their natures For as hee decreeth that necessary things shall come to passe necessarily so hee decreeth that contingent things shall come to passe contingently Thirdly as touching your antecedent I desire to know what things contingent those are whereupon we can lay any necessity whereby to foretell them for it passeth my imagination to divine This may well goe for your owne I have been acquainted with many disputants in this argument I never met with any argument of any kinne to this Certainly there is some exquisite curiosity in it For you suppose men may doubt of this and therefore you undertake to prove it but when In your treatise of the divine providence that I heare is newly printed we shall heare of it belike ere long in case you doe not forget what you promised and the reason why I may doubt hereof is this In the end of the fifth Section of this Chapter you told us that you were anon to intimate that the reservation of such liberty unto God himselse as never to passe any decree whereby to binde his owne hands is a point of high perfection Now this anon of yours is yet to come for hitherto since we parted from that section wee have received no intimation hereof But be it that you will bee as good as your word what is that which you undertake to demonstrate That some events which are to day truly contingent may by our industrie become to morrow truly necessary But this needs no demonstration For whatsoever I doe by doing it I make that necessarie which before was contingent For every Sophister knowes out of Aristotle and out of common sense also that Omne quod est quando est necesse est esse But this is nothing to your purpose For you speake of such a necessity laid upon contingents as whereby we might foreknow them But by doing things I cannot foâ—â—know them for knowledge of things upon the doing of them is rather after-knowledge then fore knowledge And therefore though heretofore I thought of no other meaning of these words of yours then this yet now by pondering better upon it I conceive you have a farther reach and that of a mysterious nature for as much as you are loath to utter it and give an instance of that which you deliver Yet why should you be loath to utter that which you presume no intelligent Christian will deny This makes me looke back againe upon your words to try whether I can start the mysterie And hereupon I discover other mysteries though not the maine as when you say We are able after this necessity layd upon them by our selves infallibly to foreknow and
passe from him or by him as they doe from us That which you take to be most true I take to be most false in the sense wherin you deliver it For like as they passe from us by ceasing to coexist with us so they passe also from God as ceasing to coexist with him And as they come upon us by beginning anew to coexist with us so they come upon God also as beginning anew to coexist with him The conforming of space of time with space of place doth abuse your understanding and cast you into errour ere you are aware though you will not be perswaded of it In space of place it is true things both comming towards us yet doe not come towards God and passing by us and from us yet doe not passe by God or from God The reason whereof is because God doth coexist with all places and filleth all but man doth not And no marveile For all places doe actually exist and God existing too they are truly sayd to coexist together But as for all the parts of time they doe not exist together and therefore consequently cannot bee said to coexist with God neither God at once to coexist with them But as they doe exist by succession one after another so is God said to coexist with them not by reason of any succession in God but onely in the creature and as wee lose our coexistence with creatures that cease to be so doth God For coexistence is an externall denomination attributed unto God from the existence of the creatures In which sence he is said to be He that was and is and is to come to wit in respect of his coexistence which was with things that are past and which is with things that are present and which shall bee with things that are to come to wâ—t when they are come But besides this succession in man of coexistence with other creatures there is also a succession in man which is not in God For he groweth or diminisheth in the quantity of his body he is changed and altered to and fro in the qualities both of body and soule In body sometimes hot sometimes cold sometime faire sometimes foule In soule he hath for a while a growth in knowledge afterward hee 〈◊〉 and decayeth in knowledge As for the duration of his essence that is without succession as the Angels are And to continue the same as God doth is not to gaine ought but to keep that which he hath God is alwayes so are Angels since the time they have beene The manner of Gods duration is indivisible such also is reputed the duration of Angels whom Schoolemen acknowledge not to be measured by time but by Aevum as touching their substance onely as touching their thoughts whereof there may be a succession they have invented a discreet time to be the measure thereof God loseth no existence by antiquity man neither loseth nor gets existence by continuance For how should the continuation of existence be the losing of it and how can hee get that which he hath already Accidents are gotten and lost I confesse nothing so in God Thus your fancies cast about to gaine some confirmation of your former erroneous conceit of Gods coexistence with all parts of time but nothing serves your turne If by continuance alone we did gaine any thing which before we had not God himselfe should gaine something which before he had not For without doubt hee hath continuance Times passing you say exonerate themselves into the Ocean of his infinite duration without inlarging it Times comming incessantlie flowe from it without diminution of it No doubt you please your selfe in these expressions To me they are worse then Empedocles his Androprora were to Aristotle There is no canting like unto this The waters that run into the Sea are a part of the Sea thence they came and thither they returne as Salomon telleth us And therefore no marvell if the Sea neither is diminished by their egresse nor by their regresse enlarged No creatures duration is a part of Gods duration as the rivers are part of the sea And how doth our duration flow from Gods but as an efficient cause and that equivocall that is wholly different but water doth not come from the Sea as from an efficient much lesse equivocall but as a part from the whole Neither indeed doth our duration proceed from Gods duration but from his will For our duration is our existence continued and this from the will of God For he worketh all things according to the counsell of his will Thus we can devise how our duration comes from God though farre different from the flowing of the water from the Sea but how our durations doe exonerate themselves into God or into his duration it surpasseth the sphere of my imagination to devise I doe not thinke Paracelsus was ever able to interprete this Yet some say he heard the devill reade a lecture through a grate in the Vniversity of Toledo Yet you have not done traversing your ground Times future you say are said to come upon us or to meet us because our duration or existence cannot reach to future things whilest they are future Your figure Catachresis when will it be at an end when we talke of reaching we suppose the thing to have existence whereat we reach but time future as yet exists not Yet you thinke God doth reach it by coexistence with it Yet I marke of late you forbeare thâ—s phrase Is it not because it doth manifestly discover the errour of your conceit For to coexist with things future doth imply that things future coexist and consequently exist and so they are present and not future The very Angells are not of so long standing to day as they shall be to morrow This I confesse is something but I would gladlie know what inference you make herehence Angells have had a beginning God hath not if God had a beginning as Angells have had every day he should be of longer duration then he was the former yet without any change and consequently without succession But will you inferre herehence therfore God hath coexistence with things future A consequence of no coulour of probability and the consequent in it selfe implying manifest contradiction as before I have shewed Till future things exist we have no coexistence with them nor God neither For if God did coexist with them they should coexist with God consequently exist and so cease to be future and forthwith become present Yet you labour to prove the contrary and so you may and sweate too and be never a whit the nearer to that you seeke for God is every way before time you say that is not onely before it as we accompt he is before that which is to come and so are we also but he was before all Worlds but after it and behind it also For that which we accompt after or behind time you call before it that so with the better grace you
doth not Some have maintayned that God can make an infinite magnitude and a number infinite as Hurtado di Mendosa disputes Secondly your argumentation is rather à Posteriori then à Priori For if by essence infinite you understand infinite in duration which is as much as eternity I have already shewed that immutability better inferres eternity then eternity doth inferre immutability But as for the necessitie of Gods being that doth manifestly and à Priori inferre his eternall being and that it is impossible he should cease to be And Bradwardine maintaynes that this attribute of God ens necessarium is the first attribute as whence all other perfections are manifestly derived For that a lesse perfect nature should have a necessitie of being and a more perfect nature should have a contingent being is most absurd and impossible For so that which is more perfect should have his dependance of being from that which is lesse perfect Wherefore seeing God is of necessary being it followeth manifestly that he must be most perfect Yet I have cause to doubt of your sinceritie in affirming that To infinite perfection nothing can accrewe It is well knowne what conceyt Vorstius intertayned hereabouts as namely that Gods decrees are not everlasting in which case some new act of will doth accrew to God which before was not found in him And I fear you will be found to be of the same opinion And I pray what meant you in the former chapter and 5. Section to maintayne that it is a point of high perfection for God to reserve his libertie and what libertie is this but of decreeing Yet in the same Section you stile Gods decrees everlasting But that denomination comes in against the hayre as if it were only to choak your reader and hâ—nder him from laying that to your charge which this reservation of libertie which you attribute to God as a point of high perfection doth manifestly import When you say that From infinite perfection nothing can fall but must fall into God or into infinite perfection seeing that he is in being infinite in such a conceyt streyned so high that it breakes into non-sence and flat contradiction For if it fall from him it falls not into him â—f into him it falls not from him In like sort in saying that God is indivisibly and totally in every space that can be imagined you contradict that which formerly you have delivered in the chapter of Gods immensitie For hence it followeth that God is in vacuo which you in plaine tearmes denyed there 3. In the next place you propose a difficultie and that is this How Gods will or counsell should be eternally immutable and yet everlastingly free And in stead of answer you tell us You see not what appearance of difficultie can present it selfe at least to such as beare the two former principles before mentioned levell in their mindes and thoughts So then two principles will serve the turne to cleare all this provided that we keepe them levell in our mindes and thoughts otherwise woe bee to the funambulus if he swerve never so little awry Now these principles you say are first That God is absolutely infinite in being the other That he is absolutely perfect according to all the branches of being or perfection by us conceivable or more then all these perfection it selfe If you will believe me I assure you I doe believe all this and yet I am as farre to seeke for clearing of the former difficultie as ever If the reason be because I doe not keepe them so levill in my minde and thought as I should I assure you I would willingly helpe this also if I knew how I would doe any thing for a quiet life and to cleare such a difficultie as this which in my opinion is a wondrous one if rightly understood But I much doubt whether every one that proposeth it rightly understandeth it For I have found by experience that many talke of the libertie of Gods will in proportion to our libertie Now our libertie consisteth in an indifferency of intertayning different acts of will But we shall fowly erre if we intertaine any such conceyt of the libertie of Gods will For the act of Gods will being all one with Gods will and Gods will being his essence and his essence being one most simple act it was ever impossible that there should be any thing found in God which now is not or that any thing should not be found in God which now is You will say then was it not possible that other things might have bene decreed by God then are Yes undoubtedly even Iudas might have bene an elect and Paul a reprobate Yet other things thus decreed should not have beene decreed by any other act in God then now is in God for the reason above specified and that for ought I know so received by Schoole Divines as denyed by none And this is a mystery I confesse wherein we must content our selves with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 leave to inquire how this may be for we are uncapable of that Onely we can prove that the course of things that now is in whole and part hath no necessary derivation from God but meerly contingent and accordingly proceeded from the free will of God yet everlastingly determining this course of things that now we see and having everlastingly determined it this will of God concerning this course of things hath everlastingly continued immutable unto this day and so shall for ever As for your principles how they conferre to the clearing of this I perswade my selfe you are not able to manifest And what need I pray of making a difference betweene these principles which seeme to be all one and your selfe have coupled them togâ—ther as all one in the former section and in that argument of yours whereby you proved the immutability of God Yet these principles must bee helpt with another supposition that so they may doe the deed that is That absolute contingency or possibilities aequipendent betwixt many effects may as truly be the object of Gods eternall decree as necessity in other workes of nature Which supposition to raise your readers thoughts to an admiration of the momentous nature thereof you say You have often promised and once for all by Gods assistance shall undoubtedly prove wheras you might well spare your paines in this no man being so simple as to question it were it not that you do intoxicate your readers thoughts in the delivering of it with wilde phrases in calling the contingency of things possibilities aequipendent enough to slagger a man at the very noise of such cracking of thornes Wee maintaine that God decreeth not onely contingency but things contingent as namely Cyrus his restoring of the Iewes and giving them liberty to returne to their owne country the burning of the Prophets bones by Iosiah upon the Altar yea and the crucifying of Christ Iesus the Apostles with one voice directly expressing
changed noâ— his omnipotent will resisted it must necessarily follow that every one so destinated to salvation shall be saved every one so destinated to damnation shall be damned The best helpe you have against this and whereupon this discourse of yours doth most runne is that the object of Gods decree is contingency or mutability for so you are pleased to confound things that differ But you are nothing wary to keepe your selfe from contradicting your selfe For when you say that God decreeth contingency you doe withall deny that God doth decreâ— the thing contingent as you have expresly professed in your treatise upon Ier. 26. Did not Hezechiah feare before the Lord c. And withall to make your meaning the more plaine you have professed that albeit God doth not decree necessity but withall decrecing the things that come to passe necessarily yet in decreeing contingency you deny that he decreeth withall the things contingent But in this place you have plainly signified that the doome it selfe of every man is foreset by the immutable decree of God and not onely the contingency of it And no mervayle For albeit as touching the actions of men ther may be some colour for the exempting of them from being the objects of Gods decrees yet the doomes of men being the actions of God himselfe there is no colour at all for the exempting of them from being the object of Gods decrees And therefore this distinction of Gods decreeing contingency or mutability but not the things contingent themselves will nothing avayle you in this place For you plainly professe that the doome of every one is forset by the decree of God and it is impossible it should be otherwise For God could not execute it unlesse he did will it He cannot execute the salvation of Peter unles he did first will it nor the damnation of Iudas except he did first will it and his will was everlasting otherwise there should be a change in God And seeing his will can neither change nor be resisted therefore it necessarily followeth that whose salvation he did from everlasting will or decree they must be saved and whose damnation he did from everlasting will or decree they must be damned And thus much as touching the doome of every man foreset by Gods decree You adde unto this The course of every mans life and affirme that it also is foreset by Gods decree And this course of every mans life you understand in respect of good and evill morall as appeares by this that you proportion mens doomes unto the courses of their lives which can beare no other interpretation then in respect of mens good and evill actions â—w at the first I wondred what you meant to bring so unequall heyfers to plow under the same yoke considering that the courses of mens lifes in this sense are the actions or workes of men but the doomes of men according to their courses of life are the actions or workes of God much more have I cause to wonder to reade you professing them all indifferently to be foreset by the decree of God For as for the good yea the most gracious actions of men according to your opinion they are not foreset by the decree of God For your profession is and that as of some singular subtilty and invention that God decreeth contingency but not the things contingent whence it followeth that as touching the most gracious actions of men even faith and repentance they being onely contingent things that God decreeth them not but only the contingency of them How much lesse fit is it for you according to the tenour of your opinion to joyne all the courses of mens lives even the evill courses as well as good with the doomes proportionall and to consider them as fore-set by an immutable and omnipotent decree of God as here you doe Yet I see how some one in your behalfe might plead for you namely that this is delivered by you onely by way of â—upposition not positively affirmed but I see no likelihood that you would plead thus for your selfe but rather give your self to the emasculating of Gods decree by some frivolous distinctions For you acknowledge Gods concourse to every action And in the preface you make shew not so much of excepting against the doctrine of Gods decreeing all things as against the manner of decreeing them And when you speake of the worst courses of mens lives as of Iewish blasphemy against the Sonne of God and amplifie the hainousnesse of their opinion that maintaine it to have been decreed by God you rather except against the manner of decreeing it to wit ineritably and that as touching the obliquity of it onely then simply against the decreeing of it Yoâ—r words aâ—e these ch 1. sect 15. Shall we say God did inevitably decree the obliquity of Iewish blasphemy Which cautions whereunto they tend I know not unlesse to make some declination from maâ—fest contradiction to the words of the Holy Ghost Act. 4. 28. delivered with one mouth by the Apostles in their meditation unto God saying Uerily against thy holy Sonne Jesus both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and people of Israel are gathered together to doe what thy hand and thy counsell had determined before to be done And indeed it is nothing but ignorance or wilfulnes in some and trafty perverting the state of the truth in others that makes those things seeme harsh which yet notwithstanding their harshnes are manifestly commended to us in the word of God For what harshnes I pray is in this God determined that all the evill that was done to Christ should be done by his permission And none give better evidence unto this truth ere they are aware then they that with might and mayne oppose it as Arminius who professeth that the Iewes proceeded so farre in their ignominious handling of Christ as God would have them and this he delivers without all temperament And Bellarmine profâ—sseth that it is good that evill should be by Gods permission And yet herein we say no more then Austin professed 1200. yeares agoe saying Non aliquid sit nisi quod omnipotens fieri velit velsinendo ut siat vel ipse faciendo And your selfe in this place joyne the doome of every man with the course of every mans life in good or evill and suppose them to beforeset by the immutable and omnipotent decree of God Wherefore it is not for your positive dictates and wild resemblances without all proportion that we doe beleeve God to be eternally and immutably free yet wee doe beleeve he is so not to decree a new for Gods decrees are eternall not temporary but to doe any thing that is possible to be done and to bring forth some creatures agents naturall to worke necessarily others agents rationall to worke contingently and freely As for the resemblance of Gods freedome and immutability your talke of it is like your other discourses For what resemblance doe you find of Gods
contradict you provided he do not say that God did inevitably decree it And surely I cannot but commend your wary proceeding in this and if you had used the like warinesse in everie sentence he had need rise betime that would goe beyond you in this kâ—nde of warinesse and circumspection yet to make all sure you give a reason of it saying For this were to bereave him of his absolute and eternall liberty And herein you say verie true for if it were absolutelie necessarie for him to decree this surelie it were not absolutelie free for him whether to decree it oâ— no. Yet I finde some in opinon have transgressed in this later but never any in the former For Aristotle a great Philosopher hath denied God to be a free agent and conceived him to be a necessary agent yet never beleeved that it was necessarie for him to decree the deposition of Elies house or ought else And therefore you doe not well to prove a more plaine thing by that which is lesse manifest We have as good stuffe in the next To say that before Elies dayes God past any act that could constraine his eternall libertie of honouring Elies family as well as any others were impiety because it chargeth the Almighty with impotent immutability Herehence are certaine Aphorismes to be selected worthy our consideration 1. God is not to be charged with any thing that is impotent but there is a kinde of immutability that is impotent therefore God is not to be charged with such an immutability Now to attâ—bute unto God â—hat which doth not become him is a kinde of blasphemy The contradâ—ctorie hereunto doth become God and must be attributed unto him to wit immutability For mutabâ—lity and immutability are termes contradictorie and it is one of the most generall principles that are that one of two contradictorie termes may be attributed to any thing therefore if it be blasphemy to say God is immutable it is no blasphemy to say that God in some cases at least is mutable And in haec Amphâ—arae sub terram abdâ—tae Old Prophet Maâ—achy dost thou heare this that hast instructed us this to be the voice of God I the Lord am not changed And thou Iames the Apostle how hast thou deceived us in llâ— that with God there is no variablenesse nor shadow of change Yet now we are taught that it is no lâ—le then blasphemy to say that God is altogether immutable yea it is to ascribe impotencie unto him Hee must be mutable that he may be potent Well let us consider wherein this impotent immutability doth consist to wit in not being able to reverse his owne act so then potent mutability consists in being able to reverse his owne act Here by the way it is acknowledged that Gods decrees are acts past otherwise in doing contrary thereto there were no colour of mutability Yet hitherunto it hath beene denyed that Gods decrees were acts past And by not passing of them there was conceited a reservation of liberty For so you thought better to discourse then at the first to professe any revocable nature of Gods decrees But now that conceyte not fadging and your selfe as it seemes not throughly satisfied you plainely breake forth and adventure to mainteyne that notwithstanding Gods decrees are acts past yet he can change them and thus farre he is mutable and to say that God is immutable herein is to charge him with impotency From the first I looked for this and at length the partridge is sprunge But you will say otherwise his liberty is restrayned I answere this is a vayne fiction proceeding from the vayne consideration of mans infirmities and attributing them unto God For man after he hath promised a thing afterwards would fayne break his promise either because he made it improvidently or because he is of a fickle disposition and therfore in performing his promise he doth it in a sort against his will But no such improvidence is found in God no such fickle disposition is incident to him And therefore his will being the same still and that for good cause his liberty is the same still For liberty extends no farther then to doe what we can or will Now though God can doe otherwise absolutely yet he will not doe otherwise and supposing that he hath decreed to doe this it is impossible that he should doe otherwise For God cannot change his will for as much as all change of will in the creature proceeds from such imperfections as are not incident to the nature of God as namely improvidence or forgetfullnes or sicklenes or the like and yet doe not we say that the deposition of Elies race or the death of his Sonnes were absolutely necessary But God had ordained them to come to passe contingently that is with a possibility to the contrary and upon supposition not only of their miscarriage but also of the will of God thus to punish their miscarriage If you rest your selfe upon such a decree of God They that dishonour me them will Jâ—dishonour what need you trouble the World with such distastfull speculations as to affirme that to say God is immutable is to charge him with impotency But this is an indefinite proposition and if this be all the decree you acknowledge in God you must deny that the will of God to depose Elies line in particular from the Preisthood was eternall and affirme thus it had its beginning by way of reservation of liberty but not to doe it untill Ely had dishonoured God And such proposition as these undoubtedly are the best grounds for these your extravagant speculations and these doe farre better suite with your first course namely as touching reservation of liberty and suspension of resolution then with revocation of his decrees considered as acts past But the common and generall opinion of making Gods decrees eternall made you to shuffle in that a long time and at length plainely to fall fowle upon the liberty to revoke them lest otherwise Gods liberty should be restrayned Of Cicero Austin sayth that dum homines fecit liberos fecit sacrilegos And you to make God free make him immutable and think to helpe it by giving us to understand that some kind of mutability is potent like as there is an immutability which is impotent as you conceave 4. In conclusion you tell us that to think of Gods eternall decree without admiration voyd of danger we must conceive it as the immediate axis or center upon which every successive or contingent act revolves And I professe I cannot think on this which you deliver without admiration And the object of my admiration is upon what axis or center your witt did revolve when you pleased your selfe with this resemblance Yet I think there is no great danger in your meaning to make a man an hereticke For it had neede be understood first And he deserves to be one of your worthiest disciples that understands you in this For like as he
neighbours or brethren either in time of plenty or time of scarcitie You doe him the greater wrong to charge him with sucking in cruelty as wine and feeding upon the needy as upon delicates neither will your good phrases make him amends in words for the wrong you doe him in deeds as for cutting morsels out of other mens throats this is a phrase incongruous for an intemperate mans diet is fitter for a superstitious Papist that in case the Priest should vomit the hoast thinkes the people bound to lickâ— it up The close of this ninth Section complies with the beginning of the first betweene which what suitable matter hath occurred let the Reader judge Though indigence be the mother of cruelty yet herehence it followeth not that it is not the mother of pitty for Rara est concordia fratrum Cleocles and Polynicas both had one mother yet there is a great difference in indigence as the cause of these Indigence heretofore suffered is made the cause of pitty but indigence in present alone is the cause of cruelty and that onely in case it cannot be relieved but by cruelty 5 Philosopher-like or rather meere naturalist-like you make errour of judgement the root of all evill as the cause of covetousnesse you make to be the opinion of want either that is for the present or may be for the time to come How farre are you different from Aquinas who maintaines that our wills are more corrupt quoad appetitum boni then our mindes quoad intellectum veri yet the Poet seems to have had another conscience in that of his Video moliora proboque deteriorasequor Saint Paul I thinke was a man regenerate when he made that profession I see a law in my members rebelling against the law of my minde and leading me captive to the law of sinne It is true there are bosome sinnes as wee call them like familiar spirits to particular men and so they may be dispensed withall in these they will shew themselves very morrall in other points and thinke it reason God should be mercifull unto them in breaking one commandment so they keepe the other nine Herod heard Iohn Baptist gladly untill hee toucht upon the keeping of his brother Phillips wife Iudas was content to follow Christ so he might bâ—are the bagge and so long as hee could make best wages by his service but thirty pieces of silver mooved him to give his master the bagge and to betray him A man for judgement able to arbitrate and voide of exorbitant affections which might expose him to partialitie or prejudice no doubt is the fittest arbitratour But if you aske me whereto this running discourse tends I cannot answer you yet it may bee you may answer your selfe hereafter Internall moderation mixt with outward competency is the onely supporter of true constancy I had thought integritie had made a man fit for arbitrament not constancy for constancy may be in courses unjust as well as just I presume it proceeds from constant integrity That content is little commendable that depends upon sufficiencie of estate not onely competent but more then competent And to my thinking even in the course of naturall morality a vertuous condition should not depend upon outward things the exercise of vertue doth I confesse but not vertue it selfe Bias his saying was Omnia meo mecum porto but wee are taught of a better Master that Godlinesse is great gaine with contentment and that the righteous cateth to the contentation of his minde which is delivered without distinction of poore or rich like as that which followeth The belly of the wicked shall want And that a dinner of greene herbs and love with it is better then a stalled oxe with hatred and strife The meanest Christian hath the love of God with him who answereth to the joy of his heart and the most glorious King that ever was professeth that A good conscience is a continuall feast and David the father a great conquerour found no blessednesse in any temporall state but in that which was incident to the meanest of his subjects saying Blessed is the man whose iniquitie is forgiven and whose sinne is covered Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth no sinne and in whose spirit there is no guile The truth is if our pretences depend upon outward things they shall bee as fraile as those are mutable and who can give strength to resist the temptations of Satan but God As there is no being but from God so no permanence of being but from God till the time of temptation a man is not known let the raine fall and the flouds rise and the winde beat upon the house then it will appeare whether it were built upon the rock or upon the sand Wee know the Angells fell wee know Adam fell and how vaine a thing is it to discourse of any naturall permanency in vertuous courses amongst naturall men that knew not God By the way your phrase of satisfying capacities is incongruous of satisfying desires wee usually heare but of satisfying capacities I never read of but in your discourse You proceed to discourse unto us of another roote of unconstancy which you call contingency which is a terme of art with you and your peculiar dialect this roote you will have to be the infinite capacitie of reasonable creatures conceites or desires within whose compasse their finite motions may become eccentricke and irregular as it were a starre fixed in too wide a sphere And this applyed to the fall of Angels in whom wee finde a double change or alteration the one morall to wit a change from the state of integrity wherein they were created into the state of sinne the second naturall to wit a change from a blessed state into a wretched and damned condition the first change was their owne worke as wherein they sinned the second the worke of God whereby they were punished Their inconstancie in not standing upright but falling into sinne is onely pertinent to the present purpose and to enquire after the root of this is to enquire after the cause of their fall Now the cause hereof as it is plaine so if we please we may as plainly expresse it for as for their possibility to fall that rose from the condition of their natures being made by God free agents and so accordingly a law being given them by God they might freely obey it freely disobey it what need wee straine our wits for obscure expression of so plaine a truth as by referring it to the infinite capacitie of their conceits or desires within whose compasse their finite motions may become eccentricke and irregular What need we affect such perturbation of speech in confounding conceits with desires and placing finite motions within the compasse of desires infinitely capacious which motions undoubtedly were their desires for they sinned questionlesse in desiring somewhat and comparing desires to spheres and againe desires to starres fixed in spheres that so
communication of them also Am. 9. 7. I have withheld the raine from you when there were yet three weekes to the harvest and caused it to raine upon one Citie and caused it not to raine upon another Citie one piece was rained upon and the piece whereon it rained not withered Some dye in their mothers wombe some hanging at their mothers breasts some after a long time are consumed with a lingring death neither is Gods love in Scripture phrase enlarged towards any save towards his elect Thus Iacob was loved but Esau hated Againe what justice doe you devise in God towards his creature Both Vasquez and Suarez concurre in this that the justice of God towards man doth alwaies presuppose his will and God may binde himselfe as he pleaseth by promise But Gods will you say is not the rule of goodnesse because the designes thereof are backt with infinite power Your theame was to prove that Gods will is not the rule of goodnesse when you come to prove it you prove nothing lesse but onely that the cause why Gods will is not the rule of goodnesse is not for that his designes are backt with infinite power This is not to disprove Gods will to be the rule of goodnesse but rather to confirme it for in saying that this or that is not the cause why Gods will is the rule of goodnesse you doe imply that you maintaine that his will is the rule of goodnesse though not for this cause Perhaps you may say They which maintaine Gods will to be the rule of Gods goodnesse doe maintaine it upon no other ground then this to wit Because his designes are backt with infinite power But had it beene so you might have fallen directly upon the overthrowing of such a foundation without carrying it in such a manner as if you would beare the world in hand that your selfe in some sort hold Gods will to bee the rule of goodnesse whereas you mean nothing lesse and therefore in carying your discourse after this manner you betray a faint heart in maintaining the maine Secondly I say it is incredible that any should maintaine Gods will to bee the rule of goodnesse for this cause because his designes are backt with infinite power as much as to say because God can doe what hee will This reason carieth no colour of truth with it for there is no reason why amongst men they that can doe what they will in comparison to other men should therefore bee honester men then other But because God hath infinite lawfull power that extends to every thing that implies no contradiction hence it followeth that whatsoever God doth is good and whatsoever God can doe if it were done by him it should justly be done otherwise hee should have power to be unjust which power in this case should either be in vain because it is not possible that ever it should be actuated or if actuated God should be unjust Holinesse you say doth so rule his power and moderate his will that the one cannot enjoyne or the other exact any thing not most consonant to the eternall or abstract patterns of equitie You take great liberty of discourse throughout What I pray according to our understandings is the subject of Gods holinesse is it not his will And how can his holinesse worke upon his will Doth the heat of fire worke upon the fire or the cold of water worke upon the water Againe here wee have power and will distinguished and the act of injoyning attributed to the one and exacting to the other Both are acts of command now I pray consider doth Gods power command I had thought imperium had beene the proper prerogative of the will yet both these by your discourse are in subjection to the eternall patterns of equity and equity before you confounded with justice Now I know no such justice in God different from his wisedome And herein I am of the same minde with Aquinas Quest. 23. De voluntate Dei Art 6. where hee disputeth this question Utrum justitia in rebus creatis ex simplici divina voluntate dependeat And there hee professeth that Primum ex quo pendet ratio omnis justitiae est sapientia divini intellectus qua res constituit in debita proportione ad se invicem ad suam causam Now let any man name any thing that God can doe and then let him answer me whether God bee not as well able by the infinitie of his wisedome to doe it wisely as by the infinity of his power to doe it at all And marke what in the same place where he seems most to favour your present Tenet Aquinas professeth Quamvis in nobis sit aliud intellectus voluntas secundum rem pro hoc nec idem est voluntas rectitudo voluntatis Deo tamen est idem secundum rein intellectus voluntas propter hoc est idem rectitudo voluntatis ipsa voluntas Although in us the understanding is one thing and the will really another thing whence it is that our will and the rectitude of our will is not the same yet seeing that in God the understanding and the will are really the same hence it is that in God his will and the rectitude of his will are all one But be it that his will is consonant to the eternall or abstract paternes of equitie I pray what more eternall and abstract paterne of equity then this that it is lawfull for God to make the world if he will and not to make it if he will yea and to doe what he will and leave undone what he will I hope the will of God revealed doth as sufficiently warrant all our actions if things are therefore good because God wils them as in case because they are good therefore God willeth them Now the former of these is true without all question in most things for whether the world had beene made sooner or later bigger or lesser more Angels or lesse more spheres or lesse whether they had moved this way they doe or the contrary way whether they should have continued longer or shorter time then they shall all had been received as the good course of Gods providence equally as now it is But here you passe to a point of a farre different nature for it is one thing to enquire whether Gods will be the rule of goodnesse in this sense whether whatsoever God brings to passe in the world is therefore good because God hath done it and a farre different thing to demand whether Gods will be the rule of goodnesse in this sense that whatsoever God commands us in his word for so I understand you when you speake of Gods revealed will it is therefore good because God commandeth it And I give a manifest reason of this difference for before the revelation of Gods word and without that all men naturally are able to discerne between good and evill they knew impiety idolatry profane swearing perjury
notorious untruth as namely that the execution of justice punitive is unnaturall unto God and that is out of Lament 3. 33. He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men Thus you take Scripture hand over head to serve your turne But I pray consider is it possible that God should doe any thing against his will men may have reluctations and conflicts in them and doe things volentes nolentes is such a condition possible to be found in the nature of God Yet in this case Aristotle hath defined the action to be simply voluntarie and done willingly If God be represented sometimes unto us as it were fluctuating like men betweene different resolutions of executing either mercy or justice as in the Prophet How shall I give thee up Ephraim how shall I deliver thee Israel how shall I make thee as Admah how shall I set thee as Zeboim mine heart is turned within me and my repentances are rowled together like as he is represented unto us as well in the shape of the members of our body as of the passions of our minde we have cause rather to take notice hereby of the goodnesse of God in condescending thus far to our infirmities to make us the better acquainted with him and the more sensible of his favour then hereby to take occasion to fashion God like unto our selves either in body or minde Yet the meaning of the Prophet is plaine enough namely that God comes not to afflict his children unlesse he be provoked by sinne and herein he differeth from earthly parents who sometimes chasten their children for their owne pleasures but God as hee doth not but in case he is provoked so he doth it for our profit as the Apostle telleth us in the same place To doe a thing willingly hath the same signification with the Latine phrase animi causa that is when nothing is the cause thereof but a mans owne will as Causabon observes out of Seneca de beneficiis 4. whose opinion was Neminem adeo à naturali lege descivisse hominem exuisse ut animi causa malus sit You further say that Nothing can provoke good men to execute punitive justice upon offenders but the good of others deserving either better or not so ill which might grow worse and worse through evill doers impunity I pray consider doe parents chastise their children for the good of others and not for the good of the children themselves God himselfe chastiseth his owne children all manner of wayes and is this for the good of others that deserve better or not so ill and not rather for the good of those his owne children themselves No chastising for the present is joyous saith the Apostle but grievous but afterwards it bringeth forth the quiet fruit of righteousnesse to them that are exercised thereby Marke I pray To them that are exercised thereby he doth not say that this fruit is brought forth to others As for the torments in the world to come who is the better for them unlesse they tend to the improvement of joy in those blessed ones while they behold in others that miserie which onely by the grace of God themselves have escaped For as for any other welfare of the Saints of God or any welfare at al of the damned crew or avoidance of grievances that is procured by the damnation of the wicked if you know it is well but I assure you it is more then I can divine of Yet doe we not say that God hath pleasure in the torture either of men or devils but onely in the demonstration of his owne glorious justice towards them and in the magnifying of his mercy so much the more toward his Saints You say It goeth against the nature of God to punish the workes of his owne hands A vile speech and withall senselesse and no marvell if when men prostitute all honesty and the feare of God in opposing manifest truth they lose their wits also and fall upon most unsober meditations For what a vile speech is it to say that any worke of God goeth against his nature who as the Apostle professeth worketh all things according to the counsell of his will Then againe what a senselesse speech is it to insinuate that it were not so contrary to GODS nature to deale thus with those creatures which were not the workes of his owne hands but being the works of his owne hands you say it is against his nature to punish them A wonderfull assertion and wherat the most barbarous people might be astonished in the consideration of the impiety shall I say or the insulsity thereof or both rather namely that it should be against Gods nature to punish sinners For it is well known that God punisheth none other nor ever did Christ Iesus the Sonne of God onely excepted And what a field have you here to expatiate in if you list to aggravate the unnaturalnesse of any action in God And with as little sobriety doe you amplifie that unnaturalnesse in God by the consideration of man especially as who you say is more deare to him then any childe is to his Father So then to punish others you are willing to grant not to be so unnaturall an action in God as the punishing of man And I pray what are those other creatures Are they inferiour as Oxen and Sheepe and all these never sinned yet is it not unnaturall to punish them if punishment may have place as being taken for the afflicting of them where there is no sinne For God gives us leave to weare them out with plowing carying riding for our necessity for our dâ—light yea to set one creature upon another the greyhound upon an hare upon a deere the hauke upon a partridge or phesant or wilde fowle No unnaturalnesse doe we exercise in all this such is the liberty which God hath given unto us But yet to punish man though a sinner for he punisheth no other this how greatly say you doth it goe against the nature of God It seemes you cannot tell how greatly neither can I helpe you herein For I doe not see how it is against his nature at all But you seeme to give a reason in saying that God is loving kindnesse it selfe But I pray consider is he not justice it selfe also as well as loving kindnesse and is it against the nature of Iustice to punish sinners no nor against his loving kindnesse neither For I hope that no attribute of God is contrary to another though according to their different notions some actions are more suitable to the one then to the other And why man should have more speciall consideration here then Angels I know no reason For if you say that God is the father of man in as much as he hath created him by the same reason he may be the father of the ignoblest creature that is To say that God is the father of man in as much as hee made him after his
every one I would I knew once what forme would satisfie you for I am apt to entertaine a resolution to gratifie you therein But to say that we must pray for all not in an indefinite but in an universall consideration if you could make me understand it I would soone come to capitulation with you In the meane time I appeale to your conscience did you ever pray in this stile for all and signifie that your meaning was to pray for them not in an indefinite but in an universall consideration I professe unto you if God should leave me unto my selfe and to follow mine owne desires I should desire not onely that all that now live but that all that ever lived might have beene converted and saved yea the Angels that fell might have been kept from sin or having sinned might have beene brought to repētance saved I see no cause why I should desire the contrary But considering the wil of God wherby the angels that fell are bound in chaines and kept to the judgement of the great day I dare not pray for their salvation And to pray that every one that now lives might be saved with submission to the will of God I see no incongruity but we have better grounds of faith and those sufficient to take up our thoughts especially in these daies wherein we live whereupon to proceed in the ordering of our prayers And I would be loath you should put upon us any course or forme of prayer for all which you practise not your selfe And if I knew your practice in this kinde I would soone give in mine answer whether I thought good to subscribe to your forme or no. In the next place you tell us that the reason why we are bound to desire the spirituall good of all men universally considered is because we must be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect Here againe you bewray your jealousie of the weaknesse of your owne cause as when you content not your selfe in saying we must pray for all men but adde hereunto that we must pray for all men universally considered the opposite member wherto before you signified to be this To pray for all men indefinitly considered Now the Apostle is farre from these scrupulosities He simply exhorts us to pray for all men hee doth not adde as you doe We must pray for all men universally considered and not indefinitely Yet in no other sense you think it will serve your turne That reason of yours drawne from the conformity to the courses of our heavenly Father whereon you so much insist I have already shewed how little it serves your turne Now I will shew you how in another respect it is rather repugnant then consonant to your Tenet For that example of conformity is onely in an indefinite consideration thus Wee must pray not onely for our friends and them that love us but also for them that are our enemies and hate us and persecute us like as God doth good unto the just and wicked and not onely to the just and good To our desires you say wee must adde our endeavours that saving truth may be imparted to all It seemes you have not failed herein Now I would gladly know what those endeavours of yours have beene hitherto whereby you have endeavoured that saving truth may be imparted to the inhabitants of terra Australis incognita or to the Negroes or to the Tartarians yea or the Turkes Saracens or Arabians Hitherto you have seemed to dispute thus God will have it our duty to pray for the salvation of all therefore God willeth the salvation of all but now you dispute in a quite contrary manner thus God wils that all should come to the knowledge of his truth therefore wee must desire and endeavour that his saving truth may be imparted unto al. The consequence of your former argument is utterly untrue as I have already shewed and as Austin long agoe discoursed mans will in an holy manner may be contrary to the will of God and againe in a most unholy manner may the will of man be concurrent with the will of God As it is the duty of the childe to pray for the life of the father though God will have the father to dye and not live On the other side a wicked childe wisheth the death of his father in an ungracious manner yet it may bee that herein he concurreth with the will of God supposing as it may well be that God willeth the death of the father at the same time that the sonne wisheth it As for the second argument we deny therein the antecedent if you understand it of all and every one For the case is cleer that God doth not bring all and every one to the knowledge of his truth not because he cannot for doubtlesse he could bestow his Gospell upon them that want it as well as upon us that enjoy it therefore the reason must needs be because he will not As he plainly professeth he will bring a famine of his word upon a Land Amos 8. 11. Behold the dayes come saith the Lord God that I will send a famine in the land not a famine of bread nor a thirst of water but of hearing the word of the Lord. vers 12. And they shall wander from sea to sea and from the North even to the East shall they runne to and fro to seeke the word of the Lord and shall not finde it So the Lord threatens the Church of Ephesus to remove her candlesticke out of his place Revel 2. and long before threatned the Iewes to take his vineyard from them and let it out to others that should bring him the fruit thereof in due season And it is very strange that these and such like judgements should come to passe and God should not will them This is the reason whereupon Austin is moved to enquire into a commodious construction of that place left otherwise we should fall upon a direct contradiction to the prime Article of our Creed and therefore after he hath given two constructions of the place the last whereof is this which you impugne but not answer his reasons which are two the one drawne from the analogie of Scripture phrase as where our Saviour saith unto the Pharises you tithe Mint and Rue and every herbe which phrase cannot be understood otherwise then of every kinde of herbe the other reason is that formerly spoken of as if we say That God willeth such a thing to come to passe which yet doth not come to passe we shall thereby deny Gods omnipotency Yet see the ingenuity of this worthy father hee gives any man leave to give any fair construction of the place provided that God bee not made unable to bring to passe whatsoever hee will have to come to passe Et quocunque alio modo intelligi potest dum tamen credero non cogamur aliquid omnipotentem statutum voluisse fieri factumque non esse qui sine ullis
onely voluntate signi that he doth not will it is voluntate beneplaciti and this will which is called the will of good pleasure is onely the will of God in proper speech and that S. Paul speakes of when he saith Who hath resisted his will the other to wit voluntas signi is improperly though usually called the will of God It being indeed nothing else but Gods commandement in which sense he willed Abraham to sacrifice his sonne yet who doubts but that it was Gods will in proper speech that Isaak should not be sacrificed And because you perceived how easily the shew of contradiction might be washed off if it were proposed in this manner therfore you made bold upon dame Logicke and without her leave and in despight of her faine a contradiction under another forme by way of consequence which indeed proves most inconsequent Thirdly you speake in a strange language when you say that the affirmation and negation of salvation falling upon the personall being of men containes contradiction implying that it might fall otherwise then upon the personall being of men and in that case it would not prove contradictious both which are not onely untrue but absurd also For the affirmation of the salvation of man cannot fall otherwise then upon the person of man and consequently upon the personall being of man whatsoever be the cause of it which cause you most preposterously conceive to give unto man a being different from his personall being whereupon and not upon his personall being his salvation should fall Againe no distinction of personall being and other being will serve your turne to save the affirmation and negation of salvation of one and the same man from contradiction I say of one and the same man which is of principall consideration in the course of contradiction and yet wholly permitted by you in this proposition though therein you talke of the strictest point of contradiction Straine your invention while you will you shall never be able to free these propositions from contradiction Peter shall be saved Peter shall not be saved But to change the nature of these propositions and of absolute to make them conditionall thus Peter shall be saved if he beleeve and repent Peter shall not be saved if he beleeve and repent not is neither to affirme nor deny the salvation of Peter For to affirme or deny the salvation of Peter is categoricall not hypotheticall What you want of force of argument you supply with devotion as if you came to enchant your reader and not to informe him as when you say Farre be it from us to thinke that God should sweare to this universall negative I will not the death of him that dieth and yet beleeve withall that he wils the death of some men that die as they are men or as they are the sonnes of Adam This is proposed by way of an holy and confident asseveration but consider how sottish it is and most averse from sobriety For first what if God had not sworne it but onely said it had there been the lesse truth in it for this Is not Gods word sure enough without an oath yet before wee heard that in things determined by divine oath the distinction of voluntas signi and voluntas beneplaciti could have no place Secondly where were your logicall wits when you said this was an universall negative I will not the death of a sinner I pray examine your rules well and see whether it bee not a singular will you measure the quantity of a proportion by the predicate and not rather by the subject Yet if you should doe so it would not serve your turne For both Aristotle of old hath taught us that it is absurd to put an universall signe to the predicate and here is no universality added either to the whole predicate which is Nolens mortem peccatoris nor to any part of it which you seeme to confound For he that dyeth is a terme indefinite Neither is it in a necessary matter For the most holy Angell God could turne into nothing if it pleased him And in the 18. chapter of Ezekiel it is apparant that this is restrained to him that repenteth without any mentall reservation but by plaine evidence of the Text it selfe Thirdly you harpe upon a false string and an erroneous translation as it were in spight of the most authorized translation of our owne Church and follow the vulgar Latine herein And withall in opposition to manifest reason to the contrary for seeing God doth inflict death and damnation upon every one that dyeth and is damned and he doth all things according to the counsell of his owne will Eph. 1. 11. it is impossible he should doe any thing and not will it that he should inflict death on him that dieth and not will it Fourthly be it as you will have it that God doth not will the death of him that dieth will you herehence inferre that God willeth not the death of him that dyeth as man or as the son of Adam implying that notwithstanding hee may will the death of him that dieth in some other respect without any prejudice to his oath what a senselesse collection and interpretation is this You may as well say God willeth the life of him that liveth ergo farre be it from us to say that hee willeth not the life of him that liveth as he is a man or as he is the son of Adam implying that for all this God may be said not to will the life of him that liveth in some other respect But I say that if God willeth not the death of any man that dieth as you will have it and to be confirmed also with the Lords oath then in no respect can it be said that hee willeth the death of any man that dieth For it is both ad idem death is the same in both and it is secundum idem for we speak of the same man in both and it is eodem modo for we speake of the will of God in the same sense in both and it is at the same time and must be for Gods will is everlasting and therefore willing whatsoever he doth everlastingly he cannot bee said at any time not to will it As for the cause of death and damnation willed by God we maintaine that God willeth not the death of any man or the condemnation of any man but for sinne But I pray what thinke you of infants perishing in originall sin If Goth doth not will their death as the sonnes of Adam how doth he will it Or had you rather shake hands with Arminius in this also and professe that no man is damned for originall sinne onely but that all the children of Turkes and Sarazens and Iewes and Caniballs that die in their infancie are saved and enjoy the joyes of heaven as well as the children of the faithfull You proceede in your devout asseveration and will have it to bee farre from us to thinke
such Ifs and And 's that the world is nothing like to profit either in wit or honestie by this information Onely in this clause alone I finde some coherence with the former to wit with the first sentence of this Section for that laid downe the thesis this delivers the selfe same in hypothesis The conclusion is that Gods ideall perfection in integrity and constancie hath no mixture of vice or humerous impotency And our conceit of this perfection in God you say is rectified thus to wit by experience of the strength of unconstant humerous desires of the faintnesse of our love and equity as well as by the contrary vertues Your wit hath plaid his part here when you strained to derive the rectification of our conceits touching Gods integrity and constancie from the contrary disposition in man Belike if Adam had never fallen our conceits could not have beene so rectified touching Gods integrity and perfection as now they are neither shall they bee so well rectified in the kingdome of heaven because there we shall be acquainted with no such humourous inconstancy or faintnesse of equity in man 2 In the former Section you complained of not extending the maxime mentioned so far as naturally it would reach and you discoursed unto us the dangerous consequence of such an humour and the cause of it The consequence was partly aptnesse to conceive difficulties in the points proposed by you and ignorance to assoile them The cause was the extending of our owne power too farre And in this Section you endeavour to rectifie our conceits hereabouts now whereas I was intent as it is fit every Reader should bee to observe what was your drift and scope in all this in the end of the former Section you fell upon the rectifying of our conceits touching Gods ideall perfection in the way of integrity and constancy as if that were the scope you aimed at but neither did your discourse in any handsome manner tend thereunto though finally it lighted thereupon neither doe I yet perceive whereunto this ideall perfection of God you speake of is directed as being nothing congruous for ought I discerne to the point in hand I rather thinke that was delivered as many other things in that Section on the by and that the immediate end you aime at is this here mentioned in the beginning of this Section namely the rectifying of our conceits touching the right extending of the aforesaid maxime which is the principall negative touching contradictories Both parts of contradiction cannot bee true no nor false neither you had rather expresse it thus To make both parts of contradiction true or false is no object of power omnipotent Now wee seeme to have found the hare againe at least the tract and sent of the hare and desire to pursue without making any fault as neare as wee can Now the rule you give us for the right extending of the maxime mentioned is this Many effects are very possible to power alone considered which imply contradiction to some other divine attributes This passage hath seemed wondrous harsh unto me and as it were Iuterpretationem commodam indignata such as could not admit a commodious interpretation and the issue of searching into the meaning thereof is not to justifie it but rather to discover sundry incongruities involved herein In the former Section you complained of men as extending their owne power too farre which you conceived to bee the reason why they did not extend the maxime there proposed so farre as naturally it would reach But here you admonish us of extending the power of God aright not considering it at large but rather as joyned with other attributes of God Secondly you complained that men did not extend the maxime you speake of so farre as naturally it would reach and therfore when here you come to give rules for the extending of it aright every man would imagine that you take a course to enlarge it at full whereas indeede you take a course to restraine it for you tell us here that a thing is not to be accounted possible in reference unto power but in reference unto other attributes of God also as love truth goodnesse and justice which manifestly doth restraine the possibility of any thing rather then enlarge it Thirdly whereas the effect of power which you treat of in this place is onely this To make both parts of contradiction true when you tell us that Many effects which are very possible to power alone considered do necessarily imply contradiction unto some divine attributes What doe you but hereby give us to understand that this effect to wit of making both parts of contradiction true though it bee possible to power alone considered yet it is not possible in respect of some other attributes divine Now I demand in the name of common sense and sobrietie whether this be a decent thing to say that to make both parts of contradiction true is possible to power alone considered whereas indeed it is no more possible in reference to any power to make both parts of contradiction true then to make both parts of contradiction false Neither indeed is it in the power of God as touching any one part of contradiction if it be not true to make it true or if it be true to make it false As for example I am alive it is not in the power of God to make it false Hee may take my life from me but that is not a course to make that proposition false For it was true onely for that time when it was pronounced not for the time to come when my life is taken from mee So when Socrates is dead this proposition is false Socrates is alive neither is it in the power of God to make it true for though hee can restore life to Socrates yet thereby he shall not make that proposition true For that proposition was true for that time only when it was pronounced not for the time to come least of all for that time when God had restored life to Socrates But you will say the being of a thing is the cause why a proposition concerning the being of that thing is said to be true not on the contrary And God is the cause of the being of things This I confesse is a truth in part God is the cause of the being of things yet not of all things but onely of things contingent God is not the cause of that which hath necessary being such as he is himselfe So that these like propositions God is eternall omnipotent omniscient most simple c. no way depend on the execution of God his power which proceeds alwayes according to the counsell of his owne will But hereupon depends not the nature of God nor many other principles containing necessary truth I grant many things are denominated possible to the humane nature which are not so in reference to the divine For the humane nature hath power to transgresse the divine nature hath not
annihilate without prejudice to his justice yea to inflict the torments of hell upon such a creature Medina maintaines that God as Creator hath such power over his creature Ex 〈◊〉 omnium Theologorum sententia yet doe wee distinguish betweene potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata God can doe that by power absolute which he cannot doe on supposition that he will not doe it for that were to change and that were impotency rather then power And to speake in proper termes It is not fit to say that God cannot doe this because he will not for there is no consequence in this either in respect of God or man Such a one will not doe this or that therefore he cannot doe it But supposing Gods will to doe this or that t is more proper to say that upon this supposition it is impossible God should do otherwise because it is impossible he should change his will For there are but two causes of the change of the creatures will and resolution the one ficklenesse of the will the other improvidence of the understanding in not foreseeing all that might come to passe But neither of these is possibly incident unto God So then if God hath promised ought t is unpossible that it should not bee performed or that God should provountrue If God loves a man t is as much as to say he is determined to doc him good and t is impossible it should be otherwise then he hath determined But to say that God in point of justice cannot performe that without performing whereof he shall be untrue is a paradox of paradoxes For if in performing it he shall be true then in not performing of it he shall be untrue And doth Gods justice binde him to be untrue you might as well say it bindes him to bee unjust Againe if God out of his love hath resolved to doe this or that good unto man shall his justice hinder the fulfilling of the counsailes and determinations of his owne will This is strange Divinity yet you deliver these uncouth assertions like a positive Theologue without all proofe as if they caried their evidence in their foreheards Men are bound by rules of a superiour power to worke after this or that manner and therefore it is not lawfull for them to doe many things from the doing whereof they are restrained by lawfull authority which commands them It is not so with God who doeth what hee will in heaven and amongst the inhabitants of the earth and no man can say unto him What dost thou In this sense you thinke you may say that all before Christ were theeves and robbers And though I thinke this interpretation is very aliene from the true meaning of the Text you point at yet I doubt not but that every one Christ excepted hath beene found in sinne and thereby more or lesse found to play the theefe and rob God of that glory of obedience which is due unto him I doubt not but the Angell of the Lord that discomfited the army of Senacherib might in like manner have smoakt away the army of the Romanes yea and God might have done so to even the one as well as the other had it pleased him without any prejudice to his justice For if it be justly possible to him to pardon our sinnes t is as justly possible to him to remove his judgements And both Suarez and Vasquez though opposite in some specialities about the justice of God yet concurres in acknowledging that there is no justice in God in reference to his creature but upon presupposition of his will T is just with God to approve a mercilesse warre And t is as just with God to approve a mercifull peace neither is it disgracefull to God though by his long suffering and patience he gives space for repentance although his goodnesse were despised unto the end As many live prosperously in sinfull courses unto the death and then obtaine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an easie departure at last as Guicciaâ—dine observes in the particular of Pope Alexander the sixt and no marvell for what is wanting in the condigne vengeance in this life God can and will supply to the full at the day of judgement And the reason why God leaves some mens sinnes unrequited in this world is out of a speciall providence as Chrysostome hath observed of old namely to this end that wee may entertaine some conceite of a resurrection 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And though God doth not afflict them with outward terrours yet he hath inward terrours enough to exercise the wicked and to keepe peace as farre from them as a guilty and tormenting conscience is neare unto them according to that of Salomon The wicked flieth when no man pursueth him The Deere when hee is stricken albeit Sylvas saltusque peragrat Dictaeos yet haeret lateri laetalis arunde O what an uncomfortable sentence do you edge this Section withall as if Gods infinite power could not save them that stubbornly abandon the waies of peace and wilfully neglect saving health so often and lovingly tendred unto them For consider did you never abandon the waies of peace or wilfully neglect saving health lovingly tendred unto you Were you never out of the state of grace For Austine hath taught me that Libertas sine gratia non est libertas sed contumatia Or were you converted at the first or second or at the third sermon that you heard Nay when Gods children are converted doe they not too often abandon the waies of peace and wilfully neglect saving health Did not David in the matter of Vriah and Bathsheba Did not Salomon in his idolatry Did not Manasses in his idolatrous fury sealing it with bloud Saint Paul exhorts Timothy to carry himselfe gently towards them without 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if at any time God give them repentance implying manifestly that God can at any time give repentance to any man if hee will Neither are wee taught that God hath denied possibility of renovation by repentance unto any but such as sinne the sinne against the Holy Ghost 3 You say it had beene unjust with God to strike the men of Sodome with blindenesse before lust had entred their eies A manifest untruth which yet you deliver satis magistraliter as a dictate without any reason to enforce it In the ninth of Iohn wee read of one that was borne blinde is it not just with God to deale with any one so as hee dealt with him You will not deny I hope this worke to have been the worke of God if you should our Saviour would convict you of errour when hee saith that hee was borne blinde to the end the mighty worke of God might bee manifest in the curing of him And this work to this end could be no others but Gods worke I had thought to have beene borne blinde had beene a judgement yet you make it to bee a blessing as whereby the Sodomites had beene guarded
any particular good therefore what good in particular soever he did did it freely So doe the Angels so shall we in the kingdome of heaven Hitherto under colour of consequence which yet indeed was no tolerable consequence you did stride very wide from the matter you had in hand to wit of Gods obligement in justice to make men taste of the fruits of his mercy after their wilfull contemning of it into an aliene matter farre removed touching impeccability Now you seeme to returne to your former discourse but in such a manner as if you meant utterly to overthrow it for here you give us to understand that so long as man doth lesse evill then he might doe he may be confirmed in goodnesse and translated unto happinesse Now I pray as bad as the Sodomites were yet were they not lesse evill then they might be For if God had suffered them longer and left them destitute of his grace had they not profited in pejus growing worse and worse And yet I confesse hereupon to bee confirmed in no better goodnesse then they had had not beene much seeing this their goodnesse had beene never a whit but you say not onely this that they that doe lesse evill then they might may hereupon not onely bee confirmed in that goodnesse which they have which may be very farre off from any goodnesse at all but also translated to everlasting happinesse Since mans fall you say wee are not capable of mercy but by free abstinence from some evills Now I demand whether this free abstinence from some evills be of grace or no If of grace whether this grace be not a fruite of mercie If so then it appeares that before we abstaine from any evill wee are capable of mercy thereby to obtaine grace to abstaine from evill I know no state that makes a man uncapable of mercy in this life but onely the state of sinning against the holy Ghost I doe not like your distinction of doing good and doing it naughtily for whatsoever we doe naughtily therein we cannot be said to doe good but evill rather for therein we sinne and in sinning wee doe not any good but evill rather Yet I confesse wee may be said to doe good imperfectly but not naughtily in my judgement Though we doe both lesse evill and the good that we doe lesse naughtily then possibly we might doe God still you say diminisheth the riches of his bounty towards us I professe at first sight I tooke this to bee a notorious untruth but when I considered a claw of your sentence which is this lesse evill then possibly we might doe I reverse my judgement and finde it to be a most vulgar and despicable conceit though in the way of truth For the contrary proposition to your supposition is a thing impossible For how is it possible that a man can doe at once all the evill that he can doe Now if he doth not doe all the evill that possibly hee can doe there is some comfort in your paramutheticall contemplations and hee neede not feare lest God proceede to diminish the riches of his bounty towards him And so might the Sodomites comfort themselves at the worst for certainly they had not done all the evill that possibly they might doe Now it was well worth the having to heare you explaine unto us what you understand by the influence of Gods gracious providence which you say God restraines and by restraining suffers men to fall from one wickednesse to another suffering the reines of our unruly appetites to bee given into our uâ—ieldie hands Here be good phrases which if you would bee pleased to interpret unto us in plaine termes I doubt not but wee should finde good matter to worke upon But to the comfort of all profane persons bee it spoken God doth never deal thus with any by your computation but such as have done as much evill as possibly they can doe To be capable of well doing is to be capable of Gods mercy and you have already told us to our comfort that to do lesse evill then possibly wee can doe doth make us capable of Gods mercy yet here you say this cannot bee done without Gods love and favour Now to my judgement no person is so profane or impious but that hee doth lesse evill then possibly he might doe whence it followeth that to this state of impiety considered as lesse then possibly might be he is arived through the love and favour of God Yet what you meane by the love and favour of God I know not and throughout I finde cause to doubt that you meane nothing lesse then to advance the honour of Gods grace but onely your scope to advance the power of mans free will And I wonder you consider not how you enterfare and crosse your owne shinnes in your discourse when you conceive the love and favour of God as a meanes to make us capable of the mercy of God you might as well say that the mercy of God makes us capable of his mercy for love and favour shewed unto him that is in misery is in the way of mercy So when you make a great difference betweene withdrawing a mans selfe from the extremities of mischiefe and the doing of such good as may make a man capable of well doing you contradict your selfe for to do lesse evill then possibly might bee what is it other then to withdraw from extremities of mischiefe yet that is enough to make a man capable of well doing as you have signified in this very page more then once as namely both in the first sentence and in the third yet this is wilde enough to say A man must doe good to make himselfe capable of well doing By the sentence following it seemes that this good that is to be done to make us capable of well doing is to repent and this you say cannot be done without the attractions of infinite love yet usually you make a worke of nature to bee a preparation to grace and sometimes you call that worke of nature humility sometimes the doing of lesse euill then wee might doe And what you meane by the attractions of infinite love I know not for you make it incident to men without the Church who are not so much as drawne hereunto by the word so that as it seemes it can be no other then Gods patience in sparing them and so leading them to repentance that you meane in this place Yet see into what absurdity of conceit you cast your selfe while you make shew to honour the grace of God as namely when you say since Adams fall our love to sinfull pleasures is so strong that we cannot repent without the infinite attractions of love implying thereby that before Adams fall wee could repent without infinite attractions of love But I pray consider what need was there of repentance before Adams fall Yet such obedience as then was congruous to innocent and undâ—filed nature could he performe without speciall grace Yes you
no such obligation for t is not the blessings but the sanctified use of them that is a pledge and assurance to them of the favour of God unto salvation and so the sanctified use of Gods temporall curses are no lesse evident a pledge and assurance to them of the same favour of God For by chastising divers and sundry waies with crosses and afflictions hee manifests unto them that God receives them for his sonnes and so esteemes of them and not as bastards Heb. 12. 8. I am glad to heare you acknowledge that Of all the motions of our hearts and soules God is the sole author and guide For such acknowledgements are most rare with you and which you cannot embrace without manifest contradiction to your selfe and overthrowing all your discourse touching Gods decree which as you say decreeth contingency but not the contingent things themselves But the motions of the soule and heart are contingent things and these must needes he decreed by God if they be produced by God And if God be the author of them hee must needs produce them So that the whole tower of your discourse touching Gods decree is suddenly overthrowne by your selfe and that with the blast of this one sentence Besides when you acknowledge God to be the authour of all the motions of our hearts and soules you therewithall acknowledge him to be the author of evill motions as well as good For you doe nor say hee is the author of all good motions but of all whose motions in reference to our hearts our soules our strength God is the sole Authour and guide yet we dare not avouch that God is the Author much lesse the sole Author of all our motions without manifold distinctions And to my thinking it became you to be very cautulous of such assertions who are so apt to charge your opposites with making God the Author of sinne Of every action of man that is free wee maintaine man to be the author as well as God but man wee make in operation subordinate unto God the second cause unto the first This is true as touching actions naturally considered and as touching good actions but with a difference man in working any naturall action we make him subordinate unto God in respect of influence generall in working good actions wee make him subordinate unto God in respect of influence speciall But as touching evill actions there wee make man alone to be the author of them as they are evill without any subordination unto God in respect of any influence generall or speciall And cannot sufficiently wonder what improvidence hath overtaken you to out-lash in so strange a manner But even in this we acknowledge a providence of God confounding the wittes and longues of them that build up Babell I remember what the Prophet saith of the Aegyptians The Lord hath mingled among them the spirit of errours and they have caused Aegypt to erre in every worke thereof as a drunken man erreth in his vomit and how is that but in defiling himselfe and that which is before him oâ— his owne favourites that sit next unto him Christs yoake is easie and his burthen light to the regenerate but is it so unto naturall men doe they not account it coards and bands Psal. 2. Doth not the Apostle tell us The affections of the flesh are not subject to the law of God nor can be It seemes you are a very morrall man you do so willingly fall upon this theame of advancing the power of mans naturall morallity But I remember withall what Austine sometimes said Malo humilem peccatorem quam superbum innocentem And arrogancie is a speciall fruit of pride And you discourse in such sort of the nature of man as if it had never beene corrupt in Adam 4 If our love of God be raised from the beliefe of his loving kindenesse to us then our love to God is not the first conception or plantation of true happinesse but rather our faith as the Apostle plainely testifieth 1 Tim. 1. 5. saying The end of the law is love out of a pure heart and good conscience and faith unfained And neither the one nor the other is the worke of nature but of Grace nor the worke of God neither by influence generall and naturall but by influence speciall and spirituall As for the conclusion you deduce herehence it is well known that life and sense and reason we obtaine by course of nature and naturall generation of naturall and reasonable parents And to know that God gives all this and maintaines naturall generation by the counsell of his will that he it is that fashioneth us in the wombe is not knowne by light of nature for the greatest Philosophers knew not this but by light of grace and so the moanest christian comes acquainted with this mysterie But herehence to inferre that God hath a purpose to give me with them whatsoever good things my heart my sense or reason can desire is a verie loose inference God hath no purpose to give his own children whatsoever good thing they doe desire much lesse what they can desire Paul desired and prayed thrise to be delivered from the buffetings of Satan but God granted it not unto him Moses desired to go over Iordan to see the goodly mountain and Lebanon but it was denied him Abraham desired that the blessing might be conferred on Ishmael but could not obtaine it And no marveyle For God knows what is better for us then our selves the childe prayeth for his Fathers health sayth Austine but it is Gods pleasure to take him away by death God hath not promised to give us all that we desire much lesse that sense desireth but hath promised that all things shall worke together for our good even povertie as well as riches sikenesse as well as health and adversitie as well as prosperitie For every creature of God is sanctified unto them that beleive and know the truth This is the faith only of a childe of God who is the heyre of the World by faith in Christ. But to say of all and every one hand over head that God hath a purpose to give them all eternall life is your common errour that now is like an hereditary sicknesse unto you driving you to maintayne two foule tenets the one that God is not omnipotent as purposing to give that which he never performes a manifest signe that he is not able to performe it as Austine many hundred yeares agoe disputed Enchirid 95. Deus noster in caelo sursum in caelo in terra omnia quaecunque voluit fecit Quod utique non est verum si aliqua voluit non fecit quod est indignius ideo non fecit quoniam ne fieret quod volebat omnipotens voluntas hominis impedivit And Enchirid. 96. Deo procul dubio quam facile est quod vult facere tam facile est quod non vult esse non sinere Hoc
contrary where he saith Istorum neminem adducit Deus ad salubrem spiritualemque poenitentiam qua homo reconciliatur Deo in Christo sive illis ampliorum patientiam sive non imparem praebeat But to returne to the poynt with farre more reason doe they discourse that considering the infinite nature of God against whom sinne is committed doe therhence inferre the desert of infinite punishment and because a creature being but finite is not capable of infinite punishment in intention therfore make him liable to infinite punishment in duration Though I well know also this is excepted against and therfore Miranrandula whom you mention makes choyce to reply on this that as many as dye in sinne theire sinnes being never broken of continue with them in infinitum and therfore doe justly expose them to infinite punishment in duration Yet I very well consider what just exceptions may be taken against this also and the lesse we can satisfie our selves in the reason herof the more cause have we to referre all to the will and pleasure of God untill such time as the wonderfull wisedom and congruity of his actions shall be more clearly discovered unto us 5. As for Lactantius I am not apt to quarrell with him about any incommodious speeches but willing to accept any convenient interpretation of them In anger as it is in man we all know there is something materiall as the kindling of the blood about the heart and something formall which is the desire of revenge But as diverse other passions doe include imperfection in the very formall part of them so doth anger for it supposeth griefe Yet some passions in the formall part of them imply no imperfection as love and joy And accordingly the rule that Aquinas gives is this Cum nihil horum Deo conveniat secundum illud quod est naturale in eis illaque imperfectionem important etiam formaliter Deo convenire non possunt nisi metaphoricè propter similitudinem effectus Quae autem imperfectionem non important de Deo propriè dicuntur ut Amor Gaâ—dium tamen sine passione ut dictum est 1. q. 20. art 1. ad 2. And in another place Ira non dicitur in Deo secundom passionem animi sed secundum judicium justitiae prout vult vindicta facere de peccato 12. q. 47. art 1. ad 1. God you say is more deeply displeased with sinne then man as if Gods displeasure and mans differed only in degree and not rather toto genere Neyther are there any degrees of displeasure at all in God properly but attribuuntur Deo secundum similitudinem effectus as anger is when God punisheth so he shewes a grenter anger when he punisheth more severely and a lesse anger when he punisheth Iesse severely You make God unchangeable in worde yet not so allwayes neyther as where you discoursed of an impotent immutability But if you maintayne that God did for a time will the salvation of any man before he had filled up the measure of his iniquity and not afterwards or that his tender love is turned into severe wrath it cannot be avoyded but you must make change and innovation in the nature of God 6. It is true that love includes no imperfection in it as touching the formall part therof unlesse it be considered as a passion but anger doth in as much as it supposeth griefe But take love as it signifieth a will to doe good and anger as it signifeth a will to take vengeance on them that doe evill and the one is as naturall unto God as the other The truth is neither of them naturall but free Gods love to himselfe is naturall and nessary but his love to his creatures is not no more then his mercy and he hath mercy on whom he will He is neyther tyed by any naturall inclination to make the World nor being made is he bound to maintayne it but as he made it according to the good pleasure of his will so he doth maintayne it Every love of God to his creatures is not suitably opposite to his anger 〈◊〉 â—he anger of God being the will of punishing nothinge is congruously opposite herunto but his love as it signifieth the will of rewarding and rewarding presupposeth obedience as well as punishing presupposeth disobedience but the will of doing the one or the other presupposeth neither You might as well say that justice is not so naturall to God as mercy and I wonder at your unreasonable declination of this comparison in this place wheras in other places you insist so much on Gods justice as to take litle or no notice of his mercy Yet if it be true as you have hertofore discoursed that there is a justice before the will of God by which the will of God is ordered how can you make that doctrine conformable unto this It is true God condemnes no man but for sinne and it is as true that God rewards no man but for obedience only here is the difference The best obedience of mans is no meritorious cause of his salvation but only disposing therto but mans disobedience is not only a disposing cause but meritorious of his condemnation It is untrue that compassion come naturally from God it comes freely â—so doth punishment also not naturally much lesse unnaturally but freely For he could pardon sinne in allof it pleased him and doth pardon it in all his elect 〈◊〉 God when he punisheth relinquisheth the exercise of his mercyfull nature but undoubtedly he exerciseth his vindicative nature Now indeede the exercise of his merciful nature is proper to his owne people as whom he hath made vessells of mercy and for whom Christ hath made satisfaction upon the crosse And therfore when he proceedes to punishment against them he may be sayd to exercise alienum opus and is represented unto us loathe to come unto it How shall I give thee up Ephraim how shall I deliver thee Israell how shall I make thee as Admah how shall I set thee as Zeboim Myne heart is turned within me c. Gods anger is seene and felt by the effects of it but to whom only to those that know God to be the Author of the things they suffer But the Angells and Saints of God doe otherwise see God in the joyes of Heaven In this world the manifestation of Gods wrath doth not alwayes hide God from men but rather is many times a meanes to make God known unto them yea a better meanes then continuall prosperity which makes men grow proude and say Who is the Lord If anger and hate are not in God but upon supposall of sinne then they cannot be sayd to be in God but only by eternall denomination attributed unto him least otherwise we should introduce a manifest innovation into the nature of God And indeede anger sayth Aquinas is often attributed unto God propter similitudinem effectus and so as often as he punisheth and not till then is he sayd