Catholic Theology Plain Pure Peaceable
§. 7. Vainly therefore do the Dominicans pretend that it is a Deifying of the Will of man to say that God can enable it to Cause the various ORDER of man's Actions, by mere moral helps, without God's predetermining premotion to that order. For this is to cause no Real being. And he that is moved to the Act in genere needeth no more premotion from God, to the disorder and sinfulness of the Act.
§. 8. And they that will call the production of faith, a Creation in the strict and proper sense, do not understand, that Creatio est Rerum, non ORDINIS rerum jam creatarum, vel existentium. An Act is of itself improperly said to be created, in a pre-existent Agent: That is not called created which is educed e▪ potentia materiae; nor that which is produced by the Potentia Activa prae-existentis forma: Faith is an Act of the same Natural Power or faculty which we had before: And Grace (or rather Nature usually) suscitateth that faculty to the Act as an Act in genere: And Grace doth cause us to ORDER that act aright, as to the due object, and other circumstances. But if any will call it a Creation, I contend not about the name.
§. 9. But the whole state of the Man, Habitual, Relative and Practical set together, is called in Scripture, a New Creature, and the New Man, tropically, but not unfitly: Partly because we are really new, though not by another Humanity or Species of Natural Essence, yet by many Accidents: And partly, because those Accidents are so great and make so great a change of our state, as that they emulate a natural Essence; and we use to say in common things, that when an unlearned man is made learned, and a poor man a Prince, and a dying man healthful, he is another man.
§. 10. Though God be one and the same, and Christ the same, and the Law and Word and many Antecedent means the same to many on whom they have different effects, This difference may be caused many ways. As 1. By the diversity of other inferior or concomitant second causes: 2. By the diverse Disposition of the Receivers (a common cause of varieties in the World:) 3. By the diversity of Impediments and temptations: And many other ways.
§. 11. The great question is, How far the diversity of Receptive Dispositions is from God? Answ. 1. God made all equal at first in Adam. 2. All were equal in sin by his fall. 3. Cain and Abel differed from several causes, and not one alone. Abel differed from Cain in faith and obedience, by God's grace as the chief cause, and his own will and agency as the second cause. Cain differed from Abel by unbelief and sin, by his own will and Satan's temptations. 4. The sins of later parents (as of Cain, Cham, Esau, Achan, Gehazi, &c.) make a further difference, by depriving their posterity of some means, helps or grace, which else they had been equally capable of with others. 5. It is certain that man hath much to do about his own heart, by which he is to be the second cause of his own Receptive disposition; and if he fail, is the only cause of his indisposition.
§. 12. Difference is but Dissimilitude: And an alteration of one of the subjects which soever, will make it dissimile or to differ from the other. When the good Angels stood and the evil fell, if you ask, Who made the difference, It was the Devils by forsaking their first estate: Though Constitutively, both their sin, and the Angels obedience made the dissimilitude. If you suppose Cain and Abel equally under grace at first, and ask, Who made the difference, I answer, Constitutively Cain's sin and Abel's righteousness maketh, or is, the difference: But as to Reputative efficiency, Cain made the difference by rejecting grace. So if you should suppose two equally qualified with common grace, and one of them to lose it, the efficience of the difference is Imputable to him. But if you suppose two equally lost in sin, and one converted and not the other, the Constitutive Causes of the difference are ones sin and the others repentance. But the Imputable efficiency is God's grace and man's repentance or will, that is recovered.
§. 13. But when Paul doth ask, [Who made thee to differ?] he meaneth [Who gave thee that good by which thou differest?] and expoundeth it by [What hast thou which thou hast not received?] And no doubt but all good is received from God: And this would have held true, if God had by equal operation done as much on the other which had been ineffectual by his indisposition or rejection.
§. 14. Nature and Scripture persuade us, that the same measure of help or influx is not enough to make one repent or believe, which is enough to make another. For the difference of souls, and temptations, and impediments plainly prove it. The same strength will not move a Mountain, which will move a Feather: nor the same Teaching make an ignorant Sot to understand which serveth a prepared person.
§. 15. Bodily aptitude, or ineptitude do much to vary receptivities; which are usually God's punishments or rewards for Parents actions: And ofttimes for men's own. Some by fornication, gluttony, drunkenness, sports and idleness, make themselves even next to Brutes.
§. 16. But we have great Reason from Scripture to believe that though God's Laws be equal, and his Judgments where men do not make an inequality; yet as a free Lord and Benefactor, he dealeth not equally with all that are of equal merit: Though he do no man wrong, nor deny any what he promised in his Word, but keep perfect Justice as a Governor; yet he may do with his own as he list, and he will be specially good to some, though others see it with an evil eye.
§. 17. Whether all that are elect have at first a greater measure of the Divine help and impress than any that are not converted, no man can say (of which more anon.) But certainly all the elect were fore-decreed by God's will to that certain conversion, which others were not so decreed to.
SECT. VI. Of the Limitations of God's Operations on the Soul.
§. 1. THat which sticks in the minds of many is, that God being Omnipotent, all his operations must be equally unresistible and efficacious; because none can conquer God: But they must consider, that though he be Almighty, yet he doth not all that he can do: nor do his works equally manifest his Omnipotency. And there are these causes, for Limiting his operations in the effects.
§. 2. 1. The chief cause is his Wisdom and Free-will. It is his Will to do what he doth, and to do no more: which hath no cause.
§. 3. 2. Another cause is, that God operateth by Jesus Christ, whose Humanity is finite, being a Creature; and God worketh according to the Instrument or medium: As he shineth by the Sun, Moon or Stars, according to their several natures, and not according to his mere omnipotency, so doth he communicate Grace by Jesus Christ.
§. 4. And Christ by Office being King and Prophet, will operate upon certain terms which in his Sapiential Government he sets down. And God will not violate those terms.
§. 5. 3. Also under Christ there are many subordinate Causes; There are his Word, Preachers, and all the forementioned means and helps: and Christ will work according to these means. Though he tie not himself from doing more or otherwise. I have proved that this is his usual way. And the effect will be limited according to these second causes.
§. 6. As the Sun shineth on us first in and through the air, which abateth somewhat of its force; and then through the exhalations, and then through the glass window, and each maketh some alteration as to the effect on us; so is it in this case.
§. 7. 4. But the notable limitation is the foresaid Indisposition of the Receiver. Every eye hath a tunicle which the Suns light must penetrate: But he that hath a suffusion, or he that winketh, hath a greater impediment to limit the effect: so is it with the various degrees of Indisposition, or moral incapacity, which yet be nothing if God did work ad ultimum posse, and did not as aforesaid; work according to his free will and second causes.
SECT. VII. Of the Resistibility of Grace.
§. 1. TO Resist Grace signifieth, 1. Either Not-to Receive it Passively ; as a stone receiveth not the rain ad intus; or as oil resisteth water; or hard things receive not impressions as the soft. 2. Or Not-to-Receive-Actually; which is Receptio Moralis; as a man receiveth not a gift who consenteth not; or as he resisteth the light who will not open his eyes: The bare Not-Consenting with the Will, or not using the senses or organs, not opening the hand, &c. is such a Resisting. 3. Or an Active opposition, which is more. As a man resisteth an Enemy, (with heart or hand); or a man by Nolition, and not only Non-volition resisteth a suitor.
§. 2. Mans sinful soul resisteth God's gracious operations, all these ways. 1. It is Passively become undisposed to Reception: And thus he is said to have a hard heart of stone, and a seared conscience, and to be dead and past feeling, Eph. 4. 18, 19. & 2. 1, 2. 2. It doth not do what it can do morally to receive grace, that is, it doth not Conari or suscitate it self to be willing of it. 3. Yea, it doth Positively resist by Action, and is unwilling of God's gracious operations: And this is twofold, 1. By willing the contrary, and prosecuting carnal interest, over-loving the pleasures of the flesh, and so turning away from the motions of grace, 2. And therefore by an enmity to that grace and work, which would convert him, and take him off his chosen Idols.
§. 3. No creature by resisting God, doth abate or retund his essential Power or Activity, nor make anything properly difficult to him.
§. 4. All the Elect resist Grace before it overcome and convert them: And all our lives after we resist it too commonly when it exciteth us to duty, and draweth us from sin.
§. 5. He that repenteth not of his Resisting of God's Spirit and Grace, doth not understand and well repent of his sin.
§. 6. All Resisting is not Overcoming: All Resist grace, but all overcome it not, that is, do not frustrate it as to the due effect.
§. 7. There are several Degrees of yielding to God's motions and operations, and so several degrees of overcoming. He is fully overcome by it, who yieldeth to it wholly; He overcometh it in some part, who yieldeth to it but in part. And because God's grace moveth us to more than we ordinarily yield to, therefore we do ordinarily overcome it in too great measure, even when we are happily overcome by it.
§. 8. God worketh not alike on all: sometime (as on Paul) he so suddenly changeth the mind and will, as that at once he both produceth the Act of man's consent, and also taketh away even the moral (though not the natural) power to the contrary in the antecedent instant. So that no man ever denieth consent who is so moved. And sometimes he procureth Actual Consent by such an operation, as in the antecedent instant might have been resisted and overcome, there being a Moral Power to the contrary. So that there is Actually-Converting Grace which was superable in the antecedent instant, as to Moral power; and there is such a converting Grace as no man ever doth overcome.
§. 9. God's grace when it prevaileth, doth not take away, but determine the Natural power in itself, but by so doing formaliter & relative it maketh it no power ad hoc to the contrary, in that instant. Of which more anon.
§. 10. Such grace of God as cometh from his Absolute Will or Decree of the due Event, is never overcome. For God's decree is not frustrate.
§. 11. God's gracious operations are never overcome by any contrary Act but what he himself is the Agent Cause of, as an Act: For in Him we Live and Move and Be. Yet man is the only Cause of the Inordination of that act, by which it is set in opposition to God's other acts: For God doth not militate against himself.
§. 12. The case lieth thus: God antecedently to his Laws, framed Nature, that is, the Being and Natural Order of all the World; and so he became the Head or Root of Nature; the first Cause, who by his wise decree, was to concur to the end with that Natural frame, and to continue to things their proper forms and motions: And man is one of his creatures, having a Nature of his own, to which God as the God of Name doth Antecedently concur. By this natural concourse of God, the fomi • cator, the murderer, the thief, &c. are naturally able to do those acts: But being free agents that can do otherwise, God maketh them a Law to restrain and regulate them. And when they break this Law, they resist that gracious concourse, which suitable to the organical cause, God conjoineth with the means: But they do this by their Natural power and activity; not used as God requireth them, but turned against his own Law. So that if God would withdraw his sustentation, and destroy m • ns Nature, they could not resist his grace. But that he will not do, being his antecedent work: and so God is resisted by his own-given-power and act, disordered and turned against his grace.
§. 13. The Will of God which is thus resisted, is only 1. His Preceptive or Legal will, de debito. 2. And his will of purpose, to give man so much help and no more by which he can and ought to believe and Repent, is said to be resisted or frustrate so far, when by man's fault it doth him not that good which it might have done.
§. 14. God's Grace and Spirit are said to be resisted when the Word and other Means are resisted which call him to his duty. For these themselves are gifts and acts of grace.
§. 15. But it is not the bar • Word or Means alone, but the Spirit working in and by those means which is so resisted: For though no mo • tal man can clearly know just how the Spirit concurreth and operateth by the Word and Means; yet we may know, that God doth limit his own operation to the aptitude of the means ordinarily; and that he worketh with and by them, not according to his Omnipotency in itself considered, but according to the means or organs. And as in Nature he operateth, nor quantum potest but agreeably to the order and aptitude of Natural Causes; so in Grace he operateth, non quantum potest, but according to the aptitude and order of the sapiential frame of Governing-means of grace.
§. 16. When the preaching of the Word, Education, Company and other visible Means seem equal, God hath innumerable means, supernal, internal, external, invisible and unknown to us, by which he can make all the difference that he maketh in men: So that we cannot prove that ever he worketh on souls, without any second cause or means at all: (though we cannot prove the contrary neither.) And therefore he that resisteth all means, for ought we know in so doing resisteth all God's gracious operations on his soul.
§. 17. Whereas Dr. Twisse so frequently asketh, Whether God's condional will (and so his operation) be [Volo te velle, modo velis, or credere modo credas,] to give us faith if we believe, and so maketh non credere or non velle to be the only resistance; and the Arminians to be ridiculous in making the effect antecedent to the cause as a condition of the causation and itself: This semi-subtlety, though it beget voluminous confidence, must cry peccavi, if a little more subtlety do but detect the defectiveness of it. We are not now enquiring of the Rationes fidem habendi, but of the Rationes non habendi; nor are we enquiring Whether God have made a Covenant or formal Promise of giving faeith upon antecedent conditions; But whether he deny (or give-not) grace for actual faith (effectual or sufficient) to any but those that resist and willfully omit the preparatory acts which they were able to perform? even preparatory Volitons? Or if you will make the question to be de ratisnibus fidem habendi (not de causis Actus donandi) Whether God do not ordinarily give or produce the act of faith, in that soul, which doth not willfully resist, and omit such preparatory acts as it could do? even Volitions? And so I answer,
1. It is not [I will give thee faith if thou wilt believe, or I will make thee willing if thou be willing of the same thing.] But it is, [1. If by resisting common preparing grace, thou so harden • hy heart, or increase the privation of receptive aptitude in thyself, as that the same degree of grace, means, help, impress, will not change thee, which otherwise would 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 thyself.
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 concur to receive my gracious motions and influx; thy gracelesness (absolutely and comparatively) is imputable, not to me, but to thyself.
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 willful progress in sin, and custom, so increse thy Privation, and obdurateness, as that the same measure of Gracie • 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 concur, 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 willfully 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 fr • 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 dishonor to God's Omnipotency to work thus limitedly and resistibly: For,
1. Else he should be the Author of his own dishonor; 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 dishonor to him; then to will only in tantum, and to operate hoc & hactenus, limitedly and resistibly, is no dishonor: 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 men's 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 judgment 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 God's 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 signify; 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 God's. And if so, how unfit are we unnecessarily to dispute of these acts of God with curiosity? or at all so as implieth 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. 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 God's Essential Knowledge, Will and Activity, be equal or unequal, physical or moral, &c. is to dote.
§. 5. But yet this Knowledge and Will of God is transient or terminated Objectively, when it is not so Effectively. And so God is said to know things differently, as they differ; and to will things differently, as they are different objects: But this speaketh truly nothing New or various in God, but only a Relative and so denominative connotation of his simple essence, from these objects, whose diversity giveth divers names to Immutable, most simple Unity. Of this all Schoolmen (for substance) are agreed, however the Thomists, Scotists and Occamists differ about the notions of Ratio ratiocinata, formalitas, & denominatio extrinseca.
§. 6. II. If it be the operation of the second Causes, ex parte operanti ••• n, and so of God by them, that we dispute of, the disputes would have the easier decision. But this is denied by the Dominicans, and another Infusing Immediate operation is made the subject of these Controversies.
§. 7. III. It remaineth therefore that it is only the effect as in the soul-receiving, which we dispute of. And if so, this must be remembered, that we dream not of any Controversy about God's Action, as ex parte agen • is, in Him, or between him and the soul.
§. 8. In man's soul, we know of nothing, but 1. The substance in the first notion as answerable to Matter in bodies. 2. The form, which is a Threefold Virtue or faculty in One; viz. The vital Power, Intellect and Will: which is at once Virtus, Vis & Inclinatio naturalis ad proprias actiones. All these are but Inadequate conceptions of the same simple essence, and not compounding parts. None of this is the thing in question, for the soul is presupposed to be a soul. 3. The Accidental and mutable Disposition of the faculties to the Acts. 4. The Impressions of s • periour Causes (God and means) in moving to the Acts. 5. The Acts of the soul themselves. 6. The Habits. I know of no more.
§. 9. I. Though All Habits are dispositions, yet all Dispositions are not Habits: And before Habits, the soul may be many ways predisposed to the Act: As 1. By former acts of another sort, which yet conduce to this. 2. By other habits that are preparatory. 3. By deliverance from many Internal and External Impediments. 4. And lastly, By the Divine Impress itself in the instant of Nature, though not of time, before the Act. For God so disposeth the soul to act.
§. 10. This predisposition, is sometime but a Moral Power, that is, in so low a degree, as containeth only the Necessary power to the act, with which alone it is sometime done. And sometime besides this Moral Power, it containeth some further degree of accidental Inclination, or propensity to the Act. And these degrees are various, in various instances and s • bjects.
§. 11. II. When God moveth the soul to believe or repent, we must conceive that in the instant antecedent to the Act, the soul receiveth some Impress or Impulse from the divine essence by which it is disposed or moved to act . And though spirits (especially God) move not by such contact and impress as things corporeal, yet in an inconceivable manner, some spirit, some spiritual Impress, Influx, or motion must be Received, by which faith is caused. And this Impress and the Disposition to the Act, caused by it, perhaps are really the same.
§. 12. III. The Act itself by this, and by the soul disposed and excited, is next caused: not given as pre-existent, but given by causal efficacious suscitation of the pre-existent faculty or power.
§. 13. IV. The Habit, which is a Promptitude to facile acting, is caused by all the forementioned causes conjunct, and not by any one alone, viz. by God, and his Impress on a soul some way pre-disposed, and by the soul itself further disposed and excited by that Impress. But of Habits more anon.
And here because almost all our seeming difference dependeth on the question, What it is that is between God's essence and man's act, which is the cause of our Act, or may be called grace (sufficient or effectual, more or less, &c.) I shall tell you how Alvarez handleth the question, and thereby further show you, that it is a thing unsearchable, and past man's knowledge, and though I satisfy myself with calling it an Impulse or Impress, or a Received energy or force or Influx, yet these are but general notions, and tell us not as to a distinct formal conception, What it is; And you shall see that the boldest disputers know no more.
Alvarez de Aux. l. 3. disp. 19. p. 77. tells you that there are these several opinions of it,
I. Some Thomists hold that It is a Quality, not permanent, but by way of transient disposition with operation: Cabrera 3. p. q. 18. ar. 4. dub. 1. Conc. 4. n. 58. For it must be some Virtus, and that must be a Quality: Imperfect supernatural acts, as attrition, fear of hell, &c. are before habits, and have only such transient virtues or qualities, &c.
II. Others hold contrarily that God's motion is nothing besides his own will or essence and man's act, being simultaneous; Their reasons I omit.
I. That which God doth in second causes, by which these act, is, Aliquid habens esse quoddam incompletum, per modum quo 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 falsely 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 God's 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 itself; 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 denieth, and speaketh of somewhat between God and man's 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 man's 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 man's understanding can reach no further than to conceive, 1. That our souls are the termini of God's Volition and Active power. 2. That though God act not on us by corporeal contact, yet we must call ourselves Patients, and think of the Attingency of his Active essence with its effects, by some Analogy 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 God's essence and man's Act, we know not at all. And if Christ had never said, Joh. 3. [so is everyone 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 color 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 controversy beyond the ken of human understanding, and there will proceed to build great Fabrics upon unknown suppositions, and perversely contend for them against Love and peace, they do but serve Satan against God, under the color 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. 481.) An Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratia p • ssit demonstrari naturali ration (vel, cum Infallibilitate Praescientiae, Providentiae, & praedestinationis Divinae?) Where he tells you that one opinion of some Catholics is, that
But the third opinion which he defendeth is, that
Where note, 1. That though he say [perfect] he proveth that it cannot be known by that which is below a perfect knowledge. 2. And that he denieth not only a practical saving knowledge, but a proper theoretical or dogmatical knowledge.
For this he citeth those words of Cajetan at large (in 1. p. q. 22. art. 4.) which many others cite and commend, [In ignorantia sola quietem invenio, &c.]
And there is no man besides Alvarez higher for the Dominicans way of Absolute predetermination, than D. Banns who is of Cajetans opinion (in 1. p. q. 23. art. 5. & 2. 2. q. 10. art. 1.)
And Alvarez citeth Calvin (lib. de aetern. Dei praedest. cont. Pigh. p. 136.) saying
What Augustine confesseth you may see a little in Alvar. ib. p. 482, 483. but more in himself often.
What Suarez, Hurtado, Mendoz. and other the most subtle philosophical Divines confess commonly of the incomprehensibility of these things, and the darkness and uncertainty of our conceptions, I have elsewhere partly cited; and any that readeth them may find.
Now all this being so notorious, and their ignorance commonly confessed, may I not confidently infer, 1. That then (seeing all must be reconciled by Believing) we must have nothing obtruded on us herein, which is not to be proved by the Word of God. What the Word saith of Predetermination, of the manner of God's operation on second causes, and influx on souls, and of the nature of his first effect or Vis Impressa, &c. we will receive: But yet men must not snatch up a metaphorical expression in one or a few Texts, and urge that against the frequent and plain expressions of the Scripture; of the spirits. Operation on souls, Christ himself saith (which is more than all forecited) [The wind bloweth where it listeth, and ye hear the sound thereof, but ye know not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the spirit.] But as for the operations of God by the word preached and other means, and the Holy Ghosts operation by and with those means, and the Holy Ghosts indwel •• ng and operating after in Believers, these are frequently asserted in God's Word: And that all Christ's members have his Spirit, regenerating, illuminating, quickening, sanctifying them, both as he is in Covenant with them to be the sanctifier of their souls, and as the Love of God and all his Graces are by him caused in us: all this is sure.
But if men will go further with us, and give us as many distinctions of God's Grace as Alvarez doth, and tell us that besides God himself, one of them (simultaneous operation) is nothing but man's act; and another (previous motion) is somewhat else, but no man knoweth what, but may be named [motio Virtuosa] though it be neither God nor a quality nor a human act; And then will dispute how much of this [something] this motio virtuosa, will serve to such an effect, and how much to another, and how and by what reason it is efficacious; and will build on his assertions such a system of consequents, as shall make up the doctrines of a sect or party, which shall set up with this stock to militate against the Love and unity of Christians: this is the course that I oppugn.
Once more, Let the Reader note that the ways of reconciling Grace and Free-will, as Alvarez mentioneth them, are these four.
I. The Jesuits way by scientia media, which I need not recite to the Learned, but think it meet to recite Alvarez words of their description of Grace.
II. The second is Durand 's way
III. The third he saith, is attributed to Greg. Arim. Scotus and Gabriel, (great Wits, if any.)
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 God's holiness, and the Christian Religion, by resolving all sin and damnation into the mere Will and Love and Irresistible Omnipotent efficiency of God?
SECT. IX. Whether God's 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 works. And God's 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 God's 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 Judgment. 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 mere 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 man's 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 God's 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 God's 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 men's various Dispositions to receive it, and their various concourse: That may convert one, that doth not another. But yet God doth not make equal Impressions on men's souls: For, 1. His own free-will as a Liberal benefactor doth more for some (as Paul) than for others. 2. Men's 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 denieth.
§. 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 God's 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 God's 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 • 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 God's 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 agent • ▪ But the Acts of Laws and other objects merely 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 • difie itself. 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 natural and quid morale, formally differ; as Actus qua talis, and ordo qua ordo, do differ ab ordine se • 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 •• minalis. Objects are usually said to Cause morally: But if they be merely 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 anything by the object on the mind, as it is a mere 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 ways 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 itself. 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 God's 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 superior 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 God's 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 of the great alterations in the World, being admirably fetched from the various Passive or Receptive dispositions of matter, no wonder if it be so with man's soul also.
A spark of fire which long was unseen, if you put Straw, Gunpowder or other fuel to it, may burn a City or Kingdom, when yet the fuel is not an efficient cause (save the fire that is in it) but an objective Matter.
What work doth a Student find all his life among Books? What abundance of knowledge doth he learn by them, which he had none of in his Infancy? And so do Travelers by viewing the actions of the World. And all these are but fuel to the fire. The soul only is the Agent, and all these are signs and objects that do nothing really on the soul at all.
You may lead a Beast up and down, and govern them by objects; which yet act nothing on them.
So Satan doth by the Drunkard, Glutton, Fornicator, Gamester, Covetous, &c. What Reputed work do objects make on them by doing nothing?
Thus Ver • m & Bonum are said to work. And the case is this, The Active Spirit, is not only Naturally Active, but Essentially Inclined to some certain objects (Truth and Goodness): And this Inclination being their very Nature, when the object is duly presented to it, and itself delivered from all false objects, and erroneous Action on them, and ill habits thence contracted, it will Naturally work accordingly. And therefore duly (externally and internally) to bring God and Holy objects to the prospect of the soul, is the way of working them to God.
And sure the World would never make such a stir about Preaching, to get fit men, and to persuade them to diligence, and to keep sound doctrine, &c. if these objective causes, as fuel to the fire, did not do much, by occasioning the Active soul to do its proper work.
9. Yet still remember (again) that Jesus Christ is the Political Head of Influx (if not more;) who sendeth forth the Spirit, as he please, but ordinarily upon his settled Gospel terms, to work on souls, by his threefold fore-mentioned influx, with and by these means, according to them, but in an unsearchable manner; As God doth in Nature by the Sun and other Natural Causes.
SECT. XI. What Free-Will Man hath to Spiritual Good, &c.
§. 1. THe understanding of the Nature of the Power and Liberty of the Will, is the very key to open all the rest of the controverted difficulties in these matters: But having spoken of it so much before, in the former part of this Book, and more elsewhere, I shall no further weary the Reader with repetitions, than to note these few things following.
§. 2. If any like not the name of Free-will, Libera Voluntas, let them but agree about these two, the Power of the Will, and Free-choice, Liberum arbitrium, and they need not contend about Free-will.
§. 3. 1. As to the first, It is the very Essence of the Will to be a natural Power or faculty of Willing Good and Nilling evil apprehended by the Intellect; and commanding the inferior faculties, either politically or despotically, difficultly or easily, perfectly or imperfectly, according to its resolution and their Receptivity.
§. 4. 2. The Liberty of choice is not only Libertas Voluntatis, but Libertas Hominis, when a man may have what he chooseth or willeth: Here the Act of choosing is the Wills; but the object is somewhat else; either an Imperate act of some inferior faculty, or some extrinsic thing. So we say truly, that the unbeliever, or unconverted sinner, may believe, may repent, may have Christ and life, if he will (as Dr. Twisse frequently asserteth.)
§. 5. 3. But the Liberty of the Will itself, is but the mode of its self-determination, as without constraint it is a self-determining principle in its elicit Acts, considered comparatively.
§. 6. The Liberty of the Will is threefold, 1. Liberty of Contradiction, or exercitii; 2. Of Contrariety or specification in the Act: 3. Of objective specification, which is Liberty of Competition. 1. The first Liberty is to will or not will; to nill or not nill. 2. The second is Liberty to will or nill this. 3. The third is Liberty to will This object or That, or to nill This or That.
§. 7. The Will hath not all these sorts of Liberty about every object▪ For it cannot will known evil as such, &c. But it hath all these about several objects.
§. 8. By this power and Liberty, the Will is made of God, to be a kind of Causa prima secundum quid, of the Moral ORDER or specification of its own acts: Not simply or strictly a Causa prima; For 1. It was God the first Cause that gave man this self-determining Power. 2. It is God that upholdeth it: And so it still dependeth wholly on his supporting will. 3. God concurreth by his universal Influx, to its acts. 4. God is still the Lord of it, and can turn it as he please, and over-rule it to his Ends, and hath put no act of ours from under his power. But he willingly so forbeareth his own further operation, as that he hath made the Will able, on supposition of his foresaid support and universal influx, and rule, to Determine itself to the said ORDER of its Acts, without God's particular predetermining premotion.
§. 9. As in the Vital and Intellectual faculties, it is God's Image to be Able to Act Vitally, and to understand; so in the Will this self-determining Power and Liberty, and Imperium over other faculties, is part of the same Image. And it is God's wrong and dishonor • o have his Image denied and dishonored: And therefore to deny this Power of the Will is as much a disgracing of God's Image, as to deny man to be Rational.
§. 10. God made man such an Intellectual Free Agent, that he might be a fit subject for Sapiential Moral Government: and accordingly he settled a Kingdom in the World: And as he governeth mere Natural Agents, by Natural motion, so he governeth Man as a Moral agent, by Laws and Moral means and motion: For he ruleth all things according to their Natures.
§. 11. Yet as man, even his will, is quid Natural • as the subject of his morality, and as Aquinas oft saith, Ipsa Voluntas est quaedam natura; so God doth by Natural agency and Causation continue and actuate man as Natural, that so he may govern him morally in the rest, even in the moral ordering of his Acts.
§. 12. When men say that the will is free from co-action, they mean not all the same thing. By co-action some mean nothing, but that willing is not nilling; or that God doth not make it to be unwilling and willing of the same thing, in the same respect, at the same instant, that is, God causeth not contradictions, it being Impossible: And so with the Prede • erminants usually to will, and to will freely, signify the very same. And if this be all the Liberty of the Will, then to move it as Naturally as a Stone is moved, to hate God, to will all sin, and nill all duty, so as that it can no more do otherwise than make a World, were no abatement of its Liberty, because it is Volition and Nolition which are the acts that it is moved to, (whether by God or Satan.)
§. 13. But I yet see not why it may not as properly be called Coaction, to move the will by physical necessitation to will o • nill, as to move the Intellect to understand, or to move any natural agent.
§. 14. If you say, that the word [Coaction] importeth reluctancy, o • unwillingness, or opposition; I confess with Scotus, that Potentia pass • v • is well distinguished, into naturalem, neutram, violentam: and that the word Coaction may be so strictly taken, as to signify no motion but of a viola • ed Patient: and so it is but lis de nomine: But a Necessitating motion o • • natural, and neutral patient is the same thing, what name soever you call it by. And they that acknowledge the pravity of the will, and its corr • pt averseness to God and spiritual good, must needs, by this rule, make God's gracious change by predetermination to be a coaction, as being the motion of a contrarily disposed patient: contrarily, I say, i • instanti priore; for the motus is supposed to change its disposition and act at once: But if still they say, that it is not contrary in eodem instanti, and that's its liberty; I say, then if the Devil had power as easily to effect by physical premotion a hatred of God and will to sin, in all men, as I can move my pen, it were no loss of Natural Liberty. And so man's liberty differeth not from a beasts, or from a plants, indeed, but only in the Nature of the Act: one willeth, when the other doth but appe • er • , but all by the like physical unresistible efficiency from other cau • es. This is but to play with the name of Liberty.
§. 15. We take not this Liberty to be inconsistent with all kind of Necessity, as is opened before in the Table of Liberty.
§. 16. Nor do we confound the several sorts of Liberty, (as the said Table showeth) 1. A Political Liberty from Restraint of Laws is one thing (not questioned in these disputes;) 2. And a Moral or Holy Liberty from vice or sinful dispositions and acts is another. 3. But it is the Natural Liberty of man's will on earth, that we speak of.
§. 17. So far as any man is vicious, he wanteth the Moral Liberty of his will, and so far as he is virtuous and sanctified he hath it: that is, His will is so far freed from sin.
§. 18. We take not Liberty of Will to consist in Neutrality of disposition or mere Indifferency: For the will acteth freely when it acteth according to its Inclination and habits, with the greatest propensity, yea, constancy of self-determination.
§. 19. We take not the Indetermination of the will to be its perfection; but its Natural Imperfection: But such as God hath made it in, in this World, where all his creatures have not the same perfection.
§. 20. Therefore though God hath thought this Indeterminate, selfdetermining Will, to be fittest for a Viator in his trial and preparation for felicity, yet perfection consisteth in the most Determinate state of Love, with the greatest necessity which proceedeth from the perfected nature of man, and the full communication of Love from God, which we hope to have in Heaven forever. And he is best on Earth who is nearest to this state.
SECT. XII. Somewhat more of Predetermination; with an answer to Dr. Twisse.
§. 1. THough I remit the Controversy of Predetermination to a peculiar full Disputation on that subject, yet this touch in transitu I shall give here.
1. It is not God's mere Volition or Decree of the Event that we speak of; but his Physical Motion.
2. The Dominicans (the Masters of the Inquisition, and Murderers of the Waldenses and Albigenses of old,) and therefore faulty as well as the Jesuits, though there are very Learned men among them both, do commonly hold, that No Creature natural or free can act, unless God by Immediate physical efficient premotion predetermine it to that act, both in the act as such (which they call the substance of it,) and all the modes, circumstances and order of it.
3. Augustine and Jansen after him, with their true followers hold not this necessity of predetermining premotion to all acts, natural, or sinful; but only to spiritual good acts: which is not from the Nature, but the Corrupt •• n of •• an▪ and therefore the predetermination is not made, say they, by God's Common Natural Motion, but by Medicinal Grace.
4. Durand and his followers (as Lud. à Dola) and Aureolus partly, do hold, that if God do but uphold • ll creatures, as compaginate in the Universe, in the Nature he made them in, (and so natural Inclination, and media and objects all supposed) this sustentation and Influx maintaining their Active Natures, and means, is sufficient to cause an Act, without another particular predetermining premotion of God. As e. g. in Naturals, they think that if a Rock were violently held up in the Air, God continuing its Natural Gravity, and all other circumstant Natures and Concauses, this Rock if loosed can fall down of itself, without another predetermining premotion of God. And that a new Act of God (supposing the said support of Nature) is more necessary to the not-falling, than to the falling of it: As it was to the fires not burning the Three Confessors, Dan. 3. And I am unable to see the error of this Opinion.
And so in Free agents, they think, that if God continue the Nature of a free-will, with all circumstants and necessary natures, it can freely determine itself, without another act of predetermining premotion; And doth so in each act of sin: Though as Jansen saith, by accidental corruption, for Conversion we need Medicinal Grace.
5. The Jesuits, and all others explode this Opinion of Duràndus as singular, but give so little and slender reason of their dissent, as would draw one the more to suspect their cause. Instead of it they scarce know what to assert: But Bellarmine and the chiefest of them, under a pretended opposition, speak (I think) the same in other words, Even an Universal Concurse like that of the Sun, which operateth in specification according to the nature of Recipients, which specify the effect. Which Universal Influx, no doubt, Aureolus and Durand include in God's sustentation of Nature: For to sustain an Active Nature in all its Active disposition, by a suitable active Influx, is universally to cause its motion. The difference they are unable to assign.
6. After these come Hobbes, Cartesius and Gassendi, with a swarm of Epicureans, (a Sect commonly despised even in Cicero 's time, and yet called Wits in ours by men that have no more wit than themselves); and some of these say, that Motion needeth no continued cause at all, anymore than non-movere: But when a thing is in motion, it will so continue, because it is its state, without any other continued cause than the motion itself. And so they may as well say (and some do) that when a thing is in Being, it will so continue till it be positively annihilated, without any continued causation of its being. As if esse & existere were nothing more than non esse; and agere were no more noble a mode of Entity than non agere, and so needed no more (that is, no) Cause. (For non esse & non agere need no Cause:) When this distraction is worn out and shamed, the next Age will reproach us for attempting the confutation of it; And yet the Wits of this delirant Age have not the wit to understand a Confutation.
Some of them say, that Spirits cannot move bodies for want of Contact (as Gassendi). Some say, that Matter and Motion are eternal, and that of themselves; As if there were no God but Matter and Motion. Some say, that there is a God who gave matter one push at first, and so set it in that motion by which one body by a knock will move another to the end. And some say, There is no other Intellect; but the wonders of wisdom and order in the World are done by such fortuitous motion.
But Hobbes meeteth the Predeterminants and saith, that the Will is free in that its Act is Volition; but that this Volition is necessitated by superior or natural Causes as much as any motion in a Clock or Watch, and that it is inconceivable that any Act or Mode of Act can be without a necessitating efficient cause. But he differs from them in his consequents, and in the Notion of a Spirit, acknowledging no being but Corporeal.
§. 2. The Predeterminants commonly build not their doctrine on God's free-will, but on the Necessity of the thing: As if it were a contradiction, which God cannot do, for God to make a creature that can Determine itself, ad ordinem actionis without his particular predetermining premotion; or to make a Stone that can fall from the Air of itself, unless he move it downwards, besides his sustentation of its natural gravity, and all other natures, by his Influx, or universal Concurse.
§. 3. But till they can prove the Contradiction, they must pass for the deniers of God's Omnipotency, which is to deny a God.
§. 4. Their chief argument is, that the moral specification of an Action is an Entity; and to say that anything can cause any Entity without God's first causing it, is to defy that creature making it a first cause. Answ. 1. The comparative Order of Actions, (as the terminating them on this object rather than that, and at this time rather than that, &c.) is but the modus modi entis; and so is no proper entity. 2. Or if the Name be the quarrel, it is no other Entity than what God is Able to make a creature Able to cause without his predetermining Causality. 3. This power is the excellency of the creature, and the honor of its Creator.
§. 5. As for their argument, that there is no effect without a cause, nor difference in effects without a difference in the causes; and that an undetermined cause cannot produce a determinate effect; I answer, 1. God is the cause of all differences without any diversity in himself. And he is the Free cause of all things necessary in the World. 2. The soul is God's Image. 3. The Will when undetermined hath a self-determining power. Therefore this is but petere principium. 4. But there are many sub causes that are a reason of the determination; As objects, opportunity, knowledge, the removing of competitors, &c.
§. 6. Therefore Gibieufs, Guil. Camerarius, &c. way of predetermination by the Causa finalis, is nothing to our question; that being no efficient, but a Material, objective or Moral Causation.
§. 7. When they say, that else God dependeth on the creature, and is determined by it, (as to his Concurse:) I answer, 1. How can God's free upholding the power of a free agent, be his dependence on it, when it expressly speaketh its dependence on him, without whom it cannot be nor act? 2. No creature determineth God's Immanent acts: nor his transient, as to the mere Impress and first effect; and so not God's Act at all: unless Terminating be Determining. It is only its own Act which the creature determineth, which is a secondary effect of God's act, as proceeding from the second cause. God's Influx maketh all that Impress on the soul which God intendeth absolutely: But whether by that Impress the sinner will consent, the will determineth, and is the chief determiner in Evil.
§. 8. Saith Dr. Twisse Vindic. Grat. lib. 2. p. 2. Digres. 9. [The second cause non agit in primam, &c. Hoc faceret vel volendo, vel ali • d agendo, &c.] Answ. It's granted: God is not passive, nor doth any second cause act on him as passive: Who is his Adversary in this?
§. 9. He addeth
§. 10. Against our Passive determination of the effect, he saith, that
§. 11. He saith ib.
§. 12. He addeth
And as for your Accidents of Actions, if you mean Relations, it is their fundamentum that we are questioning. The extrinsic denomination is founded in Relation, or else it's Causeless. In a word, Man by Common Influx can determine his own will to go this way rather than that, and also not to go, and this without a further physical predetermining premotion of God.
§. 13. But here let the Reader note, that when he maketh Moral Good and Evil no species of Actions, but an extrinsic denomination (which is true, abstracting the relation from the fundamental difference of the Acts), and maketh God the Naturally necessitating Cause of all that is physical in the acts, he maketh God equally the necessitating prime Cause of Good and Evil, which are but relations resulting from the specified acts.
§. 14. He addeth [If God move the will it is to that same act which it doth, or to another. If to another, why should it be said that God moved it to that which is not done rather than that which is done, when we speak not of moral, but necessary physical motion?] Answ. The Particle [To] doth cheat you by ambiguity. 1. As [to] noteth, the effect, of God alone, it is [to] the Impress which he maketh on the soul; which effect he still obtaineth, which urgeth it towards its own act. 2. The same I say if [to] signify an absolutely intended end. 3. But if [to] signify the natural tendency of God's Impulse as to an effect possible and desirable, yea, and due by command from the subordinate cause (man's will,) then it was [to] our act of repentance, faith, duty, that God moved us: That is, he gave us that Power, and necessary influx by which it might and ought to have been done by us.
§. 15. It is but to make toil for the Reader to answer all these fallacies and quibbles, founded in some false supposition or ambiguous word: else I would answer the rest of that Digression, and his Digres. 5. li. 1. p. 2. contra Alvar. Only here I must take notice, that in this Digr. 9. he himself rejecteth Greg. Arim. and Hurtado 's assertion of God's Determining us to this or that Numerical Act, as distinct from another ejusdem speciei, ut merum figmentum, & ad curiositati hominum nimium infoelici satisfaciendum duntaxat introductum. Whereas were it not for wearying the Reader, I might show, that the same Reasons will hold for or against this numerical, as are for or against his specifical predetermination. And the species having no existence but in the individuals, and himself saying, that 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 God's motion is ad actus singulares, if he say that it is not to that singular act that is done, rather than that which is not done, he giveth up his whole cause.
§. 16. But to this he hath an answer that it is a fiction and unsound to say, that
§. 17. And I think the good man forgot that by this he quite overthroweth his Book de Scientia Media, and much of all his other Books, which are animated with the supposition of God's Will causing faturition from eternity. For if only existentia differunt numero, futura non sunt existentia: And if the futurition of differentia numero be not decreed nor eternal (as of this Sun, this Earth, Paul, Peter, and their singular acts, &c.) then nothing is future from eternity: And so we are brought to the Arminians election of species only, and not of individuals (in primo instanti) which is rejected. Sure God electeth Individuals, or none: And if so, it is future individuals. Individuation existeth not but in existentibus. But if foreknowledge and Decree may be of futures and non-existents, it may be of individuals that are such, as well as of species.
§. 18. Yea, he proceedeth to say pag. 412. [Deum scire plura esse possibilia quam sunt, non est scire multitudinem rerum possibilium; sed tantum scire se praestare posse ut detur major multitudo rerum existentium quam actu sit: Quare multitudo rerum individuarum Deo notum est tantum existentium, sive ea sit multitudo actualis, sive potentialis, &c.]
And yet the soul of his Book de Scientia Media is [Causa transitionis rerum e numero Possibilium in numerum futurorum.] And my foresaid opposition to his Eternal Causation of futurity, is hereby confirmed. 2. It's true, that to know quid possibile, is not to know it to be existent, nor anymore than to know what God (e. g.) can do; and so to denominate Nothing, quid possibile, as relating to Power: (And so Ariminens▪ saith Nothing may be Related.) But the like must be said of futurity: And it holdeth equally of the species and de numero, & possibilium & futurorum; so that here we have confitentem reum about the dance and dream of notions and nothings which I have before shown they beguile men's understandings with.
And hence also my former doctrine is confirmed, of the non-necessity of a causal decree of Negatives or Nothings, or of a Positive Volition of them.
§. 10. The truth is, an Act of man's soul is such a thing, that de existentibus it's hard for any of their subtleties to make known the difference of species, accidents or individuals ab objectis: And to know what interruptions they must be, that go to cut one Immanent act into two, or hinder unity.
SECT. XIII. Of man's Power Natural and Moral.
§. 1. I Have said so much of this also in the other parts of this Book, that a little here may serve.
1. Man hath no Power whatsoever but from God; and therefore doth not act as a prime Cause properly, because but by a derived power.
§. 2. That which is a Power but hypothetically on Condition of something not existent, especially not in our power itself, is no power properly and univocally, but equivocally only. As to say, I am able to leap to Heaven if God will Cause it: I am able to lift a thousand pound with sufficient help which I have not: I am able to see if I had light: or to see a Phoenix if there were such a thing: or I am able to will or move with God's necessary predetermining premotion (say some) which I have not. None of this is a true Power ad hoc. But to constitute a formal Power, it is necessary that I have all things, without which I cannot do the act.
§. 3. It is a contradiction to say that when a man hath the true Power to believe, yet he cannot do the Act, without further premotion: which is to say, He that can believe, cannot believe. The Power connoteth the Possibile.
§. 4. The true Natural Power of Intellection and Volition, every man hath as a man: And when God, Christ, Heaven are brought to us with all the Conditions necessary to Objects of Intellect and Will, we have formal power to understand and will them, in this Natural sense. What is necessary to the Being of an Object, and Revelation, I desire the Reader to see distinctly opened by me, in a small tract called, The Certainty of Christianity without Popery.
§. 5. But the soul itself hath a vicious Indisposition to the spiritual exercise of these faculties or powers: And this is the morbus facultatum; And this Indisposition is called a Moral Impotency; because the soul is unfitted by it to the exercise of its natural Power.
§. 6. When this Indisposition is so great, as that no man in that case doth do the act, we say he is morally unable: And when it is not so great, but that under that Indisposition some men do the act, in that state of help we say that such a man is morally able. Therefore he that is yet more disposed, is so More able, and it hath various degrees.
§. 7. But if a man have so great a disposition (skill and will) as that he is ready to the facile and frequent performance of the act, that Promptitude is called a Habit, and is more than a mere moral power (though a power also.)
§. 8. It is certain that men can do more than they do: not only that they could do more if God would predetermine them, or give them more grace; but that properly they can. The worst hath Power to do more good, and forbear more evil, than he doth; And so have the best.
§. 9. Adam had true proper Power, natural and Moral, to have stood when he fell: He sinned not for want of necessary Power to have forborne it.
§. 10. They that deny this and resolve all sin into God's unresistible necessitating operation, or denying of power absolutely and antecedently necessary, I think do make way for Hobbes his Theology, or subversion of Religion.
§. 11. Moral Power and Impotency are primarily such in the will (the first seat of morality) and derivatively or secondarily in the Intellect and executive Power. And therefore it is not originally and radically of physical necessity, but Free, as the will which is free is the Cause of it.
§. 12. Nature teacheth all the world so much to difference between man's Voluntary and Involuntary Acts and Habits, as to take the first to be directly laudable or culpable, as being not only virtuous or vicious, but in their relations to the Rule, to be Virtue or Vice itself; and the more men have of a vicious obstinacy and voluntariness in evil, the more all mank • nd condemn and hate them. Whereas involuntary necessity is every-where taken for a just excuse: yea a necessit as volendi in a mad man or a phrenetick or melancholy person, maketh them the objects of men's compassion. And this Light and Law of human nature is not to be rejected, because it may seem hard to answer the sophisms of those that would confound these sorts of Power and Impotency.
§. 13. Therefore of a man that is no otherwise unable to Love God (e. g.) but only because (or in that) directly or indirectly, he will not, that is, is Dispositively, Actually and Habitually Unwilling; it is more proper and intelligible to say that he will not, than that he cannot: Though we may also say He cannot, when we mean but that he will not: But the most explicatory words are best.
§. 14. No man-shall be able so far to accuse God and excuse himself justly at last, as to say, I was truly willing to have Christ and Life as offered me, but I could not: or I was truly willing to leave my sins and wor •• lie vanities, and to live a holy life to God, but I could not: Yea Augustine and Twisse say more, that no man can truly say, [I would believe but cannot] (which yet I think needeth some limiting explication.)
§. 15. Obj. But though all men Can have Christ (or faith) if they will, yet the unregenerate are unable to be willing.
Answ. By Unable you must 1. Either mean that they want the Natural Power or faculty of willing it; 2. Or that they want some naturally. necessary concause or object, without which this faculty is no formal Power ad ho • ▪ 3. Or that the Will is not well Disposed so to Act.
1. The first no man will say that taketh an unbeliever for a Man. 2. The second no man will say that will not by Hobbes his physical necessitation, turn Religion into a name or nothing, or the natural mot • on of an Engine called Man. 3. And the third (which is the truth) must be named as it is: In Controversies which exercise so great animosities and •••• all zeal as this doth in the Churches, it is an injurious thing to use sed •• ing improper names, when the more plain and intelligible are at hand. Hereafter speak plainly in your contendings, and instead of [Cannot] say, An unconverted man will not believe, and his will is viciously undisposed to it, yea ill-disposed against it. Hold to this that we may understand each other; or confess that you quarrel about a word.
§. 16. Obj. The Scripture useth the word [Cannot:] Can a Black • ore change his skin, &c.
Answ. 1. The text may as fitly (at least) be translated [Will a Blackmore change his skin, &c.] Yet the word [Cannot] is brought in in the application; for here it is all one: That is, the meaning is, that some custom in sin doth cause such a settled Ill disposition or Habit, as without special Grace is never overcome: Which signifieth no more, than a r •• ted willfulness and Love of sin, and enmity to Good. 2. But the meaning is not to affirm these two sorts of Impotency to be of the same nature [An Ethiopian cannot change his skin, were he never so willing] and [he cannot be willing to change it, without Grace.] But you cannot say that an accustomed sinner cannot learn to do good were he never so willing: nor yet that he can be as easily willing as the Ethiopian, nor as hardly made willing as the Leopard. 3. Figurative speeches are frequent in Scripture, and may alike be used by us in the like cases. But in Controversies a trope is an equivocal till explained, and must not be used without necessity and explication. 4. Where the text once saith, They could not believe or repent, it saith many and many times They would not. 5. The phrase [They could not believe, because Isaiah saith, &c.] Joh. 12. 39. notoriously speaketh but of an Impossibilitas Logica consequentiae, and not of a physical disability in themselves, though it intimateth a settled willfulness. 6. When it's said, Act. 4. 14. [They could say nothing against it,] it signifieth not a want of physical power, but mediate advantage. It's said of Christ, Mark 1. 45. He could no more enter into the City— 6. 5. He could there do no mighty work because of their unbelief. 7. 24. He could not be hid. Isa. 5. 4. What could have been done more to my Vineyard? Jer. 15. 1. My mind could not be towards this people. Mark▪ 3. 20. They could not so much as eat bread. 1. Thes. 3. 1. When we could no longer forbear, &c.—1 Joh. 3. 9. He cannot sin— Heb. 9. 5. Of which we cannot now speak particularly. Act. 4. 16. We cannot deny it. And 19. 36. These things cannot be spoken against. Joh. 7. 7. The world cannot hate you. Luk. 11. 7. I cannot rise and give thee, (and yet he did.) Luk. 14. 20. I have married a wife, therefore I cannot come. Mar. 2. 19. They cannot fast. Neh. 6. 3. I cannot come down. So Gen. 34. 14. & 44. 26. 2 Cor. 13. 8. Numb. 22. 18. & 24. 13. Jos. 24. 19. 1 Sam. 25. 17. Psal. 77. 4. and other places; I think you will not say it is natural and utter disability that is here spoken of: No nor of God when it is said that He cannot deny himself or Lye, 2 Tim. 2. 13. Tit. 1. 2. We must therefore explain such doubtful words, before we draw controverted conclusions from them, as supposing them falsely to be univocal.
§. 17. The same Natural faculty may by the Alteration of objects and means, become formally a Power or no power ad hoc vel illud. And when Nature made it a faculty, Grace can make it a formal power to this or that without changing it in itself at all, in many instances or cases.
§. 18. Men have a power even moral to the use of many means which God hath appointed for the begetting of faith, before they have a moral power to believe.
§. 19. God hath appointed or commanded to all men, the use of certain duties and means for their Recovery by faith and repentance unto God: And there is no man that is not obliged to use such means; nor any man that is to use them in desp • ir of success: The very command being some signification of God's will, that obedience shall not be in vain. Whether the name of an Implicite Promise be apt for that command, I leave to those that have a mind to contend about names.
§. 20. Though a mere Indifferent faculty be (as Dr. Twisse saith) rather to be called Nature than Grace; yet it is Grace 1. Which giveth a gracious object to that faculty, though thereby it be still but an undetermined Power. 2. And it is more Grace which taketh off some vicious Illdispositions of the soul; and giveth it some more Disposition to believe, though but so much as common grace doth give.
§. 21. It is not a mere Power that God giveth men to Repent and believe: But a Power accompanied with many Gracious help • and means to determine it aright (of which before.)
§. 22. He that will not use such Power and means doth thereby forfeit further grace : However God doth not always take the forfeiture, and will not of his elect to their destruction, but doth pardon them.
§. 23. By all this it appeareth, 1. That all men have a natural power or faculties, enabled to all that is necessary to salvation, so far that it is not the want of a proper natural power that shall necessitate them to sin and perish; 2. That this Power is by vice undisposed to believe, &c. 3. That it hath some Indisposition to all that virtue or moral good which tendeth to salvation. 4. That it is not equally undisposed to all such Good. 5. That it's Indisposition to some means of Recovery, is no greater than what may be overcome by God's commoner sort of Grace. 6. That this commoner Grace is not herein ever so effectual, as that all that receive it, do all the good that they can do by it, even in a moral sense; nor all that some others do that have no more help: But the willful negligence of the receiver, or his diversion or resistance frequently frustrateth it; though not always. 7. That the right use of this commoner grace, in the use of the foresaid means, is a way appointed by God himself, and not in vain, by and in which men may be made fit to receive that special Grace which will call them savingly to believe. 8. That no man is denied that special grace that deserveth it not by the abuse of Common grace. (How the ca • e of Infants dependeth on the Parents I must not instance as oft as the exceptions of wranglers require it.) 9. And therefore no man is condemned for want of natural Power as such, but only for want of stirring up his natural power by those helps of grace, by which he might have done it, and for want of that further Good (faith, love, obedience) which by the helps rejected he might have been brought up to, had he not willfully neglected the power and helps which he had. 10. Yea usually God long waiteth patiently on sinners with the tenders of mercy, while they reject it, before he utterly forsake them.
SECT. XIV. Whether the giving of faith be an Act of Omnipotency? and a proper Creation? and a Miracle?
§. 1. THe Reader must pardon me for troubling him with such frivolous questions about names, seeing unhappy Theologues have made it necessary. An Act of Omnipotency hath several senses :
1. If the meaning be Whether Omnipotency be the Agent Principle, it is past dispute. For it's all one as to ask Whether it be an Act of God? God hath no Power but Omnipotency, that is, perfect power.
2. If the meaning be, Whether the Giving of faith be an Adequate effect of Omnipotency, it is also negatively past doubt. Though those that take God to be but Anima Mundi, say that Either the World is Infinite or that God is not Infinite, as thinking the World to be his adequate effect; yet Christians are commonly agreed, that God hath no adequate effect. Even the making of the universe, the Giving of Christ, and the Glorifying of the Church, which are the highest effects of his Power, Wisdom and Love, are not adequate effects; For nothing but another God can be an adequate effect of God: And another God, is a contradiction.
§. 2. 3. But if the sense of the question be only comparative; As, 1. Whether Omnipotency be more eminent in the giving of faith than Wisdom and Love (or Goodness)? 2. Or whether Omnipotency be more eminent in giving faith, than other works of God? they are both needless questions. And to the first I say, No: To the second, those other works of God must be named, and compared, by the presumptuous that have no safer work to do.
§. 3. 4. If the question be, Whether the giving of faith be so great a work that no Power below Omnipotency could suffice to do it? I answer, it is a presumptuous paltry question of rash men. But yet if it must be answered, it must be negatively: Because as Omnipotence is more illustrious in the making of the world, than in causing a man to believe; so Christians agree that the world itself (as I said) is not an adequate effect of Omnipotency: Which maketh so many of the subtilest Schoolmen conclude that God could not be proved to be Omnipotent by the whole Creation • as such, were it not further to be gathered from the notices of his perfection. Which were false if by Omnipotence they meant only a Power that can do all that is done: But they mean An Infinite Power; which they say must be so seen in an Infinite effect. But the world is not Infinite.
§. 4. As to the second question, it is either de nomine or de re. If the former, let every man speak as he list for me, rather than I will contend with him, whether Creation of faith be a fit name. As to the matter, 1. It is agreed on, that faith is not a substance; 2. Nor an Accident con-created with a substance; 3. Nor a composition of substances into one, done by secondary Creation, Generation or Art. 4. But that it is the right ordered Act of a substance, whose natural power which performeth it, was pre-existent, though without that act and the moral disposition. Therefore it being a Modus entis or modus modi that we talk of, the common name is Alteration and suscitation, actuating and ordering: But if men sober sometime call it a New Creation (as indeed the whole frame of holiness together is called the New Creature in the Scriptures) and sometimes the Divine nature, sometimes Regeneration, sometimes a Divine Artifice, Alteration, Conversion, Sanctification, &c. it is the same thing that is meant by all their several names.
§. 5. As to the third Question, Whether it be a Miracle p 1. As a Miracle signifieth a wonder, a thing is wonderful either for the Rarity or for the Great appearance of God's power in it. In the first respect, faith is not so Rare as to be a miracle: In the second, the Sun and Heavens are a greater wonder than faith.
2. But as a Miracle signifieth that which is done by second Causes, but unknown to us, and out of God's ordinary way of working; so it is no miracle.
3. And as some men call that a Miracle which exceedeth the power of the second causes, so all things would be Miracles that God doth: For they are effects of his power as exceeding the power of second causes.
4. As a Miracle is that which is done by God without any second causes, so some think that the propagation of souls is a miracle: But of souls and faith it is much unknown to us, how far God useth second causes; But that Generation as to one, and Preaching and all other means to the other, are some sort of second causes, is sure.
5. And lastly, if by a Miracle be meant that effect, which God produceth both above the power of second causes, and by a more glorious exertion of his own power than in his Course of Nature and Government he useth by and with second causes, so it is not a Miracle, because in the way of his ordinate co-operation with his Gospel, he ordinarily produceth it.
§. 6. So that as all Christians must confess that we had never believed if God had not wrought it in us by that spirit of Wisdom and Love which is Omnipotent; so to contend any further whether it be a Miracle, and a proper Creation, or an effect of Omnipotency as such, &c. are such questions as presumptuous Schoolmen heretofore, and hot-headed Sectaries in our times, have used to afflict the Church of Christ with, and to tempt their ignorant zealous followers into such employments, as most effectually destroy their charity, and injure others, and scandalize the world.
SECT. XV. Of the sufficiency and efficacy of Grace.
§. 1. I Have said so much of this before as that, lest I be tedious by repetition, I must be but brief. I. By sufficient Grace is meant that which is necessary to the effect, and without which it Cannot be, but with it, it may be, though it sometimes be not.
§. 2. That there is such a sufficient Grace not always effectual to man's act, is before proved by Adams Case. And that no man hath such now for any means or duty in order to his recovery, as Adam had to stand when he fell, is not to be asserted or received. And that no prepared soul hath such sufficient Grace to believe, that yet believeth not, is a thing that is past our reach to know.
§. 3. This sufficient Grace consisteth in a Power to the act: when the Indisposition of the natural power, is so far altered, or repressed, as that by the means and helps vouchsafed by God, the act is Morally possible to be done. For he that truly can do it, all things considered, is well said to have such necessary grace.
§. 4. But God of his bounty usually giveth men more than such a mere moral possibility, by many additional helps and urgencies to the act, which I mentioned before.
§. 5. But by [sufficient] is not meant [As much as is useful; yea or needful to the Ascertaining of the Event, much less to the meliority of the act.]
§. 6. II. The EFFICACY of Grace relateth to the effect: And by the effect it must be described. Efficacy is Aptitudinal, which is the force and fitness of the Efficient Cause: Or Actual, which is Efficienty itself.
§. 7. Aptitudinal efficacy is 1. In God; 2. In the means: And 1. In God's Absolute Power; 2. In his Ordinate Power.
§. 8. 1. God's Absolute Power is Omnipotency, or Infinite; and therefore was aptitudinally efficacious to make a world before it was made.
§. 9. 2. God's Ordinate Power is the same Essential Omnipotency denominated from the Connotation of those effects, which he hath decreed to produce, according to the limited aptitude of second Causes and means, or the disposition of the recipient, or at least, as limited in the effects by his mere free will.
§. 10. In these respects, though still God's power in itself be Omnipotency, yet in the limited way of operation, it is various, 1. As God's Will quoad terminos is various, 2. And as the means are various, 3. And as the Receivers capacities are various. To one, the same operation ex parte Dei & mediorum (though not from the same Decree) is abundantly efficacious, and to another not.
§. 11. And thus God so limiteth the effect of his Power, as that it shall be effectual sometime on a Condition to be freely performed by man receiving it, even by a former help, and not absolutely.
§. 12. Therefore all that is Aptitudinally efficacious, is not actually efficient of every effect to which it was thus apt.
§. 13. The aptitudinal efficacy of the means being of God, falleth in with his ordinate power, herein, and is not the thing in question.
§. 14. The effects in respect to which Grace is called efficacious are, 1. The Giving of the Means themselves. 2. The first Impress on the soul. 3. The altering of the souls Disposition. 4. The production of the act. 5. And of the Habit. And it must be some of these effects which are called efficacious or inefficacious to others. So that by that time the state of the Question is truly opened, this which Dr. Twisse saith Arminius durst never speak out his opinion of, and which he and others make to be the very heart of all these Controversies, perhaps will appear to be nothing.
§. 15. For what is that Grace whose efficacy you inquire of • Is it Gratia operans or operata? The efficient cause, or the effect? If it be God's Gratia operans, it is either the Prime Cause or the second Causes. If it be the Prime Cause, it is God's essence only; Even his Essential Power, Intellect and will. And is that the Question [Wherein consisteth the efficacy of God's essence?] Why it consisteth in itself if you mean Aptitudinal efficacy; It is God's essential Virtue. If you mean Actual efficiency, that speaketh the effect; of which more anon. So that about God's essential efficacy there is no Controversy.
§. 16. But if you say that It is his Potentia quà ordinata and not quà essentialis vel absoluta that you inquire of the efficacy of; Remember that the word Ordinata or Limited signifieth no alteration in God's Power at all, but only An effect which as Limited and ordinate, from whence the Power causing it is extrinsically so named. God's essential Power is never limited but Infinite; and to be Ordinate, is but to have ordinate effects. So that still either the Controversy must be of God's essence, (which is past Controversy,) or of some second cause, or some mere effect.
§. 17. And if you transferr the Question to the efficacy of second causes, 1. You will deny yourselves, that means and second causes have any power but from God; 2. And that the very nature of those causes is sufficient to the ascertaining of the effect, because they cause mostly morally • And it is one of the accu • ations against the A • minians (right or wrong) that they lay all on moral suasion or causality. 3. And second causes are so numerous, and unknown to us, that we are uncapable of judging well of their efficacy. 4. But it is I think agreed between you, that the force of Means or second causes in Conversion is not such as necessitateth the will. Or if some of the Schoolmen and Jesuits, which with their Scientia Media do join Gratiam per congruitatem mediorum efficacem, do make this efficacy to be the chief cause of the effect, yet they deny it to cause necessarily; at least always, when the effect followeth. And what if we add, that objects effect not as such? And therefore this question de efficacia causarum secundarum, must extend to some second effective Agents, and not only to objects as such, nor to those that preach, present and offer objects, as such: And what that Agent Cause must be, under God, by that time you are agreed, you will find that they are new Controversies that will there rise up before you. And yet I think that if we will needs wrangle about the efficaciousness of any cause foregoing the first effect itself on the soul, it must be of the efficacy of some or all these second causes, or we must question whether God be God? For I can find nothing else to question.
§. 18. It remaineth then that the question, Wherein the efficacy of Grace consisteth, must be meant of Gratia operata, even of the effect itself. And then either you mean, that this effect is efficacious to itself, or to something else. The first is such a contradiction as is not to be imagined, (that you should think that an effect is its own cause, and ask How doth faith, e. g. cause itself?) Therefore there is nothing left, but only to question, How the first effect of God on the soul in its conversion is efficacious of the second?
§. 19. And here 1. Some of you will grant that as motion causeth motion by contact of bodies, so the first effect on the soul can cause the second. And others of you will deny it, and say that God's Actions being diversified only by the diversity of effects and objects, that which causeth the second effect is to be denominated a second Action, and not the same numerically which caused the first; no nor specifically if the effects specifically differ. And so as scholastick wits here exercise their curiosity, without respect to Arminianism or Calvinism, you will here fall into notional Controversies in the way.
§. 20. 2. But granting that the first effect is that efficacious Grace which must cause the second, how shall we know what the first effect is, and what the second? God's Grace like the Sun is still shining though we are not still receiving it: When it worketh but the commoner sort of effects, these tend to more and more. The first Gracious effect may be forty years before Conversion. But this is not your meaning: But I suppose you will say that it is the first special effect or gratia operata, that is proper to the saved, which you mean. But to pass by, that Augustine, Prosper, Fulgentius (much more their predecessors) held that sincere faith, Love, holiness, Justification, present right to Life if they so died, are not proper to the saved, but that some lose all these, If you say but [proper to the Justified or Sanctified or Converted,] or, it be the first effect which is proprium Justificandis which you mean; Are we agreed what that is?
§. 21. Either the first effect on the soul, or the first Gratia operata, is the Act of faith itself, or somewhat antecedent. If the Act (as many subtly maintain) then it were a foolish question to ask, Whether the Act of faith be Effectual to cause itself, and How? Therefore it must be somewhat antecedent, or we can find no matter for our Controversy de efficacia Gratiae ad credendum.
§. 22. If somewhat antecedent to the Act, it is either a Disposition, or Infused Habit, or an Impression, Impulse or Influx which is neither Disposition nor Habit.
§. 23. 1. A proper Habit of faith it is not: Though Mr. Pemble singularly seem so to think, yet he meaneth but a seminal disposition. And it's commonly held that the Habit is given by sanctification, after the Act given in Vocation. 2. But if it were otherwise, the Habit is not always sufficient to ascertain the Act. For holy men oft sin against a Habit, and believers do not always exercise it. Habits Incline per modum naturae, but do not certainly determine to the act. 3. And of a Disposition it must be so said much more.
§. 24. 2. And if it be an Impulse or Influxus Receptus (as I think we must affirm) this is but a general notion, of which our understanding is very crude or small. A mere Motus it is not: For (as was said in the beginning) the Divine Influx is threefold, viz. From Vital-Activity (or Power,) Wisdom and Love, to Life, Light and Love, in man. Now, as I said, if there be no such Impulse, besides the Life, Light and Love produced, our Controversy is at an end: For these are not efficacious or efficient of themselves. But if such a different Impulse there be, it's hard to know what it is in man. I conceive it best expressed by all these inadequate notions conjunct: 1. An inward urgency to this threefold act; which is called in the Schools, both auxilium, concourse, and Influx: 2. By which Urgency the soul is more Disposed to the Act (in hoc ordine) than it was before: 3. Which Disposition containeth in it a Moral Power to that Act (so ordered) and somewhat more; even some Inclination to perform it. If any man can tell me better what that Divine Impulse is which is antecedent to man's Act, I am willing to learn.
§. 25. Now if this be the question, Whether this Divine Impulse, which is the first effect of God's spirit, be of its own nature efficacious to produce our Faith, Love, &c. as the second effect, I answer, 1. Sometimes God's Impulse is so Great, as propriâ vi, doth change mind and will and overcome resistance, and procure our act. 2. Sometimes it is so strong as that it prevaileth against the contrary ill-disposition, so far as to give man a Moral Power to the Act, with some Inclination, which yet contrary habits and temptations do overcome, and the Act doth not follow, which yet was not for want of Power to have done it: And this is called sufficient Grace. 3. We have great reason to believe that as in some Instances God's greater Impress is the chief differencing Cause, so in other Instances an equal Impulse of God on unequally disposed subjects, doth produce the Act of faith, &c. in one of them, which it produceth not in the other, through the incapacity of the recipient. 4. Therefore there is a double degree of efficacy or Vis, One which only so far moveth and helpeth the will, as that it can do the act, and sometime doth it without more: Another which is so strong as that the second effect always followeth it. 5. But whenever the Act of faith is produced (by force or Impulse more or less) God is the first and principal cause of it, and man but the second, and the praise of it is accordingly due. And I think this decision accommodateth both sides of our contenders.
§. 26. The foresaid Impulse or first effect, is only the work of God (and the means) and not ours: But the Act of Faith, Love, &c. is God's work and ours; and ours as Free-agents. Therefore that Impulse of God which is Aptitudinally efficacious on supposition of man's due reception and self-excitation, is oft not Actually effectual for want of that Voluntary Reception and self-excitation.
§. 27. As to the various effects of Grace fore-mentioned, 1. As to the preparation of Means and Gracious medicine (Christ, the Covenant, &c.) Grace is efficient of itself, and doth it.
2. As to the first Impulse or Impress on the soul, God certainly effecteth it, in some degree, wherever his spirit worketh on the soul.
3. Some Urgency, and some degree of disposition to the act, is constantly contained in this Impulse. And usually it giveth a moral power to the Immediate Act-required.
4. The Act of faith sometimes followeth this Impulse through its invincible force; And sometime it followeth it through its sufficient force, and the due Reception of the subject. And sometimes it followeth it not at all, through the Recipients indisposition.
5. The Habit of faith ever followeth a special Act, through the powerful operation of the Holy Ghost. But usually it goeth not before the Act: Man hath not a fixed Habit to promptitude and facility of believing before he believeth, but after.
6. The Habit ordinarily procureth following acts, by the way of Inclination: but not necessarily nor always. For by strong temptations, Habits are oft born down.
§. 28. If the question then be, Whence God's Grace is Aptitudinally and Potentially efficacious (able and fit to effect?) It is because God is God that he is Able; and his Impulse is such because he maketh it such.
And if the question be, Whence Grace is Actually efficient of its first effect (the Impulse?) It is because God will so do; and his will hath no Cause, being the first Cause.
And if the question be, Whence Grace is Actually efficient of man's faith? It is by its Impelling man to believe.
But if you ask, Whence faith itself is; or of what cause is it an effect? I answer, of God as the first cause, and the Means as his Instrument, and of the Believer as a free second Cause.
And if the question be, Why sufficient Grace which is Effectual ad Posse is not effectual ad agere? It is because (being but sufficient,) man's Indisposition and willful neglect or opposition, maketh him an unfit Receiver.
§. 29. There being nothing then but God's essence (and the means) antecedent to the first effect on the soul, and that effect ever following where God worketh: and the second effect being the effect both of God (by the first) and of man as a free agent, the questions, unde efficatia Gratiae, and unde effectus, are thus healingly answered.
§. 30. Obj. But the will of God is the first differencing and effectual Cause: And that not as it is his essence, but as it is terminated on the Creature and decreeth such an effect.
Answ. 1. It is no will but his essence which is so terminated or decretive. 2. That termination maketh no difference at all that's real in the will of God, but only in the effect or object. 3. What is the difference then between God's will simply in itself, and as willing from eternity a thing not yet existent? None really at all. And that which is not yet, being Nothing; what Relative, Connotative and Denominative difference such Nothings can make on the will of God, besides the variety of imperfect notions in man's frail Intellect, let the wise consider.
§. 31. From whence it is that School-divines after Augustine say, that with God there is no futurum velpraeteritum, no fore-knowledge or fore-decrees, properly, because no difference of time, but only knowledge and will of things as present.
§. 32. Yet God's Vital Activity, Knowledge and Will as he himself is the object of them, have a Greater distinction; because to be self-living, selfknowing and self-loving are his Essential Acts on himself the eternal object (which made many Ancients account them the Trinity of persons.) And also to Will an existent Creature is an extrinsic denomination from existence: But to will that which is not, (that man shall be, that he shall believe hereafter, &c.) as it is nothing really different from God's essence, so it is but an extrinsic denomination of his essence, from nothing.
SECT. XVI. Of Infused Habits, and the Holy Ghost Given us▪
§. 1. EVery operation of the Holy Ghost is not the Giving of the Holy Ghost, which is specially promised in the Gospel to believers. For there are 1. Many common works of the Spirit; 2. And the special effect of faith itself before it.
§. 2. This gift of the Holy Ghost unto Believers, was formerly twofold, the Gift of Miracles or wonders, and of special Holiness; of which the latter continueth to the end of the world.
§. 3. The spirit is Given to Believers in several respects conjunct. 1. In that he is Given to Christ their Head, with whom by Union they are Relatively one Body▪ 2. In that He is Given to them by the Baptismal Covenant, in special Relation to their own persons, to be their sanctifier: In which respect they are Baptized into the name of the Holy Ghost, as being now in Covenant theirs. 3. In that he worketh in them▪ the Acts and Habits of Holiness, even of Love to God and to his Image; and helpeth them in all duties, and against all temptations, enemies and sins. But not that his essence is more in them than elsewhere, but his Operations from those Relations.
§. 4. This Gift of the spirit is the great privilege of believers, and of Gospel times in the eminent degree, and He is the great Agent, Advocate and witness of Christ in us, the divine nature, and name of God and his mark upon us: our witness, earnest, pledge, and first-fruits of life eternal; and the great difference between Christ's living members and the unregenerate world.
§. 5. So powerful and fixed is this Habitual Holiness or Love of God (for that is the sum of it) that though it be no substance, nor alter not man's species, nor operate not by natural necessitating determination, yet it strongly and constantly inclineth the soul per modum nature to the act of Love; and so emulateth nature, that it is called in Scripture the Divine Nature, and the new man.
§. 6. The greatest blessing in this world is to have more of this Spirit, and the greatest punishment, to be forsaken by the spirit, and deprived of it: And believers themselves must fear most, lest they should quench and grieve the spirit, and be punished with any measure of its desertion: And their great work is to cherish it carefully, and obey it faithfully and constantly.
§. 7. The word [Infusion] as to Habits being metaphorical, is ambiguous. 1. If the question be, Whether Habits be so Infused as that they are caused without Means? we must deny it ordinarily.
2. If it be, Whether they are not at all procured by any cogitations, desires, or preparatory duties of our own, to fit us to receive them? It is to be denied as to the ordinary way.
3. If the question be, Whether the Act of faith do ever go before the Habit, as a cause of it? It must be affirmed of the ordinary case.
4. If it be, Whether the Habit ever go before the Act? we must say, that some Impulse disposing to it doth. And God can cause a Habit before the Act: But we cannot prove that he ever doth so, much less that it is his ordinary way.
§. 8. Whence it is plain that ordinarily All Infused Habits are so far also Acquired, as that they follow means and the Act: But all Acquired Habits are not such as are called Infused.
§. 9. The difference is in this, that Habits are said to be Infused when the Holy Ghost doth excite the soul to the Act, and by that Act unto a settled Habit, by such a special powerful Impulse as would not follow God's ordinary operation by mere natural second Causes. As the seal set home on the wax by a strong hand maketh a deep impression, more than when it's laid on lightly by a child: so are sacred objects and means and motives when set home by the spirit (allowing for the differences of the things.)
§. 10. Whether in every true Believer a fixed Habit of Love instantaneously follow the first act of true faith, though weak: or whether in many God only give after the first act so small an increase of the Disposition, as is short of the true nature of a habit, till increased by frequent acts, is a case that I think more difficult than needful to resolve.
§. 11. That which God worketh in Infants, is a seminal fixed disposition: But I cannot prove that it is a proper Habit.
§. 12. Whether Adams Natural sanity or sanctity antecedent to his first Act, was to be called more properly a Habit, or only a seminal disposition, I leave to others. But if his, and Infants be to be called Habits, you must say that they are only certain General Habits, such as Health in the Body, and not those particular Habits, which are strictly so called.
§. 13. The nature of a Habit is not well known to mortal men. We know that it is a strong and fixed Disposition to prompt and facile action of this or that special sort. But what that Disposition is, we well know not: That is, whether it be the robur of the essential virtues or faculties of the soul, (Intellection, Will, Activity?) And if so, wherein that second Gradus Virtutis, which is not essential differeth from the first that is? And whether it be anything else than a secret constant Act, in and by which the soul is excited to more sensible acts, it's hard to know. But certain I am that besides those Acts which taking in somewhat of Imagination or sense are ordinarily perceived by us (which are our ordinary conversation,) the soul hath also some deep secret fixed acts, which make no use of sense or Imagination, or none that is observed; and yet are the ruling acts of the man. Such commonly is the Intentio finis which operateth constantly without memory or observation in all use of means. As a travailer on his journey keepeth on his way, while he seemeth wholly taken up with the occurrences, company and talk of his way, and thinketh not sensibly of his end: And yet had he not an unobserved Intention of it, he would not go on. And night and day the soul hath this secret insensible sort of Action.
§. 14. As when a spark of fire is blown up to a flame, and the excited Act doth tend to more, and the more it burneth (caeteris paribus) the more it is strongly inclined to burn; And yet no man can say that here is any new Matter that was not before existent, nor that the second degree of fire is not of the same nature with the first, nor that there is anything but nature and action which inclineth it to more action; And yet how the same essence before not perceived is suddenly blown up by Action to such observable appearance and effects, is past the power of man to understand aright: So some such thing there is in the present case, allowing for the difference of natures, and kinds of operation.
SECT. XVII. Whether man be merely Passive as to the first special Grace.
§. 1. Answ. 1. THe Nature of man's soul is to be an Active Spirit, and therefore what ever it receiveth, it receiveth it as it is in that nature.
2. But the same soul is Passive as well as Active, and that in the prior instant of nature; For it must receive from God the first cause: which made the Greek ancient Doctors and many of the Latins say as Damascene in sense, (though in grosser words) that the soul in respect to bodies was immaterial (or incorporeal) but it was material in respect of God.
§. 2. Not only in its Receiving the Spirits first Impulse to Believe, the soul is Passive before it is Active: but also in its Reception of every sort of Divine Influx, even to every natural act. So that in this there is no difference between Conversion and any common act. For the soul is first passive in all • : even in receiving that Natural Influx by which we Live and Move and Be.
§. 3. But the soul which is passive in Receiving God's Impulse to believe, (the first effect,) is Active in the producing of its own Act of believing, (which is the effect of many Concauses.) And, as I said, It is not the Habit of faith properly so called, which it passively Receiveth before the Act.
SECT. XVIII. Whether the first Grace, and the New and Soft Heart be Promised and Given Absolutely, or on any Condition on our part; And so of faith itself?
Answ. §. 1. BY the first Grace is meant, either simply the first, or the first special renewing Grace on the soul, proper to them that shall be Justified. Of the first Grace simply there is no Condition; for it is given Universally to all, (viz. a Reprieval, a Law of Grace, a Redeemer, &c.) And after this there is much common personal mercy given conditionally▪ and much absolutely, to all or some.
§. 2. It seemeth to me an error (which by oversight I was long entangled in myself.) to think that by the new and soft heart, is meant the first special Grace. For most Divines agree, that it is proper sanctification which is meant by it, as distinct from antecedent Vocation. Vid. Ames. Medul. de Vocat. Rolloc. de Vocat. Bishop G. Downame against Pemble, Hookers Souls Vocation, Joh. Rogers of faith, and many others. In Vocation they suppose the Act of Faith and Repentance suscitated by the Spirit; and thereupon a Covenant-Relation to Christ and to the Holy Ghost, with Regenerating, Sanctifying Habits • o be given. And I see no reason to be singular herein.
§. 3. That faith is by the Law of Grace, made a Condition of this Sanctification, and the Spirit promised us [if we will believe,] and so the Spirit given to us by Covenant in Baptism when we believe, is plain ill Scripture, and the commonest doctrine of all Divines.
§. 4. Therefore if it be this Spirit of Sanctification that is meant by the New, the Tender, the Circumcised heart, it is not promised and given absolutely, but on condition of faith.
§. 5. Let us peruse the several Texts where it is promised. Dent. 30. 1, 2, 3, 6. [When thou shalt call to mind among all the Nations—and shalt return unto the Lord thy God and obey his voice, according to all that I command thee this day—thou and thy children, with •• thy heart and all thy soul; that then the Lord thy God will turn thy c •• tivity—And the Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart and the heart of thy seed to Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.]
Here it is a Grace consequent to a condition, even to much obedience, which is described.
And Deut. 10. 16. it is a command [Circumcise the foreskin of your hearts, and be no more stiff-necked.]
Jer. 32. 36, 37, &c. [I will gather them out of all Countries whither I have driven them—and will bring them again into this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God, and I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me forever.] So Ezek. 11. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. And Ezek. 36. 25, 26, 27, 28, 29. In all which, there is a promissory Prophecy, how great a deliverance God would give the Nation of the Jews, both for body and soul; And their temporal return and liberty is promised and prophesied in the same manner as a new heart is. But here is not a syllable to prove that this is the first special Grace; anymore than perseverance is, which in the same manner is promised in Jer. 32. 40. [I will put my fear in their hearts, and they shall not depart.] To say nothing how far in the first sense this was National to the Jews, nor how the performance did expound it, (For doubtless it is performed,) the Text itself premiseth [I will be their God, and they shall be my people] with other mercies. And no doubt but Faith and Repentance go before this Covenant-Relation to God; and therefore before the following gift of the Spirit, ver. 9. and Ch. 11. 19. And Ezek. 18. 31. the same is commanded, [Cast away from you all your transgressions whereby ye have transgressed, and make you a new heart, and a new spirit—.]
§. 6. The promissory Prophecy of Jer. 31. 31, &c. is recited by the Penman of Heb. 8. 8, &c. to prove the cessation of the old Jewish C • venant, and that a better should succeed. And this much is easily proved out of both, 1. That God would certainly have a holy people among the returning Israelites, 2. And especially that he would have such in the Christian Church, as should be sanctified to him by his Spirit, and have a new and tender • eart. And Predestination is well proved from the Text. But there is not a word to prove this to be the first Grace, nor that God's promise gave any man right to it, but upon condition of believing. For if God's Decree, Prophecy, or general Promise saying absolutely [I will do it] did prove it to be the first Grace, it would prove perserance such; which is false. The words prove no more but that God will do it.
§. 7. And as this is no personal promise giving any man a right to the thing promised, which he may claim; but only foretelling what God will do, or give to some: so he hath other promises which are part of his Law of Grace, and do give men Right to these same Benefits. And so the Spirit of Sanctification and a new heart, is promised on Condition of believing; which therefore is the former special Grace.
§. 8. If any therefore will prove that faith is given Absolutely, they must not do it by those Texts, which speak of Sanctification, which faith is a condition of.
§. 9. But as to the question itself, Whether Faith be given absolutely or conditionally? I answer, 1. There is no absolute promise of faith made to any persons; but only promissory predictions of some indeterminate unnamed persons, that God will draw them and give them to Christ, and they shall believe and live.
2. All men have means and duty appointed them, for the seeking of that Grace which may convert them.
3. They are hereby bound to believe, that if they so do, they shall not lose their labor. For God setteth men on no unprofitable work.
4. Those that do this most faithfully, and have most preparing grace, are the likest to become believers, and the ordinary receivers of special grace.
5. Whether de nomine this encouragement shall be called a promise or equipollent, let them contend that list.
6. God can and doth suddenly convert some without such preparations; or else give them both sorts of Grace immediately as once.
SECT. XIX. How God may be said to Cause the Acts of sin?
I Have said of this also so much before, as that this Breviate here must serve.
§. 1. It must be well considered, that God made man's Nature before he made any positive Laws for him: And that the Law of Nature itself, is in order of Nature after Nature though not in Time: Man being first considerable as Man, before he be considerable as obliged to duty. And also that the Law, both Natural and Positive, is before man's obedience and sin. So that as man is first in order of Nature Man, and then God's Governable Subject, and then (in order of Time) obedient or dis • bedient; so God is first his Creator, and then Natur • Motor, and then his Governor by Legislation, and then his Gracious Helper, and lastly his Judge and Rewarder.
§. 2. Therefore as Natural Being (substance and faculties) and Natural Motion are antecedent to Morality; so God's causation of both these is antecedent: and therefore to be Creator, Preserver and Motor is not to be the Cause of sin, or of Virtuous acts, as such.
§. 3. God as Creator was not pleased to make all his creatures of one kind, nor of one degree of excellence: but in such variety as is wonderful to our observation. Besides the innumerable species of beings, and the innumerable parts of every compound being, the dissimilitude of indviduals of the same species is admirable: so that no two faces are perfectly like, no nor no two Stones in the Street, no two Trees, Birds, Beasts, &c. And therefore it is but consonant to the rest of his works, that MAN is neither perfectly like to Angels nor to Brutes: For as God made one sort of creatures naturally determined to things sensible, and another sort necessarily (though freely) determined to things spiritual; so it pleased him to make a middle sort, endued with Reason and free-will, undetermined as to their choice, and able freely