permission and naked inspection But that we may proceed in such order as may be clear and intelligible to the Readers we shall here propose the state of the matter that we undertake to confute which is this That there is not in God a nude passive permission separate from the positive and active decree order and will of his Divine Providence and Government but that he doth rule all things according to the power and determination of his own positive and actual will And this we shall prosecute in this following order and particulars Those that deny that there is in God a passive permission separate from his decretive and actual will in his providence are accused by others thereby to infer the absurdity that God is the author or efficient cause of sin which pretended absurdity in truth and reason cannot be any because it is a simple and absolute impossibility that God should be the author of sin as these arguments do sufficiently testifie 1. That of necessity must be false which the Scriptures do declare to be so in open and plain terms But that God should be the author of sin or evil the Scriptures do deny in open and plain terms as where the Text saith God cannot be tempted with evil where both the act and the possibility of it is absolutely denied Again For thou art not a God that hast pleasure in wickedness neither shall evil dwell with thee Therefore it is false that God is or can be the author of sin and so by consequence the supposed absurdity is a meer impossibility and an absurdity urged that is impossible is most of all absurd 2. He is ens summè perfectum quicquid est in Deo est Deus but sin howsoever understood or accepted is an imperfection defect and an aberration from a just and perfect rule and therefore it is simply impossible that God can be the cause of any thing that is imperfect sinful or evil if sin be considered as malum culpae 3. God is not under any binding law given to him by some other for then he should cease to be supream independent and omnipotent Now to whom there is no law given to observe there can be no transgression for the Apostle saith where there is no law there is no transgression and therefore it is simply impossible that God should be the author or causer of sin or evil because there is no law that he can transgress against 4. God prohibiteth and hateth sin as the Scriptures do every where testifie but God is the cause of nothing but that which he loveth and therefore cannot be the cause of the evil of sin And to speak properly sin hath no efficient cause but a deficient such as is the will of faln Angels and wicked Men whose irregularity of will from the command of God is all the cause that sin and evil hath or can have An efficient cause is only of those things that are good because every efficient cause doth by working put something in being But privations of which sort are sins do put nothing in being but do truly note the absence of beings Therefore did S. Augustine say well Mali causa efficiens nulla est sed tantùm deficiens 5. That which properly hath an efficient cause hath also an end properly so called But sin hath not an end properly so called because the end is being and therefore good and the perfection of the thing But the Scripture doth declare that all things that God created were exceeding good and that the cause of sin was Man and the Devil for the text saith that the Devil was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth And again He that committeth sin is of the Devil for the Devil sinneth from the beginning Therefore from hence it is clear that God neither is nor can be the author or causer of sin 6. That which God is the author of doth not make Man worse but sin doth make Man worse therefore God is not the author of it And all sin is perpetrated because thereby it receeded from the order that respecteth God as the ultimate end of all things but God doth incline all things unto himself as to the ultimate end neither doth he turn them from himself because he is summum bonum And further as Fulgentius saith Deus non est ejus rei autor cujus est ultor At Deus est peccati ultor ergo non autor And therefore we conclude that this is a vain pretence of an absurdity because it is impossible that God should be the author or causer of sin This plausible pretence to seem to be zealous not to make God the author of sin we commend as allowable but it is but like the zeal of the Scribes and Pharisees which was without knowledge because they pretend that for an absurdity that is a simple impossibility And they ought to remember the argument of Job which is this will ye speak wickedly for God and talk deceitfully for him For as we ought not to suppose or imply him to be the author of sin so we ought not to rob him of his Glory by detracting from his power and providence nor in ascribing that unto Creatures that is only due unto the Creator as those do that hold a nude passive permission in him separate from his will and decree in his providence Neither doth the denying of this any way imply that he is the author of sin for a providential permission we allow as the act of his will and decree as we shall shew hereafter Now concerning permission in God being a suspension of his efficiency in regard of some acts permitted to the creatures and that for just and good ends the definition of it and its affections or properties are so darkly handled even by those that make most ado about it that it would serve rather to divert Men from the right way than to guide them in it or unto it Therefore here we shall only note these three things and pursue it more fully hereafter 1. There must be the person or power permitting that hath ability right and authority so to do 2. There must be the person or power permitted that hath ability to perform the thing permitted otherwise it would be in vain and to no purpose 3. There must be the thing or action that is permitted to be done or brought to pass by the person permitted to act and that must not be impossible 1. Before the Creation it is meerly improper to attribute permission unto God because there was no person nor power besides himself that could act any thing and therefore could not be permitted and so the correlative being awanting both the relative and the relation betwixt them must necessarily fall to the ground as having no existence and so it is impossible that permission should be in God when there was no Creature to
So that the Scriptures do plainly inform us of the truth in this particular as For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him For this is only proper to God to search the heart and to understand the cogitations as saith the Text For thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men he only knoweth them and neither Angels nor men and though the heart be deceitful and desperately wicked yet God doth search the heart and try the reins So that if the good Angels do not know the cogitations desires and affections of Mens hearts except God either reveal them unto them or they be made manifest by signs and effects much less must the bad Angels know or understand them 3. Those things that are meerly contingent and those which depend upon free will cannot be known of the Angels unless they be revealed by God as is manifest by the Text. Produce your cause saith the Lord bring forth your strong Idols or Diviners saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth and shew us what shall happen let them shew the former things what they be that we may consider them and know the later end of them or declare us things for to come Shew the things that are to come hereafter that we may know that ye are Gods yea do good or evil that we may be dismayed and behold it together And as the good Angels know not contingent things or those that depend upon free will much less do the faln Angels understand them as is manifest in these examples The Angel that was sent of God to warn Joseph to take the child Jesus and fly into Aegypt did not of his own innate knowledge either in it self or in its cause as the Schoolmen speak know that Herod would seek the child to destroy him because it was truly a contingent thing and did only depend upon the free act of Herods will and therefore by Divine Goodness and Providence it was revealed to the Angel thereby to preserve the life of the child and to fulfil the Scriptures Neither do the faln Angels know future events that are contingent or depend upon the free will of men as is manifest in Satans tempting and afflicting of Job which he intended to have been his destruction and therefore did falsly divine and foretel that Job would curse God to his face but the event was not according to his lying conjecture but to the manifestation of Jobs Faith and Patience and produced his glorious restoration So the lying spirit in the mouth of Ahabs Prophets did not know that Ahab would go up to Ramoth Gilead or that he should be slain there but that God did reveal it unto him and sent him forth with a powerful commission to prevail So that all the predictions and Divinations of the Devil or his Angels are nothing but lying guesses and uncertain conjectures for what can be expected from him who was a liar from the beginning and the father of lies Neither were his Idol-priests Wizzards Diviners or Prophets any better but meer conjecturers and lyars as was most manifest in all those Oracles that were amongst the Grecians which uttered nothing but cheats lies equivocations and ambiguous responsions And those amongst the Jews were no better who took upon them to foretel and divine for others but could not or did not foresee their own destruction as is manifest in Ahabs Prophets slain by Elijah and the Priests of Baal slain by Jehu and therefore must all those needs be deceived that run to Divining Witches and Wizzards of which sort of couzeners we have too many And if against this it be objected that the Devils did know and confess that Jesus was the Son of God and therefore if they could tell this that was so great a mystery much more easily may they know other inferior things and so may foretel future contingencies to which we give this responsion 1. We only affirm that Devils did not know Christ by their innate or inbred knowledge but they might know him by the revelation of the Father and by the things that were written of him by the Prophets and by the observation of those things that were manifested at his birth and shewed and done in his life time 2. And it is manifest that God did not altogether intend to have him hidden from the knowledge of Devils because he ordered that the spirit should lead him into the wilderness that he might be tempted that his power and victory might be shown over the Prince of darkness And the end that the wisdom of God had in this was that the Devils to their greater terror and horror might know their Conquerour and by whose power they should be tormented and thrown into the Abyss or bottomless pit and this made them cry out saying Art thou come to torment us before the time and also force us not into the Abyss or deep 3. The Devils might know this because the Angels had proclaimed his birth to the Shepherds and told them that unto them was born that day in the City of David a Saviour which was Christ the Lord And they might know it from the appearing of the Holy Ghost in the form of a Dove and resting upon him and by the voice which said from Heaven this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased And they might know it by the conquest that Christ had over the Devil and by their daily being cast out by the power of his word and command as by the finger of God 4. The mysteries of Salvation cannot be known unto the good Angels but by Divine Revelation much less unto the bad ones as witnesseth the Text For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him even so the things of God knoweth no man but the spirit of God The mysteries therefore of Salvation as they have been decreed by himself in his eternal counsel are not known unto the Angels but by the revelation of the spirit of God and the complement and fulfilling of his promises So concerning the restauration or precise day and hour of the coming of Christ do not the Angels in Heaven know though their knowledge be vast and great and therefore much less those faln and rebellious Angels that are chained in everlasting darkness untill the judgment of the great day 5. And as that which is not understood of the blessed and elect Angels must needs be unknown unto the faln Angels so likewise there are many things known to the good Angels that are hidden or but conjectured at by the bad ones as may be manifest in these instances 1. The blessed Angels know and see the face of the Father in beatifical vision as saith the Text Take heed that ye offend not one of these little ones for I say unto you that in heaven their Angels do alwayes
ascribed unto himself and in this the Witchmongers do him no small service in giving that power and honour unto the most wicked and wrâ—hed of all Gods Creatures that is only due to the Creator and to his instrument Nature And to conclude this I cannot but repeat that excellent and Christian Sentence of Helmont Pigritiae saltem enim immensae inventum fuit omnia in Diabolum retulisse quae non capimus 3. A third kind of power that he ascribeth unto Devils is their changing and transmuting of bodies which is either in regard of substantial transformations or of those that are but in the external figure or shape or in the qualities accidents and adjuncts only Of real transubstantiations after a long dispute he granteth that they cannot be brought to pass but by a Divine and Omnipotent Power which we have sufficiently proved before and therefore shall forbear to say any further of it here And for what other portents prodigies or lying wonders he can perform we shall here examine and discuss them to the full in this order 1. We shall pass by what may be thought of the strange feats the Magicians of Pharaoh or Simon Magus did perform as fully examined and concluded before and shall give those Texts of Scripture that mention the signs and wonders that Antichrist and false Prophets that are Satans Instruments can or do work and they are these If there arise among you a Prophet or a dreamer of dreams and giveth thee a sign or a wonder And the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known and let us serve them Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that Prophet or that dreamer of dreams for the Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. And that Prophet or dreamer of dreams shall be put to death because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God Another place is this But the Prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name which I have not commanded him to speak or that shall speak in the name of other gods even that Prophet shall die And if thou say in thine heart How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken When a Prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord if the thing follow not nor come to pass that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken but the Prophet hath spoken it presumptuously thou shalt not be afraid of him From whence we may take these Observations 1. That we may know he is a false Prophet that speaketh a thing in the name of the Lord if the thing do not come to pass But yet this must be understood with limitation where God sendeth a Message by a true Prophet where the thing is spoken positively but the condition is concealed and not expressed as in the Message of Jonah to Nineveh yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown which was intended if they repented not but implicitely was understood as the event shewed if they did repent the Lord would spare them of which Learned D r Stillingfleet hath this Proposition Comminations of judgments to come do not in themselves speak the absolute futurity of the event but do only declare what the persons to whom they are made are to expect and what shall certainly come to pass unless God by his mercy interpose between the threatning and the event So that Comminations do speak only the debitum poenae and the necessary obligation to punishment but therein God doth not bind up himself as he doth in absolute promises the reason is because Comminations confer no right to any which absolute promises do and therefore God is not bound to necessary performance of what he threatens 2. That there are those that do foretel or shew signs and wonders that do come to pass and yet those that foretel them are false Prophets because sometimes God sendeth false Prophets with power to work signs and wonders thereby to try his people whether or no they will cleave unto him with all their hearts and souls or turn to other strange gods or Idols and this is ordered by the Providence of God for the trial of the faithful as was in the Case of Job But though these may be great signs and wonders to amaze and amuse men and likewise come to pass yet are they no true miracles but are distinguished in this that true miracles are alwayes for the establishing and confirmation of the true Doctrine and Worship of Christ but the other are lying wonders wrought only to try the godly or for the deluding and punishing of those that received not the knowledge of the truth And though there are and may be signs and wonders that are wrought by Antichrist and false Prophets by and in the power of Satan yet these are all ordered by the Wisdom and Providence of the Almighty and Satan is no more but an organ and instrument in the performance of them There are two other remarkable places of Scripture concerning the Devils power in working signs and wonders the first of which is this For there shall arise false Christs and false Prophets and shall shew great signs and wonders insomuch that if it were possible they shall deceive the very elect The other is this Even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders And with all deceiveableness of unrighteousness in them that perish because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie That they all might be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness From whence we may take these remarkable observations 1. Though there arise false Christs and false Prophets and even the Antichrist himself working after the power of Satan with signs and lying wonders yet though Satan be the organ and instrument in performing these lying wonders God is the Author and efficient cause that doth inflict them because they are mala poenae and come not by a bare permissive power but are inflicted by him as punishments upon the wicked even those that received not the love of the truth and therefore these lying wonders cannot possibly deceive the elect but prove all deceiveableness of unrighteousness in them that perish and the reason why they are thus punished with the deceits and delusions of Satan is because they received not the love of the truth and therefore God doth send such strong delusion that they might believe a lie and this he doth rightly and justly that as Beza notes Ita tamen ut soli increduli sint illius fraude perituri Upon which place learned Rollock tells us this We are he saith to observe
most strangely fabulous and therefore are by no means to be relied upon as will most manifestly appear by undeniable reasons if we examine them in divided members in this order 1. The Histories and relations that are given either by the Poets or most of the ancient Philosophers of these things are so seemingly impossible and so extreamly fictitious as he must of necessity have in a manner totally forsaken his own reason that can give any credit at all unto them And especially they are so fraught with the horrible fables of the numerousness of their feigned gods demigods spirits hobgoblins Lares Lemures Mens shadows and the like that they would make a man believe that the world was full of nothing else and this was chiefly done to uphold their Idolatrous and superstitious Religion And all these kind of authors that have written from the time of Homer until the end of the ages in which the two Plinies and Plutarch lived have but run the same course all their relations tasting of the leaven of impossibilities superstition and fabulousness 2. And if we look into the Pontificial Writers especially those that have recorded stories of this nature since the sixth century we shall find such a Rhapsodie and heap of Bombast lies and invented fables both of apparitions and Witches that no rational man can well give assent to one of a thousand of them they seem so incredible that they would rather make a wise man diffident of all such matters of fact than to yield credit to any And a man might as reasonably believe the forged and lying miracles of Mahomet as those monkish fables For the extream desire that those Authors had to advance their false and feigned Doctrine of Purgatory and thereby to uphold the gain and benefit that was gotten by injoining such and such penances and eleemosynary deeds to redeem Souls from thence did drive them on to invent thousands of false stories of the apparitions of Souls after death which had not one jot of truth in them at all 3. Those that are called the Reformed Divines because they returned to that pure and true Doctrine and Worship that had been settled and practised in those foregoing ages that were truly Catholick and Apostolick being altogether intent about the main and principal points of the Faith and those that concerned the true worship of God did take little heed to the matters of this nature as being more circumstantial and therefore not by them accounted so essential and necessary From whence it came to pass that Lambertus Danaeus Hemmingius Erastus and others did without due examination and circumspection receive the opinions and stories of the Papists hand over head From whence I conceive it came to pass that Ludovicus Lavaterus a learned Divine of the reformed Religion at Zurich did write a book of apparitions and such matters but brought no other proofs of the truth of these things de facto but the often repeated stories of Heathenish Authors and some few from Ecclesiastick Authors that are of dubious credit but not any one of his own knowledge 6. But if we come to consider the Histories of late that are reported of apparitions and such like things that must of necessity have something in them that resembles a supernatural cause we may in part receive more ample satisfaction which will be manifest in these few following particulars 1. Meric Casaubon Doctor of Divinity in his treatise of Credulity and Incredulity sometimes by us quoted before hath strongly indeavoured to make good all those impossible and absurd things that are ascribed unto Witches which though he hath pitifully failed to perform yet hath he said enough that may serve to prove that there are many strange things that seem to prove the being of Demons or Spirits though he have not brought any one story of his own knowledge or that was done in his time And we have shewed before that apparitions are no certain ground for Christians to believe the existence of Demons by but the word of God But in his Preface to that piece of the relation concerning Dr. Dee he relateth two stories told by that venerable and learned Prelate Bishop Andrews to his Father Isaac Casaubon The one he saith concerning a noted or at least by many suspected Witch or Sorceress which the Devil in a strange shape did wait upon or for rather at her death The other concerning a Man who after his death was restored to life to make confession of a horrible murther committed upon his own Wife for which he had never been suspected And both these he saith that learned Bishop did believe to be true but for one of them it seems he did undertake upon his own knowledge to wit that of the apparition and the other he had from an eye-witness And considering the condition of Bishop Andrews both for learning and piety the relations are of much weight and they may be seen at large in the forecited Preface 2. I cannot but much wonder that Dr. Henry Moore a grave person and one that for many years hath resided in a most learned and flourishing Academy whose name is much taken notice of both at home and abroad having published so many books should make such bad choice of the Authors from whom he takes his stories or that he should pitch upon those that seem so fabulous impossible and incredible And that I may not seem to tax him without cause I desire the Reader to peruse his two relations the one of the Shoomaker of Breslaw in Silesia Anno 1591. the other of Johannes Cuntiâ— a Citizen of Pentsh in Silesia and to tell whether he can rationally believe those things either to have been true or possible And as for the Author Martinus Weinrichius a Silesian Physician I cannot find any thing either of his fame or writings and it is most strange that he should be omitted by that diligent and unpartial Author Melchior Adams And there had been far better Authors and of more credit to have pitcht upon for such like stories than either Bodinus or Remigius neither can there be much credit given to any of the stories that he relates except it be that of the Pied-Piper which some do interpret far otherwise 3. There was a Treatise called the Devil of Mascon or a true relation of the chief things which an unclean spirit did and said at Mascon in Burgundy in the House of M r Francis Perreaud Minister of the reformed Church in the same Town written by the said Perreaud soon after the Apparition which was in the year 1612. but was not published until the year 1653. which was 41. years after the thing was said to be acted It seems it was translated by D r Peter Du Moulin the Son of the learned and reverend Peter Du Moulin at the request of the honourable and learned person M r Boyle The most of the things had been known unto M r Du Moulin the Father when he was
by ten or twelve thrown into one pit and yet not one of them have issued any fresh and pure blood Only from some of their wounds some sanious matter would have flowed putrefaction beginning by reason of the moisture and acidity in the air but no pure blood and therefore is not a common accident to all humane bodies that die naturally or violently but only is peculiar to some and especially to those that are murthered by prepensed malice as appeareth in the Histories recited above 2. We shall acknowledge with Gregorius Horstius Sperlingius and Gothofredus Voigtius that sometimes the bodies of those that have been murthered do bleed when the murtherer is not present as is manifest from the sixth History recited from Horstius of the young Man of twenty five years old that bled so long and so often though the murtherer was not present from whence they conclude that the presence of the murtherer is not a necessary cause of the bleeding of the murthered body and therefore that the bleeding of the body is not always a certain and infallible sign of discovering the murtherer To which we reply that the issuing of fresh and crimson blood from the wound or the nostrils of the persons body that hath been murthered is always a certain sign that the Corps that doth so bleed was murthered because those that die naturally or violently by chance man-slaughter or in the war do not bleed as hath been proved before Again if the murtherer be certainly known or have confessed the crime in regard of the final cause which is discovery there is no reason why the Corps should bleed And though the presence of the murtherer may not be the efficient cause why the Corps doth bleed yet is it the occasional as is manifest undeniably by sundry of the Histories that we have related where the murtherers had not been certainly known but by the bleeding of the body murthered 3. Whereas the three Authors above named thinking they have sufficiently confuted those that ascribed this effect of the bleeding of the dead body to Sympathy or Antipathy or to the moving of the bodies or heat in the air have assigned the cause to be the beginning of putrefaction in the bodies murthered by which a new motion is caused in the humors and so in the blood by which means it floweth afresh against this these two reasons oppose themselves 1. Must putrefaction needs begin at that very moment when the murtherer toucheth the body For in divers of them there was no bleeding until the murtherers were present or did touch the bodies and their touching could not cause the beginning of putrefaction and soon after their removing the bleeding hath ceased so that putrescence in fieri cannot be the cause of the fresh bleeding 2. Putrefaction beginning could not be the cause why the murthered Shepherds body in the ninth History should with its hands point to the wound and to the murtherers nor that the hands of the Wench murthered by the Jews in the tenth History should be stretched forth to the Prince of Baden or that the Lips and Nostrils of the Body of Gawkley should work and open at the touch of the murtherer How this must of necessity proceed from some higher cause than putrefaction or any other they have laid down 4. But though it should be acknowledged that in some of these bleedings there were something that were extraordinary or supernatural yet as learned Horstius tells us It is he saith an inconvenient Tenent of those that hold that the Souls of those that are murthered wandering about the Bodies by reason of the hatred they bear towards those that were their murtherers do cause these bleedings but this in Philosophy cannot stand because the separate form can by no means operate upon the subject any longer And he saith the same thing in Theologie seems to be very impious because the Souls of the dead are without mundane conversation as is sufficiently manifest from the History of the Rich Man and Lazarus Luke 16. 5. And if some should refer these effects immediately unto God as many learned Authors have done as though God by this means would sometimes make known those that are guilty or to refer this unto the Devil as though he would sometimes elude the Judges and to do this that so the innocent might be punished with the wicked We answer he saith to this briefly by adding this only that a supernatural cause is not rashly to be feigned where a natural one is ready at hand And if there be such examples which cannot be reduced to these aforesaid natural causes of which sort many are related by Libanius part 2. sol 172. then we can by no reason be repugnant but that they are preternaturally brought to pass And of this opinion are most of the Pontificial Writers that thereby they might the better maintain their Tenent that miracles are not ceased though we do not understand that if we should grant that in these things there should be some concurrence of Divine Power more than ordinary that therefore it must be a miracle for it is yet not infallibly concluded what a miracle is and every wonderful thing is not therefore concluded to be a miracle and a miracle being not absolutely defined what is not one cannot be certainly resolved 6. Some there are that ascribe these strange bleedings of murthered bodies and of their strange motions with the sweating of blood as upon the Pedlars bended dagger or knife mentioned in the eleventh History unto the Astral or Sydereal spirit and that not improbably that being a middle substance betwixt the Soul and the Body doth when separated from the Body wander or hover near about it bearing with it the irascible and concupiscible faculties wherewith being stirred up to hatred and revenge it causeth that ebullition and motion in the blood that exudation of blood upon the weapon and those other wonderful motions of the Body Hands Nostrils and Lips thereby to discover the murtherer and bring him to condign punishment Neither is any Tenent yet brought by any that is more rationally probable to solve these and many other wonderful Phenomena's than this of the Astral Spirit if it can be but fully proved that there is such a part of Man that doth separately exist which we shall endeavour to prove ere we end this Chapter 7. But it is granted upon all sides that if the murtherer be brought to the presence or touch of the person murthered and not quite dead that then the wounds though closed and staid from bleeding or the nostrils will freshly break forth and bleed plentifully The reason is obvious because the Soul being yet in the Body retaining its power of sensation fancy and understanding will easily have a presension of the murderer and then no marvail that through the vehement desire of revenge the irascible and concupiscible faculties do strongly move the blood that before was