Holiness in all that have sin and not holiness and in the Godly so far as they sin because that it shall be so is more yea only willed by God and caused by his predetermination XXXVII Q. Whether this doctrine tend not to utter Infidelity as to the Christian faith by making it seem to men incredible Is it credible that God sent his Son so wonderfully to expiate those sins which he so loved and caused as aforesaid and to save his people from their sins which God thus unavoiâ—ably moved them to commit and to destroy the works of God under the name of destroying the works of the Devil Must Christ suffer bleed die and bear Gods wrath for that which God unavoidably made man do by his principal determination And is it easie for him that believeth one of these to believe the other XXXVIII Q. How will men preach and hear the Gospel if they do it in congruity with this doctrine Will they say God sent us to beseech and charge you not to do that sinful act which you cannot do unless he make you do it by predetermination and which you cannot avoid if he so make you do it He beseecheth and importuneth you to do all those commanded acts which you can no more do than make a world unless he predetermine you to do them nor can forbear them if he do XXXIX Q. How will men Repent confess resist temptations pray and use the means of Grace if they believe that all sinful acts in the world are thus unavoidably Caused and Willed and Loved of God as good for his Glory XL. Q. Whether they that teach as Dr. Twisse often that sin is not malum Dei sed nostri do not take it to be no injury to God nor displeasing to his will Or is not injury and displeasing evil in respect to God as the terminus though it be no hâ—rt to him nor his evil as the subject or agent And doth not the opinion that it 's Evil only to us and Good to God as conducible to his glory teach men to hate it only out of self-love and not out of love to the glory of God yea to Love it as conducible to Gods Glory more than to hate it as evil to our selves seeing Gods Glory must be preferred above our selves XLI Q. Is not sin thus made a coequal with Christ who is but a means to the glorifying of God to which faith Dr. Twisse sin is summè conductbile XLII Q. Doth not this doctrine make the sanctification of the Holy Ghost to be unnecessary when all that is to be done to save us from sin is for God not to make us sin by his premotion Or doth it not make sanctification to be nothing but this predetermination of God which is made as necessary to sin as to duty and so natural and gracious operations made the same and God to do as much to produce evil efficiently as good XLIII Q. Is it not much worse to man if God by predetermination make him first a sinner and wicked by sinful Habits and then damn him for it than if he should damn an innocent man for nothing For sin and pain is far worse than pain without sin And to compel the will unwillingly to sin were it possible is less than to make it willing XLIV Doth not he that affirmeth that the Devil doth but sin as efficiently predetermined by God and doth not force nor determine any mans will to any sinful act but that God predetermineth all men and Devils to every sinful act committed I say doth he not describe God as worse than Satan horresco quaerens if sin be the denominating evil and the causing of sin be more than tempting to it Had I not rather my will were resistibly tempted to sin than unresistibly made to sin by predetermining efficient premotion XLV Is not the objective Reason in Devils of mans implanted Enmity against them Gen. 3. 15. because they are Enemies to God and us as being themselves Lovers of sin and Tempters of us to sin and misery XLVI Doth not he take the directest course to root out the Love of God and all Religion from the World and to tempt men to hate God and so to begin a Hell on Earth who describeth God in Satans likeness and much worse as much as being the principal cause of all sin in men and Devils is worse than sinning when predetermined and tempting others to it XLVII I think that the Dominican Predetermination directly and necessarily overthroweth all certainty of Divine Revelation by man or Angel and consequently all certainty of the Christian faith even by overthrowing the very formal object the Divine Veracity For if God efficiently premove and predetermine all wills and tongues and pens to all the lies that ever are made in the world then 1. To do so is not inconsistent with his perfections or his will 2. And then we can never know when he doth not so unless by the event This is grounded on these suppositions 1. That Gods revelations to us are not Immediate only by himself but by some Creature Angel or Man or a created voice or sign 2. That the Ratio certitudinis of such Revelations by a Creature is because it is God that is the chief author of them 3. That it is not conceiveable how God can by any way of Revelation be more the author of it than by physical efficient immediate adequate predetermining both will and tongue to the act with all its circumstances Call it by what name you please Inspiration Vision Illumination Impulse c. it can speak nothing more of Gods Agent efficient Interest than this predetermination doth 4. If it did do more yet it would overthrow all certainty of our faith Because if God can efficiently cause and that as the total principal cause by predetermination all the lies that ever were told in the world we can never be sure that the other mode of his operation so far differeth from this as that he cannot be the chief cause of a lie in this way as well as of all lies by predetermination I have driven many to say their utmost and could never yet hear any such difference assigned as could prove any Inspiration whatsoever to have more of Divine Causality in it than physical predetermination doth signifie and import nor how this principle leaveth us any certainty that the tongues of all the Prophets and Apostles were not predetermined to speak falsly ab antecedente and so their pens XLVIII To say that God is not able to make a Creature with power to determine any one Volition of its own even as modified comparate or circumstantiate without his efficient physical predetermination aforesaid sayeth more against Gods Omnipotency though on pretence of a contradiction than I dare say or think XLIX Yet after all this I grant that if all proper free will and contingency be denyed and every act in the world as comparate and circumstantiate made
rationis ad utrumlibet agendum vel non agendum agendum unum vel alterum which Rivet resteth in and fitteth the doctrine of necessitation but I think expresseth not Liberty strictly taken It may be ad utrumlibet if Satan had a power to move it as I move my pen. Bellarmine's is lib. arb est libera potestas ex his quae ad finem aliquem conducunt unum prae alio eligendi aut unum idem respuendi vel acceptandi pro arbitrio nostro ad magnam Dei gloridm concessa which Paraeus dissenteth not from But all defining is vain â—ill the ambiguous word Freedom be distinguished and the sense accordingly variously stated yet is this description only of Liberty and constraint too common with some 168. But if this were so then ☞ 1. The suspension of the will might be nevertheless by force or restraint which is a non velle And so when they say Voluntatem ab ipso Deo non cogi posse because when it acteth it acteth willingly that is when it willeth it willeth the consequence holdeth not because it may be forced from all action unless they mean that it cannot nolle non agere at once 2. And if this were so then either they mean that God cannot naturally necessitate the will to act or that such a natural necessitation consisteth with its Liberty If the first they destroy their doctrine of Predetermination For what is that but Gods Physical irresistible efficacious premotion determining the will to act And what is natural necessitation if this be not If the latter then they contradict their own definition of Liberty which they oft give us that it is Liberty from natural necessity which Twiss calleth Libertas naturae distinct from Libertas conditionis vel civilis And what more natural necessity than that which refulteth from that premotion of God as the first cause of all action without which no agent natural or free can act and which none can resist 169. Their opinion of Liberty also leaveth no difference between bruitish appetite or spontaneity and free-will save only that this doth follow reason which indeed is a difference of Guides but not of Liberty 170. And according to this opinion if God gave Satan power to move any mans will to sin by as true a physical motion and as unresistible as I move my pen it were no constraint nor loss of natural Liberty because it is moved to be Willing 171. And if they lay all on the Acts congruity to the Habit or Inclination then if Satan could infuse unresistibly into the Will an Inclination to hate God or to any sin and then physically determine it according to that inclination it were no force or loss of natural liberty 172. But I think he that by irresistible efficiency makes a mans will wicked both in its Inclination and Acts doth incomparably more against him and his liberty than he that could force his tongue or hand against his will or he that only tempted and perswaded him 173. The grand Reasons why we cannot receive the Dominicans doctrine of predetermining premotion are elsewhere given I now name but these three 1. Because whatever vain talk is used to blind men it maketh God the sole-total-first-necessitating cause of all the sin that is committed in the world or can be 2. It unavoidably destroyeth the Christian faith For if God be really the said determining Cause of all lyes and other sins in the world then his Veracity which is the formal object of faith is gone And no mortal man can tell whether Prophets and Apostles are predetermined to speak true or false nor when God moveth them to the one or the other For to Call their motion by the name of Inspiration will satisfie no man that Gods Inspiration can do any more at least to interest himself in the act than his necessary physical premoving determination 3. Because it feigneth God to damn most of the world for not-conquering God who insuperably predetermined them to the forbidden act that is for not being Gods or greater than God And that he sent Christ to die only for those sins which he thus pre-moved us to irresistibly and it was as impossible to forbear as to touch the Moon 174. In the issue of all these Controversies the sharpest contenders seem agreed whether they will or no Arminius granteth that all events of sin or damnation are from eternity necessary necessitate consequentiae * * * Bonavent in 1. d. 38. q. 1. Resol Praescientia Dei rebus praescitis necessitatem non imponit cum â—o modo res cognoscat quo futurae sunt Duplex est necessitas Absoluta quae opponitur Contingentiae dicitur necessitas consequentis Respectiva dicitur necessitas consequentiae haec non opponitur contingentiaeut si ambulat movetur In praescito non est necessitas absoluta sed solum consequentiae Nicol. D'Orbellis 1. d. 38. dub 1. Duplex est necessitas Consequentiae consequentis Bene sequitur necessitate consequentiae Deus novit me cras sessurum ergo sedebo consequens tamen est contingens ut homo currit ergo movetur Nos concedimus Liberum arbitrium in â—o quod agit liberum esse ab omni necessitate ut proprie non possit necessario agere quoad exercitium sui actus quamvis respectu Divinae ordinationis certo infallibiliter agat Ames Bellarm Enervat To. 4. l. 4. c. 1. He meaneth it of a caused physical necessity no doubt which is as is said but a Logical necessity in ordine probandi that is It is a good consequence This God fore-knoweth ergo it will come to pass And it is only the necessitas consequentis which he denyeth which Rob. Baronius Metaph. calleth necessitas causata and I had rather call necessitas effecti which is in ordine productionis And Dr. Twiss doth sharply reprehend him for feigning that he or any others do assert any more than necessitas consequentiae And bringeth in the testimony of many Schoolmen professing concordantly that there is no more than this which also fore-knowledge it self will inferr It 's worth the reciting Vindic. Grat. Li. 2. p. 1. Digres 5. Quid quod ab eruditis eadem statuitur necessitas ab utraque profluens tam à praescientia Dei quam ab ipsius Voluntate Nam licet Arminius voluerit necessitatem à Dei voluntate profectam esse necessitatem Consequentis à praescientia verò promanantem duntaxat Consequentiae aliter tamen visum est magnis Theologis Sic enim Durandus Non bene dicunt illi qui dicunt quod omnia de necessitate eveniant per comparationem ad Voluntatem divinam quia omnia respectu Voluntatis Divinae eveniunt libere ideo absolute loquendo possunt non evenire Expressius Bonaventura Dei voluntatem absolutam necesse est impleri conditionalem verò minime sed advertendum quod est necessitas consequentiae sicut praedictum est
become parties in such daring medlings with the Consuming Fire Notes on some passages of Mr. Peter Sterries Book of Free-will § 1. IT is long since I heard much of the name and fame of Mr. Peter Sterry long Chaplain to Robert Lord Brook and after to Oliver Cromwel when he was Protector as then called His common fame was that his Preaching was such as none or few could understand which incensed my desire to have heard him of which I still mist though I oft attempted it But now since his death while my Book is in the Press unfinished a posthumous tractate of his cometh forth of Free-will upon perusal of which I find in him the same notions for so far as he meddleth with the same subjects as in Sr. H. Vane and somewhat of what Dr. Gibbon seemeth to deliver in his Scheme but all handled with much more strength of parts and raptures of highest devotion and great candour towards all others than I expected His Preface is a most excellent Perswasive to Universal Charity Love was never more extolled than throughout his Book Doubtless his head was strong his wit admirably pregnant his searching studies hard and sublime and I think his Heart replenished with holy Love to God and great charity moderation and peaceableness toward men In so much that I heartily repent that I so far believed fame as to think somewhat hardlier or less charitably of him and his few adherents than I now hope they did deserve Hasty judging and believing fame is a cause of unspeakable hurt to the world and injury to our brethren § 2. But I find that it is no wonder that he was understood by few For 1. His sublime and philosophical notions met not with many Auditors so well studied in those things as to be capable of understanding them It is a great inconvenience to men of extraordinary discoveries and sublimity that they must speak to very few 2. And though he cloud not his matter with so many self-made names and notions as Behmen Paraâ—elsus Wigelius and some others yet those few that he hath do somewhat obscure it 3. But above all the excessive pregnancy of his wit produceth so great a superabundance of Metaphors or Allegories that about the description of Christ especially they make up almost all his style so that to any ordinary Reader his matter is not so much cloathed in Metaphors as drowned buried or lost And though I confess my wit being to his but as a barren Desart to a florid Meadow may be apt to undervalue that which it attaineth not yet I do approve of my present judgement in thinking that seeing all metaphorical terms are ambiguous he that excessively useth them befriendeth not the Truth and the hearers intellect but while he is too much a Rhetorician he is too little a good Logician aâ—d as he is hardly understood by others I should fear lest he feduce his own understanding and can scarce have clear mental conceptions of that matter which he utters by a torrent of ambiguous Metaphors if he think as he speaketh and his words be the direct expressions of his mind I had rather be instructed in the words of the most barbarous Schoolman adapted to the matter than to be put to save my self from the temptation of equivocations in every sentence which I hear and to search after that Truth which is known only naked under so florid a disguise and paint § 3. But I cannot deny that though my temptations before were very great to doubt whether the Doctrine of Universally-necessary Predetermination as delivered by Bradwardine the Dominicans Dr. Twisse Rutherford and Hobbes were indeed to be rejected the Reading of Mr. Sterry increased my temptation not by any new strength of argument which he hath brought but by the power of his pious florid Oratory by which while he entitleth God to the necessitating causation of all sin and misery he seemeth to put so honourable and lovely a cloathing on them from their relative order to God to the Universe and to their End as that I felt my hard thoughts of both to abate and I was tempted to think of them as part of the amiable consequents of the Divine Love and of the Harmâ—nious order caused by the manifold wisdom of God § 4. And by this I see of how great importance it is in the world not only what Doctrine is taught and with what proof but who speaketh it and in what manner For as I found the same things reverenced in Dr. Twisse and Rutherford which were not so in Alvarez or Jansenius or Thom. White so I found the same Doctrine of Predetermining Necessitation almost commonly brought into greater dislike by Hobbes and Benedictus Spinosa's owning it and applying it to it s too obvious uses than all In Tract Polit. Theol. argumentations had ever before brought it And I see it as likely to recover its honour by the pious and florid dress put upon it by Mr. Sterry as if some new demonstrations for it were found out § 5. If I should recite Mr. Sterries mind in his own Metaphors the Reader may not understand it If I Epitomize him and change his words some may say that I misunderstand and wrong him But I will not do it willingly and if I do it necessarily his stile is my excuse He that would be seen must come into the light § 6. The summ of that which I am now concerned in in Mr. Sterry's Treatise is That the Freedom of all things is to act according to their natures and so is that of the will of man and that in God and man Necessity and Liberty concurr and that whatever we do or will we do or will it necessarily as being moved to it by the first causâ— and a chained connexion of necessitating causes by which all things in the world are carryed on That a will not determined by God but left to a self-determination without Gods predetermining causality is not to be asserted as contrary to Gods Goodness Wisdom power c. That sin is a privation formally and all that is positive in it is directly and not by accident of Gods positive causation else with the Manichees we must hold two first causes And that the formal privation is from the wiâ—lidrawing of necessary Divine causation of the contrary and God is the Negative necessitating cause of it Even as he causeth Light by the shining of the Sun and causeth darkness by its setting or not â—hining or as he causeth substances and shadows Life and death And that all sin thus as necessarily followeth Gods not giving the contrary or his leaving the defectible Creature to itself as the darkness folâ—oweth the Lights removal And this was the entrance of sin into the world the Woman being Necessarily deceived necessarily sinned and all good and evil is thus as to necessity equally to be resolved into Gods causing and not causing Will what he will cause cannot but be and what
God do intendere finem and what is his End The Order and Objects opened p. 57. Sect. 16. What Election and Reprobation are The order of the Decrees called Reprobation and of the Objects Of Negations of Decree p. 66. An Additional Explication of Divine Nolitions p. 76. Sect. 17. Whether God Will Decree or Cause Sin Five Acts of God in and about Sin What Sin is Many wayes God can cause the same thing that the sinner causeth and so fulfil his Decrees without Willing or Causing the Sin Objections answered God freely not idlely or impotently restraineth his own possible operations sometimes that he do not such or such an act at all and sometime that he do but so much towards it and no more Whether God be ever Causa partialis p. 84. Sect. 18. A Confutation of Dr. Twisses Digress 5. li. 2. sect 1. Vindic. Gratiae where he asserteth that God Willeth the existence of Sin and that sins are a medium sua natura summe unice conducibile to the Glorification of his Mercy and Justice p. 92. Sect. 19. The same Doctrine in Rutherford de Providentia confuted Whether things be good because God willeth them or willed by him because good resolved Whether there were eternal rationes boni mali Dr. Field vindicated p. 106. Sect. 20. The old Doctrine of Augustine Prosper and Fulgentius thought by some Jesuits too rigid but indeed Conciliatory for absolute Election to Faith and so to Salvation and for no reprobating Decree but only of Punishment for Sin foreseen but not decreed Prosper ad Cap. Gall. Sentent translated p. 115. Sect. 21. The summ of Prospers Answer to Vincent 16. Object p. 118. Sect. 22. Fulgentius words to the same sense p. 121. Sect. 23. The healing Doctrine and Concessions of many called Calvinists of the Synod of Dort Pet. Molinaeus c. p. 124. Sect. 24. And of Petr. á Sancto Joseph Suarez Ruiz c. on the other side especially Bellarmines at large and others p. 127. ERRATA PART 1. pag. 10. l. 38. in marg for Reason Being r. Relation being p. 24. l. 25. r. those Causes l. 26. r. first Case p. 27. l. 2. r. Of predetermination Reader Pain and Greater business forbad me to gather the Errata some are gathered by a Friend out of the first Book many more I must leave to your ingenuity I see in the Premonition p. 4. l. 22. for Mr. W. Mr. D. l. 47. for Armatus Annatus Also Dial. 11. p. 231. l. 30. r. refuse Dial. 13. p. 291. l. 13. for not r. done Catholick Theologie The First BOOK PACIFYING PRINCIPLES Collected from the common Notices of Nature the certain Oracles of GOD in the Holy Scriptures and the common Consent of Christians For the RECONCILING OF THE CHURCH-DIVIDING and DESTROYING CONTROVERSIES especially about PREDESTINATION PROVIDENCE GRACE and FREE-WILL REDEMPTION JUSTIFICATION FAITH MERIT WORKS CERTAINTY OF SALVATION PERSEVERANCE and many others In Three Parts I. Of Gods Nature Knowledge Decrees and Providence about Sin with Mans Free-will as the Objects of the former II. Of Gods GOVERNMENT and MORAL Works III. Of Gods Operations on Mans Soul By RICHARD BAXTER An earnest Desirer of the UNITY LOVE and PEACE of Christians For endeavouring of which he expecteth with resolved Patience still to undergo the Censures Slanders and Cruelties of IGNORANCE PRIDE and MALICE from all that are possessed by the Wisdom and Zeal which are from beneath Earthly Sensual and Devilish the Causes of Confusion and every evil work James 3. 14 15 16. LONDON Printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons at the Princes Arms in S t. Pauls Church-yard MDCLXXV The First Part OF THE NATURE KNOWLEDGE WILL AND DECREES of GOD As far as is needful to the intended CONCILIATION and CONCORD SECT I. Of our Knowledge of God as here attainable THough it be about the Knowledge Will and Decrees of God that our Controversies are agitated yet because the consequent Verities are scarce ever well understood without the understanding of the Antecedents out of which the Consequents arise and without the just order place and respect which the later have unto the former and unless things be understood in their true Method I will therefore expose my self to the obloquy of those who will call it Over-doing so far as to premise somewhat of the Deity it self But not what is necessary to the full explication of the Divine Attributes as we are capable as must be in a Method of Theologie which I have attempted elsewhere but only so much as lyeth under our Controverted Subject And when I have done that I shall leave the rest Thes 1. To Know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent is Life Eternal * * * John 17. 3. Bradward l. 1. c. 11. p. 198. The first necessary incomplex Principle is God and the first complex simply is of God Deus est c. But yet it is not to us the primum cognitum 2. To †††Exodus 20. know GOD is to know his Being Nature and Relations For though those Relations that are to Man be not essential to his Divine Nature yet are they essentially contained in the signification of the name GOD as he is the object of our Faith and Religion For to be OUR GOD doth speak his Relations to us as well as his Nature As the name KING and FATHER doth among men 3. We neither have nor can have here in flesh any one proper formal Conception of the Divine Nature that is formally suited to the truth in the object But only Metaphorical or Analogical Conceptions borrowed from things better known 4. Yet nothing beyond sense at least is so certainly known as GOD so far as we can reach though nothing be less perfectly or more defectively known or less comprehended Even as we know nothing Visible more certainly than the Sun and yet comprehend nothing Visible less 5. It is not true which many great Metaphysicians assert that the Quiddity of God is totally unknown to us For then it could not be life eternal to know him nor would a meer Negative knowledge cause in us a sufficient Positive Love or Joy or Trust c. But to know that we cannot know him would but inferr that we cannot Love him For we Love not an unknown Good 6. Nor is it true that Pet. Hurtado de Mendoza in fine Disput and some others say that the Notions of Life and Intellect are all that we have of the Quiddity of God and that the Divine Will is not a Quidditative notion 7. God is here seen in the Glass of his Works with the Revelation of his Word and Spirit And from these works we must borrow our conceptions * * * The doubt is How Imperfect works can notifie the perfect God And the Schoolmen manage it as an insuperable difficulty Whether God could have made the World or any thing better than it is If you will pardon me for making
Possible and Future we must be very fearful and not unreverent and rash in ascribing such a dance or lusus of notions to God unless as used with great impropriety after the manner of weak man 70. God knoweth his own Power Knowledge and Will And so knoweth what he can do what he knoweth to be eligible and what he will do And if any will call this knowledge of God by the name of the Possibility or Futurity of the thing known or will denominate Nothing as an Imaginary something as Possible and Future relatively from Gods Power Will or Knowledge Let them remember 1. That Nothing hath no relation 2. That properly they should but give the denomination to that which is that is to Gods Power Will and Knowledge and say God Can e. g. make a World or Will do it and not to that which is not And when they say that e. g. the world is eternally possible or future they can justly mean no more but that God can and will make it 3. And that this is but lis de nomine and not a real difference whether futurition be thus from Eternity 71. And especially let them remember that nothing in God is Caused There are no effects in God Therefore as there is nothing from Eternity but God and therefore possibility and futurition must needs be names of God himself or some Divine perfection or conception which is himself if they be said to be eternal so such Possibility and futurity can have no eternal cause For God hath no Cause nor any thing in God 72. If the Futurity of sin must have an eternal Cause then God causeth Pennot l. 3. c. 14. citeth many Fathers saying that things are not future because fore-known but fore-known because future And Augustine Greg. M. Boetius Ansâ—lm Lomb. Aquin. saying the contrary And he citeth the four wayes of the Schoolmens reconciling them and concludeth that in regard of the Creatures being the first is true and in regard of free acts the second I think that in regard of sin neither is true Unless Because signifie only rationem denominationis objectivam And even if so it is dubious whether they be not simultaneous as Relations are the futurity of all sin But that is not so For none is the Cause that sin will be but he that mediately or immediately causeth the being of it when it is 73. Imagine per possibile vel impossibile that a thousand years hence a free created agent that can do otherwise will cause such an act It may be denominated Future without the taking in of any antecedent cause into the notion It is called Future because it will be and not because there is at present existent any cause from whence it will be mediately or immediately 74. Though Futurity be Nothing yet this Proposition is something This or that Will be And to know the futurity of a thing is most properly to know the truth of that proposition It will be 75. God knoweth not by Propositions for that is the imperfect mode of man But he knoweth Propositions when they are existent as humane instruments or conceptions And therefore he knoweth the truth of all true propositions of futurity 76. What man knoweth by Propositions God knoweth otherwise by a more transcendent perfect but incomprehensible way Therefore God knoweth that every thing will be which will be 77. There were â—o Propositions from Eternity For man that useth them was not And God useth them not though he know them as used by man Therefore this proposition Hoc futurum est was not from Eternity Because non entis non sunt affectiones 78. But if there had been such Propositions from Eternity as The world will be made Christ will be incarnate c. they would have been true And so the eternal Futurity of things as commonly disputed of can be nothing but the Eternal Verity of a Proposition de futuritione which was no proposition because then there was none only in time mans brain Imagineth or feigneth that then there might have been Creatures who might have used propositions de futuritione rerum which if they had they would have been true 79. All Verity is either 1. Rei 2. Conceptus 3. Expressionis And 1. Ubi non est Res ibi non est Veritas Rei The thing which was not from Eternity was not a True Thing from Eternity 2. The Divine knowledge that such and such things will be was True from Eternity by an incomprehensible way above propositions 3. If there had been any Propositions Mental or Verbal de rerum futuritione they would have been true And this is all that can truly be said of the Eternity of futurition 80. Only this being added that so far as Gods will was the first Cause determining of any thing that will be so far he was eternally the Cause of the truth of this proposition Hoc erit when such a proposition shall be 81. But where Gods Will is not the first cause of the Thing which will be there it is not his causing the truth of the proposition that is the cause that it will be Though his Knowledge be a medium from whence it may Logically be inferred that it will be 82. Moreover whatever is from eternity must be Res or modus rei or Relatio But from Eternity there is no Res futura no modus rei futurae no Relatio rei futurae * * * I know that the Judicious Greg. Arim. 1. d. 28. q. 3. pag. 122 c. asserteth these four things 1. That aliquid potest reserri realiter ad non ens 2. Non ens potest realiter referri ad ens 3. Quod Deus aeternaliter referebatur ad Creaturam quae non erat 4. Quod Deus realiter reserlur ad creaturam ex tempore And his reasons are very considerable for three of them But as to the second which concerneth our case he faileth For 1. his first reason that relations are ever mutual or convertible I deny his proof as vain as to the reality of the relation 2. And that res non existens is causa I deny Fuit causa non est 2. And remember that he instanceth only in things as caused or foreknown Sin therefore can be called future but as fore-known 3. Remember that his Master Ockam hath oft in Quodl proved that Relations are Nothing besides the quid absolution and Reason Being nothing but Comparabilitas all is but to say that God fore-knew what would be and therefore had there been such a proposition from Eternity as This will be it had been true Vid. Aquin. 1. p. d. 38. q. 1. a. 1. Bonav ib. a. 1. q. 1. 2. Durand 1. d. 38. q. 1. Scot. ib. q. 1. Cajet Bannes Rip Zumel Nazar Molin Vasqu Arrub. c. 1. p. q. 14. a. 8. Greg. Valent. 1. p. d. 1. q. 14. punc 5. s 3. Alvar. de Auxil disp 16. Snarez de Aâ—xil l. 1. c. 13.
at words What is this Complexe object Deus est Is it any thing or nothing If nothing it is not before Gods knowledge and the Cause of it If any thing Is it God or a Creature A Creature is not before God nor a cause of his knowledge which is God himself If it be God is it his Essence as such or his Essential properties or the Persons None of these For Gods essence is the prime Incomplexe Being and not a Complexe proposition Dens est His Properties primary are Omnipotent-vital-power Intellect and Will But these also are the same Incomplexe essence and not propositions And his Intellect as an object of it self is not before his Intellect as an Actual Knowledge of himself nor the cause of it All the sense he can make of it is that this proposition Deus est est Aeternus c. if it had had an eternal being would in order of nature have been conceivable to us before this Deus scit se esse or before his knowledge it self or that if man had been the Knower it had been first a true proposition that He is before he knoweth that he is But God knoweth not himself by propositions Words in mente vel ore are but artificial organs for blind creatures to know by And doth God need such to know himself Doth he know by Thinking and by Artificial means as we do Hath he Entia rationis in his Intellect as man as Propositions are And had he an Intellect and these Entia rationis or propositions in his Intellect Deus est c. before he knew them yea and his self-knowledge which in Act is his pure eternal necessary Essence caused by these All that you can say is that poor creatures know by Propositions and phantasms and diverse thoughts and that God knoweth man and therefore knoweth all our propositions and thoughts as ours but not that he had the like eternally in himself and knoweth them in himself and that Himself as a proposition is the Cause of himself or self-intellection as in Act. He can know that you see by Spectacles and yet not eternally use Spectacles himself as the Cause of his sight But Bradwardine saith that God knoweth illa vera complexa quae voluntatem divinam praecedunt per solam suam essentiam sicut alia vera incomplexa Illa vero quae voluntatem ejus sequuntur non scit Deus per illa complexa neque per aliquid aliud à voluntate ejus semota sed per suam voluntatem vel per suam substantiam cum voluntate c. More presumption still He saith God knoweth complexa sed non complexe And who knoweth what sense those words have What meaneth he by complexa but Notions that is names and propositions as distinct from the Things And what is it to know propositions complexe but to know them as they are And what is it to know them incomplexe unless it be to know quid physicum a proposition is or to know that it is no proposition that is to err If God know a Complexum or a proposition that Proposition is in being And where was it in being before God knew it If in God or no where 1. God then is a proposition 2. And God is before he knoweth himself 3. And a proposition being in intellectu an act of knowledge it is to say that God knoweth that he is before he knoweth that he is and his knowing that he is causeth him to know that he is If it be said that by complexa he meaneth not organical notions words nor propositions but the Verity of Gods Being Eternity c. I answer To know things is said to be to know some Truth because by knowing the thing we can make this proposition This is or This truly is But Gods knowledge of Things is not as ours but by pure perfect intuition and so maketh not propositions in himself by knowing things But if it be the Truth of this proposition Deus est that you mean it supposeth that proposition to exist for quod non est non verum est and so to exist in God which is denyed And it is that proposition that Bradwardine speaketh of But if by Truth you mean nothing but Gods Essence that is not a Complex object which he speaketh of And he saith not that God knoweth suam essentiam creata vel futura but that he knoweth per suam essentiam quod Deus est est Omnipotens Aeternus c. per suam essentiam cum voluntate quod mundus futurus est So that it 's a proposition that he calleth complexum incomplexè cognitum by contradiction when he cannot prove that Gods Intellect made propositions in it self and that antecedently to themselves and the Causes of themselves And all this which men talk in the dark about God is non-sense to trouble themselves and the world with on false suppositions that Gods knowledge is such as ours or that we can have formal conceptions and descriptions of it when we should tremble to read men thus prophanely take Gods Name in vain and pry into unrevealed things I have purposely been the larger on this instance to warn the Reader to take heed of the common cheat of Scholastick Word-mongers who would obtrude on us humane entia rationis or Thoughts as real Divine entities and would perswade us that every nothing which they make a name for is therefore something yea some of them God himself What I have said of Divine Intellection I say of his Volitions of which cap. 20 21. Bradwardine saith that Voluta priora viz. Deum esse omnipotentem esse bonum cognoscentem c. sunt Causa But 1. It is too bold to say that Gods Will is an Effect 2. If it were so it must be his Essence Omnipotency and Intellect that is the Cause of his Will and not a Complex verity as Deus est omnipotens bonus est c. For Gods Will is not caused by Propositions 3. If you say that his Volition as terminated objectively on his Essence Goodness c. is his Will in act se Velle which some call the third Person yet here would be no Cause and Effect but our distinct partial conceptions of that incomprehensible simplicity which hath no real diversity or priority SECT VI. Of Gods Knowledge and the Co-existence of the Creature 88. AUgustine well and truly saith that fore-knowledge in God is the same with the Knowledge of things present Past present and future through his Infiniteness and Eternity being alike to him even all as present 89. But this dependeth upon the Indivisibility of Eternity in which all the things of time are included and co-exist 90. Thus saith Augustine li. 2. ad Simplic q. 2. Quid est praescientia nisi scientia futurorum Quid autem futurum est Deo qui omnia supergreditur tempora Si enim in scientia res ipsas habet non sunt ei futurae sed praesentes ac
Gods will hath a final cause meaneth but a final object as he confesseth A Tree is a passive recipient cause of the Termination of the Suns calefacient act and of the â—ffect as received but not of the act ex parte solâ—â— 283. Even the Acts of Gods free-will or Decrees have no Cause even in God himself no more than those called Necessary For we must not say that any thing in God is an effect 284. Yet as Gods Acts are oft denominated by Connotation from the object which in man is a constitutive Cause of the Act loco materiae so extrinsick objects may be called The Causes but rather the Objects of God Will Love or Knowledge not as his Essence but only as so denominated by that Connotation of the object 285. These distributions of Gods Volitions in Number and by specifying objects and individuating objects which are called material constitutive causes of the act are all according to humane weakness in us who know God but enigmatically and in a glass But yet if any man use such words in a broader manner than we think fit before we censure and condemn him we must hear his sence explained For all that ever we can say of God is improper analogical yea metaphorical And it is but in degrees of impropriety that all words about Gods attributes and actions differ For as is oft said no man hath formal proper conceptions of any thing in God If God should not speak to us in this improper language of our own he must not speak intelligibly to us unless he create another understanding in us And he himself in Scripture using such language of himself alloweth us to use it while we profess to disclaim ascribing to God any of the imperfection which it seemeth to import 286. On these terms not only Various Volitions are ascribed to God in Scripture and exteriour causes of them as John 16. 27. the Father Loveth you because ye have loved me and believed c. * * * So Gen. 22. 16. 26. 5. Prov. 1. 24. Luke 11. 8. 19. 17. Gal. 4. 6. Eph. 5. 6. 1 Sam. 28. 18. 1 King 9. 9. 11. 34. 20. 42. 2 King 10. 30. 2 Chron. 34. 27. Psal 91. 14. But also Fear Affliction Grief Hatred Repenting Rejoycing c. Deut. 32. 27. Isa 63. 9. Gen. 6. 6. Psal 5. 5. Gen. 6. 7. 1 Sam. 15. 11. Joel 2. 13. Jer. 15. 6. Hos 11. 8. Zeph. 3. 17. Jer. 32. 41 c. and exteriour causes of them 287. That which is to be understood by all these is 1. That man is so far the Cause of the Effects of Divine Volitions as the Dispositio receptiva may be called a Cause And I before shewed in the instance of the effects of the Suns Influx how great a hand the various Dispositiones materiae receptivae have in the diversifications of effects 2. And that Gods Volitions themselves are hence relatively denominated 288. Therefore we must say that Gods electing Peter and his rejecting Judas his Love to Peter and his hatred of Judas are not in specie the same act of his will nor his Loving Peter and his Loving Paul the same Numerically As his knowing of Peter to be a Saint and his knowing Judas to be a Saint is not the same numerical act of knowledge Though as they are Gods Essence all are but one And we must say that he Loveth one because he is good and hateth another because he is evil and he justifieth men because they believe and condemneth men because they believe not that he forgiveth a sinner because he repenteth c. Though Gods Will have no efficient Cause 289. Those Volitions of God which are but Immanent as to Efficiency but Transient Objectively are some of them to be denominated as before the thing willed and some as after The Will of effecting is before the thing willed The Will ut finis or Complacency and Displicency as also Intuitive Knowledge of the thing as Existent estimation approbation reprobation of it the Will of Continuing modifying altering perfecting destroying suppose the existence of the thing willed in esse objectivo And so many Volitions may be denominated as beginning in time as connoting the objects †††Pennottus li. 4. c. 24. p. 235. confidently argueth that because God can Love him that he hated or Loved not he can therefore Predestinate him whom he reprobated or change his decrees without any change in himself I answer 1. I grant that God can Love a Saint whom he hated as a sinner before and cease hating him without any change save relative and by extrinsecal denomination 2. But his inference seemeth to me false and dangerous unless he had meant it of executive Election and Reprobation which he doth not For 1. Proper Love and Hatred connote an Object as existent and by such connotation are named And his fourth supposition is false that Love is nothing but Gods Will to give a man life Eternal For the formal Act of Love is Complacency And the Velle Bonum is another thing as I think an effect of Love or at the most another act of Love And we deny that any absolute Velle bonum alicui is ever changed though displicence be changed Because it is the same with Decree 2. And the reason why the said Decree or Volition if absolute and proper may not be denominated changed is because it maketh its own object and so supposeth it not pre-existent and dependeth not on it denominatively And therefore it would inferr God to be mutable to change it But it is not so in the other which as to the Relation and Name followeth the Mutable creature as doth Gods Knowledge of present existents and preteritions as to denomination and connotation And it is no more wrong to Gods Immutability so to name them than to his simplicity to name them many and divers 290. And in this sense it is no more wrong to Gods Immutability to speak of Him as being before in Potentia only as to such Relative denominations As the Rock in the Sea hath not yet that proximity to the Wave which a twelvemonth hence will touch it and yet is not therefore mutable Or as you are yet but in potentia to the termination of his Relations who will pass about you before and behind on the right hand and on the left So God was but Potentially the Creator and Redeemer of the World from Eternity Though as to any real passion God hath no passive power 291. In this sense of relation to the objects and effects it is that we conceive of Gods acts of Knowledge and Volition in a certain order of nature as one being before and one after another Though not as they are Gods Essence 292. Yet because the use and truth of words or names is their signification of Things as indeed they are and we should put no name on any creature but what is adapted to notifie it aright
ipsa Dei essentia quae est necessaria Alliac Camer in 1. q. 12. D. See in Ruiz de Vol. Dei disp 24. how they are confounded about the ordering of Gods decrees as to the order of Intention and Execution His Solution supposeth that Unius objecti Volitio est ratio determinans ad aliorum volitionem When as ex paâ—te Dei there is but One Volition and that hath no cause and the Ratio is a deceiving ambiguous word and his Decrees are his Will and therefore are all but one 374. 4. They cannot deny but that all our conceptions of God are improper and analogical or metaphorical more or less and that what Knowledge and Will in God is formally no mortal knoweth And should we dispute then audaciously about this Order 375. 5. None can deny but that these Mysteries require the highest reverence and that it 's dreadful to take Gods Name in vain and dally with the Consuming fire And yet shall we presume 376. 6. They all confess that our Lord Jesus his Prophets Apostles or Scriptures lead them not this way and decide not these Controversies so as that they can stand to their decision alone 377. 7. They cannot deny but that desiring arrogantly to be as Gods in Knowledge was our first Parents sin that ruined them and us and that this was Satans first successful game And that our disease is like to be such as its original 378. 8. Lastly They cannot choose but know that it is the troubling of the Church with new Articles and new practices and leading them from the simplicity that is in Christ even as the Serpent beguiled Eve with the promise of more knowledge which hath been the great plague and divider of the Churches in all Ages though the Apostle foretold them that It was this that he feared of them And are we not self-condemned if after all this we will censure and reproach one another and foment divisions for that which most certainly no mortal understandeth 379. I. And first your very foundation is uncertain that God doth properly Intendere finem Nay it is certain that as Aquinas afore-cited Vasquâ—z saith that Gods own Goodness is not a final Cause of his Volition supposing that movere ad Electionem medii is final Causality Ruiz asserteth the contrary taking final Causality to be first esse primum objectum And thus men strive about artificial notions Vasq 1. d. 82. c. 1. Ruiz de Voâ— Dei d. 15. §. 1. p. 159. But that nothing is the Ratio Volendi but his own Goodness see Albert. 1. p. tr 20. q. 19. m. 1. a. 1. Alex. 1. p. q. 35. m. 3. Henric. quodl 4. q. 19. Gabr. 1. d. 14. q. 1. a. 2. Dried de Concord p. 1. c. 3. Vasq disp 82. Scotus 1. d. 44. Molin 1. q. 19. a. 5. saith though Vult hoc esse propter hoc non tamen propter hoc vult hoc He prescribeth Ends to Man and setteth Ends to Means which are fiâ—es operis But that he Intendeth an End Himself must be said very improperly or very uncertainly or not at all The truth is that we must say that God doth finem intendere because we must speak of him after the manner of men or not at all But it is not true in the same sense as we speak it of man and as the word properly signifieth but equivocally 380. For 1. To Intend an End is to make that End a Cause why we choose the means as most say But Gods Election or Actions have no Cause All deny that there is in God Cause and Effects or that propter hoc vult hoc 381. 2. In man to Intend an End doth imply that a man yet wanteth his end and that it is somewhat that he needeth or at least doth not yet obtain But God needeth nothing and hath no end that is desired or wanting nor but what he continually possesseth or enjoyeth as well now as hereafter 382. 3. We know no such thing as Intendere finem where the Act and the End are the same Intendere is not the same with Finis But in God they are the same He that is most simple hath no Intention which is not Himself and no End which is not Himself and so both are one 383. 4. Our Intendere finem is not the same really with Electio mediorum But God hath no Intention but what is really the same with Election though not denominatively connotatively and relatively 384. 5. Divines usually say that Nothing below God himself can be his End But where there is no means there is no End or intention of it But to God there is no Means He is not a Means of himself And no creature can be a means of him If we say that any thing can be a means ut Deus sit vel ut sit Maximus Sapientissimus Optimus it were no better than Blasphemy God then hath not an End like man 385. Yet necessity constraineth us to use the phrase but these things must still be understood when we use it 1. That no creature can be Gods End unless you will call an object as terminative an End or else an Effect 386. 2. That it is not Gods Essence and perfections that is an end as to any medium But it is his Will For his Free Will is the Beginning and the Complacency of that Will is the End of all things But if you call God his own Object and so call the final Object an End so we must consider God as Loving Himself and Himself is the End or final object of his own Love or Complacency and he himself as Loving himself is said to Act on that End or Object And indeed eternal self-knowledge and self-love which some of old ventured to call the second and third Persons are the Great Immanent Acts of the Divine Essence with the sibi vivere And it seemeth the chief Notion of Holiness in God that he Loveth Himself in primo instanti and that he is most Amiable to his Creatures in secundo instanti and that he is the Cause and End of all that is good in them Thus a final object of his own and our Love or Complacency God is past all doubt And secondarily his Will is pleased and fulfilled in all his works 387. 3. Yet by that Complacency we mean not that God is passive or receiveth any Delight from the Creature or hath any addition by it to his felicity But as he is a Communicative Good by way of Efficiency as the first efficient Cause so is he a felicitating Good to the Creature as its End and he is Love taking the creature into its nearest Communion with him which is his Complacency and the End of all things And hence it is that God is said when he had finished his works to Rest complacentially in all as very Good 388. 4. As the Complacency of Gods Will is his End in the formal notion so far as it may be said of God
a Means 2. Making one little parcel of that means to be the end 3. Inserting two acts or parts only of that which they themselves confess to be but Means For what should the names of Salvation and Damnation do in the description of the end Are they any part of the end Why is not Redemption Justification Sanctification Preservation Resurrection c. as well put in Is he not Glorified in them as well as in final salvation or damnation Yea and in Creation and the frâ—me of nature too Yea why is not the glory of Angels and all the world put in as part of the same means to his end 406. If it be said that it is only Gods Glory of Mercy and Justice in menâ— salvation and damnation which is the end of Redemption Conversion Preaching Ordinances Sanctification Adoption c. 1. I deny it His Power Wisdom and Goodness and his forementioned subordinate attributes are thereby Glorified also 2. It is an injury to God unworthy of a Divine to make God to have as many distinct ultimate ends as they think there are particular aptitudes or tendencies in the means 407. For undoubtedly we must feign in God no more ultimate ends than one And undoubtedly the means consisting of innumerable parts make up one perfect whole in which Gods Glory shineth so as it doth not in any part alone And he that will cut Gods frame into scraps and shreds and set up the parts as so many wholes will more dishonour him than he that would so mangle a Picture or a Watch or Clock or House or the pipes of an Organ or the strings of a Lute and tell you of their beauty and Harmony only distinctly Well therefore did Dr. Twisse reduce all the Decrees de mediis to one But they are one in their apt composition for one end And the Glory of Sun and Stars and Angels and the whole Creation is a part and the Glory of our salvation and damnation is but another part 408. The order therefore of Gods Decrees in respect of the Execution is onâ—y fit for our debate Any farther than that we may moreover say that Gods will or Himself is all his ultimate end and his Glory shining in the perfection of his intire works is the perfect means And there is nothing else that we can reasonably controvert And about this our Controversie is next to none at all Here we may well enquire what is prius vel posterius quid superius quid inferius c. and that to our edification 409. Seeing then that we are agreed as is said with Aquinas that * * * Ruiz de Voâ—â—n Dei disp 15. §. 4. p. 163. prettily argueth that Si non potest dari ratio ipsius â—olitionis divinae sed solius denominations extrinseâ—ae resultantâ—s ab eâ—â—â—â—lis creatâ—â— sequitur â—anas esse plurimaâ— Thâ—oâ—ogorum de ordine dependâ—â—tia vel ratione diviâ—â—â—um volitionum post quam inter illos constat quem ordinem dependentiam vâ—l rationâ—m habeant externa objecta inter se The conscquent is true They are vain indeed though he deny it And all his reasons p. 161 162 c. to prove that dantur iâ— creatâ—â—a rationes finales moventes divinam voluntatem are but triflings with the ambiguities of the word Ratio and abuses of the word Causa having before confessed that there is no Real Cause And are there Causes that are not Real 1. We grant the Creature is an Object of Gods will and the object is bâ— some called the material cause of the act in â—â—â—â—â—â—â—â— numero 2. It is the Terminus and Recipient of the divine influx 3. It may therefore â—e causa materialâ—s of the diversity of the effects of Gods influx as Received in patiente ex diâ—ersitate dispositions 4. Our acts may be the effects of Gods Volitions 5. And may be second Causes of other effects 6. Those other effects may be said to be Gods nearer ends speaking of him after the manner of imperfect man 7. Where our acts are not causes they may be conditions sine quibus non of many of Gods acts quoad effectus as sin is of punishment at least 8. In all these respects Gods Volition which is One in itself may and must be denominated divers from the diversity of these effects and objects which therefore are the Ratio nominâ—â— And he that would prove any other Ratio or Cause of the first Cause the will of God or any of his acts as in himself must first renounce all natural and Scholastical Theologie at least He citeth Durand Major Richardus c. But Durandus 1. d. 41. q. 1. doth but say that Gods Acts are thus to be reckoned secundum rationem as likening Gods reasoning or thoughts to ours ut n. 7. and not â—uxta rei veritatem Richard is full for what I say 1. d. 45. Voluntas sive volens de Deo secundum essentiam dicitur non est aliud Velle aliud Esse But yet his Velle hoc speaketh not his esse quà esse and therefore he addeth that when God is said scire aut velle it is his Essence but to say Hoc aut illud scit aut vult is but to say Hoc aut illud est subjectum scientiae vel voluntatis quae ipse Deus est Et Voluntas Dei est prima summa Causa omnium cujus Causa non est quaerenda non est diversa Voluntas sed diversa locutio de ea in Scripturis And Richardus in loc p. 141. saith but this that Ipsius divini Velle nulla est ratio motiva cum realiter idem sit quod Deus Tamen Ordinationis quae est inter divinum velle ipsum volitum bene est ratio aliqua respectu alicujus voliti Which is no more than I have said And as to Major Ruiz did ill to cite him who there professeth that Predestination and Volition is but Relatio rationis denominatio extrinseca as to God And his ordo signorum in mente divina is but the Scotists assimilating Gods acts to mans Deus non propter hoc vult hoc sed vult hoc esse propter hoc that which we have to do is but to enquire 1. De re how one thing is a Cause or other means of another 2. And so how God Decreed it to work and be 410. And 1. It is agreed that the Creation was Gods first work that we know of or have any thing to do with This had as to the first part no Antecedent Object but produceth its effect which some call its object But the latter dayes works had an antecedent object and also a produced effect And accordingly God Decreed from Eternity that this should be his first work From whence by connotation that may be called his first Decree 411. That sin or the Permission of sin or other meer Negatives are not to have place among the asserted Means and Decrees I am anon in due place to
soever that God is not the Cause of sin except some odd presumers who are condemned by the generality One or two spoke some hard words that way in Belgia whom the Synod of Dort rejected Mr. Archers Book was burnt for it by the Parliament or Westminster Synod Beza himself in Rom. 8. 28. passim abhorreth it as intolerable blasphemy But this Doctrine in question plainly maketh God the Willer and Cause of sin Yea more very much more than wicked men or Devils are which is not true 578. For they make Men and Devils to be but a second pre-moved predetermined Cause of the Act of Volition and Execution whence the formal obliquity necessarily resulteth But 1. God is certainly the Cause of the Nature which is the Agent 2. He is the Cause of the Law which maketh the act in specie to be sin His saying Thou shalt not commit Adultery or Murder maketh Adultery and Murder to be sin when they are committed which they would not be without the Law 3. God causeth and ordereth all the objects and occasions 4. And now they also say that God willeth ut peccatum fiat and is the first predetermining Cause even the total Cause of all that is in the act and all its circumstances without which predetermination it could not be So that man doth but will what God first willeth and act what God first moveth him unavoidably to act as the pen in my hand 5. And the Law and the Act being put in being the Relative obliquity is but the necessary result and hath no other cause 579. And note here what Estius before cited after Aquinas saith that to Will that peccatum sit vel fiat is all that the Sinner himself doth when he willeth sin And therefore it 's a vain thing here to distinguish between willing sin and willing the event futurity and existence of it ut peccatum fiat vel eveniat Though I confess I was long detained in suspense if not deceived by that distinction For he willeth sin who willeth the existence of it or that it be or come to pass 580. And note that it is both matter and form Act and obliquity which they say God willeth ut fiat For it is sin And forma dat nomen It is not sin but by the form of sin But if they had said otherwise it had been all one For he that willeth the fundamentum relate and correlate Saith Twisse Vindic. Graâ— li. 1. P. 1. Sect. 7. p. 137. Posito quod velit perâ—ectiones istas manifestare necesse est non impediat ingressum peccati sed permittat 1. As if he had proved that God was not able to manifest his Mercy and Justice by Laws and Illuminating men to know them without execution by the occasion of sin 2. Yet doth he make Christs death unnecessary and his satisfaction to Justice so far as that God could have accomplished our pardon and salvation another way if he would And is sin better or more necessary than Christs satisfaction 3. And methinks they that lay so little on Moral means and operations of Grace in comparison of Physical should not give so much to sin which were it a means as it is not but a Passive and opposite occasion is but a moral means And himself saith page 136. Permissio peccati proprie medium est assequendi â—inem à Deo praefixum At peccatum non est Medium proprie dictum sive manifestandae Dei misericordiae sive justitiae Media enim ejus sunt naturae ut ad ea facienda movâ—atur quis ex intentione finis Would the Reader have a better confuter of him than himself But he there addeth that it is Materia etsi non medium as stone and Timber to an House And yet sin they say hath no matter besides the subject and object but is a meer Privation of moral Rectitude But if it be to the Devils Kingdom loco materiae it is not so to Christs Rather if a beggar Want a house is that Want the Materia domus no nor the Materia of his mercy or bounty that buildeth it Thus the defectiveness of the subtilest wits abuseth God and his Church when the Christian simplicity of modest souls with a holy life would honour him So Sect. 9. pag. 137. Peccatum mihi videtur propriâ— dicendum esse materiam manifestandae Dei sive misericordiâ— sive iâ—stitiâ— potiâ—s quam medium Permissionem vero peccati medium esse ejus manifestandae proprie dictum But 1. how oft elsewhere doth he forget and contradict this 2. Permission it self is nothing being but non-impedire And is nothing or non-agere a proper means But especially I intreat the Reader to observe that in that very place Twisse and Arminius are herein professedly agreed that it is the Permission of sin and not the sin that is the Divine medium only one saith Praedestinationis and the other providentia And yet they will differ while they agree And I that differ from both would agree with both willeth the Relation 581. There is nothing left to be said then but that God willeth that sin be done but not as sin or because it is sin But this is nothing For 1. Either none or few of the Reprobate do will sin because it is Sin but because of the pleasure of sense or imagination or for seeming good 2. And if a man or Devil do maliciously Will sin as sin because it is against God so doing is but one of their sins which they say God willeth ut fiat before they willed it and predetermined them to it so that here is nothing in it but what is first and chiefly of God 582. If they say that God willeth it for the Glory of his Justice and so do not wicked men but for wicked ends or in enmity to God I answer That proveth that God hath a will which the wicked have not but not that the wicked have any will which God hath not For that Will and that Enmity to God still is but one of their sins which they say God first willeth ut fiat 583. Obj. But it is only ut fiat ipso permittente non faciente Answ The hypocrisie of that addition maketh it but the worse in the assertors For 1. They usually make Gods will effective of the thing willed 2. They maintain that there is nothing in the act as circumstantiated which God is not the total first efficient Cause of 3. They confess that the formal relation necessarily resulteth from the act and Law And why then do they put in the word permittente Would not that deceitfully insinuate to the Reader that the sinner doth something which God doth not do but only permit when they mean no such thing For that is my second reason against them 584. 2. By their doctrine God never permitteth sin which is false For that which he Willeth and Causeth as the first total Cause he cannot be said to Permit To do a thing and
Rutherfords charge of Camero and his followers in France Amyraldus c. with Semipelagianism and Arminianism and filthy opinions it is but the effect of the good mans overweening and conceitedness of his own apprehensions which must be allowed or endured in most of these contenders And the fruits of such disputes is like to be little better But the worthy praises of Blondel Dallaeus Placeus Capellus Amyraldus Testardus c. shall survive such reproach And a thousand pitties it is to read a good man Voluminously proving God to be a Willer of sins existence and a prime-predetermining Cause of all prohibited Volitions and acts and reproaching the Jesuits Lutherans Arminians and Socinians as the great enemies of Gods Providence for denying this As if he would tempt the World to think that Socinians were in the right and that Jesuites Lutherans and Arminians were the only defenders of the Holiness of God whilst Calvinists made him the Lover of all the sin in the World as the most appetible conducible Medium to his Glory 649. But to proceed his next Argument is cap. 23. Sin conferreth something to the splendor ornament and plenitude of the Universe Eâ—go See Bonavent well confuting this in 1. d. 46. q. 3. Malum fieri nullatenus bonum esse sed bene occasio boni God willeth its existence This is answered before The antecedent is utterly unproved Sin addeth nothing to the ornament or perfection of the World His word is no proof 650. Afterwards he heapeth up many frivolous arguments against that which he calleth reproachingly The Idle Permission of sin and saith that it frustrateth the prayers of the Saints and their patience their gratitude trust hope fear joy alloweth the arrogance of the persecuters fighteth with Gods Wisdom Clemency Justice Providence with the Ministry of the Word the Promises Threatnings with Ministers confirming â—â—â— against sufferings and it is blasphemously injurious to God and contrary to the order of things in the world that he should permit sin and not will the being of it Resp What is it that a man yea a pious man in a blind zeal of God and self-conceit may not pour out confident words for What a case is the poor Church in when the unlearned people must be on both sides charged by their Teachers with blasphemy what way ever they go This man will tell them that they are * * * Pag. 370. blasphemous and overthrow all reason and Religion if they say that God only Permitteth sin and doth not himself will the being of it and move unavoidably all wills and tongues and hands to all the blasphemies persecutions and murders that are done and damn men for it when he hath done And others will as confideâ—â—ly say that he is a Blasphemer for charging God to be much more the cause of all forbidden acts of wickedness than Devils and men are and theâ— damning them for it and for putting God into the shape of the Devil and painting him odious to humane nature that man may not love him What shall poor people think when they are thus torn and tormented by their holy Guides But all his arguments are before answered when I shewed him how many wayes God hath to secure the Effects and Events in the world and attain all his Ends and yet only Permit and neither Will nor Love nor Cause the sin 651. Cap. 26. he cometh to plead for Predetermination and saith p. 385. God predetermineth us to the Act of hating God in linea meâ—â— physica non morali Meer delusory words He maketh it by the Law of Nature a sin to hate him and then he maketh men hate him â—â— linea physica non morali as if the moral sinfulness resulted not from the Law and act that is here from Nature it self viz. of the Man and act both which God made 652. Pag. 386. he saith that Directa expressa efficax Dei Vâ—litio qua Vult ut sit seu fiat actus Dei odii non facit Deum Malitia qâ—â— I confess Gab. Biel in 2. d. 37. speaketh too like these several atheological assertions as do many others per accidens sequitur actum authorem Resp But that per accidens is no reason of the denyal if God cause that accident also as the first cause If he make a Law and make the forbidden act the relation of sinfulness is an Accident indeed but ariseth from the said fundamentum so necessarily that it cannot be otherwise But it should have made a holy Divine to tremble to have said that God directly expresly and effectually willeth mens Act of hating God viz. that it exist or be 653. And it is false that he saith that God is equally the Cause that men hate him if he will the Act hypothetically ineffectually and determiâ—ably by anothers will as if he willed it efficaciously And so when he maketh the Doctrine of Universal Concurse and Causation as guilty as â—is predetermining pre-motion As if God could not make man a free-â—iller and agent and as the spring of Nature enable him and concurr â—o his Act as an Act in genere without causing it to terminate on the forbidden object in specie As if it were impossible for the Sun to be â—n universal cause of the stinking of a Dunghill and Weed without being â—he special or as if God must be made the cause of every blasphemy unless â—e will make the blasphemer speechless and of every villany unless he will strike men dead to prevent it This is not reverent and holy judging of the most holy God the Judge of all 654. The summ of all his Vindication of God from being the chief Author of all sin pag. 387. passim is but this one reason God is under no Law But if this be all why do you not speak out what you mean but hold that which you dare not name viz. That God is the chief So Bannes in 1. q. 23. â— 3. p. 270 271. Voluntas hominis malâ— est quia exercet actum odii Dei sine regula rationis immo contra legem Dei Deus autem bona vol untate vult fieri illum actum permittens defectum Causâ— secundâ— in ipso ut inde aliquod majus bonum faciat which is true of the act in genere but not as it is Odium Dei. For so if he will it and cause it he doth more than permit and the defectus Causae secundae is that very odium as against God And doth God cause the greatest sin that he may do good by it He can do as much good without causing the evil â—nsuperable cause of all the sin of Devils and men for which he damneth â—hem and that both as to the matter and form but yet thus to do is no sin in God himself because he is under no Law This is your most â—lain undoubted sense or else your Book is non-sense What need we then any further enquiry what you hold It is
Will or Power as if he could do no more But it is his Delight thus to govern the creature according to the nature and rank which he hath made it in and his non-volitions and non-operations of a higher sort are agreeable to his Perfection Wisdom and Liberty Higher action being used on higher creatures 3. Yet hath God placed and kept these free Agents not only under his Moral Government but also under his Dominion and disposal so that he will do with them as his own what he lift and none shall frustrate his disposing Will. 4. It pleased him first to make man perfect under a Law of Perfection making innocency or perfection the only condition of Life and the contrary of Death 5. When Man had sufficient Grace to have kept this Law not sufficient to ascertain the event but sufficient Power to have stood that is as much Grace as was necessary to his standing sine qua non esse potuit cum qua esse potuit he broke it and sinned against that sufficient Grace before God either denyed him any thing necessary or withdrew any from him 6. From whence it is clear that the Nature of Man's Will is such as that it is made to use a Power which doth not necessitate or determine it self or is determined necessarily but freely And that it is no Deifying of the Will nor extolling it above its Nature to say that it can act or determine it self without Gods pre-determinating premotion or by that same measure of help which at another time doth not determine it Though its Nature and its Act as such be of God yet so is its Liberty too and therefore by the Power and Liberty given by God the Will can act or not act or turn it self to this object or to that without more help than the said natural support and Concurse And this Power and Liberty is its Nature and Gods Image 7. From hence also it is evident that there is such a thing or operation of God as Grace Necessary called sufficient which is not effectual For God took no Grace away from Adam before he sinned nor let out any temptation upon him which he was not able to resist nor did he sin for want of necessary Grace but by that same degree of help might have overcome 8. God passing Sentence on faln Man for sin would not forgive him the temporal death nor common calamities of this life but cursed the creatures which he was to use as part of his penalty 9. But the Great evil which sin brought on man was the loss of Gods approbation and complacency and of his Spirits saving Communion and help and of Gods Image on man's Soul and of Communion with God herein and also his right to life eternal All which man 's own sin cast away and man was both the Deserver and Executioner without any change in God 10. Yet was all this privation penal in that God made Man such a creature as that his own sin should become his punishment or ruine if he committed it so that all Punishment is not determinatively of God though Gods Antecedent Will did make that which by man is made a Cause As in argument God saith antecedently If thou sin thy own sin shall be thy torment and misery and man saith I will sin Therefore it is Man that is the determining Cause of the Conclusion My own sâ—â— shall be my torment and misery So it is in Causation God antecedently to man's sin doth resolve I will make Man such a Creature with such a Mind Conscience and Will as that his Holiness shall be his Health and Joy and his immediate Receptive capacity of my favour and of his Communion with me and of his title to my spirit and Glory And that if he forsake me and his Holiness in the very Nature of the thing he shall lose all this Life Light and Love Joy and Communion and title to my Grace and shall feel the torments of his own Conscience telling him of his sin and loss This is Gods Antecedent Law Nay this is Gods Antecedent Creation to make man such a Creature Now if man sin his owâ— sin doth ipso facto become his misery and yet is not caused at all by Gods But yet that his Nature was made such as sin should prove a misery to was Gods Work And from that Antecedent Creation or Constitution the Relative form of a Punishment resulteth to the Sinner Even as God saith If thou Murder it shall be thy sin or Thou shalt not Murder And man doth Murder Here the Act that is sin is of man but that the Relation of sin belongeth to that act resulteth partly from the Law which forbiddeth it and yet God is not the Cause of sin though he Antecedently decreed Murder shall be sin if thou commit it So is it also with this sort of Punishment which is either sin it self or the effect or result oâ— sin immediately By which we see that when sin and punishment are found in one thing God is the Cause Antecedently of the formal Relation of a Punishment without being a Cause of the sin yea antecedently is some cause of the formal relation of the sin by his Law without causing any of the sin it self as the author of it As if God make man of such a temper as that surfetting drunkenness lust will make him sick and hazard his life Here God did no otherwise punish him than by making him such a man which he turned to his own destruction by his sin If a man make a thorn Hedge about his Garden that men may not steal his fruit and those that will shall â—rick themselves it is they that prick and punish themselves If God say He that will leap into the fire shall be burnt or into the water shall be drown'd it is they that do it that cause the evil and yet some formal relation of penalty may result to it from Gods conditional antecedent Law I say not that God executeth no other kind of punishment But these are the most common 11. Man having thus cast away Gods Image and his Innocency could beget a Child no purer holier or better than himself For he could not communicate that which he had lost So that our Nature is vitiated with Original sin and unhappy in the miserable effects Bradwardine hath a shift which serveth them that say man could do no good in Innocency without supernatural Help viz. Making that Help to be Gods Will that it shall be done But is not Gods Will called our natural Help when it is the foundation of Nature working by natural means It 's true that free will without Gods Will could do nothing 12. The promisory part of the Covenant or Law of Innocency became null or ceased with man's first sin cessante subditorum capacitate and so the Condition which is its modus So that no man ever since was under the Obligation of that Law as a Covenant of life
If in any of these points men of less accurateness use not the same words take not therefore the old way of proclaiming them Hereticks till you have tryed how far they erre indeed Most of our lower Divines of all parties would be made Hereticks for want of Skill in the denominations allowable or not allowable by the Communication of idioms if the Schoolmens accurateness must be the test e. g. If the question were whether the Humanity be part of Christ or Christ be compounded of a Divine Nature and Humane c. â—â—â—â— would affirm it that mean well But saith Alliac Camerar 3. q. Neque persona neque natura divina est composita nec â—â—â—â— est compositus ex duabus naâ—â—â—is divina scilicet humana sive ex tribus rebus Corpore scilicet anima divinitate sed â—â—â—â— ex duabus secundum humanitatem scilicet corpore anima essentialiter ex infinitis partibus quantitativis integraliter â—â— non est concedendum quod humanitas sit Pars Christâ— Nam ficut homo non est compositus ex albidine substantia 〈…〉 est Compositus ex humanitate persona divina How many have gone for Hereticks for want of the Language of â—â—â—â— and the Schoolmen his Soul the deep sense of Gods displeasure with Sinners and of his â—â—â—â— of sin though no sence of Gods hatred to himself For it is conceiveable how Christ being the Lover and surety or Sponsor for Sinners and undertaking to suffer as a Sacrifice for their sins and in their stead might have on his own Soul the sorrowful sense of Gods hatred of sin and wrath against Sinners though not properly terminated on himself and so he bore the sorrow of our transgressions and was so far forsaken of God for that time and not further 52. The true Reason of the satisfactoriness of Christ's sufferings was that they were a most apt means for the demonstration of the Governing Justice Holiness Wisdom and Mercy of God by which God could attain the ends of the Law and Government better than by executing the Law on the world in its destruction as in general was before intimated 53. The measure of the satisfaction made by Christ was that it was a full salvo to Gods Justice and demonstration of it that he might give Pardon and Life to Sinners upon the new terms of the Covenant of Grace and give what he after gave 54. The matter of Christ's meritorious Righteousness was his perfect fulfilling the Law given him as Mediator or the performance of the Conditions of his mediatorial Covenant From which resulted the Merit so the Dueness of all the Benefits which God had promised in that Covenant as to Christ though mostly for men This was the Righteousness of Christ for man and hence arose his Merit for us 55. The matter of his Law of Redemption required of him was threefold 1. That he should by habitual and actual perfect Holiness fulfil the first Law of Nature or Innocency which Adam broke not just as it obliged Adam in every point but as it was common to man and belonged to Christ as Man 2. That he should fulfil all the Law of Moses given only to the Jews 3. That he should perform the great things peculiar to himself as Mediator which were to be a Sacrifice for Sin to do his Miracles to teach the Church as its Head to Rule it and to appoint Orders and Officers for it to rise again to conquer Satan Death and Sin c. 56. That Christ did not fulfil all the Law in our persons so as that we did it in and by himself and are thereby justified is further evident in that he did not all the Duties which the Law bound us to perform and for not doing of which we are truly Sinners He did not do any of the proper Offices of a Husband to a Wife or of a Wife to a Husband of a Father to Children of a Servant or a hired day-labourer to a Master of a Magistrate King Judge c. to Subjects of a Captain to Souldiers or Souldiers to their Captain of a Landlord to Tenants of such as have great riches towards the poor of the sick the imprisoned and abundance such like Besides the personal Laws given to Adam in the Garden to Noah to Abraham to David â—â—â—â—â—olomon the Prophets and such others Christ did not these same â—â—â—â— for us nor we fulfilled not these particular Laws in him 57. The Disputes whether it be Christ's Divine his habitual his active or his passive Righteousness that is made ours to our Justification seemeth to be but the Off-spring of the error of the undue sense of Christ's personating or representing us in his Righteousness And the parcelling out the uses and effects that one is imputed to us instead of habitual Righteousness another instead of actual and the third pardoneth our Sins is from the same false supposition It 's well that they suppose not that his Divine Righteousness is imputed to our deification But the case is plain 1. That Christ's whole Humane Righteousness habitual active and passive are meritorious for us not as being the very same things all which we should have done and suffered and had as if we had did and suffered them our selves by one that had did and suffered them in our persons in a Law-sense But as being the parts of that one Righteousness of Christ as Mediator which consisteth in the full performance of the Law of Redemption or of his own Covenant with his Father undertaken for our sakes Having been and done and suffered what he promised he is Righteous 2. And his Divine Righteousness by virtue of the hypostatical Union dignifieth his Humane to its meritorious value 58. By his Satisfaction or Sacrifice and this Merit Christ did procure all that Pardon Life and Benefits whatsoever that consequently are given us of God And so is the true meritorious cause of all 59. That Sacrifice and Obedience Righteousness and Merit which was directly given to God for man by performance of Christ's undertaking may yet be consequently said to be given unto man In that it was given to God for man and in that the Benefits merited are given to man and so relatively as to those Benefits the Sacrifice Obedience Righteousness and Merit may be said to be given us As the Ransom is given to the Captive which is given for him because the liberty purchased by it is given him Of which more after SECT IV. Of the New Covenant or the Law of Grace in the Second Edition 60. The New Covenant is Christs Law of Grace his Instrument by which he giveth Title or Right to the Benefits promised and conveyeth Right to the Fruits of his Sacrifice and Merits And his Law by which he governeth the Church as a Saviour in order to Recovery and Salvation It hath greatly scandalized the Papists against us to find some old Prâ—testants deny Christ to be a Law-Giver and
* * * Such as are most of the sober Heathens in the world For the most religious and sober of them are Pythagorears to this day Lege Varenium de divers Relig. post Hist Japâ—n Bless Lord thy own reconciling Truths to the healing of thy Churches or at least of some dis-joynted minds And teach me with patience to bear the Obloquy and Reproach of mistaken zealous Consurers And forgive them that know not what they say or do And wherein I err forgive and rectifie me and better inform both the Reader and me The Third Part OF God's Gracious Operations ON MANS SOUL Their DIFFERENCE and the OPERATIONS OF MANS WILL. For the fuller Decision of the Controversies about EFFECTUAL and DIFFERENCING GRACE By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed by Robert VVhite for Nevill Simmons at the Princes Arms in S t. Pauls Church-yard MDCLXXV THE CONTENTS THE Preface Pag. 1. Sect. 1. The Presupposed Principles briefly repeated p. 7 Sect. 2. The Order of Divine Operations p. 9. Sect. 3. Of the Operations and Principles as compared p. 12. Sect. 4. How far God useth Means p. 16. Sect. 5. Of the Causes of the different Effects of Grace and Means p. 18. Sect. 6. Of the Limitations of Gods Operations on the Soul p. 20. Sect. 7. Of the Resistibility of Grace p. 21. Sect. 8. What is that Operation of God on the Soul enquired of in many following Questions And whether searchable by man p. 22. Sect. 9. Whether Gods Operation be equal on all p. 31. Sect. 10. Whether it be Physical or Moral p. 32. Sect. 11. What Free-will man hath to Spiritual Good p. 35. Sect. 12. More of Predetermination by Physical Premotion p. 37. Sect. 13. More of Mans Power Natural and Moral p. 43. Sect. 14. Whether the giving of Faith be an act of Omnipotency and a Creation and a Miracle p. 46. Sect. 15. Of the Sufficiency and Efficacy of Grace p. 48. Sect. 16. Of Infused Habits and the Holy Ghost even special Grace p. 53. Sect. 17. Whether Man be meerly Passive as to the first Grace p. 55. Sect. 18. Whether the first Grace and the New and Soft Heart or Faith it self be Promised or Given absolutely or on any Condition to be performed by man ibid. Sect. 19. How God may be said to Cause the Acts of Sin p. 57. Sect. 20. How far God and how far man himself is the Cause of Hell and other punishments p. 62. The Conclusion § 1. The Concessions of the Synod of Dort specially the Brittish Divines More of Divine Motion or Impress p. 67. § 2. The Epitome of Alvarez de Auxil drawn up by himself in Epilogo in Twenty Conclusions considered p. 70. § 3. A Censure of the other three wayes described by him viz. 1. The Jesuits de Scientia Media p. 75. § 4. 2. Durandus's Way p. 76. § 5. 3. That of the Scotists and Nominals Of Gods partial Caâ—sality p. 79. § 6. The true face and Scheme of the Dominican Predeterminant way in the Sense and Consequents in Fifty Propositions and the Reasons of my preferring any before this p. 80. A Summary of all to satisfie sober minds p. 100. Additional Animadversions on Mr. Peter Sterrey's Book of Free-will making God the Author of Good and Evil as he is of Light and Darkness p. 106. The Third Part OF GOD'S GRACIOUS OPERATIONS ON MANS SOUL AND THE SUB-OPERATIONS OF MANS WILL. For the Ending the Contentions about Sufficient and Effectual Common and Special Grace and Free-VVill The Preface THE first Part of this Treatise though largest and fullest of mens contentious Questions and opinions is furthest from the true point of the difference and difficulty which troubleth the Church And is made large by accident by way of disquisition and detection of the many ensâ—aring questions and vain or hurtful wranglings of the Schoolmen The Second Part cometh nearer our chief Controversies and resolveth many other on the by and containeth the summ of that part of Theologie which is most clear and sure and necessary This Third Part which cometh up to the main Controversie is short and troubleth you less with other mens opinions and Schoolmens Wranglings about Grace and Free-will Partly because you had enough of them by the way before And chiefly because I would not by tediousness and recitation of Contentions obscure that which I most desire to make plain nor discourage the Reader by the length I think if I can manifest that there is no real or considerable difference among the Learned and Moderate on each side such as are the Synod of Dort on one side and even Bellarmine Suarez Ruiz c. on the other besides the moderate Lutherans and Arminians who may be ashamed if they go farther from us than the Jesuites besides abundance of Schoolmen that are of a middle strain between the Dominicans and Jesuites few understanding Divines would then think that there were any considerable difference remaining about Predestination or the universality of Redemption Those differences being but respective unto this But about Perseverance I confess that there doth a real difference remain But that it is of less moment than most on both sides say and such as is no way fit to quench Christian Love or alienate Christians from each other or hinder their liberties or peaceable communion I have fully proved in the Second Part and formerly in a peculiar Treatise entituled My Thoughts of Perseverance If therefore I can truly disprove our pretended difference about the â—â—â—rations of Grace or at least prove it to be but as it is no greater not more intolerable than that of Perseverance I shall think that all is done that is thus necessary The main difference seeming or real is about the Power of Mans Will Of which I have spoken much in the First Part and purposely leave much to the Reconciling Praxis in the Second Book which shall dissipate the cloud of ambiguous words Till then it shall here suffice to manifest 1. That we are agreed with them whose conciliation I endeavour that â—â— is not the natural Powers essential to a man which we are deprived of 2. But that these Powers have by our common corruption a sinful Disposition unfitting them for a due exercise for God and against sin 3. And that all men at least at age are not depraved in the same degree 4. That this Ill disposition is called a Moral Impotency when it is such as while it remaineth the sinful Act is ever done or the commanded act is never done There is then no Moral Power 5. That the vitious sinful impotency of the will and its Habitual or dispositive unwillingness to good and proneness to things forbidden is all one 6. That he is Morally Able who without any other grace than he hath can do the thing commanded or forbear the thing forbidden 7. That there is no Power but of God 8. That Nature common grace and special grace give several powers or dispositions 9. That a moral power
Creatures and their various species of being is after by PROVIDENCE to manage them as Active or Passive in their several Capacities And the ACTIVE Natures are threefold which he hath made to operate on the threefold Passives viz. INTELLECTUAL SENSITIVE and IGNEOUS or VEGETATIVE in its proper matter upon AIR WATER and EARTH § 12. GOD is so Active as not to be at all PASSIVE All the Active Creatures are first Passive as receiving the Influx of the first Cause and Inferiours from the Superiour second Causes But they are Naturally Active in that dependence and supposing that Influx § 13. The works of Providence about the Existent Creatures are MOTION causing Motion GUBERNATION causing ORDER and ATTRACTION or meet objective Termination satisfying their Appetites and giving them their Ends. * * * Cyprianus sie explicat Act. 17. In ipso sumus movemur vivimus In Patre sumus in Filio vivimus in Spiritu Sancto movemur Pater est sons omnis essentiae Filius est Vita Spiritus Sanctus est agitator seu motor unde apud Hebr. nomen habet Ruah quod significat endelechiam continuam perennem agitationem Vid. Strigel in Melanct. Loc. com pag. 294. § 14. MAN being endowed by his Creator with his Image in Vital-Active-Power Intellect and Free-will a Threefold Virtue in One as the formal Essence of his soul is peculiarly fitted for such acts of Providence as he must be under § 15. As the higher and Nobler Natures are under God the Immediate 1. Movers 2. Governours of the Inferiour so also are they 3. Their Immediate or nearest End having a Goodness in them fitted to attract terminate and satisfie the Appetites of the Inferiour God is not the only end of Appetites § 16. The Acts of Divine PROVIDENCE about MAN-existent are 1. Action or Motion 2. Special Government 3. Love From whence God is Related to Man the fundamental Relation of CREATOR supposed †††I hold with Bradwardine li. 1. c. 2. cor 3. Quod necesse est Deum servare quamlibet creaturam immediatius quacunque cansa creata Et c. 3. cor 3. Quod nulla res potest aliquid facere nisi Deus faciat illud idem immediatius quolibet alio faciente Et c. 4. cor 3. â—adem de Deo Motore â—aking immediation for proximity and facere movere for the action as such and not for the meer moral specification and comparability 1. As ACTOR vel MOTOR 2. As RECTOR 3. As AMICUS vel FINIS Lover Benefactor and End 1. ACTION as such is from God in the first relation 2. Action as ORDERED is by him in the second 3. Action as TERMINATED FINALLY and in perfection is in him in the third § 17. Creation inferreth Propriety and making us Good and inter bâ—na and ad bonum inferreth that God is our Benefactor So that ab origine he standing in these three Relations to us from what is past he is to dispose of us by Providence accordingly § 18. Gods Omnipotence is most conspicuous in Creation propriety and Motion His Wisdom in Governing and Order and his Good will in our Benefits efficiently and our Perfection finally in mutual Love § 19. MOTION is caused by Moving â—â—â—ce impressed ORDER moral by LAW or signification of Gods Will de debito And PERFECTION by attingency and union with our END § 20. From the first resulteth NECESSITY properly so called From the second Moral RECTITUDE In the third is FELICITY as to single persons § 21. From the first viz. God as Actor upon Many or the Universe ariseth CO-OPERATION or Concurse All things work together as the Wheels in a Watch. From the second Divine ORDERING ariseth HARMONY and from the third UNIVERSAL PERFECTION and Melody of the whole Creation and to man perfect Love § 22. Motion is unresistible unless by a greater or unequal Contrary Motion or passive impedition and its effect as such not free but Necessary Government by Law is resistible and obedience free Final Goodness or Love do perfect and felicitate necessarily and freely not effecting for so they are not now considered but satisfying so far as they are enjoyed § 23. The Creation being past and Beings existent except what Generation and Composition make unfearchably and Gods fundamental RELATIONS setled we shall confound and be confounded if we distin-guish not Gods after-actions according to the Relations in which he worketh them and their foresaid differences in themselves SECT II. The Order of Divine Operations § 1. GOD is the Immediate Cause of all things and actions caused * * * Bradwardine ib. p. 172. seemeth to favour Averrois saying that God is Forma omnis formae forma maxime essentialis principalis cujuscunque formati and so acteth all things And indeed when we deny him to be the form of any creature we mean that he is More and not Less And that we have not a fitter Analogical conception of God than that he is eminently more than the soul of the world And c. 14. p. 210. he calleth Necessarium the most proper name of God But when he saith c. 17. that Gods Essence Omnipotence Intellect Naturally precede Gods Knowledge and cause it and so putteth Causes and Effects in God he is too bold by him as to the Proximity of God to the effect For he is every where present in Essence and as near to every Being and Action as it is to it self We must not conceive of Gods using means as we do of mans where the Pen the Saw the Knife c. is between the hand and the effect God is as near and as total a Cause of what he doth as if he used no second cause § 2. They that say God is thus Causa Immediata Immediatione Suppositi seu Essentiae Virtutis speak true but not aptly because it ill insinuateth as if Gods Virtus were not his Essence when as in God they are all one only as inadequate conceptions we may distinguish suppositum à virtute but not otherwise And it is not as quid creatum that we speak of Virtus § 3. Since the Creation in the Motions of Providence God who at first made the Universe to be One by conjunction and co-operation of parts as truly as a Clock or Man is one hath setled a course of second Causes that one thing may act upon and move another and though he work upon the Highest of these Causes immediately without any other subordinate Cause yet on all the rest he ordinarily worketh by superiour created Causes which are some of them Necessary and operate in one constant course and some of them Voluntary and Free and operate more mutably and contingently § 4. The course of Necessitating Causes is commonly called NATURE and the Influence of Angels and other Voluntary Causes distinguished from Natural But they all operate as second Causes under the Influx and Government of God upon us that are here on earth § 5.
There is no Place where any Corporeal being is where some Active created Nature is not with it so that considering the proximity and the natures we may well conclude that we know of no corporal motion under the Sun which God effecteth by himself alone without any second Cause § 6. Joh. Sarisburiensis and some Schoolmen liken Gods presence with the Creature in operation to the fire in a red hot Iron where you would think all were Fire and all Iron But the similitude is too low The SUN is the most Notable Instrument in visible Nature And GOD operateth on all lower things by its virtue and influx God and the Sun do what the Sun doth and we know of nothing that God moveth here on earth that 's corporeal without it § 7. But the Sun moveth nothing as the Cartesians dream by a single Motive Influx alone but by emission of its Threefold Influx as every Active Nature doth that is Motive Illuminative and Calefactive which are One-radically in Three-effectively § 8. This Efflux of the Sun is universal and equal ex parte sui But causeth wonderful diversity of effects without diversity in God the prime Cause or in it self The same Influx causeth the Weed and Dunghill and Carrion to stink and the Flowers of the sweeter Plants to be sweet some things to live and some to dye some things to be soft and some hard c. In a word there are few changes or various actions below in bodies which the Sun is not the Cause of without difference in it self But not the specifying Cause § 9. The reason why one equal Influx causeth such wonderful diversity of motions is the DIVERSITY of RECEPTIVE DISPOSITIONS and natures Recipitur ad modum recipientis So one poise maketh various Motions in a Clock c. § 10. God operateth on second Causes as God Omnipotently but not ad ultimum potentiae but Freely as he pleaseth § 11. God worketh by second Causes according to the said Causes aptitude so that the operation of Infinite power is limited according to the quality of the second cause which God useth § 12. There is a superiority and inferiority among Spirits as well as Bodies And whether God work on all our souls by superiour Spirits as second Causes is unknown to us It is not improbable according to the order of his providence in other things But we know little of it certainly § 13. But certain we are that superiour Voluntary Agents Angels and Devils have very much to do with our souls and operate much upon them It is a wonderful power which wise observers perceive Satan hath upon the Imagination or Thinking faculty of which I could give some instances enough to convince a rational Sadducee And it is not like that good Angels have less power skill or will § 14. And we are sure that God hath ordained One Great Universal second Cause to convey his Spirit and Grace by which is JESUS CHRIST As the Sun is an Universal Cause of Motion Light and Heat to Inferiour creatures and God operateth by the Sun So is Christ set as a Sun of Righteousness by whom God will convey his spiritual Influx to mens souls and there is now no other conveyance to be expected § 15. Christs Humane Nature united personally to the Divine and Glorified is by the Office of Mediator Authorized and by Personal Union and the Fulness of the Holy Spirit enabled and fitted to this communication of Gods Spiritual Influx to mankind § 16. Object A Creature cannot be a Cause of the Operation of the Holy Ghost who is God the Creator Sending is the Act of a Superiour But Christs humanity is not superiour to the Holy Ghost Answ 1. Christ as a Creature is no Cause of any Essential or purely Immanent Act of God for that hath no Cause But 1. He is a Cause of the Spirits operation as it signifieth the effect 2. And so the cause why his Act is terminated on the soul and 3. Of the ordering of these effects why rather on this soul than on that and at this time measure c. And 2. This Christ doth not as a superiour sender of the Spirit but a Ministerial and a second cause As a Master payeth his servants as his Steward determineth § 17. It is certain that Christ is the Political Cause or Head of this spiritual Influx on souls that is As Mediator is Authorized to determine of the Persons measure time conditions of the Communication of the Spirit But whether he be a Physical Head of this Influx by proper efficiency giving the Spirit from himself as the Sun giveth us its Influx is all that is disputable That is Whether the Spirit be first given Inherently to Christ and pass from his person as his unto us as the Spirits do from the Head to the Members § 18. This question may be put either of all Natural Being and Motion or only of Spiritual Motion in the soul of man Whether Christ be so the Head of Nature as that all Nature in Heaven and Earth is sustained and actuated by him as the physical efficient Cause or whether this be true of this Lower World which was curst for sin or whether it be true at least of Humane nature or whether it be true only of Gracious operations § 19. 1. That Christ hath the Political dispose of the whole Universe contained in the words Heaven and Earth the Scripture seemeth to assert 2. That he hath the Political disposal of humane nature and of all other creatures that belong to man so far as they belong to him Angels Devils Sun Air Earth c. is past dispute 3. That the real â—hysical effects acts and habits of the Spirit on mens souls are caused by Christs Moral Causation by his Merit and his Political Mission is past dispute 4. That besides all this the Spirit it self by Baptism is in Covenant with all the members of Christ and that as they are such and is in a prior Covenant first Related to Christ himself and so by this Covenant given us in relation as we are united to Christ is past dispute 5. And that Christ himself doth make such Physical changes on our souls by Means and by the foresaid Political Mission of the Spirit by which we are made Receptive of more of the Spirits operations is past dispute 6. But whether moreover any Action of Christs own Humane soul glorified do physically reach our souls or whether the Holy Ghost may in its own essential Virtue which is every where be said to be more in Christ than elsewhere and communicated to us as from the root or the Spirits effects on the soul to come by Reflection from the first effects on Christ as Light and Heat from the Sun by a Speculum or Burning-glass are questions not for me to determine § 20. Christs spiritual Influx on souls is not single but is ever Three in One as the Sun 's aforesaid which are according to
Creature doth preach him to us and all things must be sanctified and used to this holy end § 33. He setteth Death continually before our eyes assuring us of the shortness of our lives and shewing us how we must leave this world that we may read Vanity upon all and not be deceived by it § 34. By all this we see that this Kingdom of Christ is a sapiential frame of Moral Causes designed for the Government of man in right ordering his internal and external acts and glorifying eminently the wisdom of our Ruler § 35. And he that will think rightly of this excellent frame must have all these things in his consideration 1. That Christ himself is not only a Justifier and Actor of us but a Prophet Priest and King and that the Government is laid upon his shoulders Isa 9. 6. 2. That we are not only Patients and pardoned sinners but also Subjects and engaged Covenanters 3. That Christs Church is not like a Statuaries shop but a Kingdom and a School where all must learn and obey 4. That Christ hath not only Motive power but Laws Promises Threatnings c. to work by 5. That his great blessings of Glory are his Rewards and Hell at last after those here are his punishments foretold to work on souls 6. That he hath a day in which as Rector he will judge the world in righteousness according to what we have done in the body 7. That faith is wrought by Preaching and Love and Hope and obedience are the ends and uses of faith 8. That the felicity of individuals and in them of the Heavenly Society in one Glorified body with Christ is the end of all where Gods Remunerating Justice is to be glorified and his governing Wisdom and Love for ever § 36. From all this I conclude That they that slight all this work of God by the contemptuous name of Moral Suasion and take it to be a diminutive term as to the honour of it to call it Moral and by Means and talk of Gods work of Grace on the soul as if there were no more in it very honourable than a physical Motion and God Converted souls but as Boyes whip their Tops or Women turn their Wheels or the Spring moveth the Watch are Cartesian blind Theologues and overlook the very nature of that Theologie which they profess which is the Doctrine of the Kingdom of God over man And while they see little but Matter and Motion they are fitter mechanically to treat of or deal with Stones or Bricks or Timber than men â— being unfit to treat of humane Government much more of Divine SECT IV. How far God useth Means § 1. CHrist who is the chief means is used in all the Conveyances of Grace to any one in the world § 2. God hath a double work in Illuminating and Converting souls One by activity of exteriour appulsive causes The other within us on the Agid. Column Rom. Quodl 1. qu. 2. p. 5. citeth Dioâ—ys de div nom l. 3. as holding that every order of second causes is like a beam of light streaming down from God as so many cords let down to men to draw them up to God And if a man should take hold of one of them and ascend to Heaven he might imagine that Heaven did bow down to him when indeed it moveth not but he would draw himself up to it so when upon Prayer or other second Causes God doth us good he seemeth to incline and bend to us but it is not so but he is unchangeable and it 's we that are drawn and moved to him and by the use of means by us we are conjoyned to Gods purpose that the things may be done for us which he hath decreed Vid. reliq where he confuteth the contrary errours faculties of the soul without those causes I cannot better illustrate it than by the causing of sight hearing c. The Light without us is not only a terminating object as some dream but an Active thing or Action which operateth by appulse upon the eye And the Sun and Aire are the causes of it The eye is not only a passive Receiver as some dream but an Organ where the visive spirits and soul are Active And God worketh internally on this visive faculty by his influx to sustain it in its activity And by a congress of these two fires or Active causes the sensitive soul doth see Now we all know that God giveth the external light only per media by the Sun c. But how he sustaineth and actuateth the Visive faculty is more difficult His own influx or Causation is undoubted And that the same Sun ut causa universalis cherisheth and moveth the visive spirits But whether God move the sensitive faculty or soul it self by any superiour spirit or mediate cause in its motion or action towards and on the exteriour light is past our knowledge Though the order observed in other cases maketh it not improbable Even so in the Illumination of the mind and conversion of the will we are sure that beside the terminative object there is an external motion which by the foresaid means is made at least on the senses and imagination whatever it do further on the Intellect But in the superiour Influx on the soul it self what use God may make of Angels or other superiour spirits or causes we cannot tell We are sure as is said that if there be a second cause yet as to proximity it is never the less neerly from God And souls being Intellectual and for ought we know of the highest nature of Creatures though not the highest Degree neither is improbable that God moveth us by a second cause or that he doth it without § 3. But as Christs fore-described mediate Causality is still supposed so it is certain that God doth not only work as some think concomitantly with the word but by it as his Instrument Though his wayes of co-operation are past the reach of man yet this much is sure 1. That he adapâ—eth the means to do their work both word Minister c. 2. And that his concurse maketh the due Impression on the sense and imagination 3. And though no Philosopher certainly know whether the Images in the phantasie be meerly passive as to the Intellect or what use is made of them and the passions to Intellection and Volition yet such use as is naturally to be made of them for these ends God maketh and manageth them accordingly by skill and power § 4. But here MOTION the effect of Active force and ORDER of motion as the effect of GOVERNMENT must be well distinguished For it is not so much the second Causes of the souls Action as such that we are now enquiring after But of the ORDER and Rectitude of its Actions which is done by Government § 5. That God doth work Grace on man by means ordinarily as ordinarily he causeth natural effects by means and Miracles are rare may be proved by all
have done it and will change another not so self-hardened thy gracelesness and destruction both absolutely and as compared to others that are converted is imputable only to thy self 2. And if thou be unwilling to use the Means as thou art able to hear read or meditate on that which should affect thee and unwilling Privatively to hear and receive the inward motions of my Spirit which should convince and turn thee and wilt not either by previous Cogitation or immediate conatus and suscitation of thy Intellect to Think and of the will to its act actively concurr to receive my gracious motions and influx thy gracelesness absolutely and comparatively is imputable not to me but to thy self 3. Much more if when thou canst do otherwise thou run the contrary way and turn thy thoughts and affections eagerly after vanity and hate and oppose my help and grace because it is against thy lusts 2. Or if you will take it in the form of a half promise or encouragement from God thus 1. If thou wilt not by wilful progress in sin and custom so increse thy Privation and obdurateness as that the same measure of Gracieâ—s Means and Impress will not convert thee as would do one that hath not so abused common grace 2. And if also thou wilt at the present do what thou canst in stirring up thy own will to concurr and thy Intellect to consider and wilt but Consent that my Grace shall help thee and that thou wilt wait for it in the use of means 3. And if thou wilt not hate and resist my motions as enemies to thy lusts and turn wilfully after vanity in such a degree as thou art even Morally able to forbear Thou shalt find that I am gracious and merciful abundant in goodness and truth and forsaking none before they forsake me and have not appointed thee these means in vain To whom thus prepared did I ever deny the grace of faith Name him if thou canst So that Volo si velis hoc is one thing and Volo si velis aliud si ad hoc volendum quantum potes teipsum suscites Gratiam non oppugnes nec contraria prosequaris quando pravas Volitiones frâ—nare possis is another thing § 18. That God giveth his gracious operations sometimes in a Resistible limited degree besides what is said is most evidently proved 1. In that all Divines confess that in making the World he hath not done quantum potest but quantum voluit 2. In that there are innumerable Possibilia quae non sunt aut existentia aut futura God could have made the World sooner or made more Orbs Earths Trees Men Brutes in specie numero and done more acts and made more alterations than he doth 3. There is certainly some Divine operation with and by his instituted means which is limited to their instrumental aptitude § 19. And it is no dishonour to Gods Omnipotency to work thus limitedly and resistibly For 1. Else he should be the Author of his own dishonour who freely diversifieth Instruments Receptivities and effects throughout the World in wonderful variety 2. If the total Non-Volitions Non-operations or forbearing to do what he could as in all the innumerable Possibles aforesaid be no dishonour to him then to will only in tantum and to operate hoc hactenus limitedly and resistibly is no dishonour being more than not to Will and Work at all SECT VIII What that Operation of God on the soul is which is the subject of our many questions as Whether it be equal on all Whether it be resistible Whether it be moral or physical Whether it be sufficient when it is not effectual c. And what the various opinions about it are and how uncertain they are YOU may think this should have come first but for some reasons I have reserved it to this place § 1. I think the Ignorance of this in a great measure is common to all mankind But the Ignorance of mens Ignorance and presumptuous contending about what we understand not pretending even to triumphant scorn of dissenters that we do understand it is the very life of most of our contentions about these points § 2. My own judgement is that our own Intellection and Volition in the body are Acts that take in so much of the sense imagination and corporeal spirits into that of them which we perceive and denominate as that we cannot tell how far the Acts even of our own separated souls will differ from these which we here perceive and from perception call Intellection and Volition And much less do I know the difference between Gods Vital-activity Intellection and Volition and ours Some likeness there is or else ours were not his Image But all Schoolmen and Divines agree that the names are not Univocal and that it is not the same Thing in God as in man which these names signifie And that no man can have a formal conception of them I am satisfied that a glow-worm or the fire in a flint yea or in a stick or clod is incomparably liker the Sun than Man 's poor Life and Intellection and Volition is like to Gods And if so how unfit are we unnecessarily to dispute of these acts of God with curiosity or at all so as implyeth a nearer likeness The Lord knoweth that I would with reverence withdraw from this consuming fire and no further meddle with it than the Glorifying of God and the pacifying of the contentious and the healing of divisions and calling off the presumptuous doth require § 3. * * * The great difficulty is what it is which we must conceive to go between Gods essence and mans act or inclination given Dr. Twiss accuseth the Jesuits for denying Intellection and Volition to be instantaneous Acts sine motu And yet his friend Alvarez holdeth the Divine Act antecedent to be properly motio and would have his predetermination so described quâ praeviâ motionâ— actuali causis secundis praesertâ—m liber is inharente illas applicâ—t â—d operandum c. But it is either God or an effect of God which he calleth motio If an effect it is so called as it is in the receiver And what motio antecedent to mans Act can be imagined in man when motion is an Act though every Act be not motion Therefore they voluminously dispute de non ente or of they know noâ— what If we must have a distinct conception of it I think Viâ— impressâ— fitter By Divine Action or operation must be meant 1. Either something in God or something caused or Created by him 2. If caused or created it must be either something in the second Causes or something in the Recipient soul I think the distribution is sufficient § 4. I. In GOD there is nothing but GOD His Life Knowledge and Will are no accidents but his essence And therefore invariable and no subject for any of these questions To ask whether Gods Essential Knowledge Will and Activity
make this motion to be somewhat received before we act and yet nothing but our act which is absurd IV. Other Thomists hold that It is somewhat really distinct from our operations and that is Quoddam complementum virtutis activae quo actualiter agat And he that knoweth what predicament this complementum belongeth to and what it is let him take this opinion for more than a meer complement And here they tell you that they speak not of Gods simultaneous concurse for that Alvarez confesseth is nothing besides Gods essence and mans act But of his previous motion which he saith is somewhat more So Amesius Antisynod de Grat. c. 2. pag. 255. Satis esset apud omnes pios dicere Dei Velle sine ulla Impressione intercedente certe posse efficere ut Voluntas consentiat ipsius Vocationi I now meddle not with the truth of this and Twisses argument is easily answered But I intreat the Reader to note into what all our controversies are by these excellent men reduced who yet most aggravate them What now is the Gratia efficax ad credendum Nothing besides Gods esse but ipsa fides Is faith effective of it self No. Is Gods essential will effective of it Who ever denyed it What place is there for Controversies of sufficiency and efficacy when it is but Gods essence and the known effect of which they speak and hold not as Alvarez doth any motion or Impress made by God upon mind or will at all Gods will then is effectual quia vult effectum and it is virtually sufficient for whatever he willeth not but could will But then no man can possibly do any more good or less evil than he doth because no more or less is willed of God which volition is the first necessary Cause of all things And is not all their Volumes de Auxiliis Gratiae and the several sorts previous simultaneous operating co-operating c. meerly vain when there is no such thing as any Grace besides Gods meer will and the Act of man And yet Dr. Twisse elsewhere saith that Gods Decrees do nihil ponere in objecto As if they differed in the nature of motion And he saith that this is true both of supernatural acts which are from Infused habits as faith hope Love and of Imperfect supernaturals as fear of hell and attrition by which man is remotely prepared for Justification ◠which proceed not from supernatural habits but from the spirits special impulse not yet inhabiting but moving And Alvarez thus concludeth I. That which God doth in second causes by which these act is Aliquid habens esse quoddam incompletum per modum quò colores sunt in aere virtus artis in instrumento artificis It is Aliquid incompletum transiens cum ipsa operatione Are you ever the wiser for all this II. Hoc ens incompletum praevium actioni causae secundae producitur in illa effective à solo Deo nullo modo dependet efficienter ex influx◠ipsius causae secundae And therefore herein the will is passive though not in its own Act as he falsly affirmeth Luther to assert for what can act and not be active III. When second causes natural or supernatural have by their inherent form sufficient Active virtue per modum actus primi proportioned with the effect then Gods premotion is not a Quality but proprio vocabulo dicitur Motio Virtuosa by which the universal cause maketh the second actually operate according to its proper mode Therefore it is not a Habit or disposition or natural power IV. Yea in Imperfect supernatural acts as fear of hell which go before habits and by preventing grace are elevated to the acts it is not a Quality but Motio Dei virtuosa by which they are done and is of the same sort with that which causeth acts from habits V. This previous Motion is Really distinct from the operation of the second cause and is not our act it self but is immediately from God Which he useth many arguments to prove And can all this give any man a formal conception what it is which he calleth aliquid incompletum and Motio Virtuosa We know not what the Vis projectis impressa is in corporeals And can we tell how spirits and how the God of spirits maketh his Impressions or what the word Impression or Motion here signifieth We know that we know it not if we know what we know and know-not And why is it called Motio Virtuosa Virtus he maketh a quality It is no quality and yet Virtuosa Omnis motio est Actio Is it Actio Increata Then it is God himself which he denyeth and speaketh of somewhat between God and mans Act. Is it Actio creata Then it is a Modus Agentis for so is every Action as such as distinct from its effect in patiente And if so it cannot be modus Dei for then it is Ipse Deus And if it be modus hominis it is either homini◠agentis vel patientis If the first then it is mans Action If the second it is formally no action For modus patientis is passio though many would confound action and passion with saying after their Masters that Actio est in patiente which is equivocation So that the plain truth is that mans understanding can reach no further than to conceive 1. That our souls are the termini of Gods Volition and Active power 2. That though God act not on us by corporeal contact yet we must call our selves Patients and think of the Attingency of his Active essence with its effects by some Analogie of Corporeal attingency contact and impressed moving force But truly to know how God toucheth moveth operateth on any Creature and by what Impressions or what there is indeed between Gods essence and mans Act we know not at all And if Christ had never said Joh. 3. so is every one that is born of the spirit our own experience might have told us that we know it not Boldly then tell our Church-distracting wranglers that contend about the nature sufficiency efficacy resistibility of this Act of Grace that they know not the very subject of their disputes And shall we still fire the Church by striving about words that profit not but subvert the hearers and tend to the increase of ungodliness Yea and shall bold blind zeal use the Reverend names of God and his precious Truth to colour and countenance these pernicious contentions I grant that the nature of Grace and the concord of it with Free-will may be soberly treated of But when men have followed the controversie beyond the ken of humane understanding and there will proceed to build great Fabricks upon unknown suppositions and perversly contend for them against Love and peace they do but serve Satan against God under the colour of his sacred truth and name And I think it not amiss here to tell you what Alvarez saith to this Question de Aux l. 12. disp 118. p.
voluntatis à Deo elevatis suo speciali influxu consistere aiunt gratiam praevenientem excitantem Liberum autem arbitrium his duobus motibus gratiae praevenientis adjutum excitatum liberam habet potestatem imperandi aut non imperandi assensum fidei Quod si voluntas fidem amplecti velit actumque credendi imperet intellectui influente simul nutu gratiae praevenientis quam habet elicit in seipsa actum supernaturalem quâ— fidem amplecti vult quóque assensum imperat intellectui simúlque Intellectus motus imperio illo supernaturali voluntatis illustrationéque divinâ adjutus elicit actum supernaturalem assentiendi revelatis Gratia excitans seu praeveniens novo influxu quo unà cum libero arbitrio influit in supernaturalem actum fidei sortitur rationem gratiae adjuvantis cooperantis efficacis Si autem voluntas pro sua innata libertate fidem nolit amplecti gratia excitans praeveniens manet intra limites gratiae sufficientis nec est efficax quia voluntas non voluit fidem amplecti cum potuisset II. The second is Durandus's way Nullum esse necessarium Divinae voluntatis concursum ad actiones secundarum causarum sed saâ—is esse quod Deus eas produxerit in esse ipsas naturas earúmque virtutes postmodum conservet But this is a partial recitation for this sustentation of their Active Virtues is the same with an Universal Influx or Concurse to action as action which Bellarmine is for Read of this Ludov. à Dola III. * * * So Malderus in 1. 2 q. 111. a. 3. dub 1. Hic Dei concursus quod attinâ—t ad identitatem realem ex parte termini nam ex parte principii est ipse Deus aut Dei voluntas est ipsa actio Causae secundae quatenus est à Deo Nihil ponit in ipsa Voluntate sed est influxus Dâ—i in actionem seu effectum So many others The third he saith is attributed to Greg. Arim. Scotus and Gabriel great Wits if any Cooperationem Divinam se tenere ex parte effectus non Causae h. e. Conâ—ursum Dei non determinare Voluntatem nostram nec aliquid in illam imprimere aut operari sed immediate influere in effectum eumque producere illo ipso momento quo à voluntate nostra producitur Ergo Deus non determinat Voluntarem nec Voluntas Deum Nam uterque concursum libere adhibet si alter noâ—â—â— concurrere opus non fiet sicut cum duo ferunt ingentem lapidem Et licet simul operentur tamen Deus operatur quia Voluntas operatur non contra But this is partially recited and it is true only of the effect And his confutation is that then Graetia est pedissequa Voluntatu And why saith he not God is pedissequus hominis because he judgeeth men according to their works I have otherwise opened the matter than is expressed here of any of these But can the sober Reader think that the IV th way which is that of the Dominicans predetermining premotion of all acts good and bad is so much surer than these three as that he dare venture on that supposition to cry down his Brethren as enemies to the Grace of God and to his Providence who would gladly ascribe all to both which belongeth to perfection and are only afraid to deny Gods holiness and the Christian Religion by resolving all sin and damnation into the meer Will and Love and Irresistible Omnipotent efficiency of God SECT IX Whether Gods Operations be equal on all § 1. IF the question be ex parte Dei it is absurd to make a question of it For God is the same whatever the diversity be in his * * * Of Preparation for Grace Medina noteth three degrees of it one which Grace ever followeth which is it that our Divines mean by effectual Vocation and this he saith is never had but by Gods special help the other two are distant and common But that the Schoolmen of the other parties think otherwise he confesseth and saith In hac quaestione Durand Scot. propemodum omnes Nominales quos sequitur Adrian Quodlib 7. q. 4. tenent partem affirmativam scilicet quod homo per sâ—as vires sine speciali auxilio Gratiae potest se ad Gratiam praeparare sic ut consequatur gratiam infallibiliter ex merito de congruo D. Tho. tenet contrarium Medin ib. p. 593. But then by sufficiens praeparatio ad Gratiam he meaneth Conversion it self dimovere animum ab iniquitate st in Deum convertere sicut convertere faciem ad solem ut quiâ— illuminetur works And Gods acts as in himself are God And there is no Virtue or Efflux from God but what is a creature or effect of God § 2. If the question be of second causes and of Gods operation in and by them I answer 1. Some things God Giveth and Doth as Rector of the World by a Law or according to a Law And herein God doth equally till man make a difference as is aforesaid viz. in his Legislation though not in the promulgation and in his Judgement 2. Some things God Giveth and Doth besides as Owner and free-Benefactor and here he primarily maketh a difference So that there is a certain sort and measure of grace given equally till men make a difference And there is a sort and measure given unequally by the meer will of God as he diversifieth Natural things § 3. But if the question be of the effects on the soul those effects are 1. Mans predisposition 2. The divine Impress 3. The Acts 4. The Habits as is said And as to the first God equally disposed man at first But two Causes have filled the World with very unequal dispositions One is mans sin corrupting themselves and their posterity more than as they are the seed of Adam and this God is no Cause of The other is Gods free differencing mercy to some of equal ill desert giving them both Greater outward helps and Common Grace and fewer impediments and so more preparing them for special Grace But no man by Indisposition is deprived of special Grace but he that hath contracted more than he had from Adam only And God doth not equally repair and dispose all that have viciously undisposed themselves Though while they are here he giveth such mercy to all as tendeth to their recovery § 4. If the question be of the equality of Gods Impulse or Influx on the soul 1. There may be a diversity of further effects where the Impress is the same in kind and measure because of mens various Dispositions to receive it and their various concurse That may convert one that doth not another But yet God doth not make equal Impressions on mens souls For 1. His own free-will as a Liberal benefactor doth more for some as Paul than for others 2. Mens ill deserts may so forseit grace and quench the Spirit as
to make a difference 3. The means much differ which several men have And God usually operateth according to the means upon the soul § 5. If the question be either of the Act or Habit it is no question For that were but to ask Whether all men have equal faith love and other graces which common experience denyeth § 6. Whereas some will stick at my mentioning a Divine Impress on the soul in nature antecedent to Act and Habit I would have them remember that either there is such a thing or not If there be I rightly mention it If not we are instantly at an end of all this sort of Controversies and Calvinists and Arminians cannot differ if they would For then the question must be only about that which is past question viz. 1. Either about Gods Act as in Himself which is his simple Essence 2. Or about the Act and Habit of Faith Love c. in Man which all the World knoweth is not equal For all men have not faith For as for pre-disposition the question will be revolved to the same point It is certain that all are not equally disposed and it is certain that Gods Acts as in him are his Essence SECT X. Whether the said Operation be Physical or Moral § 1. THis paltry question is worthy but a few words though â— make too much stir Of the sense of the words Physical and Moral having spoken before I will not repeat it here 1. If the question be de operatione ut est actus agentis before the effect it were but to ask Whether Gods Essence be Physical or Moral which is unworthy an answer § 2. 2. If the question be of the Action of second Causes as the Preacher c. if truly Acts they are both Physical as they are really actus naturalis and moral as they are the acts of free intellectual agentâ— But the Acts of Laws and other objects meerly as objects on man are called Moral Acts because they are but nominal but indeed are no Acts and therefore neither Physical nor Moral For they are but signa and significare is not agere but is only an objective aptitude by which an Intellectual agent can â—difie it self All the Books in my Library teach me without any Action by being signa objectively to my active Intellect § 3. 3. If the question be of the Divine Impress on the soul it is quid reale and therefore physicum And it is moral as it is the principium actus moralis The same is to be said of our own Acts and Habits They are physical and moral accidents And they cannot be moral unless they be physical § 4. But it must be known that to be quid naturale and quid morale formally differ as Actus qua talis and ordo qua ordo do differ ab ordine seâ— Relatione ad Legem ad finem morum and Moralitas est actus Physici vel privationis Relatio viz. ad Regulam finem morum § 5. But if the question be not of the Morality of the Act but the Morality of the Cause viz. Whether Grace or divine action do cause Physically or Morally I answer plainly that There is no true Cause which is not Physical A moral Cause not physical is but Causa reputata vel â—â—minalis Objects are usually said to Cause morally But if they be meerly objects they cause not efficiently at all but by termination only materially constitute the Act in specie But some things vulgarly called objects as Light Heat c. are Active and so effect And he that doth proponere objectum doth indeed effect by speaking or doing But he doth not effect any thing by the object on the mind as it is a meer object But the Vox loquentis doth more than present an object It doth by agency suscitate the Spirits and operate on the organs of sensation And many mercies afflictions and other means forementioned have their several wayes of active operation But it is readily confessed that nothing corporeal can by any direct efficiency operate on a soul but only Active Spirits like it self Remember therefore that I take the word Physical here as the Schools do largely as comprehending Spiritual or hyperphysical And I plainly say de nomine that Gods operations of Grace are to be called Hyperphysical in respect to God the Agent and Physical as they are Physical effects on man and Moral as the same are in instanti secundo also moral effects And that they are called Moral in two usual senses 1. In that it is Morality or Virtue that is produced by them 2. And in that objects being much of the Means the operation or efficiency of objects as objects is properly none at all They do but materially as it were constitute the Act and terminate it and occasion it as sine quibus non which many call a Moral Reputative Metaphorical Causation And yet diversification is much by objects § 6. If this stumble any who look not at the greater inconveniences on the other side and occasion them to think that it is little efficient operation which we own in the collation of faith and conversion I desire them to consider well 1. That it is no new substance at all that is to be produced but a pre existent substance and faculty to be actuated 2. That it is not an Act as such in genere that is to be caused by Grace but the due ordering of acts as to right objects c. 3. That the soul as such is an Active Spirit not indifferent between Action and cessation but as naturally prone to Act as the earth to rest and as a stone in the air to descend and as the Sun to move and shine so that it is never one minute out of Action even in this earthen tabernacle from its first being to the last breath day or night Though in different manner 4. That God as the God of Nature doth uphold the soul in this Active Nature affording it that Concurse or Influx necessary thereto which in Nature he made due to it As he doth to the Sun in its action and to the souls of Brutes So that Activity as such distinct from the due order of it is given by God in Nature 5. And God hath placed the soul in the Universe as a wheel in a Watch where it must needs have some effects of the co-operation of Concauses or superiour agents 6. And Angels and Devils who have very much to do with our souls do work as Voluntary Agents in Political Order though not without the regulation of Gods Law or Will 7. And God can do what he will on souls without any second cause though whether he do so or what we know not 8. All this being supposed for Efficiency objects duly qualified may do much for the Order of Acts though properly they do nothing so that though they be but ut Materia ad formam occasions sine quibus non yet the reasons
cause Moral Good and hinder Moral Evil and by which as our Lover and End he will draw mans soul to himself in Love § 20. God as Rector though he vary his Laws in some things to several ages and places and promulgate the same Gospel with inequality on several accounts yet according to the respective Laws that they are under dealeth with all men in a certain equality which is called Justice that is His Laws antecedently to mans acts make not difference and as Judge he maketh none but what mans different actions require according to the said Laws and Justice But yet as Owner and as Benefactor he is free not against but above his Laws to make many inequalities which are no injustice they being not acts of formal Government and so he may do with his own as he list And thus though God give all their due according to his Law of Grace yet he giveth to his Elect such proportions of Grace as he gave them no antecedent Right to by his Law or at least to many of them passing by the controversie now whether he do so to them all § 21. God could cure and sanctifie all men if it were his Absolute will but he doth not and will not being no way obliged And he will be no loser nor sufferer by the creatures sin § 22. Gods absolute will is as fully accomplished by mans free acts as if they were all necessitated and Natural And mans actions are as free as if God had made no Absolute Decree of their futurity as in Good he hath done if we may so ascribe futurity to his Decrees § 23. It seemeth that all sin beginneth in the wills omission of what it was able to have done Even when Adams appetite was to the forbidden fruit and some think that this was the first part of the sin it seemeth that it was rather in the Wills not restraining that appetite when it could have done it And then positive sins do follow thereupon § 24. There is more Brutishness in sin and consequently more privative and less positive faultiness of the Reason and Will than many do consider which Paul partly meaneth Rom. 7. For it is certain 1. That a passion e. g. anger or fear may be forced on a man suddenly as â—n a Brute without Reason As if you come behind one and affright him or strike him suddenly no Reason raised that passion and consequently no Rational Will 2. It is certain that this passion without Reason can cause despotically a corporal motion as the fearful will start and run and the angry strike without any reason or rational will but as a Beast doth 3. It is certain that it is the office of the Will to Rule this passion and these motions 4. And that it must have due information from the understanding that so to do is good and best 5. If this information of the understanding did never miss of determining the Will then man would never sin but when the understanding failed of its necessary office before the will which would resolve all sin into the will of God as much as if he directly moved the will to it by necessitating unresistible predetermination For the Intellect as such hath no Liberty but is necessitated by objects further than it is under the Empire of the Will And the Objects and Intellect are made by God 6. Therefore it followeth that there is a certain measure of Intellecâ—â—â—l true apprehension according to which the will can excite and determine it self without â—â—y thing which it hath not and yet can forbear And that this not-willing what and when it should is the beginning of all sin § 25. God is no Efficient or Desicient cause of this first Omission of the will For efficient it hath none And deficient God is not who gave man power to have done it But man is the deficient Cause § 26. Man 's not believing not knowing not loving not obeying not desiring trusting fearing c. being the far greatest part of the sins of his life * * * Which made the worthy Bishop Usher dye with these words as his last But Lord in special forgive my â—â—â— of omission we see by this are not at all of God § 27. Though multitudes of positive Acts of sin do follow such omissions and go before some of them yet they being not sinful as Acts but as Disordered against the Rule and End and upon undue objects and especially comparatively preserring the wrong object before the right it seemeth that in their first instances they are all Omissive and Positive in the second only which maketh the Schoolmen so commonly say that sin is a Privation § 28. Yet the Moral formal Relation of sin is not only Privative but a Positive Disobedience or Disconformity And so as Quid Morale formaliter sin hath as much Relative being as Duty hath viz. 1. As contra Legem significantem 2. Contra Voluntatem Dei significatam 3. Et contra Jâ—â— Divini Dominii Imperii Amoris § 29. If any be unsatisfied in this it is certain that in the Velle hoc prohibitum potius quam hoc imperatâ—m there is no more physical entity than in the Velle imperatum no nor than there is in the Velle indefinitely considered as on any object Or if any deny that it is certain that there is no such addition of Entity it being but ordo modi in any such sinful Act from which as such the formal obliquity or sin resulteth but what man can do and doth without Gods causing the Act as so ordered and terminated So that God is no way the cause of formal sin § 30. †††Bradwardiâ— dealeth more plainly and maketh Gods effectual Volition to be the total immediate cause that man sinneth though it be no sin in God to do so and saith that God willeth it for good uses as the sinner doth or if he do not it is because God maketh him unavoidably do otherwise They that say He causeth all that man causeth and that as the first necesâ—itating or insuperable cause but yet is not the cause of the form of sin contradict themselves seeing that form is but a Relation which resulteth ipso facto from its fundamentam and terminus and nè per divinam potentiam cannot but do so And hath no other cause but what causeth them § 31. And they that say that yet God is not the Author of sin because he is under no Law do but sport with dreadful things And they mean that God is the chief Cause of all mens sins in the world but not of any sin of his own which is none of the question § 32. God doth neither Cause the sin nor the futurity or existence of it as some vainly distinguishing maintain especially Dr. Twisse and Rutherford For as Estius and others truly say to cause the sin is nothing but to cause the existence of it And sin as sin Dr. Twisse often
are wrought by common grace and that it is special acts and habits overcoming the flesh and world which are wrought by special grace So that those firemen that are resolved that yet differ they will and implacably differ and their adversaries shall be enemies of Gods Grace whether they will or not are yet defective in that acuteness and pregnancy of wit which is necessary to pretend a real disagreement and are forced to say that they disagree when they have not wit enough to seem to prove it to any but those that take their cholerick zeal and reproach for proof For in this there is no difference among us 6. Obj. At least we can prove that we differ in this about the effects that one side make Gods gracious habits given to believers to be such as may be lost and dye and the other do not Answ That is no difference You still want wit to make differences though you want not will For both sides are agreed that perseverance ariseth not from the meer nature of the Habit of grace but from Gods superadded sustentation For Adam and the faln Angels had as is commonly held such kind of habitual grace as we though objectively differing 7. Seeing there is no difference on Gods part as they all conclude Resistible grace and irresistible sufficient and effectual can have no difference but in the very effect or event and the connotation of mans Power or impotency to the contrary I know as I have said that not only the Dominicans and Calvinists but Suarez and other Jesuits say that Effectual Grace is such ex parte principii as is forcibler for faith as the effect But they contradict themselves who confidently say that besides that effect it is nothing but Gods essence which hath no degrees or real differences And mans power of Resistance and frustration is none as to Gods will and essence but only as to the effect When he could have done otherwise 8. The same Vanity they declare in the question Whether the same degree of Divine Grace help or operation would Convert one man as doth another or would Convert as doth not Convert When they are agreed that the effect is not the same and that the cause hath no degrees of difference 9. And though it 's past mans understanding to comprehend how all the various effects in the world should be produced without the least diversity in the Cause Will or Action ex parte agentis and that Velle salvare Petrum velle damnare Judam should be perfectly the same Volition ex parte Volentis yet it is the liker to be true because man cannot comprehend it as long as he hath no evidence to prove that it is not true For God is incomprehensible 10. Seeing then that we must concent 1. That God Decreed to do all that he doth and properly and absolutely no more 2. And that Christs death is the cause of all that it effecteth and properly of no more Of which the conditional gift of pardon and life is part And so that all the Controversie 1. Of Decree 2. Of Redemption is resolved into that of the effects 3. And seeing all the effects are such whose difference we little differ about if at all and ex parte Dei agentis they agree that there is no difference where then is the Difference among all the contenders §. II. Alvarez his Epitome in Twenty Propositions considered BUt that all this may more plainly appear I will recite the Twenty Conclusions which Alvarez in his Epilogus giveth us as the summ of all his Book one hundred twenty one Disputations And I shall tell you how far they are all to be consented to * Thus Bradwardine concludeth his Book with thirty six errors and as many verities which he would have the Church especially that of Rome determine But leaving out the most unsavoury parts or expressions of his own judgement Whether God be the chief necessitating Cause of all sin is none of them I. Free-will in lapsed nature cannot without the help of grace do a moral work which by co-operation of the supernatural End shall be truly good and a work of Virtue so as that by the doer it be referred to God beloved simply above all as to the ultimate natural End Answ It is granted and more that though all natural men have one sort of Grace given them yet I think this cannot be done without special saving grace II. Man by the sole strength of nature cannot assent to all supernatural mysteries propounded and explained to him as revealed of God or because revealed of God so as the formal reason of his belief is Divine revelation Answ It 's true He must have commoner grace to believe them dogmatically and uneffectually and special saving grace to believe them practically and savingly III. Not only faith it self but also the first beginning of faith proceedeth from the help of grace and not from the strength of Nature only Answ Very true IV. The free-will of man in lapsed Nature cannot without the help of Grace Love God above all simply even as he is the author of Nature Answ It 's true V. Man in lapsed Nature without the help of Grace cannot fulfill all the precepts even of the Law of Nature nor overcome any great difficulty and temptation even for any little time which it is necessary to overcome for the keeping of that Law Answ True Therefore they have some Grace that do it VI. There is no Law nor ever was made by God of his giving the actual helps of preventing grace to them that do all that is in them by the sole faculty of nature nor hath Christ merited or would have any such Law Answ True For he giveth some common grace to all men antecedently without any condition on their part And though he give to those that use their common grace to the utmost or near it sufficient encouragement to go on and hope that such endeavour shall not be in vain as to the obtaining of peculiar grace yet de nomine vel definitione Whether this encouragement shall be called a Law or a Promise or neither we contend not VII God by his helping grace floweth into free-will by premoving it that it may co-operate and also truly-efficiently together with the same free-will causeth its pious operation Answ It 's true But all adjuvant grace produceth not the second effect which floweth from both Causes of which before and after VIII When God by his exciting Grace striketh and toucheth the hearts of men he doth not expect that the will by its innate liberty begin its motion by Consenting But God by adjuvant grace effecteth that it freely and infallibly Consent Answ It 's true of all that do consent But God hath a degree of exciting and adjuvant grace which are Necessary and give the posse Velle which cause not the act through mans defect And though God expect not that effect as one that is deceived
yet he commandeth it and requireth it of us But exciting and adjuvant Grace are all one on Gods part And if you will difference the same things as connoting divers effects you must denominate it more fitly from the effects by words that notifie the difference IX Adjuvant Grace and Free-will are not Partial Causes of supernatural Consent as two drawing a Boat so as neither is premoved by the other or maketh it co-operate with it Answ True For God premoveth the will of man though through mans fault it be not ever effectual And though Gods will and mans be two Causes of the same effect the term Partial is scarce fit while man hath his whole power and activity from God X. Scientia media is not to be ascribed to God But all prescience of the future co operation of the will even from the foresaid Hypothesis presupposeth in signo rationis the free decree of Gods will by which absolutely or granting that Hypothests he will in us and with us effect that operation if Good and permit it if Evil. Answ Here come in your presumptions of things unknown or false 1. That God knoweth future contingents and conditionals is certain But I think this scientia media unfitly named and an unnecessary distribution and insufficient to the Jesuits ends 2. And your fiction of signa rationis and the necessary antecedence of a decree of Gods to his knowledge of every Volition of man is a more ungrounded and perillous figment which you have not proved It seemeth a denyal of Gods Omniscience or perfection that he cannot know an act future as future but only as decreed to be so 3. You deceitfully talk of permitting evil while you plead for the irresistible predetermining premotion of the will by God to every evil act with all its circumstances Is that but Permitting 4. To permit is Nothing no act of God but a non-agency not to hinder And how prove you that God must of necessity have a Positive Decree for every Nothing or non-agency Is not the not-willing or not-decreeing to hinder a lye e. g. supposing natural concurse or to make more worlds enough to the production of that lye by an ill inclined nature or to the not-being of more Worlds We are in the dark and God is infinitely above us and these tremendous mysteries are not to be so presumptuously handled by unproved assertions XI There is on our part no Cause Reason or Condition assignable for which Gods supernatural providence in comparison of this or that hath the formal reason of predestination or retaineth the common reason of providence but predestination is to be reduced into the sole free-will of God Answ Most of this is about meer words The word Predestination connoteth various effects and objects and so is called various Acts. There is no efficient Cause in the Creature of any act of God But there are objects without which Gods Acts have not their special denominations and these objects are the termini and called Material Constitutive Causes of those various acts as denominated various specially or numerically And so Gods Decree or Will to Justifie and Glorifie man hath something in the object as a necessary condition of it * * * That is of that object which is not â—â— the object of his decree of giving faith And that hath something in its object which is not in the object of the decree of giving a Redeemer to the World or making the World c. if you will at all distinguish Gods decrees by their objects or effects But if not there will be no matter for any Controversie And Predestination is an ambiguous word If it be taken for All Gods fore-decreeing or all about man or all of Good to us then our Being is the first effect of it in us and the making of the World a preparatory effect c. And so no doubt the first effect supposed us no men before and therefore no condition in us But if you take Predestination for Gods decree of Giving us Grace and Glory only then it is presupposed that we are lapsed sinners And the decree of damning men is exercised only on them as foreknown damnable sinners And the decree of penal denying Grace or faith to sinners for sin supposeth them such punishable sinners But the bare Negation of a Decree to give faith to one to whom the absence is no privation is unfitly called Reprobation though men may talk at their own rates And we grant that some such no-decrees have no condition in the objects for they have no objects e. g. If you will feign that God decreed from eternity to give me no faith before the Creation or before I was born or to give Innocent Adam no faith in a Saviour as dying for him this were no reprobating act But when God hath given men a Saviour with his common grace to believe in and accept here if he deny them necessary grace to believe it is a penal act And note that Christ and Common grace as absolutely given to mankind and offered to individuals ever goeth before mens accepting or refusing him And no man to whom he is offered refuseth him for want of necessary help till by sin against that grace he forfeit it XII God by an absolute and efficacious decree of his Will antecedently to the prescience of the future good use of free-will predetermined all good acts which are done in time specially those by which the predestinate come to eternal life Answ The substance of this seemeth true only 1. Whether you fitly denominate a decree efficacious from eternity which effecteth nothing till the Time I leave to them that dispute of words 2. You presumptuously determine Gods Decrees to be antecedent to his prescience herein when they are neither before nor after one another 3. If by predetermining you mean more than predecreeing or prevolition as if mans will was predetermined when it was not determined or determined before it had a being you speak contradictions But Gods own will was eternally determined if we may so say of that which was never undetermined to give all the grace that he giveth in time and to cause all the good acts that he causeth as he causeth them XIII The Co-operation of free-will with the gifts of grace is in the predestinate an effect of predestination and efficiently proceedeth from God making us by the help of grace freely to co-operate and consequently dependeth not on the sole and innate liberty of the will Answ I think so too XIV We must necessarily distinguish of a twofold help of Grace one sufficient by which man may be converted to God or work piously The other effectual by which God effecteth that he be actually converted and act piously Answ Hold to that and contradict not the terms in your description and all 's well XV. The effectual help of preventing or preoperating grace moveth mans free-will to act not only by perswading alluring inviting or other
to be simply necessary to motion Here the Reader must know that the Controversie is equally of Natural and Free agents and action And first let us enquire of natural action I. Fire is an Active nature as much Inclined to Action as Earth to non-action or rest Yea it s Active Virtue and Inclination is its very Essential Form and this as to a threefold action viz. Motion Light and Heat If God then make Fire and continue its Nature or Essential Inclination For I have before shewed how many wayes this is certainly done The whole experience of the world sheweth that God doth operate by second causes according to their natures and wayes of operation Therefore it more concerneth us here to know what second causes do on the soul in good and evil actions than in these disputes is usually observed Adrian Quodl 3. fol 18. Sententia Durandi plurium aliorum certum tenet c. Quam opinionem ultimo tradit Magister 37. d. 2. judicium relinquens prudentis lectoris examini to these acts and continue fuel approximate with all necessary concauses and media without impediments to say that this Fire yet cannot burn or act without another kind of Divine premotion besides all this even an Immediate physical impulse besides the described Influx is a plain contradiction For Fire is essentially an Inclined Power to act And that which hath a true Power to act can act It 's a contradiction to say It hath power but it cannot And a Power naturally inclined to act will act caeteris paribus The question then is Whether it be an impossibility for fire to burn if God do but as the first Cause of Nature continue its burning power and inclination with all concauses or rather Was it not a Miracle for the three Confessors Dan. 3. not to be burnt in that fiery Furnace If you say that the Miracle was in Gods withholding his additional premotion you then imply that God as principium vel causa prima Naturae doth ordinarily give that additional premotion For that is no Miracle which is not dissonant from the common course of nature But nothing can belong to God as the Cause of Nature but to continue Nature as he made it and he actually premoveth and concurreth while by his Influx as the first cause he continueth all its Moving Nature both Power and Inclination In the motus projectorum so far as the moving vis impressa continueth and prevaileth the motion continueth accordingly And who can prove that though the vis impressa continue e. g. in a Bullet shot out of a Gun and all concauses yet there can be no motion unless God otherwise thrust it on or move it by some other impulse Suppose a Stone or Rock hang in the Air quasi per filum or by somewhat that hindereth its descent If God continue the Natural Gravity of that Rock which is not only a power but an inclination to descend and if he continue all concauses and media and if the thred be cut or the impediment removed that held up the stone yet saith the Dominican this Stone cannot fall unless God moreover by another action thrust it down or by an efficient physical premotion predetermine it or as the Jesuits say unless God concurr with a further moving Impulse A plain contradiction That a Power of motion strongly inclined to act so as a greater power is necessary in the impediment that will hinder it and this in genere Agentis continued by Divine Influx yet cannot act unless otherwise moved God worketh so constantly by Natural Inclinations of second causes as fully proveth to us that ut prima Causa Naturae he hath decreed so to work And how is that then but by his Influx into Nature as Nature If my house cannot fall when the foundations and pillars are gone unless God otherwise thrust it down If I cannot fall though I leap down from the house top unless God otherwise thrust me down If the Town cannot be fired unless God predetermine it or concurr besides his continuation of Nature why should we fear it when we know not that God decreeth any more than the continuation of natural causes and that action which is by them and by him as the upholder of them II. And the case of Free-agents is here confessed to be the same The Influx into their Natures and Virtues is it that continueth them in esse substantiali and in esse movente moto An Act is but the modus substantiae And it surpasseth my understanding to conceive what it is for God physice influere in actum immediate non in potentiam seu virtutem agentem nor how he can be said to move the faculties to act that doth cause the act and not meddle with and therefore not move the faculty Nor know I how an Act immediately and not the agent can be the terminus of a physical motion Though it 's easie to conceive how God should cause an act by moral and extrinsick objective means Therefore as God moveth things Natural by his Influx into their moving Virtues or into the moving Virtues of second Causes which being Active operate on passive matter so as the Soul and its Will is quadam natura inclined to Action in genere and to will good in special God as the cause of nature moveth it by his Influx into the faculty as he doth other natural agents But having made it a Free self-determining Agent his Influx upholdeth and moveth it as such And the same Influx is upholding and moving and moving as upholding seeing God as Motor also doth influere in naturam vitalem liberam Besides which supporting and moving Influx no other predetermining premotion is necessary to an Act as an Act that I know of But the very natures or dispositions of lapsed man being depraved the reparation of them is necessary to holy actions And here also God operateth on the faculties by right disposing them and by that grace which Augustine and Jansenius well call Gratia medicinalis his special Influx causing maintaining and actuating it he causeth the holy actions of believers I do verily believe that Durandus and his followers under the name of supporting the natural and free faculties did mean inclusively that which Bellarmine pleadeth for A General Concurse to the Act as an Act And that they differ in words and not in sense And if his doctrine hold not true I cannot see how God can be said to Permit mens sinful Actions or any action at all For if neither the Inclination of natural agents as of Fire to burn a Stone to descend c. nor the Inclination of the most wicked nature would cause any act unless God otherwise cause it by premotion then there is no place for Impedition for we cannot be said to Hinder a Stone from speaking or a Mountain from walking nor anything from any act which it could not as And permittere is non impedire And
think a good thought by any help that God can give him unless he physically predetermine him to it then the reason why man doth it not is as notoriously to be resolved into Gods not-predetermining him to it as the reason why he doth it into his predetermination and as it is night because the Sun shineth not XVII But at least we can say that God is not the cause of sin because he is under no prohibiting Law Though it be true 1. That his nature or perfection the root of all Laws is more than a Law 2. And we know indeed that this proveth him not at all to be no cause of the sin of man but only to be no sinner himself though he cause it which is none of the question XVIII And from this necessity of predetermination it followeth that all that part of our holiness and obedience which consisteth in not sinning is not at all caused by God e. g. that we hate him not nor his truth and wayes and servants that we murder not commit not adultery steal not lye not covet not blaspheme not wrong none do no evil c. we need no help of God for this Because if he will not move our wills by efficient predetermination to do them it is impossible for us to do them at all XIX And though we say that God willeth sin to be by his permission only and not by his efficience yet indeed predetermining by efficiency as the first cause is the principal efficiency And properly we must say that God permitteth no sin at all For we say that his permission proveth the consequence of the thing permitted And therefore we must say that he permitteth no sin but what is done And that which is done by commission positively he effecteth by effecting the fundamentum and therefore permitteth not And men sin by omission because God doth not make them sin and not because he meerly permitteth it For permission is not de impossibilibus XX. God willeth not sin because he willeth it not as sin in its formale which also we must confess that the wicked themselves do not XXI And whereas we hold that God cannot foreknow things future but as he willeth or decreeth them we must confess that the formale peccati as well as the materiale was such as it is quid futurum if it was but futura privatio And therefore this would inferr that God willed and decreed the formale peccati also XXII Gods Will is his Love and what he Willeth he Loveth XXIII God willeth the futurity and existence of sin not only of the materiale but the formale even of all the sin that ever is done XXIV The existence of sin is Good and Amiable not only by accident but per se as being very conducible to the Glory of Gods Justice and Mercy and therefore is per se Willed and Loved of God XXV It is incomparably much more sin than Holiness which God willeth and Loveth and by predetermination causeth in mankind on earth For it is much more sin than Holiness that existeth in man And all that existeth God causeth as aforesaid the circumstantiated act and so the resultancy of the relative form And he willeth and Loveth the existence of all and the thing existing so far as he causeth it XXVI God Willeth Loveth and Causeth sin incomparably more than wicked men do For they Will and Love it with a humane mutable dependent will but God with a Divine primary immutable will Man causeth the forbidden act whence the relation resulteth with a Will that is irresistibly moved so to do by God as the pen writeth only sâ—o modo with Volition But God causeth it as the first omnipotent unresistible cause of all that the Creature doth in sinning XXVII The same must be said of God and the Devil who can no more commit one sinful act till God unavoidably predetermine his will to it by his premotion than sinful man can XXVIII God by his Law doth strictly forbid all those sinful acts which he principally and unavoidably causeth And he strictly commandeth all those good acts whose contraries he thus causeth us to do XXIX Though there is nothing in sin which can have a cause of which God is not the Principal cause and though he Willeth and Loveth all that he causeth yet the Scripture saith that God hateth sin and cannot behold it and hateth all the workers of iniquity and that it is abomination to him that he is as one laden with it and wearied provoked and offended by it And that he Loveth the Acts of obedience and holiness when he will not cause them but doth cause and will the contrary XXX Pardon and salvation is promised and earnestly offered by God to the Reprobate themselves on condition that they will believe and repent when God doth unavoidably as the first cause determine their wills to the contrary acts even to disbelief and impenitent hatred of God and holiness XXXI The Law of God is that all the Reprobates shall be damned to hell fire if they will not believe and repent when his omnipotence doth unavoidably premove and determine them to unbelief and impenitence and if they will not give over those acts of sin to which God doth thus unavoidably move and determine them XXXII Gods executions are answerable to these Laws and all save Christians and all professed Christians saving the sanctified are to be punished in hell fire for ever only for not doing the acts of Faith Love and obedience when God as the first cause predetermined them to the contrary and for doing the acts of sin when God unavoidably moved them to it and made them do it so that consequently all that are damned suffer in hell for not being Gods even the first sufficient causes of their own acts and for not being above God or stronger than he that is for not overcoming or avoiding his invincible and unavoidable predetermining premotion unto evil acts XXXIII The same must be said of the Devils who sin and suffer on the same terms XXXIV Q. What kind of torment then will there be in Hell Can Conscience torment men for doing that which they were unavoidably made to do by Omnipotency and for not doing that which without Divine predetermination they could no more do than make a world or for not doing that whose contrary they were thus predetermined to that is for not overcoming God when they know the case Or must we not more congruously say that the state of Hell torments lyeth in a most vehement hatred of God for so using them and a justifying of themselves Or will every mouth be thus stopt in judgement XXXV Q. Is not Divine Justice the most perfect Justice and the exemplar of all humane Justice allowing for disparities And should Kings and Judges imitate this fore-described course And how then would they be esteemed XXXVI Q Is not that best which is most agreeable to Gods Will and Love And therefore sin better than
he will not cause cannot be And this is the beautiful variety and harmony in the Universe In God himself is nothing but perfection but the Greature being the shadowy Image of God defectibility and imperfection is essential to it so that he reduceth Morality to the frame and necessity of physical motion and maketh Moral Good and evil to be indeed as much natural good and evil and of the same kind except as in another subject as Summer and Winter heat and cold day and night health and sickness life and death animate and inanimate the unavoâ—dable diversifications of the will and work of God And that every permission of his will is accompanied with a positive volition of the thing permitted And yet that Will is not properly in God but so called after the manner of man That sin is considered as related to the Principle of action which is God and so it is good or as in the terminus Man and so it is horrid devilish odious evil as blindness death darkness caused all by Gods desertion or not operating otherwise than he doth § 7. To the quieting of the mind that cannot digest this but thinketh God is thus dishonoured being made more than Satan the cause of sin and misery for sin which the Scripture contradicteth and that man is excusable at the barr of Justice that could no more in innocency forbear to sin than to make a world To them that think it hard that no one in all the world could ever possibly do more or less Good or Evil than they do but that is all done by physical motion as in an Engine c. he hath a great deal to say and more than ever I elsewhere met with and with great modesty proposed § 8. As to the Law whose transgression is sin he supposeth that Whatsoever imposeth on us any thing to be done by us as an antecedent condition to any consequent good is the Law opposed to the Gospel Pag. 173. Yea that the proposal or pressing of any Truth or Goodness on us in a literal or moral way only or the word as written in Letters is the Law and the spirit operating the thing it self on the soul is the Gospel the first is the old Covenant and the second the New That the proper and next ends of the Law or letter are sin condemnation death and the Divine wrath To let in sin and heighten it that it might abound and to bring on us spiritual death These flow not from the Law of it self but by accident from the weakness of the flesh and creaâ—ure But both Law and sin are brought in ultimately for good viz. God having a design which he intended to enrich with the fullest the highest glories of his Godhead brings forth in the course of this design a dark scene of all evils sin death wrath The evil in this scene is carryed on to its utmost extent and height Thus the variety becomes more full in the whole design and the chief design is heightned in its greatest Glory God in his Infinite wisdom so bringeth in this scene of sin and evil that himself is perfectly pure and good in the contrivance and conduct of it He setteth up a Law good holy and spiritual but such that sin inevitably may take occasion from it through the frailty of the flesh and of the creature to spring up as an overflowing flood to display it self over all things in its fullest foulest birth This Law is to convince us of the frailty and mutability in mans primitive state c. viz. that he is a creature For Pag. 175 176. man is composed of the light of God and his own proper darkness These two the Schools call the Act and Potentiality the form and the matter being and not being which constitute every Creature The darkness or nothingness which is the Creatures own is the proper ground of sin The Law comes and distinguisheth the Light from the Darkness Pag. 177. so that to see sin is to see that we are Creatures God withholds his Pag. 178. Divine presence appearances and influences from man and so the darkness discovereth it self in man and predominateth and captivateth him entirely and becomes his choice and Lord. so that sin is but an Imperfect Creature and the Law to cause and shew it § 9. Pag. 113 114 c. He saith The Immediate cause of the first change made in the understanding at the fall was the Divine Glory withdrawing or withholding it self Darkness is the privation of Light Privations have no proper Causes but accidental only Thus the Divine Glory retiring from the understanding or ceasing to shine in it is by accident the cause of the darkness there as the Setting or departing of the Sun is the cause of Night which is not a blemish to the Sun but its glory that in its presence are all the beauties and joyes of light in its absence all the disagreeableness and melancholies of night and darkness Pag. 115. All evil is from the absence of God c. P. 117. The fault in man is the deficiency which ariseth from the defectibility or nothingness of the Creature in its shadowy state in the purity of its first Creation Pag. 122. The fall springs from the Harmony of the eternal design in the Divine mind being comprehended in it as a part of it § 10. And yet he makes man Guilty and unexcuseâ—ble and God just iâ— this because Guilt is but our being really bad And he that cannot deny himself to be bad is unexcuseable And the opening of this causeth shame And Justice is to Judge and use all creatures as they are § 11. To be short he maintaineth that man can have no freedom from necessitating predetermination If he should it would cross the nature of God of the creature of the soul and the unity and harmony of all things But that God causeth all sin negatively as necessarily as he causeth darkness or any natural privation But then he doth with a torrent of Rhetorick so Praise Gods design in it and the beauty and harmony of all things made up of good and evil unities varieties diversities and contrarieties and sheweth so largely the glory that cometh to God by sin and the good to the Universe and that it 's but our narrowness and weakness of sight that maketh us take it to be any other than a part of the glory of the universe though bad in and to the person that sinneth that I confess I never found my self more tempted to Love sin or to cease my hatred of it than by his florid Oratory § 12. And withall as he resolveth all the rest of Morality into Physical conceptions so he seemeth to judge suitably of Hell and of Redemption supposing that all this darkness that God brings on sinners is but to prepare for their resurrection to a life of unity and glory and that it shall go well with them in the end § 13. And as
the moderatest that he * Vid. Episcopii Resp ad qu. 64. qu. 33. pag. 32. â—bi dicit Deum decrevisse ut Judaei Christum e medio tolleren ex praescientia quod id liberâ— voluntate facturi essent atque inde praedictiones certas natas esse decreed the event that Sin should come to pass ipso permittente quamvis non efficiente or at least that he decreed his permission of it B. I. The first sort are those few whom I in the beginning renounced of whom the Dominicans and good Dr. Twisse and Rutherford his Follower de providentia are the chief I easily confess to you that God made the Law and God made man and God maketh the Objects and God causeth the Act as a natural Act in genere by a natural general concourse And if it could be also proved that God were the chief efficient Determiner of the Will and that by necessitation to this Act or Object comparatively rather than to that e. g. that David willed the Acts which were Murder and Adultery I could never deny that God is the chief Author of the Sin For the formal reason of Sin is Relative viz. Its disconformity to the Law of God And the Relation resulteth without any new Act or Agent Posito fundamento omni absoluto And neither God nor Man do or can do more to cause the Relation And Dr. Twisse and Rutherford so far saw this that the up-shot of all their Vindication is 1. That God causeth not sin as sin but as a means to his Glory 2. That God is under no Law as we are and therefore can be no Author of Sin But to the first I answer It 's one thing to will Sin as Sin and another thing to cause Sin as Sin We charge them not with inferring that God willeth Sin as Sin but Nullus est Catholicus qui ignoret peccatum non esse effectum praedestinationis etiam si praedestinatus occasionem ex eo saepius capiat suae salutis Nam cum Deus causa peccati esse nequeat efficitur ut Deus peccatum nulla ratione praedestinare possit Neque actus ipse peccati secundum esse naturale non est effectus praedestinationis quamvis sit hoc modo effectus divinae voluntatis Vasquez in Tho. 1. q. 23. cap. 2. disp 93. if he will it and cause it for another end he causeth the formal nature of Sin that we may not play with the ambiguity of Quatenus and that 's as much as man doth For Sinners do not all if any will sin as sin under this formal notion as it is a breach of the Law of God and displeaseth him but as it bringeth them some seeming good And by doing evil for that good they are Sinners To the second we do not charge the Dominicans with making God a Sinner But with making him the chief cause of the sin of man even in its form II. But this is nothing to the Calvinists in general Therefore I say that your selves hold the same that they do in this point Q. 1. Do not all the Jesuites and Arminius hold That God is the Decreer of what he is the Author of And that God is the Author of the Act as an Act natural in the general See but Rob. Baronius his Metaphysicks and Bellarmine whom he followeth A. That is nothing to the moral specification of the Act. B. And Dr. Twisse hath oft enough told you where Arminius saith That God would have Ahab to fill up the measure of his Sin A. That is not that he willed the sin but that Ahab having made himself wicked God decreed not to stop him but let him go on B. Either you mean that the Object of Gods Decree was but his own permission as the Arminians use to say or else that it was the Sin it self matter and form permitted not because it is sin or evil for so man oft willeth it not at least but as an occasion of Gods Glory Arminius his words import the latter And then you go as high as Dr. Twisse or Rutherford But if you say that it was but a rash word of Arminius which you stand not to to make plain and short work with you I am so far from being liable to your charge that I charge you as presumptuous if not erroneous in saying that God decreeth or willeth to permit Sin And I assert 1. That God doth not Decree the form of Sin as Sin 2. Nor yet the event of that form for any good end For Ut peccatum eveniat is but peccatum futurum and what is it to decree Sin but to decree that it shall be Nor 3. Hath he decreed that this Act which is the Sin shall come to pass in its comparative circumstantiated state from whence it is that Sin in its form resulteth And so Augustines saying so much decantate by Dr. Twisse and others * As Bradwardine who also tells us That if God damn the Innocent his Will is the rule of justice and equity But I think they that so describe his Justice do rather think that none are damned than that the Innocent are or may be as an act of Justice whatever a meer Proprietor may do is not found that nothing cometh to pass but what God willeth either effecting it or permitting it It cometh to pass without Gods willing it or decreeing it so that he permitteth it but decreeth not that it shall come to pass Not that it is against his contrary absolute Decree but as Lombard from other places in Austin telleth you plainly God neither willeth that it shall be because it is sin nor properly and simply willeth that it shall not be for his Will is not overcome 4. Yea he cannot be proved to decree his own permission Because to permit is but not to hinder which is nothing but a negation And we have no ground to feign that God hath Volitions or Decrees of nothing or of negations So that I say that Sin cometh to pass without Gods Decree of the event or of his permission Though not without his Decree of the good which cometh by it of which more when I speak to the other extream And of this also more anon The third Crimination A. III. You make God necessitate mens sin and damnation by your negative decrees as well as others by their positive For you hold That no man can believe and repent but such as God decreeth to give Faith and Repentance to And no man can do any more good than God decreeth that he shall do And some say that God decreeth Not to give men any more Grace than he giveth them which is a Decree objectively negative de non dando And you and others say That he doth not Decree to give them more And so as a stone is not culpable for not flying no more are Sinners not elected for not believing and obeying God * Note what Vasquez granteth in 1. Tho. q. 23. a. 5.
stir up their distast of others B. The question may have three several senses of passiveness as man is considered 1. In his Nature 2. In his Action And therein 1. In the reception of the Divine Influx 2. In the acting thereupon And so the questions are 1. VVhether mans Soul be an active nature or passive matter only 2. VVhether mans Soul be meerly passive in the reception of the Divine Influx ad agendum 3. VVhether mans Soul be meerly passive in its own first act of Faith or Repentance Tell me Are not these three distinct questions And are they not all that you can devise unless you will make another whether we are merly passive in the preparatory part And are you not now ashamed to confess that you need any answer to any one of these three questions I. All the world is agreed save the Hobbists and Somatists and Sadduces that mans Soul is not meer passive nature but is an active nature inclined to Action as passive Elements are to non-action And that when God moveth it he moveth not Earth Water or Air but a Spirit whose nature is self-moving as fire under the first mover II. All the world is agreed that the Soul and all Spirits are not so purely and meerly active as God is but are partly and first passive and that they do and needs must be receptive of the Divine Influx before they can act For all Creatures depend on the first Cause and both Being Nature and Action would cease if Gods emanation to it ceased And all the world agreeth that no man before Conversion or after doth any act of Faith Love c. no nor eating and drinking and going c. but he is in the first instant passive as influenced by God before he is active Who ever doubted whether physice recipere be pati Did you ever know such a man III. All the world is agreed that man is not meerly passive when he acteth An Act is an Act sure And to believe repent and love is an Act and an act of mans Soul And Scotus who thinketh that immanent Act are qualities as we think of habits yet thinketh that the Soul is truly active antecedently to that quality Where now is there any room for a Controversie C. You would make me believe that we are very ignorant Wranglers that make a noise in our dream and will not suffer others to rest Do not the Arminians say that man concurreth with God to the first act of his own Faith yea that he maketh Gods Grace effectual B. You shall not again tempt me to anticipate the question of effectual Grace though enough is said before to it as far as this Objection is concerned in it Gods Influx on the Soul is one thing mans natural faculty receiving that Influx passively is another And mans Act is another To thrust in here a general word man concurreth and so to run away from clear and necessary distinction is not the part of a man of knowledge Did ever man yet deny that man herein concurreth as aforesaid 1. Man concurreth not to make his Soul nor to continue it in being or power 2. Man concurreth not as any efficient of Gods Influx on his Soul ad agendum 3. But man receptively or passively concurreth as a Receiver of that Influx 4. And man actively thereupon concurreth to believe and repent Is not all this true But you would tempt the Arminians to say that it is you and not they that are herein to be accused For what mean you else by confining the Controversie to the first act of Faith or to our first Conversion Would you make men believe that a converted man is not as truly passive in believing loving God c. as the unconverted is Must not the holiest person be passive in receiving the Divine Influx on his Soul before he do any holy Act You seem to deny this and then you are the person that err by ascribing too much to man If not shew the difference C. There is a habit of Faith goeth before the first Act And it is in respect to that habit that the Arminians say we are active procurers of it which we deny But the godly operate from a habit B. You speak a private Opinion of your own brain against the sense of the Concordant Churches Where doth Scripture say that a habit of Faith goeth before the first Act Mr. Pemble * Vind. Gratâ— saith so indeed yet he sometime calleth that but a Seed which at other times he calleth a habit Dr. Ames in his Medulla contradicteth it Bishop Downame * In the end of his Treatise Of Perseverance Le Blank de diss Grat. 2. Thes 22. speaking of our being passive as to operating Grace saith truly Non videntur hac in parte Reformati a sanioribus inter Scholasticos dissentire licet aliis verbis mentem suam exprimant The School-men and Protestants little differ in the method of operations of Grace and all are drawn by Controversies too near curiosity beyond their reach hath written a large Confutation of Mr. Pemble The generality of Protestant Divines contradict it and thus with Rollock de Vocat distinguish Vocation from Sanctification that they suppose Vocation to cause the first act of Faith and Repentance and Sanctification to give us the fixed habit the act intervening Mr. Tho. Hooker is large upon it in his Souls Vocation Will you start one mans Opinion which Calvinists and Arminians are against and feign this to be a difference between Calvinists and Arminians And perhaps Mr. Pemble himself by his first semen or habit meaneth no more than the Divine Influx ad actum received I have before told you how unsearchable the nature of that Influx is and how hard it is to know the true nature of an Habit. C. But Mr. Pemble saith It is the Spirit that is given before we believe B. Away with Ambiguity By the Spirit is meant either the meer received Influx of the Spirit ad agendum and so it is granted Bad men receive the Spirits Influx to such acts as he moveth them to Or else you mean the foresaid fixed Habits and Dispositions to a ready and facile ordinary Operation Or else you mean the Spirit given relatively by Covenant undertaking to be the Sanctifier and Preserver of the Soul In both these latter senses the Spirit is not given before the first act of Faith to Infidels They have not the fixed habits of Holiness Love Hope Obedience c. Otherwise they were holy Infidels No Scripture speaketh it nay contrarily it promiseth the Spirit as to Believers and affirmeth it given after Faith Eph. 1. 13. Joh. 14. 17. 15. 26. Gal. 3. 14. 4. 6. Joh. 7. 39. And that the Holy Ghost is not given in Covenant to Infidels I need not prove to them that will not baptize Infidels The sixth Crimination C. They hold that none are damned only for Adam's sin imputed * Yes Vasqu and other
equality with the wise Do we not see that as man is so is his strength and work operari sequitur esse The strong do as the strong and the weak judge and do as the weak Why else doth God give men strength of Grace sure they that think the habit of Grace must needs be before any act will not hold that all our lives after the Acts from immediate divine production go beyond the degree of the habits We know that God is the chief cause of our perseverance and all our works that are good But he causeth them by disposing and quickening strengthening illuminating and sanctifying our faculties to do them which is habitual Grace B. What is your own judgment in this point A. Our judgment is 1. That he that truly at the present preferreth the pleasing of God and his Salvation before all this World is sincere and justified 2. That of these some have well setled apprehensions and resolutions but others have such shallow Conceptions and weak Resolutions as that a very strong Temptation would change their minds and overcome them 3. But if they escape such Temptation and be not overcome they shall be saved For God will not damn men for possible Sin and Apostacy which they were never guilty of but only for that which they did commit 4. And that it is no certain sign of hypocrisie that they would have fallen away had their Temptations been great but only a proof that they were weak 5. Else to pray Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil should be rather discover not our sincerity or hypocrisie by temptation 6. Therefore God useth to proportion mens trials to their strength And that young and weak Believers may persevere he exposeth them not antecedently to their provocation to great Temptations as he doth the strong Even as while a young Tree hath little rooting it hath also but a little top else had it the top of a great Tree and but the roots of a Plant the first great Wind would overturn it 7. Even strong Christians might possibly have some Temptations which would over-match their strength and turn them from Christ if God should not keep them from such Temptations 8. Therefore there are some Temptations so far above the very nature of man by such Grace as is not a meer Miracle to be overcome as that God doth not suffer Mankind to be tried with them As to be most exquisitely tormented many moneths or a longer time And in that unusual trial of the poor Christians in Japon though many endured those torments many weeks yet nature could not sustain them to the last but when they had suffered as much as many Smithfield burnings to death at last almost all denied Christ so that Christianity is now there extirpated Now if Rogers Bradford Hooper shewed sincerity by suffering death why should we not think that these did so that suffered far more than they though afterward the degree was greater than their strength 9. We hold that Gods Punishments and Mercies to men in this World are very much exercised in either permitting or not permitting great Temptations * The same Bradwardine l. 2. c. 16. holdeth that the cause of the damneds obstinacy in sin is not only themselves and Gods not-willing to cure and save them but also Gods positive Will by which their obstinate wills are for ever continued in the act But I see not why we should assert Gods positive Will of Sin in Hell or Earth when his not-effectual willing to cure it is enough And that for great sin he oft delivereth men up to Satan and giveth him the greater power over them Yea that the nature of sin it self is such as giveth greater advantage to the Tempter As he that will with Achan look on the wedge of Gold or that will please his tast with delicious Drinks and Meats or that will permit his eyes immodest Spectacles hath thereby let in the Devil into his Imagination and will not easily thence cast him out And on the other side he that pleaseth God and conquereth one Temptation obtaineth that Grace by which he is much saved from the next and the Tempter is the more disadvantaged and restrained 10. Lastly We therefore hold That seeing Temptations do not only try our sincerity or hypocrisie else we should desire them for self-examination but also tend to change mens minds and make them worse the way to persevere is to pray against and avoid Temptations and resist those that cannot be avoided This is our judgment In which you see that we hold that all weak Christians that are sincere may have assurance of their present Justification though they are not strong enough to stand the greatest trials And that they may well hope that God will save them from over strong Temptations while they sincerely do his Will B. But Christ saith That he that forsaketh not all that he hath and hateth not his own life cannot be his Disciple And what greater trial can there be than the loss of life it self A. Though some taking it to be hard that none are true Christians that would not be Martyrs were they tried have said that this Text speaketh de necessitate praecepti non medii You must grow up to this at last if you will be my Disciples yet I will not so force the Text but say as you do But 1. There are far stronger Temptations than the love of Life Though not from Interest yet from false reasonings which may deceive the judgment And one that would die for Christ while he believeth in him may possibly have so strong Temptations to unbelief as shall exceed in danger his fear of death 2. And all men that at the present would forsake Life and all for Christ yet have not the same fixedness of Resolution nor the same degree of Faith and Love No doubt but the Martyrs in the same flames had various degrees of Grace Now a less firm and fixed measure may be loosened by degrees or shaken by Seducers and mutable man may after be overcome by that same Temptation which once he could have overcome So that I accuse their Doctrine as utterly inconsistent with true Christian Comfort on both these account And such is the success of those men that will overdo and devise means of their own for extraordinary comforts which God never gave them B. The comfort of poor Christians it seems standeth but on slippery terms in the Opinion of both sides while each Party thinks that there is no true comfort in the others way * Whether we may be morally sure of our present Justification the Papists Doctors agree not among themselves Bellarmine and many others affirm it and others deny it as Aureolus cited by Brianson in 4. q. 4. fol. 36. and others that say no man can know whether his Habits are infused But doth not experience confute you Do you not see that many have true Christian comfort that are not of