Miracles Therefore a Servant of Christ may most comfortably suffer Martyrdome for his testimony to the Deity Christianity the Life-to-come or Charity and Justice against Malice and Persecution and Cruelty which even a Miracle would not justifie more than for a disputable Opinion § 20. It 's a great Question How a true Prophet might be known antecedently before his Prophecy was fulfilled And it 's of great moment to consider the difference between a Legislative Prophet and a meer particular Message Moses and CHRIST the Legislators confirmed their Laws and Word by multitudes of uncontrouled Miracles For Life and Death lay upon mens Obedience or Disobedience to them And if a Prophet did reprove any Sin against that Law the Miracles that confirmed the Law did justifie them But if it were but a Prophecy about some other temporal Event as Ieremy's of the Captivity it needed no Miracle for it was but a temporal Suffering that followed the not believing them The Law of God which should here be handled I shall speak of afterward CHAP. VIII Of God's causing or not causing Sin § 1. HOw certainly the Doctrine of the necessity of immediate efficient physical predetermining Premotion doth make God the principal Cause of all Sin I have so oft shewed and so fully proved that I shall here be very short upon that Subject § 2. To say that God is the principal determining Cause of every sinful act with all its Objects and Circumstances called the materiale peccati and also the Cause of the Law that forbiddeth it and the Person that committeth it is to make him the chief Cause of Sin as far as it is capable of a Cause even of the formal Cause § 3. To say That such a Cause is the Cause only of the Act but not of the Obliquity is absurd because the obliquity is a Relation necessarily resulting from the Law and Act with all its modes and circumstances And the obliquity can have no other Cause § 4. To say That God willeth and loveth and causeth Sin not as Sin but for good ends and uses is to say no more for God than may be said for wicked men if not for Devils save only that God's Ends are better than theirs § 5. To say That God willeth not Sin but the Existence and Futurity of Sin is but as aforesaid to say that He wills not Sin as Sin or sub ratione â—ali but that it exist for better ends or else it is a contradiction For to will or cause Sin is nothing else but to will and cause the existence of Sin § 6. They that say That God willeth the Existence of Sin as it is summe conducibile to the Glory of his Justice and Mercy yea and that per se and not only per accidens do wrong the Glory of God's Holiness and Wisdom A Physician can love his own skill and compassion and the honour that cometh to him by curing a Disease without loving or willing the Disease it self but only supposing it as an Evil which he can turn to Good § 7. They that say That God is the Cause indeed of our Sin but is no Sinner himself because he is under no Law say nothing in the latter but what all grant and nothing in the former but what God's Church doth commonly abhorr excepting some few singular presumers § 8. They that hold That God doth by immediate physical efficient predetermining Premotion principally and unresistibly cause every sinful act with all its modes and circumstances do certainly deny all certainty of Faith and so subvert all Christianity For the formal Object of all Divine Faith is God's Veracity that God cannot lye if God could lye our Belief could have no certainty Now God speaketh to us but by inspired men and not by an essential voice of his own And if God cause as aforesaid all the Lyes that ever were spoken by Men or Devils in the World then no man can be sure that he doth not so by Prophets and Apostles or that ever they say true And God's Veracity then is gone § 9. They that think â—o evade this Evidence by the difference of Predetermination and Inspiration and say God inspireth no Lyes though he predetermine all by physical Premotion do labour in vain For 1. No man can ever prove that any Inspiration doth interest God more in the Act or Lye than physical Predetermination doth For how can God be more the Author of any Act than by effectual premoving the Creature to act it and that by immediate physical Predetermination What doth Inspiration do but so move the Mind Will and Tongue of a Prophet No man can name more that Man is capable of 2. But if there were a difference we are not capable of understanding that difference so well as to prove that God can cause all the Lyes in the World by predetermining Premotion and yet can cause none by Inspiration shall none believe him that know not this difference 3. And were it intelligible it would be only to inspired men themselves So that I am past doubt that we must part with all Certainty of Christianity and of all Divine Belief if we receive this Doctrine of Predetermination because the objectum formals fidei is then gone § 10. They that say that if we make not God the Predeterminer to every act in specie morali and in every comparative respect and mode we shall make Man a God by making him a Causa prima do thereby as much conclude God to be the first and principal predetermining efficient Cause of every wicked Habit as of Malignity or Hatred of God c. because a Habit hath as much Entity as an Act Therefore if it deifie Man to make him the first Cause e. g. of a Lye or Murder in specie then so it will do to make him the first Cause of the Habit. § 11. If it be as impossible for Man to do any thing but what he doth or not to do all that he doth without God's foresaid predetermining Premotion as it is to be Gods or to overcome God or make a World then if Men are counted Sinners and condemned it is for not doing such impossibilities for not doing what God alone can do or for not overcoming Almighty premoving Power § 12. â—t cannot rationally be expected that they that believe that God is the chief Cause and Willer of all Sin should think it very bad or themselves bad for it or that when God hath unresistibly made all men to sin he yet hateth it and sent his Son into the World to testifie his Hatred by dying for it and that he is serious in all that he saith against it in his word nor that such men should hate it and rather die than sin § 13. Therefore as the Church of God hath ever abhorred to make God the Cause of Sin and kept up the sence of the Evil of Sin for our hatred of it and departing from it and our Humiliation as a
Word of God And I think that I have elsewhere proved that Generative Traduction of Souls and yet God's present yea immediate Causation of their Essence which may be called Creation are here Consistent Which here I must not now repeat Vid. Meth. Theol. and Reasons of Christian Religion CHAP. XI Of our Redemption by Christ. § 1. SIN having made Man guilty and depraved unfit for duty and felicity odious to the most Holy Righteous God and lyable to his Justice the eternal Wisdom and Word of God did interpose and by Mercy did save Man from the deserved rigour of Justice promising Actual Redemption in the fulness of time and on that supposition giving fallen Man a pardoning and saving Law or Covenant of Grace with answerable help of his Spirit and Means and outward Mercies fitted to his Recovery and Salvation § 2. But God would not have this Recovery and Salvation to be perfect at the first but gave Man a certain proportion of Common Deliverance and Mercy binding him to a Course of Duty in the performance of which he should receive more by degrees till he were perfected As Phisicians cure their Patients § 3. Therefore God did enter into Judgment with fallen Man and did sentence him absolutely to some degree of Punishment even to Labour Pain the penalty of the Cursed Earth and finally to Death which Temporal Punishment God would not remit nor give him a Saviour to procure the pardon of it but only to the Faithful to turn all this unto their Benefit and to deliver them from the greater everlasting Sufferings § 4. And their own sinful pravity and privation of Holiness and communion with God which also was their greatest punishment by Consequence God would not at once nor in this Life perfectly save them from and therefore accordingly pardoned them their punishment but by the forementioned degrees For he is not perfectly pardoned or saved who is yet left under so much penalty § 5. Some thinking it hard that for 4000 Years the World should have no Existent Mediator and that an Existent Faith in the future Mediator should be more necessary than an Existent Mediator and his Work and thinking withal that it would solve many Textual Difficulties objected by the Arians and explain the Appearances of Christ to the Patriarchs have conceived that Christ hath a threefold Nature viz. The Divine Nature a created Super-Angelical Nature to which the Divine Nature was united before the Incarnation and the Humane Nature assumed at the Incarnation and that so we had an Existent Mediator from the time of the Fall But whatever conveniences this Opinion may seem to have I find no satisfactory proof of it in Scripture nor that the Christian Church did ever hold it And it is overmuch boldness to take up so great a Doctrine as a third Nature in Christ which the Church of Christ was never acquainted with And the Texts that seem to be for it are capable of the common Exposition § 6. If any think that this was the Judgment of abundance yea the most of the Antient Writers before the days of Arius because they have such unhappy expressions of Christ which the Reader may find truly Collected to his hand by Petavius de Trinitate and that it is fitter to Expound them as speaking only of Christ's second Nature than to account them all Arians or to honour the Arians by making them on their side I answer I leave every Man to his own judgment upon perusal of the Fathers words allowing all Charity that hath sufficient ground But I cannot perceive that these Writers talk of any more Natures in Christ than two and pious ends must be served by no Fictions and Untruths I think that we must rather gather with Petavius there that the Votes in the Nicene Council tell us that then the greater part of the Church were against Arius and therefore they were so before because they held in so great a point the Faith which they had received from their Fathers And that the greater part of Writers might differ from the greater part of the Church And withal these Writers having more than other men to do with the Heathen Philosophers and Orators who were prejudiced against the Doctrine of the Trinity did shun their Offence by too much stretching their speeches to that which they thought they could easilier digest which gave Arius his advantages The Conclusions either way are harsh and sad but I leave others better to avoid them § 7. The Deity it self may not unfitly be called our REDEEMER before the Incarnation though not so fitly a MEDIATOR and though Redemption by Christ's Death and Merits in the Flesh was not then wrought Because the word Redeeming is oft taken for a merciful Delivering though without a price and also because the Price was promised from the beginning But thus the word REDEEMER is equivocal signifying either the Deity as a promising undertaking Saviour or the Mediator who was promised and who performed the undertaken means § 8. The MEDIATOR himself being purely the Gift of the Divine Love and Mercy it was no inconvenience that God then had all the Glory and that Faith then acknowledged no other existent Saviour but God himself the infinite Good § 9. It troubleth men much to open how Christ was any true Cause of our Pardon and Salvation as a Mediator before his Incarnation And what his merits sacrifice and intercession could do before they did exist And the common Answer is That Moral though not Physical Causes may cause before they exist and so operate as foreseen foredecreed or willed But these Logical notions must not be used to put off the Question instead of satisfactorily answering it This tells us not whether by a Moral Cause they mean a True Cause of some moral Being or something morally called a Cause which indeed is not so but quasi causa Nor yet whether they mean a Cause efficient final or constitutive Nor yet whether they mean a Cause of any thing in God or only of some following effect § 10. It must be concluded that Christ's merits sacrifice and Intercession make no real Change in God his Understanding or Will and therefore have no such Causality § 11. But God's Promise first and Christ's Merits and Sacrifice next make a Change in the state of things laying that Ground-work or necessary Antecedent and Condition upon which it becometh meet right and just for God to give the rest of his mercy which this is the Condition of and the true meritorious Cause And so the Change was neither on GOD nor immediately on Man but for Man on the state of things which God and man were both concerned in It is a causa ordinis while that is done first which is prerequisite to what is to follow And it is a causa rei benefici◠while it not only removeth moral Impediments of our Pardon and Salvation but also setteth matters in such a state in which it becometh congruous
of his own proper Law or Covenant of Mediation which is materially 1. His habitual 2. and actual Perfection in Resignation Obedience and Love 3. and therein his Humiliation and offering himself a Sacrifice for sin 4. And all this exalted to acceptable Dignity by the Conjunction of the Divine Perfection § 23. The Donative Covenant of Grace to Man being but a meer Instrument of Donation and Condonation that which procured it is the procuring Cause of Pardon and Life that is Christ's meritorious Righteousness § 24. Though this Covenant pardon and justifie no man till he perform the Condition and be a capable Subject by that moral Disposition yet when that Condition is performed its performance maketh us but meet Recipients and it is still the meritorious Righteousness of Christ for which we have the free gift of Pardon and Life for the performance of the Condition doth but remove the receptive Incapacity of the Patient and the suspension of the Donation § 25. Iustification signifieth 1. making us righteous and judicially justifiable 2. Iudicial Justification 1. By Plea 2. By Evidence and Witness 3. By Sentence 3. Using us as Righteous by Execution Or 1. Constitutive 2. Iudicial and 3. Executive Iustification § 26. No man of common Understanding will deny the real difference of these three And if the Name only be questioned no man will reasonably deny That in humane use the name is accordingly applicable to each And that use of it is easily proved also in the Scripture 1 Cor. 6. 11. Tit. 3. 7. Rev. 22. 11. c. And the word Righteous and Righteousness is so frequently used in Scripture for that called Inherent or Self-performed Righteousness incomparably oster than in any other Sence as will help to inform us what Constitutive Iustification is And if any dislike the Name let them call it Making us righteous if that will please them better than the word justifying § 27. Constitutive Iustification is ever first God never judged a man righteous that was not righteous § 28. No man on earth is righteous by the Condition or by the rewarding Part of the Law of Innocency Not by the Condition as performed for that Condition is perfect perpetual personal Innocency which no man hath nor is any righteous in conformity to the Precept unless secundum quid as a damnable Sinner's less unrighteousness may be called Righteousness Nor is any one justified by the Retributive or Promissory part of that Law because perfect Innocency is its Condition § 29. Though that Law perfectly justifie Christ who perfectly fulfilled it we are not therefore righteous in the sence of that Law or justified by it because Christ fulfilled it of which more anon Because the sence of the Law was not Thou shalt obey or another for thâ—e It never mentioned a vicarious Obedience But thou thy self shalt perfectly obey § 30. We are justified from or against the curse of that first Law by deliverance or grace but it is by a Redeemer and not by that Law § 31. The Causes of our whole Iustification whose parts were before-mentioned are these 1. The constitutive Causes called Material and Formal are before opened being divers in their divers parts In brief our Righteousness now is our Interest in the meritorious Righteousness of Christ and our own performing of the Conditions of that Interest or of the New Covenant by his Grace and thereupon our Right to Impunity and Life or to Salvation from destructive Punishment and to Glory 2. The efficient Causes are 1. Principal God 2. Mediatory and meritorious Christ and his Righteousness 3. Instrumental as to our jus ad impunitatem gloriam the Condonative and Donative Covenant 4. The material Dispositio receptiva of this Right is our Faith and Repentance or performance of the Covenant's Condition hereof 5. The principal Cause of this Faith or Disposition is the Holy Ghost 6. The instrumental is the Word 7. The mediate Agent is Man § 32. That Justification which consisteth in our jus impunitatis quoad poenam damni sensus our right to impunity as to Loss and Sense is the same thing with Pardon of sin whether you take both actively or passively § 33. Obj. If the Law of Innocency as a Covenant ceased upon Adam's Fall no man but he and Eve was ever under it And if so they deserved not Damnation for any Sin but final Unbelief and Impenitency according to the Law of Grace And if so no such desert is forgiven them by Christ. § 34. Ans. The Law of Grace taketh in the Law of Nature naturae lapsae though not on the Terms of the first Covenant as it was naturae integrae for preservation of Innocency And still all that God commandeth is our Duty and all that he forbiddeth is Sin and every sin deserveth death in the nature of it for it cannot be Sin and not deserve Punishment but the difference is That under the Law of Innocency it was Desert unremedied but now it is Desert with present Remedy or an affixed Pardon to every penitent Believer So much of the Law of Nature remaineth as maketh Punishment due in primo instanti naturae conjunct with a Pardon which maketh Impunity due in secundo instanti As if the King should grant a future Pardon by a Law to every man that will list himself in his Wars under his Son lest in primo instanti their faults deserve punishment while they are daily pardoned § 35. II. Publick judicial Iustification for private I pass by is virtually in the Law or constitutive Justification before described For when a man is righteous the Law justifieth him virtually And this is the sence that we are said to be justified by Faith in primarily in Scripture A Believer is made just indeed and so is justifiable in Iudgment that is justified virtually by the Law As we use to say The Law doth justifie such a man § 36. 2. But actual judicial Iustification is principally by our Iudge and subordinately by Christ as our Advocate by Plea and by Evidence and Witness which is chiefly by the Righteousness of the Cause laid open to all the World § 37. It is by the Law of Grace the edition which men lived under that Christ will judge the World Therefore we must accordingly judge of his Justification § 38. Seeing the thing to be judged of is the meritum causae the Merits of a man's Cause therefore the same may be the meritorious Cause and the material of this judicial Justification and they err that take this for an Absurdity § 39. Though the great end of God's Judgment of Man will be to glorifie his own Iustice Mercy and Wisdom and to glorifie Christ's Righteousness yet the Cause of the day which is to be decided is not whether Christ be righteous but We Nor whether he fulfilled his mediatorial Law which is presupposed § 40. Iustification being related to real or possible Accusation so many things as the Accusation may
Whether it be a glorious igneous Substance endowed with the Power of Motion Light and Heats And yet what is less comprehended And no man hath an adequate knowledge of it or of the least part of it § 2. There are three things that must concurr to our Conceivings of God 1. Our General Conceptions 2. Our Metaphorical Conceptions by way of Similitude 3. Our Negative Conceptions what God is not § 3. I have opened this as distinctly as I am able in my Methodus Theologiae Cap. 4. in the Table called Ontologia the beginning to which I must referr the Reader that would be accurate and clear I. We must conceive of God as a Substance lest we think him to be nothing And as a spiritual transcendent Substance not univocally the same with created Substance nor such as Man can reach to any sensible or immediate or formal Conception of But by the Similitude of created Substance our Conceptions may get some help This we call the Fundamental Conception but it is but a Conception partial and inadequate yet necessary fetcht from the Similitude of the Creature whose Matter or Substance is the first constitutive Conception § 4. II. We must conceive of God as the prime Essential LIFE And though God be not compounded of Substance and Form yet from Similitude of Creatures we must as inadequate Conceptions think of his being LIFE as the form of his Substance not divisible or compounding but as a distinguishing Conception And formadat esse noment § 5. III. Though in God's Essence there be no Parts Degrees or Accidents yet to answer the Similitude of Parts Degrees or Accidents in Man we must put in general Transcendent Perfection And this includeth abundance of his Perfective Attributes as that He is One infinite eternal necessary independent uncompounded unchangeable and all the rest that are contained in Absolute Perfection § 6. IV. When we say That God is the prime essential LIFE we mean a Life of Eminency above all that is created But yet such as must be known by Creature-similitude And therefore from the Similitude of Man we must think of the Formal Divine LIFE by a threefold Conception 1. As Vital Power in Act 2. As Eminent Intellect and Will called Omnipotency in Act Wisdom and Goodness or Love Whether these be the FATHER SON and HOLY GHOST is after to be opened But as FATHER SON and HOLY GHOST the Scripture teacheth us to conceive of God As Three in One God and One God and Substance in these Three § 7. V. God is to be conceived of in relation to the Creation in general as OF HIM and THROUGH HIM and TO HIM are all things As He is the Divine Efficient the more than Constitutive and the final Cause of all § 8. VI. He is especially to be conceived of in his Relations to the Reasonable Creatures as their absolute Owner supreme Ruler and chief Benefactor and amiable attractive Good and End § 9. VII He is especially to be conceived of â—s related to Man As our Creator and Conserver as the God of Nature 2. As our Redeemer by Christ and the God of Grace 3. And as our Perfecter by his Spirit and the God of Glory And as related to his Kingdom of Nature Grace and Glory § 10. VIII He being without Passivity a pure Act must be conceived of as 1. In virtute seu potentia Activa 2. In his Acts objectively immanent 1. Self-living 2. Self-knowing 3. Self-loving 3. In his transient Acts or Works considered both ex parte agentis and as the Effects § 11. IX He is negatively to be known by the dâ—nial of all that noteth Imperfection § 12. X. When I say that God is to be known by Similitudes I mean that though nothing be fully like to God yet somewhat in which he may be partly known appeareth on the whole frame of Nature but especially on the Soul of Man which is his Image Therefore he that would know how to conceive of God must first know himself and what his own Soul is The true Conceptions of your Souls must be the prime Helps to conceive of God by similitude And here you first find Intellective Volitive and Executive Acts. 2. And by these you know that you have the Power so to act for no one doth that which he cannot do 3. And hereby you know that your Souls are Substance For all Power is the Power of some Substance Nothing can do nothing 4. And by this you know that an intellectual Spirit is a Substance so impowered And that others are such as well as you And knowing what a Spirit is you know what God the Father is transcendently and eminently And though all God's Works notifie him you have thus the most intelligible Similitude within you § 13. Therefore I know not how you can better conceive of God than as MORE THAN A SOUL TO ALL THE WORLD but especially to Saints I say More than a Soul For a Soul is but a Part and Câ—â—â—â—iâ—utive but God can be no Part and is more than Constitutive The World is finite but God is infinite therefore he is more than a Soul of the World â—assâ—ndus calleth the World Indefinite but seemeth to mean Infinite and so to make God but the Soul of the World But that cannot be proved Not but that there be created Souls under God But while God is more than a Soul to all those Souls he is more than a Soul to all the World § 14. It is lawful and useful to think of God by such similitudes as he hath used of himself in his Word how low soever Even by his particular Works Three Names he assumeth Life Light and Love He is the Living God He is Light and with Him is no Darkness God is Love saith the beloved Apostle GOD is said to cloath himself with LIGHT as with a Garment And a man will say I have seen the KING to day who saw him but in his Garments And if he saw the Skin of his Face how little of the King did he see In Scripture they that have seen Angels are said to have seen God and heard his Voice by them When we see the Glory of the Sun that diffuseth its Beams to all the surface of the Earth and uniteth it self with every Eye even of the smallest Worms and quickeneth every thing that liveth this giveth us by similitude some low resemblance of the Divine Life and Light and Glory When he is called Our FATHER and he is said to love us as a FATHER his Children this is some help to our Conceptions of him When we read of all those Visions which Iohn had in the Revelations of Christ's glorious Appearance as before on the Mount and of God on the Throne with the four Beasts and seven Spirits and the thousand thousands of glorious Attendants and of the metaphorical Description of the Heavenly Ierusalem It is not unlawful nor unuseful to us to make use of such Spectacles of
know that their extraordinary production hath an answerable extraordinary use and signification of God's Will § 9. And no doubt but Nature and all its parts are absolutely in the Power and Government of God's Will And He can and doth turn things up and down as He pleaseth without making any breach in his established Order If the Husbandman can turn the course of Rivers to water his Grounds by meer Impediments and Receptivities without any alteration of the natural motion of the Water how much more must we ascribe to God in using Nature without overthrowing it § 10. It is Atheistical or absurd to set God and Nature in opposition competition or separation and to say as some Philosophers This or That natural Causes can do without calling in God as the Determiner Whereas natural Causes are nothing and do nothing but by God And there is no less of God in the effects of Nature than if He did the same himself alone In Him we Live and Move and Are. § 11. And it is no better in them that say that God doth not operate proximately and immediately where Nature or second Causes work but only remotely As immediately signifieth without any medium or second Cause so God doth not then work immediately But as it signifieth proximately He doth For an infinite being cannot be essentially distant from any Creature or Effect Nor is it possible that the second Cause can be nearer to the Effect than God who is as near as if he used no such Cause § 12. And the Dispute Whether God do proximately effect immediatione suppositi or only virtutis seemeth to have a false supposition viâ— That God's Virtue is not his suppositum and that the virtus divina may be where the suppositum is noâ— If by suppositum they mean God's Essence as Essence existing and by virtus they mean his Essence under the formal notion of Power Wisdom and Love then they are but two inadequate Conceptions of the same simple Being and therefore God thus ever operateth immediatione essentiae virtutis essentialis But if they mean that God hath â— virtus which is neither his Essence nor a Creature we believe them not § 13. The Controversie between Durandus and his Followers and the Jesuites and Dominicans about the necessity of a moving Concourse besides the support of Nature seemeth to me thus reconcileable 1. God as he is fons naturae is the Living God the prime Active Principle who by constant vital Activity is the Spring of all the Action in the World and is not to be dreamt of as one that had made the World and then left it to it self and withdrew his hand and is fallen asleep 2. But the Living God moveth not all things alike but every thing according to its nature and place for his Influx is received ad modum racipientium 3. The Nature of some Creatures is essentially Active and so inclined to act that they will act if their Nature be not by others or want of concurrent Necessaries hindered Such is every Soul or living Principle and Fire And other Creatures are naturally Passive only ex se or at least principally So that for God to continue Fire or Souls or any naturally-active Principle is to continue a nature essentially inclined to move or act 4. It is supposed that these Natures are not solitary but parts of the universe and are continued with all necessary circumstant Beings and Objects and that the whole frame of Nature and cooperating Causes are continued e. g. That the Sun doth not stand still while the Life of a Plant or Brute is continued 5. All this being supposed by Durandus Aureolus a Dola and all sober men the Question debated is Whether there be further necessary another immediate Divine Motion or Concourse to every motion of a Creature natural or free besides all this aforesaid And 1. Let it be consider'd that God's Essence being but one his Act which ex parte agentis is his Essence is not distinguishable saving ex connotatione effectus And if this be all that is meant That as ipse motus distinguitur a causis so God's Will Power and Agency may be distinctly denominated 1. As from the second Causes and 2. also from the Motion it self as more than the Causes this none can deny nor is it a Controversie But if the question be of the necessity of another distinct way of Divine Causation of the motus besides that by second Causes before mentioned they can prove no such necessity For is it mediate or immediate Causation or Efficiency which they mean we speak not of immediate as it signifieth proximate which is granted but as signifying sine causis secundis If it be mediate by second Causes that God must further concurr those are natural Causes or some other if natural it 's a contradiction to say that Besides God's moving by natural Causes which is granted he must also move by natural Causes as if Ideâ— were not Idem Unless they will say it must be by some other natural Causes which they do not nor can assign nor yet any other that are not natural But if they mean that to every motion there must be an immediate operation of God to it withoâ—â— that which he doth by second Causes even by God alone without any second Cause I then ask Doth God move any thing in the World by any second Cause or not If not then not by the Sun not the Coach by the Horses the Arrow by the Bow the Stone by the Hand the Pen by the Writer c. If yea then is it the whole or part only of that motion which is made by second Causes and God by them If the whole habetur quaesitum If part how prove you that God cannot make the whole motion himself by second Causes as well as part but must needs leave the other part of the same motion to be done without second Causes And it would follow that no second Cause no not the noblest in the World as the Sun and God as acting by it hath and exerciseth à vis adequata to the smallest motion even of a Leaf Whereas God in Nature maketh natural Power with his own as he is fons naturae adequate to its Actions And let unbyassed Reason judge Whether if a Rock should be held up in the Air if God conâ—inue the natural Gravity of it with all the rest of the frame of Nature could not that Rock fall without another motion of God which is without any second Cause to thrust it down If He continue the nature of Fire was it not a greater Miracle that it burnt not the three Witnesses Dan. 3. than to have burnt them or than its ordinary Action Why else should there need ten thousand fold more natural Power to hold up the said Rock or to quench a City on fire or to stop a River or the Winds than to move them supposing natural Causes if there need an
meet right and just for God to pardon and save us which is a remote disposing the fall'n sinner to be a due Recipient of God's following promised Grace And thus it is in both senses a moral Cause as it is a Cause of our Right and of Congruity and as it is though not indeed yet morally reputatively or Quasi causa physica realis of our Pardon Grace and Salvation by making them become just right and due And being thus far a Cause of the effects ad extra per extrinsecam denominationem ex connotatione relatione ad objectum it may be called with cautelous sobriety a Cause of God's own Intellections and Volitions For though in themselves they are God's Essence yet for God to know us to be redeemed and to will our present Pardon and Salvation as Redeemed ones are words that speak more than God's Essence as in it self and include the termination of his Acts on these Objects as such and so denominate God's Essence distinctly from the Objects which else would never be distinguished nor have but one name being really but one § 12. Yet all these diversifying distinguishing denominating Causes of God's Intellections Volitions and Operations must not even denominatively or relatively be counted or called Efficient Causes of God's Acts nor strictly final but objective And therefore here it must be considered what Cause an Object is which Philosophers are not well agreed in But I think I may safely say That as to moral acts the Object is to be reduced to such a cause materialis or constitutiva as they are capable of not of the Act as an Act but as this act in specie denominated from the receptive terminating matter or object And though to Man to know this or that and to will this or that ad extra seem somewhat really different or modally at least from knowing and willing our selves or some other Object yet in God it is not to be called ex parte sui a real or modal difference at all § 13. Yet I assert not that the Ratio prima of all these Diversities of the Divine Acts is ex terminis seu recipientibus For the first Reason is in and of God himself For it is God that maketh all diversities of Effects and Changes and so it is from those divers Effects of his own Will that his Will is relatively ex connotatione termini diversly denominated But that in God which is the Ratio prima diversitatis is not divers but his one simple essential Will so that it is the diversity of Objects which is the immediate Reason of distinguishing God's acts of which before § 14. These things premised I come nearer to the Question if that which existeth not do truly cause it must be either efficiently constitutively or finally The two first are denied by the common Reason of Mankind That which is not cannot effect Nothing can do nothing And to say it is not is to say it constituteth not And as it is certain that causa finalis non efficit yea is but causa metaphorice operans so it is certain that no Creature causeth any thing in God no not finally § 15. Those that say That Christ and his death and merits did not cause before Existence in esse existenti but in esse cognito as constituting the Divine Idea's 1. Must remember that the esse cognitum as they call it is no esse rei cognita at all Therefore if only the esse cognitum do cause then it was not Christ and his Merits that caused 2. In Man for an esse cognitum to cause his further acts is but for one Thought to cause another Thought or a Volition or Nolition And these Thoughts and Volitions are really divers and constituted by reception of intromitted Objects But God is no Recipient nor knoweth any Object as we do by intromission Nor hath he any such Thoughts or Idea's of Creatures as are really divers ex parte Dei but only by extrinsick denomination § 16. If it be said That then God should know nothing till it is because a denomination must be from something and nothing can be no Object or terminus and so of his Will I Ans. 1. God doth not know any thing as existent now which doth not exist now But our Now is in his Eternity and his Eternity without partition comprehendeth all our Times prae and post ab and ad are Prepositions of no signification in and of Eternity but only In And therefore as Augustine saith his Prescience is but his Science so denominated from the Order of Objects but noteth not any difference in him who hath neither prae nor post How this is to be understood without making the Creature eternally exist I have elsewhere fully opened § 17. That plain truth therefore which must here satisfie us is That God who is the first efficient and ultimate final Cause of all things and caused by none did of his free abundant Mercy undertake the saving of sinful Man and notwithstanding his Threatning and Man's Defect resolving to make advantage of our Sin and Misery for the Glory of his Wisdom Love Mercy and Justice he promised that the Eternal Word should in due time assume Man's nature and therein do and suffer that which should glorifie him more than Man's Perdition would have done and which should make it just and meet for him to save the Guilty both inceptively at the present under the Promise for 4000 years and afterward more fully at Christ's Incarnation and finally to perfect all in Glory So that the Work of our Salvation is one entire frame composed by Divine Wisdom and Love where one part is the Reason of another though none be the Cause of any thing in God And Christ's Mediation though coming after 4000 years yet was then to do that which should make it meet and right and just for God to pardon Sin before Even as in a Building the several parts may be the reason of each other because they must be all compaginated and fitted to their relative places and uses And though the Foundation make not the Superstructure it upholdeth â—itâ— And as Aquinas briefly faith Deus non propter hoc vult hoc sed vult hoc esse propter hoc nothing is the Cause of God's Will but it is God's Will that one thing shall be for another And when all his Work must be one Frame the part last made may be a reason of the former And so Christ's merits and sacrifice though after 4000 years perform that for which it became just and meet before for God to pardon Sinners For though it was not then existent yet besides the Decree the Promise Prediction and Publication made it useful to its ends in respect to GOD and Man § 18. So then though the Cause be not truly a Cause till it exist and though all the Pardon and Salvation given for 4000 years was before the existence of the merits and sacrifice of