Catholic Theology Plain Pure Peaceable
§. 4. God as Creator maketh substances, with their necessary Accidents, and as the Natural Orderer of them, placeth them in their natural order: and as Motor (or Actor) he causeth Action as such; But as Moral Rector he causeth only the Moral Order▪ of Actions, as far as belongeth to a Rector (the rest being presupposed in Nature,) and leaveth it to man to cause the rest.
§. 5. Seeing God is not to be blamed for making such a creature as man (of a middle, defectible, undetermined Will, left to his free choice, with necessary helps,) it being part of the beauty of his works to be diversified; He is not then to be blamed for any of the sins of such a creature, because he supporteth his Being and his Active Nature, and is his first cause of Action.
§. 6. God could prevent all future sin, if he absolutely willed so to do, either by destroying the World, or disabling the sinner, or by withholding his Moving Influx, or by such a change of his nature, as should make him indefectible. But he that made man in this Middle state, will so continue him, and not make a change in the frame of Nature, to fulfil our wills.
§. 7. No Act as an Act, no Vital Act as Vital, no Intellection, no Volition as such, is Virtue or Sin; And therefore to cause it as such is not to cause either moral good or evil.
§. 8. As God is Related to us as our Owner, Ruler and our chief good, (efficiently as our Benefactor, and finally as our End;) so to consent to these Relations, and to the Duties of our correlations, and to Practice them, is the sum of all Moral Good; even Dispositively and Actually, to be Resigned and devoted to God as our Owner, to obey and please him as our Ruler, and to be Thankful to Him, and totally Love Him, as our Benefactor and our ultimate End. All Moral Goodness lieth in this.
§. 9. By which it appeareth, that Morality consisteth in the due or undue ORDER of our actions and dispositions, as they are a Moral Agent 's related to God himself in these three Relations, and to his Actions therein, viz. his Disposals, his Laws, and his Attractive final Goodness with his Benefits.
§. 10. In these, the Morality consisteth as simpliciter talis in all three inseparably, (as God's Relations are inseparable and our correlations:) But the Relation of our Actions to any one of them, is Morality secundum quid.
§. 11. And among them all, our Action, (submission, resignation, patience) to God merely as our Owner, is Moral but in the slenderest initial sense. And our Actions as related to him as our Rector, are Moral in the fuller formal sense, (And therefore by most accounted the only formal Morality, as being a relation to a Law): But yet our Actions as Related to God our Benefactor, Lover and End, are Moral in the highest, most perfective notion.
§. 12. It is not only sub ration • obedientia as it is a thing commanded by a Law, that Love to God is Morally good, but also in that superior sense, formally as it is the Love of God. And therefore Love is called the Law of Laws, and the fulfilling of the Law, not only as commanded by a Law, but as being the End of the Law, and the state of perfection above it (as Christ is to the Law of Moses;) and also as being a Law eminenter (something greater) though not formaliter.
§. 13. But as there is an Order in these Relations, so is there in the Morality of our Actions as towards them: So that the Last still includeth the rest foregoing. All Love is Obedience; and all Obedience is submission to our Owner: But all Obedience is not Love, nor all Submission or Resignation, formal obedience to a Rector: Though they must all concur, and not be divided, when they are formally distinguished.
§. 14. I have thought it necessary (though I be guilty of some repetition) to open here the Doctrine of formal Morality (Virtue and Vice,) because we cannot understand how God is vindicated from being the Author of sin, till we know what sin is; which we cannot do till we know what Virtue is; which we cannot do, till we know what Morality is: And also because the Schoolmens most subtle elaborate enquiries into this point (especially de nature • peccati) are generally too little subtle or accurate, as comparing it with this little, you may perceive.
§. 15. From all this it is plain; 1. That God as the mere Author and Motor of Nature, doth not cause us to Obey or Love him. And therefore that these must be caused by another superadded operation.
§. 16. Yet when we Obey and Love him, the Generical Nature of the Act is from God as the God of Nature, viz. as it is Intellection, Volition, Action: But that these Actions are so duly ordered as to be thus terminated on God and things commanded, is otherwise caused: For though the Generical nature of Action, Intellection and Volition as such, be seldom found but in some Moral species, and that be never found but in singular acts; yet can one causality procure the Generical nature, and another the Specifical, and another the singularity▪ in the same action. As the Sun is the Generical Cause, and the Virtus Seminalis the specifying, and the Individuatio seminis the Individ •• a • ing, of Plants, Animals, &c.
§. 17. As God is the God of Nature, so he hath settled Nature in such a constant course of motion, as that we have small reason to expect that he should there make any ordinary mutations▪ And therefore (as the Sun aforesaid) he doth by his Generical Influx concur▪ with all Specifying and Individuating Causes, according to their several natures or receptivities.
§. 18. They therefore that suppose that God as the Cause of all Action, must (of natural necessity ad esse) by physical efficient premotion predetermine every Act natural and free, to its object compared with other possible objects, and that in all its modes and circumstances, do confound Nature and Morality▪ and leave nothing for God to do in causing Holiness, but what he must needs do to cause all action that is caused, (allowing the difference of the second effects, • yea, but what he doth in causing every sin: (For his Pracept is not with them the Causing predetermination.)
§. 19. Jesus Christ▪ and his Gospel with all the fore described frame of moral means, and the Spirit▪ to co-operate, are the proper second causes▪ by which God as RECTOR will on his part ordinarily cause Moral Good; and hinder Moral Evil; and by which as our Lover and End he will draw man's soul to himself in Love.
§. 20. God as Rector (though he vary his Laws in some things to several ages and places, and promulgate the same Gospel, with inequality, on several accounts, yet) according to the respective Laws that they are under, dealeth with all men in a certain equality, which is called Justice: that is, His Laws antecedently to man's acts make not difference, and as Judge he maketh none, but what man's different actions require according to the said Laws and Justice. But yet as Owner and as Benefactor he is free (not against, but) above his Laws, to make many inequalities, which are no injustice; they being not acts of formal Government: and so he may do with his own as he list. And thus though God give all their due according to his Law of Grace, yet he giveth to his Elect, such proportions of Grace, as he gave them no antecedent Right to by his Law: (or at least to many of them, passing by the controversy now, whether he do so to them all.)
§. 21. God could cure and sanctify all men, if it were his Absolute will; but he doth not, and will not; being no way obliged: And he will be no loser nor sufferer by the creatures sin.
§. 22. God's absolute will is as fully accomplished by man's free acts, as if they were all necessitated and Natural: And man's actions are as free, as if God had made no Absolute Decree of their futurity (as in Good he hath done, if we may so ascribe futurity to his Decrees.)
§. 23. It seemeth that all sin beginneth in the wills omission of what it was able to have done. Even when Adams appetite was to the forbidden fruit, and some think that this was the first part of the sin, it seemeth that it was rather in the Wills not restraining that appetite when it could have done it: And then positive sins do follow thereupon.
§. 24. There is more Brutishness in sin, and consequently more privative and less positive faultiness of the Reason and Will, than many do consider (which Paul partly meaneth, Rom. 7.) For it is certain, 1. That a passion, e. g. anger or fear, may be forced on a man suddenly as • n a Brute, without Reason. (As if you come behind one and affright him, or strike him suddenly: no Reason raised that passion, and consequently no Rational Will.)
2. It is certain that this passion without Reason can cause despotically a corporal motion▪ as the fearful will start, and run, and the angry strike without any reason or rational will, but as a Beast doth.
3. It is certain that it is the office of the Will to Rule this passion, and these motions.
4. And that it must have due information from the understanding, that so to do is good, and best.
5. If this information of the understanding did never miss of determining the Will, then man would never sin, but when the understanding failed of its necessary office, before the will: which would resolve all sin into the will of God as much as if he directly moved the will to it by necessitating, unresistible predetermination. For the Intellect as such hath no Liberty, but is necessitated by objects, further than it is under the Empire of the Will. And the Objects and Intellect are made by God.
6. Therefore it followeth that there is a certain measure of Intellec ••• l true apprehension, according to which the will can excite and determine itself (without •• y thing which it hath not) and yet can forbear. And that this not-willing what and when it should, is the beginning of all sin.
§. 25. God is no Efficient or Desicient cause of this first Omission of the will: For efficient it hath none: And deficient God is not, who gave man power to have done it. But man is the deficient Cause.
§. 26. Mans not believing, not knowing, not loving, not obeying, not desiring, trusting, fearing, &c. being the far greatest part of the sins of his life , we see by this are not at all of God.
§. 27. Though multitudes of positive Acts of sin do follow such omissions, (and go before some of them;) yet they being not sinful as Acts, but as Disordered (against the Rule and End, and upon undue objects, and especially comparatively▪ preserring the wrong object before the right) it seemeth that in their first instances they are all Omissive, and Positive in the second only: which maketh the Schoolmen so commonly say that sin is a Privation.
§. 28. Yet the Moral formal Relation of sin, is not only Privative, but a Positive Disobedience or Disconformity: And so as Quid Morale formaliter— sin hath as much Relative being as Duty hath, viz. 1. As contra Legem significantem, 2. Contra Voluntatem Dei significatam; 3. Et contra J •• Divini Dominii Imperii & Amoris.
§. 29. If any be unsatisfied in this, it is certain that in the Velle hoc prohibitum potius quam hoc imperat • m, there is no more physical entity, than in the Velle imperatum, no nor than there is in the Velle indefinitely considered as on any object. Or if any deny that, it is certain that there is no such addition of Entity (it being but ordo modi) in any such sinful Act from which as such the formal obliquity or sin resulteth, but what man can do, and doth, without God's causing the Act as so ordered and terminated. So that God is no way the cause of formal sin.
§. 30. They that say, He causeth all that man causeth, and that as the first neces • itating or insuperable cause; but yet is not the cause of the form of sin, contradict themselves; seeing that form is but a Relation, which resulteth ipso facto from its fundamentam and terminus, and ne per divinam potentiam cannot but do so; And hath no other cause but what causeth them.
§. 31. And they that say, that yet God is not the Author of sin, because he is under no Law, do but sport with dreadful things. And they mean that God is the chief Cause of all men's sins in the world, but not of any sin of his own; which is none of the question.
§. 32. God doth neither Cause the sin, nor the futurity or existence of it, as some vainly distinguishing, maintain: (especially Dr. Twisse and Rutherford.) For (as Estius and others truly say) to cause the sin, is nothing but to cause the existence of it. And sin as sin, Dr. Twisse often saith, is not willed by the sinner himself.
§. 33. So far as God Causeth not sin, he willeth it not: and they that say that he Loveth and Willeth the existence of it as a means to his glory, abuse God's Moliness, and are confuted before, Par. 1.
§. 34. How God overruleth sinners, and the effects of sin, and procureth his own ends, not by the Means or Causality, but Occasion of it, I have so largely there opened, that I must refer the Reader thither.
SECT. XX. How far God, and how far Man himself, is the Cause of Hell and other punishments.
THough somewhat be said of this, in the Conclusion of the second Part, I think meet to say more here, because I find that the not understanding it doth tempt many to unbelief, and others to hard repining disaffected atheistical thoughts of God.
§. 1. Again here consider that God made man such as he is in Nature, before either Laws or sins or punishments had any being; so that if you can but forgive God for making you men, (that is, Rational Free-Agents) you can have no fair pretence of quarrel with him: As will appear by these considerations following.
§. 2. Mans Body and sensitive soul are of such a nature, as that things inconvenient will be his pain: He that will take poison shall be griped and tormented by it, and he that will eat unwholesome meat, or will surfeit shall be sick, and he that will cherish diseases by sloth, or excesses, or abuses of nature, will have the pain of them; And he that will wound himself, or break his bones, will be his own afflicter; And he that cuts his throat or hangeth himself, must die. And all this without any doing of God, besides the making him a man, and continuing such a nature (under his Government) in and with the world.
§. 3. Not only positive hurting, but omissions will bring men's bodies unto pain and death; As not eating, not exercising, not keeping warm, &c. And consequently such a life of prodigality or sloth as tendeth to such wants.
§. 4. The inward senses, Imagination and Passions are so constituted as that their inconveniences will be a pain and torment, as well as the inconveniences of the outward senses. 1. Cares and Melancholy thoughts are distracting. 2. Desires breed such care, and are themselves like a thirst or hunger to the soul. 3. Fears are tormenting. 4. Sorrows if deep and long are as a living death. 5. Anger is a vexatious fever of the mind: And revengeful malice and envy do prolong it. 6. Despair anticipateth eternity of misery, &c. 7. And Love itself (how pleasing soever at first) is the strength of them all.
§. 5. The superior faculties, as they are more noble, are capable of greater misery; and their corruption and disorder is the worst. To have an ignorant erring mind, that taketh evil for good, and good for evil; To have a carnal, malignant, wicked, obstinate, froward Will and sinful Affections, and by these to have men's actions misguided, and so the sensitive soul itself brought into the foresaid misery, through bad government, is a misery to man in the Nature, and immediate effects of the thing.
§. 6. Man liveth among multitudes of fellow Creatures in the world, which will all be tormentors of him if he will make them such. As a post will hurt him if he knock his head to it. The fire will burn him if he touch his flesh with it. The water will drown him if he will leap into it over-head. The Sun will scorch him, the frost will pain him, if he expose himself to them. A Lyon or Mastiff will tear him if he avoid them not. His neighbors will hurt him, (likely) if he hurt them, and cross their interest: Men in power will hurt him if he offend them: And all things will be to him as he behaveth himself to them.
§. 7. All this being Natural, let us now consider what sin doth to the sinner here, and you will find that almost all his calamity consisteth in his very sin itself, and the natural effects of it: But yet it is sin as man's, and it is punishment as from God, when yet God is no Cause of the sin.
§. 8. This is plain if you consider that God's Act by which he maketh sin a Punishment, was Before the sin, though the Relation of a Punishment come after the relation of sin. Here are two Agents, 1. God making Nature and a Law therein; 2. Man disordering his actions by transgressing. 3. Hence Immediately followeth Guilt or the form of sin. 4. And with it, even in the change, or after it, the natural pain, of loss or hurt; 5. And this is Related to man as a punishment for the sin, in the last place.
For instance, God made man, and God made meat, wine, and poison: God telleth Man in Nature, [I have made thee such a Creature, as that excess of Meat will make thee sick, excess of Wine will make thee mad, and Poison will torment and kill thee: I have given thee self-love, and command thee that thou avoid all these; and I will not deny thee necessary help; But if thou wilt not, it will be thy pain, which I will that thou suffer for and by thy sin.] I need not further apply it here; the application is obvious.
§. 9. All this I speak only of natural punishments which by the Law of nature follow sin: what is supernatural is after to be considered.
§. 10. And 1. It is evident that the Reatus culpae is either the sin itself or its inseparable effect. He that hath once sinned is Related to God as a sinner. And an infamous Relation, such as of a Rebel, a Rogue, a Murderer, &c. is no small evil, in all sound men's esteem.
§. 11. 2. Sin is the Deformity, disorder, and disease of the soul; and its Habits are a kind of Vicious Nature: It is the Nature of Devils to be exceeding malignant, rebellious and at enmity with God and spiritual Goodness: To have a Nature or Disposition, which is averse to that which should be its own end, delight and happiness. And a wise man would rather be annihilated, than turned into a Toad, a Snake or Adder, though their nature be not offensive to themselves. How much more would he rather be annihilated than become a Devil? Wicked men are liker to Devils than they are aware of: They Love not God and Holiness: nay they have a malignant enmity to him: which maketh them so averse to all that is Holy in their lives, and to be such persecutors and haters of good men. So that the Scripture calleth their wisdom Devilish, yea and themselves flat Devils in plain words, and the Children of the Devil, Jam. 3. 15. Joh. 8. 44. Joh. 6. 70. One of you is a Devil. And 13. 2. Act. 13. 10. Thou Child of the Devil and enemy of all righteousness— 1 Joh. 3. 8, 10. He that commits sin is of the Devil— Therefore they are adjudged to suffer with the Devil and his Angels, as the Saints shall be equal with the Angels of God. For the truth is, a Saint and an Angel, and a wicked man and a Devil, do differ less than is commonly thought on. Now what sober man would not rather be Nothing, than be a Devil? To have a venomous, malignant, malicious, restless, rebellious nature, at enmity to Good and in love with evil? And who is it that maketh men to be such? Not God but themselves.
1. Is it not a great calamity to be mad? Wicked men are far worse: and they made themselves such.
2. Were it not a great misery to have a nature that had no Love to, or delight in, health, cleanliness, dwelling, food, friends, &c. but hated all of them, and set against them? How much more to have such an enmity to God and holiness and our own salvation?
3. Were it not a misery to have a nature distrustful of all our truest friends: afraid of poison in all that we eat and drink, and still thinking that our own parents seek our death? How much more to have a distrustfulness of God?
4. Were it not a misery to be deceived with a thousand errors, and to take evil for good, and good for evil: and to spend ones days in bewildering perplexities or fall • e conceits? How much more to be mistaken about God, and things of greatest excellency and consequence?
5. Were it not a misery to have a Will that is perversely set against the wills of all our Governors and dearest friends? That must needs have and do whatsoever is forbidden us by the greatest, wisest and best of men? How much more, to have a Will that is thus set against the will of God?
6. It is a misery to have a violent Appetite after that which cannot be had, or cannot satisfy. To have vehement hunger and thirst without meat or drink, &c. Wicked men have such a diseased appetite after things that God told them would neither be satisfactory nor continuing. All this and more is in sin itself, in the Habits or Nature, which God never made.
§. 12. The exercise of this diseased vitiated Inclination, is an actual torment: As it is more Joyful to use Grace, than merely to Have it; so is it as to sin more calamitous. And 1. Men's willful blindness and neglect of God, depriveth them of all the excellency and delights of holy knowledge.
2. Their Disaffection and malignity depriveth them of all that holy Joy, and invaluable sweetness, which cometh in by the exercise of the Love of God; And of all the pleasures of a holy life. As a sick stomach doth loath a feast, and a malicious man hath not the pleasures of friendship: so how can that soul delight in God that Loveth him not?
3. Unbelief and distrust deprive the soul of all that quietness and content, which followeth faith and confidence in God.
4. A Rebellious will doth lose all that Rest which the obedient find in pleasing God, and in his blessed will.
5. Luxury and carnality and all sin deprive the soul of the pleasures of temperance, chastity, innocence, and a good and quiet conscience.
6. Wickedness and sloth deprive the soul of the pleasure of doing good to others, by works of charity, which is very great. Abundance such privations are in sin.
§. 13. And sin itself brings the contrary torments. 1. Sinful malignity against God and Good men maketh the wicked eat their flesh as it were with envy, and vex themselves with persecution and revenge.
2. Sinful anger is a sinners rage and pain: And though he have pleasure in revenge, it is a painful pleasure, like a troublesome itch.
3. Self-willedness maketh a man continual vexation and disappointment, while he must needs have that which he cannot have, or which will torment him when he hath it.
4. Carnal Love is the root of misery, while it Tantalizeth the soul, or longeth for its own vexation.
5. Sinful fear is a tormenting distraction.
6. Sinful grief is a continual sickness and self-vexation.
7. Sinful Desires engage men in self-afflicting labors.
8. Sinful cares are as thorns in a man's heart.
9. Sinful Impatience and discontent is torment itself.
10. Sinful, confused, unruly thoughts, are the annoyance and the shame of the soul. And all these are men's own sins, not Caused by God, but by themselves.
§. 14. Next Sin itself, there is the natural consequent of it, which is caused by the sinner himself. As 1. That God doth not complacentially Love him: which is no change in God, whose Nature is to Love Good and Hate Evil; but in the sinner himself, who hath made himself uncapable.
2. And that God's Hatred is terminated on the sinner, is his own doing▪ Even as he that would open his naked breast to the scorching Sun, or cold Frost, is hurt by himself. When God hateth a sinner and delighteth in a Saint, there is no Diversity in Him, but in Them.
3. The loss of Right to Heaven and all God's special benefits, is their own work, and not by any change in God. God made a Deed of Gift of Heaven to the faithful: And if they be unfaithful, it is their own doing to cast away or refuse that right.
4. Abundance of temporal mercies men's sins cast away. For
§. 15. Sin doth here torment even men's bodies. The slothful and the prodigal bring want upon themselves: The glutton, drunkard, fornicator, and the idle, breed painful diseases in their own flesh: And most men dy • by some sinfully contracted maladies.
§. 16. Besides the Natural consequents, and the natural effects on the Body, there are natural calamitous effects of sin on the soul; As 1. The consciousness of a man's sin, called An evil Conscience.
2. The shame that ariseth from the guilt.
3. The Conscience and sense of God's displeasure (a tormenting thing.)
4. Sadness for our folly in hurting ourselves.
5. And fear of all the after miseries. All hitherto mentioned, men do themselves against themselves.
§. 17. Yea more, men themselves make other men their tormentors. The angry stir up others to hurt them. The offenders stir up Magistrates to punish them. The fornicator chooseth a filthy disease under the name of a pleasure, and kindleth a putrid fevor in his own soul. The covetous and unjust make all men their enemies; and so do many of the proud, tyrannical and oppressors. The froward will not give themselves rest in their own families; but make Wives, Husbands, Children, Servants, and everything to be their own vexation. And O what work do bloody Tyrants by Wars and persecution make to themselves and others in the world? and what Calamities doth miserable mankind bring, by folly and wickedness, on themselves?
§. 18. In a word, shall we not believe that there is a Hell, and know much of the nature of it; when we see a Hell already begun on earth? and the whole world walloweth in folly, filth, impiety, and woe? As Heaven is known here by its first-fruits of the spirit, so Hell may be (I think) more known by its beginning, as more notorious. Men are almost Devils already: conceive them but all turned fully into Devils by themselves (and not by God) and you will know much of Hell.
§. 19. And for the Life to come, consider, that God made man's soul Immortal before man made it sinful: And who can expect that God should alter or destroy his work? Live we must, because we have Immortal souls. And must not men look to Live as they are? Such then as the wicked make themselves, no wonder if they continue.
§. 20. And then exceeding wickedness will make them Devils; and all that they here initially brought on themselves, will be there in eminency. Their Minds will be blind as to Good and Evil, though not as to mere notional Truth. Their wills set against God's will. Their hatred of God and goodness increased: Their Intellects, memories and thoughts, will be the treasury of pain; Their wills and affections the seat of misery • And their invigorated power, will make all lively.
§. 21. And a mind thus blinded cannot see God as Good, but only as hurtful by Justice. A Will that hath no Love to God and holiness, can take no delight in them. Heaven must be to them as a feast to a sick stomach: They turn their own Hearts from God and Heaven, and deprive themselves of all its joys. They hate the Heavenly society; and so • an be none of their companions in delight. They deprive themselves of Innocency, of Divine Love, of the Grace of the Holy Ghost, of part in Christ, of peace of Conscience, by willful diversion, opposition and incapacity, as he that shuts his Windows against the Sun-light. It is themselves that turn themselves thus out of Heaven.
§. 22. And it will be their own Lusts that will tantalize or torment them. For God did let them know that this world and its pleasure must soon forsake them: They cannot expect that God should give them wealth, meat, drink, and carnal pleasures, after this life: If they will needs contract a fleshly thirst, God is not bound to follow them with satisfaction.
§. 23. Even their malignity (like Satan's) will be their torment, filling them with envy at the felicity of the Saints, or hatred of their holiness. And when we are in Heaven, Devils and devilish men will be in subjection to the Saints, so low and base as will increase their rage.
§. 24. It is likely that their very nature or substance will be much more base than that of the Glorified, as their place and condition will be: For God is not bound to make them Naturally Glorious. Devils dwell in the air and earth: And inhabitants use to be connatural to their Regions and Elements.
However, it is a groundless fancy of too many that think that the sensitive faculties shall cease. The Organs and manner or sorts of sensation may be altered: But the soul will be still sensitive as well as rational (notwithstanding their vain objection about bruits.) And therefore the condition they put themselves into, will as necessarily give them sensible torment, as poison will in the stomach, and as despairing men now torment and make away themselves.
§. 25. At least when they have bodies, they will have sense.
§. 26. Devils and wicked men with them, will objectively torment them.
§. 27. I deny not but besides all these there may be punishments more efficiently from God. But all this alone, which sinners not only Deserve but Inflict upon themselves, will make a Hell of unspeakable misery.
The Conclusion, Summing up the several ways of the Contenders.
I Shall conclude with a further Explication, 1. What the Judgment▪ of the Protestants was in the Synod of Dort about the nature of Grace (besides what I have cited of theirs before.) 2. I shall give you some Animadversions on the Epilogue of Alvarez, 3. And of the Jesuits way of Scientia Media: 4. And of Aureolus and Durand 's way: 5. And of the Scotists and Nominals Causa Partialis: 6. I shall fullier give you the sum and Consectaries of the Dominican Predetermination, and the reasons which alienate me from their way. 7. I shall Epitomize Jansen, with some Animadversions on his way: 8. And sum up in few words what sober minds may rest in.
§. 1. AND that you may see how little difference there is even in this point of Effectual Grace, where all the difference seemeth to be founded, 1. See what the British Divines say in the Synod of Dort; de art. 3. & 4. suffrag. p. 124.
Th. 1. There are certain outward works, ordinarily required of men, before they are brought to the state of Regeneration or Conversion, which use to be sometime freely done by them, and sometime freely omitted: as to go to Church, to hear the Preaching of the Word, and such like.
Th. 2. There are certain inward effects, which are excited in the hearts of those that are not yet justified, previous to Conversion and Regeneration, by the virtue of the word and spirit: such as are, the knowledge of God's will, the sense of sin, the fear of punishment, the thoughts of deliverance, some hope of pardon. To the state of Justification—God's grace useth not to bring men by sudden Enthusiasm, but prepared and fitted (or disposed) by many previous actings by the Ministry of the word. As in natural Generation there are many previous dispositions before the reception of the form; so in the spiritual we come to the spiritual birth by many foregoing actings of Grace. If God would immediately Regenerate and Justify a wicked man, not prepared by any knowledge, any sorrow, any desire, any hope of pardon, there were no need of the Ministry of man and the Word Preached to do it—
Th. 3. Those that God thus affecteth by his spirit by means of the Word, them he truly and seriously calleth and inviteth to faith and conversion. We must judge of the helps of Grace by the nature of the offered benefit and by God's plain word, and not by the abuse and event. Se • ing the Gospel of its own nature calleth men to Repentance and Salvation, seeing the excitements of grace tend to it, we must not think that God here doth anything dissemblingly—Nor can it be imagined that that calling by the word and spirit can make men unexcuseable, which is given only to that end to make them unexcuseable—
Th. 4. Those whom he thus affecteth, God forsaketh not, nor ceaseth to promote them in the true way to conversion, before he is forsaken by them, by voluntary neglect, or the repulse of this initial grace. The talent of grace once given men of God, is not taken away from any man, till he bury it by his own fault. Therefore we are oft warned in Scripture, not to resist or quench the spirit, nor to receive the grace of God in vain, nor to fall from God. Yea it is plainly given as the reason of God's forsaking men that they first forsake him—
Th. 5. Many lose these beginnings—
Th. 6. The Elect do not so behave themselves under these preparatory workings, but that for their negligence and resistance, they might justly be forsaken of God: But such is God's special mercy to them, that though for a time they may repel or suffocate this exciting and illuminating grace, yet God doth urge them again and again, and ceaseth not to promove them, till he fully subjugate them to his grace, and place them in the state of regenerate sons.
Th. 7. All men resist God's grace, and God might justly forsake all, —but doth not—]
By all this it is evident that they took not man to be forsaken of God in the state of mere original sin, or the corrupt mass, but as a willful resister and refuser of offered Grace, and oft after the receiving of much preparing grace; and that God forsaketh none till they forsake his grace.
2. To the same sense our English Divines commonly tell us how, ordinarily God prepareth, men for conversion before he convert them; and how far persons unconverted may go in common grace: He that readeth Mr. Hooker of New England, Mr. John Rogers his doctrine of faith, Mr. Boltons instructions for comfort— Mr. Meads Almost a Christian, and abundance such, will see that they were of the same mind.
3. Hence it is plain, that those persons that resisted this further work of grace, and forsook God first, had true Power to have done otherwise; and could have gone further than they did, without any other grace than they had: (Though quoad necessitatem sequentem vel consequentiae, it might be inferred even from God's prescience, that it could not be.)
4. They here describe God's effectual grace by moral titles, of God's urging them till they yield; though (as after they open it) God's renewing active influx, maketh new creatures, and is not a mere moral indetermining suasion leaving the will indifferent.
5. The truth is (as is aforesaid) no mortal man can tell of any difference on God's part between his common and special agency on souls, but only on the part of the work done; Nay it is against the doctrine of all • orts of Divines both Papists and Protestants as to the generality, that there is any difference at all. For they all say that all God's actions ad extra are no • hing but his essence (viz. his essential knowledge, will and power) which is undividedly one, as terminated, effecting, related and denominated variously: E. g. by one Volition he willeth divers products, but not by divers volitions ex parte sui, either considered specifically or numerically; but the specification and individuation is only in the effects, and in God's will as relatively denominated. And if this be all men's doctrine, what an unhappy case is the Church fallen into, that the very same men that say this, should yet intolerably quarrel, Whether this one Divine attingency or operation shall be called Creation, infusion, urgency, excitation, persuasion, physical, hyperphysical, moral, or what else, when all are agreed that all are one and the same ex parte Dei.
And as to the effects, I do myself think that a certain Impulse received on the soul, is the first effect, and the Act of man (as faith) is but a second, and that of both Causes: But we cannot tell well what that Impulse is; And therefore must dispute in the dark about the differences of it. And this is nothing to them that own nothing but God's essence as the cause of our act, as the first effect: If their opinion hold true that as in Creation there was no mediate Impulse between the Creator and the Creature (for there was no recipient,) so here there is no effect on the soul before the Act and habit of faith itself, then what is that Grace whose Ratio efficaciae we can make a Controversy of? Ad hominem at least I may say that it is common acts and habits, overtopped by fleshly interest and concupiscence, which are wrought by common grace; and that it is special acts and habits overcoming the flesh and world, which are wrought by special grace. So that those firemen that are resolved that yet differ they will, and implacably differ, and their adversaries shall be enemies of God's Grace whether they will or not, are yet defective in that acuteness and pregnancy of wit which is necessary to pretend a real disagreement, and are forced to say that they disagree when they have not wit enough to seem to prove it to any but those that take their choleric zeal and reproach for proof: For in this there is no difference among us.
6. Obj. At least we can prove that we differ in this, about the effects, that one side make God's gracious habits given to believers to be, such as may be lost and die, and the other do not.
Answ. That is no difference: You still want wit to make differences though you want not will. For both sides are agreed that perseverance ariseth not from the mere nature of the Habit of grace, but from God's superadded sustentation. For Adam and the fallen Angels had (as is commonly held) such kind of habitual grace as we (though objectively differing.)
7. Seeing there is no difference, on God's part (as they all conclude,) Resistible grace and irresistible, sufficient and effectual, can have no difference, but in the very effect or event, and the connotation of man's Power or impotency to the contrary. I know (as I have said) that not only the Dominicans and Calvinists, but Suarez and other Jesuits, say that Effectual Grace is such ex parte principii as is forcibler for faith as the effect. But they contradict themselves, who confidently say, that besides that effect, it is nothing but God's essence which hath no degrees or real differences. And man's power of Resistance and frustration is none as to God's will and essence, but only as to the effect; When he could have done otherwise.
8. The same Vanity they declare in the question, Whether the same degree of Divine Grace, help, or operation, would Convert one man as doth another, or would Convert as doth not Convert. When they are agreed that the effect is not the same; and that the cause hath no degrees of difference.
9. And though it's past man's understanding to comprehend how all the various effects in the world should be produced without the least diversity in the Cause (Will or Action) ex parte agentis, and that Velle salvare Petrum, & velle damnare Judam, should be perfectly the same Volition ex parte Volentis; yet it is the liker to be true because man cannot comprehend it; as long as he hath no evidence to prove that it is not true. For God is incomprehensible.
10. Seeing then that we must consent, 1. That God Decreed to do all that he doth, and properly and absolutely no more; 2. And that Christ's death is the cause of all that it effecteth, and properly of no more (Of which the conditional gift of pardon and life is part,) And so that all the Controversy 1. Of Decree, 2. Of Redemption, is resolved into that of the effects; 3. And seeing all the effects are such whose difference we little differ about, if at all; and ex parte Dei agentis they agree that there is no difference: where then is the Difference among all the contenders?
§. II. Alvarez his Epitome in Twenty Propositions, considered.
BUt that all this may more plainly appear, I will recite the Twenty Conclusions, which Alvarez in his Epilogus giveth us as the sum of all his Book (one hundred twenty one Disputations:) And I shall tell you how far they are all to be consented to.
I. Free-will in lapsed nature cannot without the help of grace do a moral work, which by co-operation of the supernatural End shall be truly good, and a work of Virtue; so as that by the doer it be referred to God beloved simply above all, as to the ultimate natural End.
Answ. It is granted, (and more) that though all natural men have one sort of Grace given them, yet, I think, this cannot be done without special saving grace.
II. Man by the sole strength of nature cannot assent to all supernatural mysteries propounded and explained to him, as revealed of God, or because revealed of God so as the formal reason of his belief is Divine revelation.
Answ. It's true: He must have commoner grace to believe them dogmatically and uneffectually; and special saving grace to believe them practically and savingly.
III. Not only faith itself, but also the first beginning of faith proceedeth from the help of grace, and not from the strength of Nature only.
Answ. Very true.
IV. The free-will of man in lapsed Nature cannot without the help of Grace Love God above all simply, even as he is the author of Nature.
Answ. It's true.
V. Man in lapsed Nature without the help of Grace, cannot fulfill all the precepts even of the Law of Nature, nor overcome any great difficulty and temptation, even for any little time, which it is necessary to overcome, for the keeping of that Law.
Answ. True: Therefore they have some Grace that do it.
VI. There is no Law, nor ever was made by God, of his giving the actual helps of preventing grace, to them that do all that is in them, by the sole faculty of nature: nor hath Christ merited or would have any such Law.
Answ. True: For he giveth some common grace to all men antecedently, without any condition on their part: And though he give to those that use their common grace to the utmost (or near it) sufficient encouragement to go on and hope that such endeavor shall not be in vain as to the obtaining of peculiar grace, yet de nomine vel definitione, Whether this encouragement shall be called a Law, or a Promise, or neither, we contend not.
VII. God by his helping grace floweth into free-will by premoving it that it may co-operate, and also truly-efficiently together with the same free-will causeth its pious operation.
Answ. It's true: But all adjuvant grace produceth not the second effect, which floweth from both Causes, (of which before and after.)
VIII. When God by his exciting Grace, striketh and toucheth the hearts of men, he doth not expect that the will by its innate liberty, begin its motion, by Consenting: But God by adjuvant grace effecteth, that it freely and infallibly Consent.
Answ. It's true of all that do consent: But God hath a degree of exciting and adjuvant grace, which are Necessary and give the posse Velle, which cause not the act, through man's defect: And though God expect not that effect, as one that is deceived, yet he commandeth it, and requireth it of us. But exciting and adjuvant Grace are all one on God's part: And if you will difference the same things as connoting divers effects, you must denominate it more fitly from the effects, by words that notify the difference.
IX. Adjuvant Grace and Free-will are not Partial Causes of supernatural Consent, as two drawing a Boat, so as neither is premoved by the other, or maketh it co-operate with it.
Answ. True: For God premoveth the will of man, though through man's fault it be not ever effectual. And though God's will and man's be two Causes of the same effect, the term Partial is scarce fit, while man hath his whole power and activity from God.
X. Scientia media is not to be ascribed to God,—But all prescience of the future co▪operation of the will, even from the foresaid Hypothesis, presupposeth in signo rationis the free decree of God's will, by which absolutely (or granting that Hypothests) he will in us and with us effect that operation if Good, and permit it if Evil.
Answ. Here come in your presumptions of things unknown or false. 1. That God knoweth future contingents, and conditionals is certain: But I think this scientia media unfitly named, and an unnecessary distribution, and insufficient to the Jesuits ends.
2. And your fiction of signa rationis, and the necessary antecedence of a decree of God's, to his knowledge of every Volition of man, is a more ungrounded and perilous figment, which you have not proved. It seemeth a denial of God's Omniscience or perfection, that he cannot know an act future as future, but only as decreed to be so.
3. You deceitfully talk of permitting evil while you plead for the irresistible predetermining premotion of the will by God to every evil act with all its circumstances: Is that but Permitting?
4. To permit is Nothing: no act of God; but a non-agency: not to hinder. And how prove you, that God must of necessity have a Positive Decree, for every Nothing or non-agency? Is not the not-willing or notdecreeing to hinder a lie, e. g. (supposing natural concourse,) or to make more worlds, enough to the production of that lie by an ill inclined nature? or to the not-being of more Worlds? We are in the dark, and God is infinitely above us, and these tremendous mysteries are not to be so presumptuously handled by unproved assertions.
XI. There is on our part no Cause, Reason or Condition assignable, for which God's supernatural providence, in comparison of this or that hath the formal reason of predestination, or retaineth the common reason of providence: but predestination is to be reduced into the sole free-will of God.
Answ. Most of this is about mere words. The word Predestination connoteth various effects and objects: and so is called various Acts. There is no efficient Cause in the Creature of any act of God: But there are objects without which God's Acts have not their special denominations; and these objects are the termini, and called Material Constitutive Causes of those various acts as denominated various, specially or numerically: And so God's Decree or Will to Justify and Glorify man, hath something in the object as a necessary condition of it , which is not •• the object of his decree of giving faith; And that hath something in its object, which is not in the object of the decree of giving a Redeemer to the World, or making the World, &c. if you will at all distinguish God's decrees by their objects, or effects: But if not, there will be no matter for any Controversy.
And Predestination is an ambiguous word: If it be taken for All God's fore-decreeing, or all about man, or all of Good to us; then our Being is the first effect of it in us, and the making of the World a preparatory effect, &c. And so, no doubt, the first effect supposed us no men, before, and therefore no condition in us. But if you take Predestination for God's decree of Giving us Grace and Glory only, then it is presupposed that we are lapsed sinners.
And the decree of damning men is exercised only on them as foreknown damnable sinners; And the decree of penal denying Grace or faith to sinners for sin, supposeth them such punishable sinners: But the bare Negation of a Decree to give faith to one to whom the absence is no privation, is unfitly called Reprobation, (though men may talk at their own rates;) And we grant that some such no-decrees have no condition in the objects, for they have no objects: e. g. If you will feign that God decreed from eternity, to give me no faith before the Creation, or before I was born; or to give Innocent Adam no faith in a Savior as dying for him▪ this were no reprobating act. But when God hath given men a Savior with his common grace to believe in and accept, here if he deny them necessary grace to believe, it is a penal act. And note that Christ and Common grace as absolutely given to mankind, and offered to individuals, ever goeth before men's accepting or refusing him: And no man to whom he is offered, refuseth him for want of necessary help, till by sin against that grace he forfeit it.
XII. God by an absolute and efficacious decree of his Will, antecedently to the prescience of the future good use of free-will, predetermined all good acts, which are done in time, specially those by which the predestinate come to eternal life.
Answ. The substance of this seemeth true: only 1. Whether you fitly denominate a decree efficacious from eternity, which effecteth nothing till the Time, I leave to them that dispute of words.
2. You presumptuously determine God's Decrees to be antecedent to his prescience herein; when they are neither before nor after one another.
3. If by predetermining you mean more than predecreeing or prevolition, as if man's will was predetermined, when it was not determined, or determined before it had a being, you speak contradictions. But God's own will was eternally determined (if we may so say of that which was never undetermined) to give all the grace that he giveth in time, and to cause all the good acts that he causeth, as he causeth them.
XIII. The Co-operation of free-will with the gifts of grace, is in the predestinate, an effect of predestination; and efficiently proceedeth from God making us by the help of grace freely to co-operate; and consequently dependeth not on the sole and innate liberty of the will.
Answ. I think so too.
XIV. We must necessarily distinguish of a twofold help of Grace; one sufficient, by which man may be converted to God, or work piously: The other effectual, by which God effecteth that he be actually converted, and act piously.
Answ. Hold to that, and contradict not the terms in your description, and all's well.
XV. The effectual help of preventing or preoperating grace moveth man's free-will to act, not only by persuading, alluring, inviting, or other morally attracting, even inwardly; but also efficaciously and truly effecting, that the will moved and excited of God determine itself and act well.
Answ. We know what man's persuading and moral operations are (a little): But the difference between these interior acts of God named by you no man knoweth. You cannot prove that his Interiour suasion is not truly efficient of the act: nor know you how God pro • ureth our determination, as to the mode of his interior operation. Your arbitrary names have no signification of your true formal conceptions of the matter. This Controversy therefore is vain.
XVI. The efficacy of the help of preventing grace, and the infallible connection of it with the free co-operation of the will, is totally founded and taken as from its first root, from the Omnipotency of God, and from the absolute and efficacious decree of his will, willing that the man whom he moveth be converted and work piously: nor doth this efficacy any way depend, no not as on a condition sine qua non, on the future co-operation of the created will; though the free act by which man persevereth depend effectively on his will moved by God.
Answ. 1. I grant that all the good that cometh to pass is fore-decreed by God. 2. But God's mere will effecteth it not without his Power. 3. His power effecteth it not from eternity before it is effected. 4. You leave out one of the causal Attributes; The effect of Grace is as well from the Wisdom of God, as from his Will and Power 5. God's act dependeth not on man's will. But man's co-operation which is his own act, you must confess dependeth on his will as the effect on the nearest efficient. 6. The non-efficiency of sufficient Grace dependeth on the sinners will. It was not merely nor principally from an absolute efficacious Decree or predetermination of God, that Adams will omitted his duty first, or committed sin first. And if any run to the common shadow that sin hath no efficient cause, and man only is deficient, I answer 1. He is the first Reputative Deficient (though not culpable, because under no Law) who must be the first efficient of the contrary and is not: As if Adams body had never had a soul, God was the first Non-efficient Cause, that is, into whose will and non-agency the whole ratio defectus is to be resolved. 2. Forget not that Alvarez himself saith, lib. 6. disp. 45. p. 210.
XVII. Supposing effectual Grace in free-will, it infallibly followeth, that free-will will consent and act piously: so that these two are incompossible, that effectual Grace be in a man, and that he actually dissent.
Answ. True, because it is not called properly effectual, unless either 1. Because it effecteth, 2. Or as it cometh from an absolute decree of effecting, 3. Or is of such a nature and degree that it cannot but effect. And in all these cases it is true.
But such Grace may be eventually ineffectual, which had a sufficiency ex parte sui to effect.
XVIII. The gift of perseverance, as such, and the efficacy of it, dependeth not, no not as on a Condition sine qua non, on the co-operation of our free-will, but on the absolute decree of God, effecting man's perseverance.
Answ. This needeth no other explication or observation, but as aforesaid. Only that the Jus ad gratiam quâ ad finem perseveremus, is given on condition, in the Gospel, from how absolute a decree soever it proceed.
XIX. Effectual aid and a Power of dissenting, are compossible in the same subject, and consist in the same will.
Answ. True: And remember that a true Power is that quâ vere possumus; and not that faculty which could do this or that if God will predetermine it, and otherwise cannot; no more than the Sun can shine without him. When God withholdeth the Influx necessary to action, such a faculty is no true power as to that action in that State.
XX. By preventing Grace efficacious as aforesaid, the Liberty of the will is not destroyed, nor the actual use of it hindered, but is wonderfully perfected and roborated.
Answ. There is a Liberty that is perfected by some even necessitating predetermination of God: And there is an inferior Liberty of Imperfect Viators, which some efficient Divine predetermination (feigned by you) would destroy. And if God did by that insuperable premoving influx (which omnipotently moveth all things) predetermine all men and Devils to all the wicked Volitions and actions that ever were done, with all the circumstances, and as respecting every object comparatively, so that no creature ever did nor can resist such a predetermination any easier than make a World, this were to destroy the true Liberty of that Creature, with his innocence and felicity: however you may at pleasure put the name of Liberty on, and deny the name of Necessity to, such an absolutely necessitated Volition and act; and then may say, that they are premoved and predetermined to do the Act of all sin freely (or constrained to do it without constraint,) and so the liberty of the will is established. For I see not but cogere ad Volendum is as apt a phrase, as cogere nolentem ad agendum; when a will formerly innocent is irresistibly predetermined by physical efficiency, to all those comparate circumstantiate acts, which are forbidden in God's Law, and that on pain of man's damnation.
But note how wisely Alvarez left out the great difference, about predetermining to the acts of sin, from this summary of his disputations.
§. III. Of the three other ways, and I. Of the Jesuits way.
Quest. AS you have past your judgment on Alvarez and his Dominican way, tell us how much you think well or ill of in the other three ways mentioned by Alvarez, and recited by you sect. 8?
Answ. I. I have said enough before to answer this: Briefly, as to the Jesuits way de scientia media, 1. It is certain, that God knoweth all that i a capable object of knowledge: And therefore he knoweth what conditional propositions of future contingents are true.
2. Whether this should be called scientia media or not, is a vain question.
3. God's acts ex parte sui being but his Essence, and all one, can no otherwise be distinguished, nor ordered as to the denominations of priority or posteriority, than as the objects are distinct, and by their order of priority and posteriority allow us by Conn • tation so to denominate the acts.
4. The Intelligibility and the Amability of things are in themselves simultaneous, though from the order of human operations, we say that things are first Intelligible, before they are Amiable. And so we may say of God after the manner of men; but not otherwise.
5. God doth not will the form, or the act of sin as circumstantiated, and as the form necessarily resulteth from it: neither for itself, nor propter aliud; the essence or existence.
6. Therefore God doth not foreknow sin as willed and decreed by him: nor therefore foreknow it because he willeth it.
7. God fore-knoweth (or knoweth) the formal peccati as well as the material: yet almost all confess, that he willeth not the formal: Therefore he knoweth that which he willeth not: Therefore his Volition of it is not necessary to his knowledge of it.
8. There is no effect in God: for all that is in God is God; who is not effected: Therefore there is no Cause in God of anything in God: Therefore God's will or decree of Good is not the cause that he foreknoweth it, no • his foreknowledge the cause that he willeth it: But he both knoweth and willeth all that is Good, at once.
9. God's inward operations on the soul are real efficiencies, and yet moral, and to us unsearchable: They cause the will to determine itself to Good, when it doth so; but how we know not. But we know that he ordinarily worketh by means, and according to their aptitude.
10. God useth such means with the free wills of his elect as he foreknoweth will prevail with them; and setteth them in such circumstances as he foreknoweth they will freely act aright in: But his inward grace is the principal or chief cause: And he doth not will or decree to give them such means and circumstances, because he foreknoweth they will prevail. That is, God's will and decree as in him hath no cause.
11. But the word [because] is in Scripture applied sometimes to God's Love or hatred, and sometimes to his outward acts: (as John 16. 27. The Father loveth you, because ye have loved me and believed—) And in the first case that which is meant, is, that the qualification of the object is the material constitutive cause of the act of God, (not as it is Himself, but) as relatively denominated ab extra from the object in specie vel individuo. And in the second case, It meaneth, that the effects of God ad extra called his transient acts as in passo, have their proper uses, and we our commanded ends in using them: And so God is said to send Ministers, e. g. because he would save the hearers; that is, the Ministry is a cause of men's •• lvation.
12. From all this it appeareth, that they err who think that their scientia media is equally useful in the points of Election and of Reprobation, and that they run pari passa. For all Good is both willed and known, and so Election supposeth not the foresight of our faith or obedience as causal or antecedent, (if we speak of that Act of Election which is to faith and obedience.) But Evil is foreknown and not willed at all: And therefore there is no such Reprobation which is a will or decree that men shall sin: And the non-impedition of sin being no act, needeth no positive act of will or decree . But Reprobation which is the decree of damning, ever supposeth the object to be a foreseen-sinner finally rejecting grace.
The rest about this is spoken to sufficiently before.
§. IV. II. Of Durand 's way.
II. AS to the way of Aureolus, Durand, Ludov. à Dola, &c. I conceive it is commonly rejected, because not understood, or because the wording of it soundeth disgracefully; But it is a great matter that all confess, how easily it would end all these controversies, were it true. And by Lud. à Dola 's Explication, and what Capreolus saith of Aureolus, I conceive that they are commonly mistaken. Durand thinketh, that to the motion of the Creature it is necessary 1. That God by his continued influx continue the being and the nature and properties of the agent; 2. And that he continue all the circumstant creatures, concauses and objects and the media of action; 3. And that no powerful impediment hinder the action. Now, say the Jesuits and Dominicans and the rest, God doth moreover concur as the first cause to the Act itself, by an Immediate efficient Influx, besides that by which he upholdeth the Power and second Causes. But I think that Durand meaneth as much as they: that is, that God doth not only uphold the creature in its mere esse, but in its Nature, which is its Mobility, and its principium motus; And this Nature is not only a Power to Action, but also an Inclined Power. So that for God by constant Influx to continue a Natural Power and Inclination to Action or motion, with all necessary concurrents, without impediments, is truly by his Influx to concur to the motion as the first Cause; while his Influx is not only as to Being, but as to the Motive force, and inclination: And no more than this doth seem to me to be simply necessary to motion.
Here the Reader must know, that the Controversy is equally of Natural and Free agents and action. And first let us inquire of natural action.
I. Fire is an Active nature, as much Inclined to Action as Earth to non-action or rest. Yea, its Active Virtue and Inclination is its very Essential Form, and this as to a threefold action, viz. Motion, Light and Heat. If God then make Fire and continue its Nature or Essential Inclination to these acts, and continue fuel approximate with all necessary concauses and media without impediments, to say that this Fire yet cannot burn or act, without another kind of Divine premotion besides all this, even an Immediate physical impulse, besides the described Influx, is a plain contradiction: For Fire is essentially an Inclined Power to act. And that▪ which hath a true Power to act, can act: It's a contradiction to say, It hath power, but it cannot. And a Power naturally inclined to act, will act, caeteris paribus.
The question then is, Whether it be an impossibility for fire to burn▪ if God do but as the first Cause of Nature, continue its burning power▪ and inclination with all concauses? or rather, Was it not a Miracle for the three Confessors, Dan. 3. not to be burnt in that fiery Furnace▪ If you say, that the Miracle was, in God's withholding his additional premotion, you then imply that God as principium vel causa prima Naturae doth ordinarily give that additional premotion. For that is no Miracle which is not dissonant from the common course of nature. But nothing can belong to God as the Cause of Nature, but to continue Nature as he made it, and he actually premoveth and concurreth while by his Influx as the first cause, he continueth all its Moving Nature, both Power and Inclination.
In the motus projectorum, so far as the moving vis impressa continueth and prevaileth, the motion continueth accordingly; And who can prove that though the vis impressa continue, e. g. in a Bullet shot out of a Gun, and all concauses, yet there can be no motion, unless God otherwise thrust it on, or move it by some other impulse▪
Suppose a Stone or Rock hang in the Air quasi per filum, or by somewhat that hindereth its descent: If God continue the Natural Gravity of that Rock, which is not only a power but an inclination to descend, and if he continue all concauses and media, and if the thread be cut or the impediment removed that held up the stone, yet saith the Dominican, this Stone cannot fall unless God moreover by another action thrust it down, or▪ by an efficient physical premotion predetermine it; or as▪ the Jesuits say, unless God concur with a further moving Impulse. A plain contradiction: That a Power of motion, strongly inclined to act, so as a greater power is necessary in the impediment that will hinder it, and this in genere Agentis, continued by Divine Influx, yet cannot act, unless otherwise moved.
God worketh so constantly by Natural Inclinations of second causes, as fully proveth to us, that ut prima Causa Naturae, he hath decreed so to work. And how is that then but by his Influx into Nature as Nature?
If my house cannot fall when the foundations and pillars are gone, unless God otherwise thrust it down; If I cannot fall though I leap down from the house top, unless God otherwise thrust me down; If the Town cannot be fired unless God predetermine it or concur, besides his continuation of Nature; why should we fear it; when we know not that God decreeth anymore than the continuation of natural causes and that action which is by them, and by him as the upholder of them?
II. And the case of Free-agents is here confessed to be the same. The Influx into their Natures and Virtues is it that continueth them in esse substantiali and in esse movente & moto: An Act is but the modus substantiae. And it surpasseth my understanding to conceive what it is, for God physice influere in actum immediate, & non in potentiam seu virtutem agentem: nor how he can be said to move the faculties to act, that doth cause the act and not meddle with, (and therefore not move) the faculty. Nor know I how an Act immediately (and not the agent) can be the terminus of a physical motion. Though it's easy to conceive how God should cause an act by moral and extrinsic objective means. Therefore, as God moveth things Natural by his Influx into their moving Virtues, or into the moving Virtues of second Causes, which being Active operate on passive matter; so as the Soul and its Will is quadam natura inclined to Action in genere, and to will good in special, God as the cause of nature moveth it by his Influx into the faculty, as he doth other natural agents: But having made it a Free self-determining Agent, his Influx upholdeth and moveth it as such: And the same Influx is upholding and moving, and moving as upholding; seeing God as Motor also, doth influere in naturam vitalem & liberam. Besides which supporting and moving Influx, no other predetermining premotion is necessary to an Act as an Act, (that I know of.)
But the very natures or dispositions of lapsed man being depraved, the reparation of them is necessary to holy actions; And here also God operateth on the faculties, by right disposing them, and by that grace which Augustine and Jansen well call Gratia medicinalis, (his special Influx causing, maintaining, and actuating it) he causeth the holy actions of believers.
I do verily believe, that Durand and his followers, under the name of supporting the natural and free faculties, did mean inclusively that which Bellarmine pleadeth for, A General Concurse to the Act as an Act; And that they differ in words and not in sense.
And if his doctrine hold not true, I cannot see how God can be said to Permit men's sinful Actions, or any action at all. For if neither the Inclination of natural agents, (as of Fire to burn, a Stone to descend, &c.) nor the Inclination of the most wicked nature, would cause any act, unless God otherwise cause it by premotion; then there is no place for Impedition, (for we cannot be said to Hinder a Stone from speaking, or a Mountain from walking, nor anything from any act which it could not as): And permittere is non impedire. And therefore God's moving a man to the Act of sin, is not a permitting him to sin; Motion being one thing, and the not hindering of motion, another thing (or nothing.)
§. V. III. Of the Scotists and Nominals way.
III. ANd as to the third way, ascribed by Alvarez to the Scotists and Nominals, I think that de nomine it is not a proper expression to call God causa partialis. But if we agree of the sense, we may bear with improper expressions about God, of whom we can say nothing without some impropriety. Doubtless God and man are not to be accounted co-ordinate concauses of the act; but whatever man doth, he doth it in subordination to God. But God operateth 1. As the prime cause of Nature, in a stablished way, by natural causes; And so he giveth man his Natural vital power and the Liberty of using it: and by this Power and Liberty a man can do more than he always doth. So that God's natural causality and concourse doth not bring all the Power which he giveth men into proportionable adequate Action: but men freely exercise the same power sometime more and sometime less. 2. And in the like manner God causeth gracious or holy acts: Rectifying our Powers, and fortifying them by holy habits, and preserving and actuating them, by the Holy Ghost: Yet the Spirit is to Grace, as God the prime cause is to Nature: He giveth us more Gracious Power than we use, and than his own concourse always reduceth into adequate act: So that God's operations in Nature and Grace are not ad ultimum posse Dei, nor ad ultimum posse hominis; but limited by his most wise and holy will: And man as a free agent is not only Able, but obliged, to use his power further, than by all God's concourse or premotion it is used.
And in this sense I conceive it is that Scotus and others call God and man Causae partiales, in that there is a certain proportion of premotion and help, which God as the first Cause of Nature and Grace, doth afford to man; And there is moreover a certain use of God's help and Grace, beyond what God predetermineth man to, (as comparative to this object rather than that, &c.) which man can do, and is bound to do; Not independently or in co-ordination with God; but by the Power and Liberty which God only giveth and upholdeth, and affordeth him sufficient help to actuate. Now if man do this Part which is left to his liberty, the effect always followeth. If he do not, it may not follow, though God gave him that necessary help or grace or premotion which is commonly called sufficient. And when Scotus likeneth God and man, to two drawing a Boat, where the strength of both must concur, I believe he meant no more than I have said.
1. All the Power is of God as the total first cause.
2. All the Grace that rectifieth and disposeth our faculties, is of God as the total first cause.
3. All the Act as an Act in genere, is of God as the total (though not the sole) cause.
4. All the Holiness or Moral Goodness of the Act is of God as the total first cause (though not the only cause.)
5. But all the sinfulness or moral evil of Acts and Habits is from Man.
6. And that implieth, that man's free will is not so much freed from sin, mutability and infirmity, but that it can neglect to use well the power and helps of grace afforded. But of total and partial Causality I have spoken more fully in the first Book. And of their opinion, that God's Influx puts nothing into the will, but only is ad actum seu effectum, if it be true, it easily endeth the controversy of the difference of sufficient and effectual grace, as to that Act: But it is to me unintelligible, and the thing quite above all our understandings, and very unfit for bold disputes, or mutual censures.
§. VI. The true face or Scheme of the Dominican predeterminant way, as to the sense and consequents.
I Do readily confess that, as the sum of all the Controversy is, Whether man have truly any Free-will, that is not moved as necessarily as any natural motions are caused; so the arguments of Hobbes and the Dominicans and Dr. Twisse are not easily answered. And had we not better proof of all that Morality and Religion which is inconsistent with this opinion, I should myself be inclined also to think, that we must be contented with the naked name of Liberty; there being nothing indeed, but Volition necessitated; and that man is an Engine moved by God and other causes, no less necessarily and physically than a Clock or Watch, but only by more invisible causes and to us unknown, and therefore our Volitions are called Contingent and free, when truly there is nothing contingent in the World. We that converse in the body with things corporeal, are so much strangers to ourselves and to all the race of Intellectual-free Spirits, that we are very prone to such gross corporeal imaginations, and to think that all action is like the motus projectorum, violent, and necessitated; and that it belongeth to the perfection of the first mover that it should be so, yea, that he himself should be in all things the most necessary agent, and consequently all things necessitated by him.
But as Alvarez confesseth, Free-will is proved by Aquinas and many others, by natural proofs, and no Predeterminant or Hobbist can give the tenth part so full and certain proof, of the necessitation of all Volitions, as we can give of all the contrary principles in Morality which are overthrown thereby.
And therefore (whatever some think of the fatum Stoieorum) the Light of Nature taught almost all the Philosophers in the World, the Freedom of man's will, and the morality there founded: of which Groti • s hath collected so full a Volume of testimonies in his Book entitled De fato, that it shall save me the labor of transcribing any.
Yet though I think Christianity inconsistent with their opinion, I doubt not but many of the Predeterminants are good Christians, and excellently learned and acute Divines, as not apprehending the inconsistency of their own thoughts: And I confess that there is a Religion consistent with their fundamental error, which I shall therefore put into the Scheme, lest any think that none but Hobbes hath made the right deductions from it.
And remember, that I charge them not to say all the words which I here lay down, but only that the reason why I myself do above all others shun their principles, is because I take this following to be the true sense and complexion of them, which I must also believe, if I do believe them: And I suppose the Reader to be acquainted with their own words, and to have their Books at hand.
I. Their fundamental Principle is, that
II. To say that any creature can act without this physical predetermination to all the circumstances, or can forbear to act when so predetermined, is by consequence to say, that such a creature, is God, the first cause. For it is as impossible, as to be God, or to make a World.
III. Yea, the creature that will forbear any act which God so predetermineth him to, must be stronger than God and overcome him, or do contradictions.
IV. And if God had not decreed so to predetermine by physical efficient premotion, he could not have known any future acts. No, though with Scotus we say, that he willed all those Acts antecedently to his prescience, it would not serve, unless he willed so to predetermine the agent in causing them.
V. Yet we will say, that the Will is free: but we mean only that to will and to will freely are words of the same sense. For a man is said to will freely in that he willeth, and his Willing is not a Nilling.
VI. Free-will then is nothing but Facultas Voluntatis & rationis • d utrumlibet agendum vel non agendum & ad agendum unum vel alterum: sed tantum prout à prima causa physice praedeterminatur: That is, it is such a faculty as God can predetermine to act which way he will, by making it will: yet its Indifferency is not only objective or passive, but also Active, because it is an Active Power of the will which God predetermineth. God predetermineth the will to determine itself.
VII. We will call this the wills Power, but it is but hypothetically a Power, viz. It can act if God physically predetermine it: else not at all. As the Wheels of the Clock can move if the Poise or Spring move them, or rather; as the hand can move, if the Will and the Spirits in the Nerves do move it.
VIII. The will is said to be free, partly by reason that its active power is capable of being determined by God, and then by itself ad utrumlibet, and partly in that it is not liable to coaction.
IX. The will that is by Omnipotent physical premotion efficiently predetermined by God, is not constrained, because it willeth not unwillingly: that is, so far as it is willing it is not unwilling and reluctant.
X. Yet the will that was one way inclined, habituated and acted in the precedent instant, is oft physically premoved and predetermined by Omnipotency to the contrary act in the next instant, which it could not resist: As he that in this instant will • eth Chasti • y, may in t • e next instant be predetermined by unresistible Omnip • tency to will fornication; or he that Loved God may be predetermined and premoved by God to hate him the next moment. But we will not call this irresistible efficiency [coaction,] because it is ad Volendum, and so in ipso act • there is no reluctancy or resistance.
XI. When God hath given man a Power with liberty to will or nill, or not will, to will this or that, and also giveth him all necessary objects and concauses, and also as the first cause of natural and free action giveth him all that Influx which is necessary to an Act as such, yet the moral specification of that Act, to this proposed object rather than that (as to hate God, rather than to hate sin,) or to this Act rather than to that (as to hate God, rather than to Love him, or to speak a lie, rather than the truth) hath so much Entity in it, that it is a blasphemous deifying man to say, that man can do it, without God's fore-described unresistible predetermining physical premotion.
XII. God made the Law which forbiddeth sin, and God made man's nature Intellectual and free to be ruled by Law; and God made and ordereth all the objects, temptations and concauses; and God by the said efficient, physical premotion causeth irresistibly every act of sin in all its circumstances: (As when David was deliberating, Shall I do this Adultery and Murder or not? God first by omnipotent motion determined his will to it, or else he could not possibly have done it.) And sin in its formal is nothing but the Relation of Disconformity to God's Law, which can have no cause but that which causeth the subjectum, fundamentum & terminum; nor can it possibly be, but it must exist per nudam resultantiam, hisce positis. And yet though God make the man, the Law, the act, the object, and all that is in the world from whence sin resulteth as a mere relation, we are resolved to say that God is not the Author or Cause of sin.
XIII. Yea, though the Habits of sin are certain Entities, and therefore God must needs be their first cause in their full nature, according to our principles, who account it proper to God to be the first and principal cause of any such entity; yet we are resolved to say, that God is not the Cause or Author at least of sin.
XIV. Yet we will say, that he is an enemy to God's Providence, that holdeth that man can possibly do any wickedness, unless God thus predetermine both Will, Tongue, Hand, and every active part, to every act which he hath forbidden with all its circumstances.
XV. Sin is caused by God as to the circumstantiated Act which is the material, but not as to the formal: And yet we must confess, that the Relation is caused by causing the subject, foundation▪ and term, (all which God principally doth,) and can be caused no otherwise.
XVI. But the formal of sin is but a defect or privation, which is nothing: Therefore man and not God is the cause of it; For God cannot be a deficient cause, nor have any privation. And yet we cannot deny but that 1. There is as much positivity of Relation in disobedience as in obedience, in curvity as in rectitude, in disconformity as in conformity. 2. Nor that God can be a Cause of Privations (such as death is,) though not a subject of them; even such a cause as they can have. 3. Nor that some of ours (even Alvarez) say that sins of commission (and habits) are positive in their formal. 4. And sin is such a Nothing, as is man's misery, and he is damned for and by. And if it be such a Nothing as can have no cause, man can no more be the cause of it than God. 5. And that the Reason of non existences, negations, or privations, is as notoriously resolved into the will or non-agency of the first necessary cause of the contrary, as existences and positives are resolved into his will and agency. And if a man cannot think a good thought by any help that God can give him, unless he physically predetermine him to it, then the reason why man doth it not is as notoriously to be resolved into God's not-predetermining him to it, as the reason why he doth it into his predetermination: and as it is night, because the Sun shineth not.
XVII. But at least we can say that God is not the cause of sin, because he is under no prohibiting Law. Though it be true, 1. That his nature or perfection, the root of all Laws, is more than a Law: 2. And we know indeed that this proveth him not at all to be no cause of the sin of man, but only to be no sinner himself though he cause it: which is none of the question.
XVIII. And from this necessity of predetermination it followeth, that all that part of our holiness and obedience which consisteth in not sinning, is not at all caused by God, e. g. that we hate him not, nor his truth and ways and servants, that we murder not, commit not adultery, steal not, lie not, covet not, blaspheme not, wrong none, do no evil, &c. we need no help of God for this; Because if he will not move our wills by efficient predetermination to do them, it is impossible for us to do them at all.
XIX. And though we say that God willeth sin to be, by his permission only and not by his efficience, yet indeed predetermining by efficiency as the first cause, is the principal efficiency: And properly we must say that God permitteth no sin at all; For we say that his permission proveth the consequence of the thing permitted: And therefore we must say that he permitteth no sin but what is done. And that which is done by commission positively he effecteth by effecting the fundamentum; and therefore permitteth not: And men sin by omission because God doth not make them sin, and not because he merely permitteth it. For permission is not de impossibilibus.
XX. God willeth not sin, because he willeth it not as sin, in its formal: which also we must confess that the wicked themselves do not.
XXI. And whereas we hold that God cannot foreknow things future, but as he willeth or decreeth them, we must confess that the formal peccati as well as the material, was (such as it is) quid futurum, (if it was but futura privatio:) And therefore this would infer that God willed and decreed the formal peccati also.
XXII. God's Will is his Love: and what he Willeth he Loveth.
XXIII. God willeth the futurity and existence of sin, not only of the material, but the formal, even of all the sin that ever is done.
XXIV. The existence of sin is Good and Amiable, not only by accident, but per se, as being very conducible to the Glory of God's Justice and Mercy, and therefore is per se Willed and Loved of God.
XXV. It is incomparably much more sin than Holiness which God willeth, and Loveth, and by predetermination causeth in mankind on earth: For it is much more sin than Holiness that existeth in man: And all that existeth God causeth as aforesaid (the circumstantiated act, and so the resultancy of the relative form:) And he willeth and Loveth the existence of all, and the thing existing so far as he causeth it.
XXVI. God Willeth, Loveth and Causeth sin incomparably more than wicked men do: For they Will and Love it with a human mutable dependent will; but God with a Divine, primary, immutable will. Man causeth the forbidden act (whence the relation resulteth) with a Will that is irresistibly moved so to do by God (as the pen writeth; only s • o modo with Volition:) But God causeth it as the first omnipotent unresistible cause, of all that the Creature doth in sinning.
XXVII. The same must be said of God and the Devil, who can no more commit one sinful act, till God unavoidably predetermine his will to it, by his premotion, than sinful man can.
XXVIII. God by his Law, doth strictly forbid all those sinful acts which he principally and unavoidably causeth: And he strictly commandeth all those good acts, whose contraries he thus causeth us to do.
XXIX. Though there is nothing in sin which can have a cause, of which God is not the Principal cause, and though he Willeth and Loveth all that he causeth, yet the Scripture saith that God hateth sin, and cannot behold it, and hateth all the workers of iniquity, and that it is abomination to him, that he is as one laden with it, and wearied, provoked, and offended by it. And that he Loveth the Acts of obedience and holiness, when he will not cause them, but doth cause and will the contrary.
XXX. Pardon and salvation is promised and earnestly offered by God, to the Reprobate themselves, on condition, that they will believe and repent, when God doth unavoidably as the first cause, determine their wills to the contrary acts, even to disbelief and impenitent hatred of God and holiness.
XXXI. The Law of God is, that all the Reprobates shall be damned to hell fire, if they will not believe and repent, when his omnipotence doth unavoidably premove and determine them to unbelief and impenitence: and if they will not give over those acts of sin, to which God doth thus unavoidably move and determine them.
XXXII. God's executions are answerable to these Laws; and all save Christians, and all professed Christians saving the sanctified, are to be punished in hell fire forever, only for not doing the acts of Faith, Love and obedience, when God as the first cause predetermined them to the contrary; and for doing the acts of sin, when God unavoidably moved them to it, and made them do it: so that consequently all that are damned, suffer in hell, for not being God's, even the first sufficient causes of their own acts, and for not being above God or stronger than he, that is, for not overcoming or avoiding, his invincible and unavoidable predetermining premotion unto evil acts.
XXXIII. The same must be said of the Devils, who sin and suffer on the same terms.
XXXIV. Q. What kind of torment then will there be in Hell? Can Conscience torment men for doing that which they were unavoidably made to do by Omnipotency? and for not doing that which without Divine predetermination they could no more do than make a world? or for not doing that whose contrary they were thus predetermined to? that is, for not overcoming God? (when they know the case.)
Or must we not more congruously say, that the state of Hell torments lieth in a most vehement hatred of God for so using them, and a justifying of themselves? Or will every mouth be thus stopped in judgment?
XXXV. Q. Is not Divine Justice the most perfect Justice? and the exemplar of all human Justice (allowing for disparities?) And should Kings and Judges imitate this fore-described course? And how then would they be esteemed?
XXXVI. Q Is not that best which is most agreeable to God's Will and Love? And therefore sin better than Holiness in all that have sin, and not holiness, and in the Godly so far as they sin? because that it shall be so, is more (yea only) willed by God, and caused by his predetermination?
XXXVII. Q. Whether this doctrine tend not to utter Infidelity, as to the Christian faith, by making it seem to men incredible? Is it credible that God sent his Son so wonderfully to expiate those sins which he so loved and caused as aforesaid? and to save his people from their sins, which God thus unavoi • ably moved them to commit? and to destroy the works of God, under the name of destroying the works of the Devil? Must Christ suffer, bleed, die and bear God's wrath, for that which God unavoidably made man do by his principal determination? And is it easy for him that believeth one of these to believe the other?
XXXVIII. Q. How will men preach and hear the Gospel, if they do it in congruity with this doctrine? Will they say [God sent us to beseech and charge you, not to do that sinful act, which you cannot do unless he make you do it by predetermination, and which you cannot avoid if he so make you do it. He beseecheth and importuneth you to do all those commanded acts, which you can no more do than make a world unless he predetermine you to do them, nor can forbear them if he do?]
XXXIX. Q. How will men Repent, confess, resist temptations, pray, and use the means of Grace, if they believe that all sinful acts in the world are thus unavoidably Caused, and Willed and Loved of God as good for his Glory?
XL. Q. Whether they that teach (as Dr. Twisse often) that sin is not malum Dei sed nostri, do not take it to be no injury to God, nor displeasing to his will? Or is not injury and displeasing, evil in respect to God as the terminus, though it be no h • rt to him, nor his evil as the subject or agent? And doth not the opinion that it's Evil only to us, and Good to God as conducible to his glory, teach men to hate it only out of self-love, and not out of love to the glory of God? yea to Love it as conducible to God's Glory, more than to hate it as evil to ourselves; seeing God's Glory must be preferred above ourselves?
XLI. Q. Is not sin thus made a coequal with Christ? who is but a means to the glorifying of God, to which faith (Dr. Twisse) sin is sum conductbile?
XLII. Q. Doth not this doctrine make the sanctification of the Holy Ghost to be unnecessary? when all that is to be done to save us from sin, is for God not to make us sin by his premotion▪ Or doth it not make sanctification to be nothing but this predetermination of God, which is made as necessary to sin as to duty, and so natural and gracious operations made the same, and God to do as much to produce evil efficiently as good?
XLIII. Q. Is it not much worse to man, if God by predetermination make him first a sinner, (and wicked by sinful Habits) and then damn him for it, than if he should damn an innocent man for nothing? For sin and pain is far worse than pain without sin. And to compel the will unwillingly to sin, were it possible, is less than to make it willing.
XLIV. Doth not he that affirmeth that the Devil doth but sin as efficiently predetermined by God, and doth not force, nor determine any man's will to any sinful act, but that God predetermineth all men and Devils to every sinful act committed, I say, doth he not describe God as worse than Satan (horresco quaerens!) if sin be the denominating evil, and the causing of sin be more than tempting to it? Had I not rather my will were resistibly tempted to sin, than unresistibly made to sin, by predetermining efficient premotion?
XLV. Is not the objective Reason in Devils of man's implanted Enmity against them, Gen. 3. 15. because they are Enemies to God and us, as being themselves Lovers of sin, and Tempters of us to sin and misery?
XLVI. Doth not he take the directest course to root out the Love of God and all Religion from the World, and to tempt men to hate God, and so to begin a Hell on Earth, who describeth God in Satan's likeness and much worse; as much as being the principal cause of all sin in men and Devils, is worse than sinning when predetermined, and tempting others to it?
XLVII. I think that the Dominican Predetermination, directly and necessarily overthroweth all certainty of Divine Revelation, by man, or Angel, and consequently all certainty of the Christian faith: even by overthrowing the very formal object, the Divine Veracity. For if God efficiently premove and predetermine all wills and tongues and pens to all the lies that ever are made in the world, then 1. To do so, is not inconsistent with his perfections or his will; 2. And then we can never know when he doth not so, unless by the event. This is grounded on these suppositions,
1. That God's revelations to us are not Immediate only by himself, but by some Creature, Angel or Man, or a created voice or sign. 2. That the Ratio certitudinis of such Revelations by a Creature, is because it is God that is the chief author of them. 3. That it is not conceiveable how God can by any way of Revelation be more the author of it, than by physical efficient immediate adequate predetermining both will and tongue to the act with all its circumstances. Call it by what name you please, Inspiration, Vision, Illumination, Impulse, &c. it can speak nothing more of God's Agent efficient Interest than this predetermination doth. 4. If it did do more, yet it would overthrow all certainty of our faith: Because if God can efficiently cause, and that▪ as the total principal cause by predetermination, all the lies that ever were told in the world; we can never be sure that the other mode of his operation so far differeth from this, as that he cannot be the chief cause of a lie in this way as well as of all lies by predetermination. I have driven many to say their utmost, and could never yet hear any such difference assigned, as could prove any Inspiration whatsoever, to have more of Divine Causality in it, than physical predetermination doth signify and import: nor how this principle leaveth us any certainty that the tongues of all the Prophets and Apostles were not predetermined to speak falsely, (ab antecedente; and so their pens.)
XLVIII. To say that God is not able to make a Creature with power to determine any one Volition of its own, even as modified, comparate or circumstantiate, without his efficient physical predetermination aforesaid, saith more against God's Omnipotency (though on pretence of a contradiction) than I dare say or think.
XLIX. Yet after all this I grant that if all proper free will and contingency be denied, and every act in the world (as comparate and circumstantiate) made as necessary by predetermination as the motions in a Clock, yet a certain Religion is consistent with it, and the Atheist that hence would nullify▪ all Religion absolutely, would raise false inferences from this principle. Much more persuaded am I, that many that hold it are very worthy holy persons, much better than I am or can hope here to be, as not discerning the inconsistency of their opinions (as I said.)
L. The Religion • consistent with it I conceive must be such as this:
1. There is a God who moveth all things by physical necessitation, even man's Volitions as well as any natural actions.
2. This God doth all that he doth himself by necessity, viz. of perfection, not of co-action: And there is no contingency in rerum natura.
3. This God hath made his Creatures of various ranks and degrees of excellency: And man a more knowing Creature than the Bruits.
4. Among men he maketh some wise, some foolish, some good and Godly, and some vicious and ungodly; And as he maketh the difference of men and beasts, of a Horse and a Toad, of the Sick and the sound, of Prince and people, rich and poor, so doth he of godly and ungodly, chaste and unchaste, &c.
5. Yet man being Intellectual, God will move him by means and second causes; and therefore hath made him Laws, obliging him de jure, and commanding his utmost diligence to keep them; promising and threatening Life and death hereafter for the keeping or the breaking of them: and appointing Ministers and Magistrates to persuade and drive him on.
6. And it's likely though not certain that God will do according to these Laws, in some considerable degree.
7. Man by his Nature, and by Scripture (which may be true) is bound to Love and serve his God above all other, as the Cause of all the being and good that is in the world, (whatever he do by us,) and of all our good.
8. There is another life of Reward for the good▪ and punishment for the bad, which must be our hope and fear.
9. God's Laws are called moral means, but Cause only as physical engines or tacklings▪ to move man's will by the said necessitation.
10. God's hatred of sin, is no true hatred or nolition (where sin is:) but only his prohibiting it to us, and his punishing men for it.
11. If God did send Christ and the Apostles, and Miracles, &c. it was only to be tacklings or parts, in this engine of physical operations.
12. God causeth and Loveth sin as much as obedience; but he maketh it not so Good and Lovely to us, it being our disease and misery.
13. As God no otherwise hateth sin than sickness, and sinners than the sick, and looketh on good and bad but as modal physical differences caused by himself; so must we do also: and hate that most that hurteth us most.
14. To mourn for sin, and confess it, and strive against it, or talk of Christ's suffering or satisfying for it, any otherwise than as a Voluntary disease and misery of man, or to avoid any sin any otherwise than as a misery to ourselves or others, is but the error of superstitious men.
15. Men should do all that ever they can to cure their sins, and live holily, so far as increaseth not their misery, and no further; and this only as a physical Voluntary perfection, and as the avoiding of a natural misery to themselves and others.
16. God will punish man, not out of any hatred of sin (which he willeth and causeth) but out of a differencing will, as he maketh Toads and Serpents, and causeth Cattle and Fowl to be killed by us, and Horses labored in pain: Therefore we have no reason to fear any other misery in Hell, than God's arbitrary disposal bringeth on the more wretched sort of his Creatures, without any sinful commerit or provocation; and perhaps little more than we voluntarily here choose and bring upon ourselves, or of the same kind, our sin itself being our punishment though it pleaseth us, (As scratching is to him that hath the itch.)
17. Therefore the end of a man's life is the public good and his natural felicity; besides and above which to make God our End, as he is holy and to be pleased by Holiness, is an error; for all that cometh to pass whether sin or holiness, do equally please and fulfil his will, as they are equally caused by him, according to their several natures.
I Have delineated this hypothesis with its consectaries as truly as I can. If any expect that I should have given you their own words for all that I have said. 1. Remember that I charge not all these words on them; but mention their judgment with the consequents. 2. That I charge not these consequents to be owned by the men, but upon their doctrine. And let any man discharge or justify them that can. 3. But I desire no more to prove that I wrong them not, than that the Reader be acquainted with their own writings, and not to impose too many on him, particularly, with Bradwardine, Banns, Holkot and Alvarez, and with Piscator, Maccovius, Dr. Twisse, and Rutherford de provid. And I desire him first but to read the words which I have before cited and confuted of theirs in this Treatise; and the words of Alvarez and Twisse which I have cited and answered in my Dispute. contr. Praedeterm. in Methodo Theolog.
And I must profess that the Religion here described in the end, is all that I can prove consistent with their opinion truly understood in itself and its consectaries; and that if I held their doctrine, I think I could have no other faith: Which I have annexed lest the Hobbists should think that their principle, were it proved, would justify all Immorality and Irreligion. For this much they might be obliged to notwithstanding it.
But he that can see so great eyidence for the Dominican predetermination, above the other three ways, and what I have here farther added, as for the sake of it, to admit so great a change of his Religion, or so great a degree of the forsaking of true Religion, he seeth not with my eyes, and I hope I shall never see with his, though I am not a stranger to the pretences for their way, that make it seem plausible to them that do respicere ad pauca.
And if any think that I deal too harshly in clogging their opinion with such odious consequents, Let them prove them inconsequent, and I will recant it: But if they cannot, civility shall not make me hide and favor so great Impiety; and as little in Doctrine as in manners, (as Adultery, perjury, blasphemy; &c.) because he that thinketh he doth well, will not Repent, and an erring mind will justify sin, and fight against God and his truth in his own name; and it's more to Teach men to break a come-mand, than to do it, and confess the sin. They think it is for God that they err; And I think it is for God that I detect it. And who it is that erreth indeed, the Light must discover, and the studious impartial prepared Children of the Light must discern; and the Father of Lights must finally judge.
Note that in the first part I speak as in the name of the Predeterminants; till I come to the Questions, and thence-forward I speak as in my own name, which the Reader may easily perceive.
§. VII. Of Jansen his way of reconciling Grace and Free-will.
§. 1. BUt after all these cometh Jansen, and justly blaming Philosophy as the great occasion of our heresies and errors, which misled the Schoolmen, Jesuits and others, he goeth to Augustine alone (as Lombard thought he had well done before him;) and disgraceth his cause by saying that Augustine first taught it to the Church, (as if Grace had been unknown by the former ages:) And because many will not be at the labor to know his mind by reading so big a volume, I shall briefly select what concerneth the matter in hand, and animadvert upon it.
1. His first Tome describeth the Heresy of Pelagius, wherein he proveth that Pelagius held all this that followeth concerning grace:
1. The Remission of sins, containing 1. Conversion to God, 2. The abstersion of the blot and filth, 3. Reconciliation, or remission of God's offense, 4. And of the eternal punishment. Jansen Aug. To. 1. l. 5. c. 22. p. 126, 127.
2. That Pelagius owned the Infusion of habitual grace. And that God in Baptism did blot out all sins, purge, cleanse and expiate them, save and renew the soul, restore nature, deliver from the body of this death, and from the contracted custom of sinning: He held that Grace doth Regenerate, Illuminate, cause Faith, Justify, (even Infants,) Sanctify, make us new Creatures, incorporate us into Christ as his members, give us the anointing of the Holy Ghost, not only restoring us to the state that we were in in Adam, but to a better, and to be adopted sons of God, and saved. cap. 24. And 25. as to the Relative effects, that Grace Reconcileth man to God, maketh him an adopted Son of God, and the Temple of the Holy Ghost, an Heir of God, and co-heir with Christ: So that they acknowledge not only Habitual Infused Grace, but more; even in Baptism: As also the Assisting motions of the spirit to good acts, making them possible.
Also that after Pope Zozymus had condemned the Pelagians, they went further, and that their design was but to lay men's salvation or damnation on free-will. lib. 6. c. 7. &c.
And when he cometh to characterize Pelagius, he doth it as he doth elsewhere the Protestants, and as Malignants do Religious persons, by presumptions: viz. that he was indeed as Augustine saith, Temperate and of a good life but singular and very proud, (which he proveth by his opinion, and because he was against Swearing, and said,
II. Jansen asserteth that the Angels and Adam had such Free-will as could obey or disobey, and so could determine itself to good, and persevere therein, without anymore grace than they had when they did it not: And that by this Free-will some Angels stood and some fell, and Adam fell when he might by it have stood, and thereby fell from a nobler sort of Free-will, which consisteth in a due subservience to God, and fell to the Love of Himself (not primarily of external things) instead of God, and to selfdependency and dominion. De Grat. primi hom. c. 6. p. 40, 41, 42. &c. 7.
IV. That without or before faith no good work is done, but lies and sins: l. 3, & 4. c. 1. p. 223. no nor without true Godliness, p. 261. & passim. To think that Infidels and ungodly have any true virtue, is dotage. c. 17.
V. The first sin had no necessity, being mere sin, and no punishment, and so easily avoidable and wholly voluntary: Other sins are also punishments, and so partly involuntary and unavoidable and necessary: Though a sinner may forbear one sin by another. cap. 22.
VI. A rational Creature could not be made of God sinless without true Love to God, or at least a faculty most sufficient to love him and cleave to him. De statu nat. pur. l. 1. c. 17. p. 323, 324. nor can God withdraw that grace of Love from the innocent. c. 13.
VII. The grace of Adam, and of Christ, Adjutorium sine quo non, & Quo, do thus differ, that the first serveth the will, and is determined by it: The second (Adjutorium medicinale) giveth▪ the ipsum velle to the unwilling, which else it could not have. The Grat. Chr. Sal. Li. 2. c. 4. and is more than Lex, scientia, revelatio, remissio peccatorum, gratia sufficiens, habitualis, & per congruitatem efficax. c. 5. Also 1. The Adjutorium sine quo non giveth not Merit to the will, but it meriteth itself: But the Adjutorium Quo giveth us the ipsum opus & meritum. 2. The former is meritum humanum; the second meritum divinum, as given of God. 3. To the first Life would be merces meriti: To the second it is a free gift; Reward and Gift are repugnant. Angels merited life. 4. By the first and free will Angels persevered: but we cannot but by the second. 5. The first (fine quo non) was given them that were to be differenced by free-will: The second to them that are to be differenced by grace. c. 6, 7, 8. One is adjutorium possibilitatis, the other actionis. c. 9.
VIII. That since the fall no good can be in or of man, but by God's gift, and is not laudable in any but God. c. 23. Man hath no part of the praise. This grace is, ever effectual, determining, rapeth the will so that it is scarce perceived to act: It useth the will as an instrument, which way God will: It is insuperable, irresistible, not merely potential: It is never ineffectual, but in all that have it infallibly effecteth. c. 24, 25.
IX. There is no grace of Christ but this (quo): None now fine quo non, or ad posse. c. 27. That ceased with innocence.
X. This grace is ever effectual, but not ad omnia: It giveth some small degree to some, and more to others: And the weakest have not enough to produce faith, prayer, hope, obedience, but some Velleities and Complacencies only. c. 27. p. 86.
XI. He distinguisheth sufficient Grace into that Prater quod nil aliud ex parte Dei per modum Principii necessarium est ut homo Velit •• t operetur: And that Quod satis est ut homo dicatur posse operari, quamvis ali •• adhu • necessarium est ut de facto operetur. The later he denieth not: As to the former he saith, Nullum jam dari hominibus lapsis gratia sufficiens, quin sit simul efficax. lib. 3. c. 1. p. 102, 103. This Gratia sufficiens is but the sine quo non, the grace of innocence and not medicinal, and that which Pelagius and the Massilienses held against Augustine, yea, ad gratiam naturae pertinet, & Lapsorum reparationi inutilis & pernictosa. cap. 2. p. 104. For it supposeth Nature to be sound. Quid homini misero perniciosius, quam illa gratia abundare, qua nemo unquam, fatentibus scholasticis, nisi majorem damnationem assecutus est? Hoc ipso quippe ••• squisque damnabilior est, quo magis sufficienti gratia abundavit, Nemo •••• unquam sufficienti gratia usus est, aut utitur, aut uietur in aternum; qui mitius puniretur si tali auxilio caruisset; quo Deus neminem vel damnandorum vel salvandorum usurum esse praescivit.
He concludeth c. 4. Nullam Christi gratiam effectu operi • ad quem efficiendum voluntati datur, ulla voluntatis pervicacia frustrans.
XII. He maketh this to be the great doctrine of Augustine, that All God's Law, both old and new, is given to convince men that they cannot keep it, and all written precepts are to show men their sin, which maketh them the worse, because of the Laws restraint and commands: And that Law and Grace thus differ, that Christ's Grace is only God's making us will and do; and the Law showeth that we cannot, and so driveth us from is to Grace; c. 4. That to Jews and Christians that have written Laws, there is no sufficient or adjuvant grace, but what maketh them do the act. c. 5. No potential grace (that giveth the power) is sufficient to the act, unless it give the act. c. 6. Hence is the necessity of sinning, p. 126. Unbelievers want Remote as well as Proximate sufficient help and all its principles. c. 11. And the Commands are to them impossible, yet make them inexcusable, c. 18, 19.
XIII. That impotency excuseth a man, when he strongly would do the act and cannot; but not that by which he would not do it, though he cannot will it without grace. p. 145, 146.
XIV. Christ's dying for All, is meant only for all the Church, or all sorts: yet as he giveth to others the grace of faith and Love without perseverance and salvation, so far he died for them▪ and prayed for them. c. 20. p. 163, 164.
XV. The essence of the grace of Christ is a Heavenly Suavity or Delectation, given before our free act, by which the will is bowed to act what God will. It is a vital and indeliberate act of the soul, even of Love and Desire before Consent, and that Delight which is our Rest and Joy. li. 4. c. 1. & 11. Plainly it is a necessitated complacency, which is the first act of Love; when God and Righteousness, not for ourselves, but for themselves and as such, are Pleasing to the soul.
XVI. Christ's grace is necessary only to Love God sincerely in every act of obedience, and only this Love and Suavity is Christ's grace, whatever other graces or acts as to the name it is found in. li. 5. c. 1. For nothing is good that is done only by Fear, and not in Love of Justice. The Justice Loved is not any habit or act of the soul, but God the Eternal Justice. c. 2. and the Justice of his Precepts. Virtue is nothing but the Love of God. c. 3. The four Cardinal Virtues are fourfold Love of God: And so all others. c. 4, 5.
XVII. By the Love of God is not meant only that degree by which we Love him above all, but true sincere Love of God for himself, and not ullius creaturae intuitu: which is either Imperfect, not Loving him so well as the creature, (but only to an ineffectual Velleity) which yet how remiss and small soever, is the true and chaste fruit of the Love of God, even amoris amicitiae: or more perfect, which justifieth. The first is quaedam dilectio justitiae quasi simplex ejus complacentia, quae non eo usque increverit, ut adversantia isti bonae voluntati valeat superare. This goeth usually first, and sinners find a good will to goodness, and like it, and many years perhaps are wishing and purposing to leave their sins for it, and turn to God, till at last Love prevaileth. And this though imperfect, is true sincere Love, not from a perfect habit, but from the excitation of the Holy Ghost: It hath the same object as perfect Love, that is, Justice for Justice, or God for God, not loved on consideration of any other reward: which proveth it sincere Love. Such wish to live chastely, temperately, justly, but cannot come to it. Out of this imperfect love, springs faith; faith may be habitually many years before Justification: Justification is the grace of perfect Love to God above all: Hope and Perfect Love also come from this initial Love. c. 7, 8, 9.
XVIII. As Hope, so Reward and respect to it may stand with this grace of Love: For the Reward is not desired ex amore concupiscentia for ourselves only; cum enim charitatis proprium sit & unica voluptas diligere Deum, non quia hoc sibi suave vel utile vel gloriosum est, vel alia quacunque consideratione redundat in se, sed quia ita est ordo creature • sub creatore, qui propter seipsum super omnia (ex superexcellenti bonitate) diligendus est—ita unicum premium est, veritatem & bonitatem Dei facie ad faciem contemplando ardentius amare & lauaare Deum; non quia utile est & beatificum diligenti, sed quid ae •• rnae veritati▪ congruum, dilecto debitum, &c. Amoris hic inchoati, Amor futurus consummatus unica merces. Praemium Dei ipse Deus est. Quisquis delabitur ab illa charitatis puritate, ut amore concupiscentiae incipiat velle & concupiscere sibi Deum, totum dilectionis ordinem quem natura docet, & Lex aeterna praecipit, diligendi perversitate perturbat. Nam & Deum ad se refert, & seipso fruitur, quorum utrumque aeterna & indispensabili lege proscriptum est. c. 10.
XIX. The fear of punishment (and attrition) is good, being f • g • mali; an Antecedent of wisdom: It is from a certain general grace, but not that properly called the grace of Christ: The Spirit of the Old Testament even of fear, is God's Spirit: not that which Christ died to give men, which is contrary (delectation;) but another much inferior grace, which after the firm belief of God's judgment and eternal punishment, fortassis Gratiam peculiaris cujusdam providentiae & operationis non excedit. They that have but the Righteousness of fear by knowing the Law, have not God's righteousness but their own: Indeed they have faith and that radicated, but not Christ's proper grace, but that which may come ex proprii arbitrii viribus, excited by providence, or, if you will, inspired fear: no sin can be avoided by it, but by other sin. c. 22, 23, &c. It is but of self-love. It is Legal righteousness and our own. c. 31, 32.
XX. Liberty of will is either mere Voluntariness, whose contrary necessity is involuntarii coactio; or that free state which is the Love of God, consistent with simple necessity. lib. 7.
XXI. Gratia Christi est Praedeterminatio voluntatis, sed non Dominicanorum praedeterminatio. 1. Praedeterminatio physica est motio nescio quae virtuosa, habens esse incompletum, ut colores in a • re, impetus in impulso: Gratia Christi est verissimus motus voluntatis, ineffabilis, viz. delectatio, &c. 2. Praed. physica non est eis actus Vitalis animi, sed aliquid cui voluntas tantum passive subjacet: Gratia contra, &c. 3. Praedet. physica in quibuscunque circumstantiis voluntas collocetur, omnem superat resistentiam & semper facit effectum: contra delectatia victrix, si alter ard • ntior est, in solis inefficacibus desideriis haerebit animus. 4. Praed. physica est instar concursus cujusdam generalis Dei in ordine supernaturali: Adjutorium Christi non ita. 5. Praed. physica necessaria statuitur omnibus agentibus ex vi causae secundae, &c. Christi adjutorium laesa tantum voluntati propter vulnus necessarium est. 6. Praed. physica propter naturalem indifferentiam voluntatis exigitur: Gratia non ita— 7. Praed. physica statui innocentiae necessaria dicitur: Gratia Christi non ita, ergo hi (Dominicani) magis Aristotelici quam Augustiniani sunt. Gratia tamen est Praed. physica: And grace and free-will are reconcilable as Predetermination and free-will are. l. 8. c. 2, 3, 4. Summa est, quod Gratia Amantem & Volentem facit: & non tantum posse velle dat. In conclusion he belieth Calvin, 1. As denying in man boni & mali electionem, and so in many • there points. cap. 21.
XXII. His doctrine of Predestination as congruous to this I pass by, • nly adding that he denieth Angels to be elected of grace or to perseve • ance, which was but foreseen, and they were made to differ, not by • race, but by merits: Man is elected to merits and glory; but to glory • efore the foresight of merits. The Reprobation of Angels was after the • urpose of giving them sufficient grace, and the foresight of sin▪ Permis •• on of sin was no effect of it: But the Reprobation of men was by God's positive absolute will, of men in original sin, and the effect of it excaecation and obduration; but not the permission of the first sin. lib. 10.
This is the Epitome of Jansen as far as concerneth our present business.
The Animadversions.
§. 2. I. IT seems Augustine and Pelagius were both pious men, that differed in the methodizing and wording those fundamental conceptions in which they agreed; by which Pelagius ran into errors. And I doubt, he was not so innocent as Jansen intimateth, when he maketh Augustine to be the first true Teacher of grace, and Pelagius his Opinion to have been so ancient. And if it were not too bold to say so against one that read over all Augustine ten times, and all his writings against the Pelagians thirty times, I would say that I think that Austin owned more universal grace and free-will, than Jansen supposeth him to have owned. Of Prosper and Fulgentiu • it cannot modestly be denied; who I think were of Augustine's mind.
II. He confesseth that self-determining free-will and sufficient Grace, were the condition of the Angels and innocent man; and so that it is not alien to God's government, or prerogatives, for subjects to be so Ruled and Judged.
III. He seemeth to me to ascribe far too much to innocent man and Angels in using sufficient grace, when he maketh their wills the chief laudable cause of the effect: I rather think that no Angel ever did any good, the chief praise of which was not due to God as the principal first cause. God giveth them all the power, liberty, help, means, motives, by which they do it; Besides that they did nothing but what he fore-decreed and willed they should (eventually) do: Therefore there is no good but of him as the first cause, though not as the sole cause.
IV. Whether the best actions of Infidels or ungodly men be properly to be called good, is but a Logomachy: Call them but a Less evil, or the abatement of evil, and actions that tend as Means to their repentance, and salvation, and I shall not disagree with you in this.
V. His concession that the first sin was not necessitated is of great moment: But it is a great mistake, that following sins are necessary, because they are punishments. It is not the existence of the sin that is a punishment, but the hurtfulness of it supposing the existence. If drunkenness, or gluttony be themselves noxious and penal, that is but a consequent of their existence, which was not necessitated by God as punishing them that caused them.
VI. The sixth I think sound, and the Schools [pure nature], as if Adams Love (in the principle) was not his necessary Sanity, is unsound.
VII. Here again, 1. I think he giveth too much to free-will in innocence, and too little to God. For God's Help did not then serve man's will so much as God's; and God fulfilled all his will while Angels used their power and liberty, and they did no good but what God willed and caused as he saw best. And while man and Angels used their liberty, they fulfilled God's will in all their duty, as much as if they had been necessitated by natural predetermination.
2. And it is not true that their sufficient grace gave not Merit to the will: For it followeth not, that because they could have omitted a duty, therefore in doing it they did anything of which God was not the prime cause: He that gave them all their power, disposition▪ objects, helps and motives, did give them that which he calleth Merit.
3. It is his grand error that Gift and Reward are repugnant, and that Life would not have been to Adam, and was not to the Angels of free gift, though of Reward. For it is impossible that any creature can merit of God as a Proprietor in point of Commutative Justice; seeing God is the absolute Owner of us and all things, and no creature can give him anything but what is his own: Therefore there is a natural impossibility that quoad valorem rei, aut ipsum beneficium a creature can have anything but of free gift: But God who is an Owner and Benefactor is also a Rector, and so the cause of Moral Order as well as of real Benefits; And so that which as a Benefit is a mere gift, yet quoad ordinem conferendi is given by God per modum praemii to those that will Accept the Gift according to its nature, and denied to those that will despise it and refuse it. As a Father will give a purse of Gold to the Child that will thank him, and humbly take it; and not to the Child that will spit in his face.
J • nsenius doth so weakly open the nature of Merit and Reward, as that alone would show that he was not meet for his great undertaking: Though he excellently show that God is our Reward himself, yet the Rat • • nes praemii he • aith little to, that can satisfy the judicious. Of which more anon.
4. Angels were differenced inter se by God's will and their own: And we confess, that so far as sin made the difference, it was by their own will and not by God's: But was he sure that no such difference is made since the fall among men? He will confess, that when Eve sinned before Adam, it was she that made the difference: And how can he prove, that it was not Cain who by sin first differenced himself from Abel? or the Prodigal, Luke 15. that by forsaking his Father, first differenced himself from his Brother? According to his own principles who holdeth falling away from Grace and Justification, doth not he that falleth away, difference himself from him that standeth? He can never prove, that now two men may not have equal help from God to go to Church, or read a good Book, and one do it, and the other go to the Tavern; or read a Play-book.
VIII. 1. God doth not so use man as his Instrument in good, but that he giveth the Instrument its proper aptitude and action as to the effect: And that which it is and doth may be spoken of it: To say a thing is gud, is to praise it▪ and good must be called good; And to say that you were the Actor of Good and that Voluntarily, is to praise you. Therefore the Actor of good ex natura rei deserveth praise, seeing Truth must be spoken of all things.
2. God himself doth so often praise his servants, and promise to honor them that honor him, that to say no praise is due to them is to charge God with error.
3. To deny all Reward, and Merit as it signifieth Rewardableness, or Moral • ptitude for Reward, is to deny the greatest part of the Scripture; to deny God to be our Rector, and so to be our God, to deny the whole frame of his Sapiential Government, and his glory therein, and so to deny his Laws, Judgment and Execution, Sin▪ Duty, Heaven and Hell.
Th •• sum of all is this, • . No man or Angel can merit of God in Commutative Justice as Proprietor▪ But only as Rector. All is (as is before said) of free gift from God as • roprietor and Benefactor▪
2. The same God who is Omnipotent, is also sapientissimus & optimus: And he that glorifieth his Power eminently as the Author of Nature, as Creator, Conservator, and Motor, doth also glorify his Wisdom in rerum Ordine: And he ordereth Moral Agents eminently per sapient • am • t Rector per media moralia, viz. Doctrinam, Leges, Judicia: And he glorifieth his Goodness and Love partly Antecedently (to man's Actions) and as a free Benefactor; partly consequently, according to the order of his Laws. So that as his Attributes are inseparable, so are (herein) the operations of them. And the same Benefit is ut quid productum the effect of God's Omnipotency and Dominion; and ut Bonum & Beneficium the effect of the Benefactors Love; and yet quoad ordinem conferendi it is Pr • mium à Rectore adjudicatum. And between all these there is no repugnancy.
3. We grant that God Rewardeth no man now, according to the Law of Innocency, (for that condemneth every sinner.)
4. Nor according to, or for the works of the Mosaical Jewish Law.
5. Nor for any sincere obedience to the Law of Nature, or any other, without Redemption by Christ.
6. We are agreed that the Reward is now doubly and eminently a free gift, and the reward of Christ's merits. It is not only free as all Benefits from God to man are, as to commutation: but also after forfeiture freely given to sinners; and it is procured by the merits of Christ, who was freely given to be the Savior of the world; and it is given us by Christ as free gifts are, upon condition of Acceptance; and an Accepting Will is God's free gift; and they that have it not, want it because they refused Preparatory grace, which they were able to have better used o • submitted to.
So that the Reward is only such as a free gift, which quoad ordinem conferendi, & rations adjudicandi is given by God as a Father; who at once useth Power, Love and paternal Justice, according to the tenor of his own Law of Grace, which is founded in Christ's perfect merits, and is Christ's own Law.
VIII. and IX. 1. That quoad eventum the good Angels grace was effectual, and Adjutorium quo as well as sine quo non, he granteth▪ (And Adams till he fell.) Let us find out the difference then. To say that yet They could have sinned, is a doubtful speech: If [could] signify P • t •• • iam naturalem, it is no • for want of Natural Power that Christ himself sinned not; but because perfection caused the right use of that Power. To be able to sin, or not to believe, or not to love God, if it signify anymore than the Natural power which men abuse, is an improper speech▪ for sin is from moral impotency, (or indetermination,) and not an va • t of (other) power. But a Logical Possibility of any event but what • ame to pass, God's very fore-knowledge will exclude, (and so his Decree.) And if the question be Whether Adam could not have stood when he fell, it is agreed that he could.
It seemeth then that our Controversy lieth plainly▪ •• these two things, 1. Whether any man now (Holy or unholy) have any help from. God by Christ by which he is truly able to do any one good action more •••• other than he doth, or to forbear anymore evil? 2. Whether all Divine causation or operation • e such, as of itself alone will infer the ••• tainty of man's Volition as the Effect? We g • ant that Divine prescie ••• doth infer it, e • •• oessitate infallibilit •••• . Divine Volitions some think are ever efficient of all that is willed, and that God hath no other operation but Volition (as Bradwardine and others.) Others deny this, 〈…〉 that God hath Power operative as much distinct from Volition a • •• tellection is, and also that God willeth more than he operateth or totally causeth. And of this opinion must Jansen needs be, because he held that the free-will of Adam before his fall, and of the good Angels caused more obedience than God caused as to the totality of causation: And yet • ethinks he should be loath to say that it was more than God willed or decreed. However the former is but a wordy strife: For if God operate only Volendo, yet his will as Immanent and a mere will (as man's,) must be distinguished from his will as transient and efficient by operation. So then the thing in question is, Whether God's power or will so far only as it is operative be so total a cause, as that hac posita ex vi causandi necessario sequitur effectum (viz. fidem, charitatem humanam) secuturum? And we grant that as ex perfection Intellectus, it followeth, Deus praesc • t hoc futurum, ergo futurum est: so ex perfection Voluntatis, & summo Imperio, & foelicitate Divina it followeth, Deus vult hoc futurum esse; ergo futurum est: and that ex necessitate existentiae, no doubt it is a good consequence, Deus hoc fecit, ergo factum est: But Whether from his mere adjutorium, or prime efficiency, limited by his own will, it be a good consequence, [God giveth as much help as is of necessity to man's volition; ergo, man will consent or will?] is the doubt. He granteth that in Innocency it would not have followed, but he thinks that now it will.
We grant that God giveth not only the posse velle, but the ipsum velle to those that have it: His giving it being but a causing their faculties to Act: And we grant that wherever God absolutely willeth that his Help shall be successful, it is so: And also that whereas all the effect cometh from our natural Power, and God's grace conjunct, God is the cause of both; And is ever the total cause quoad effectum, that is, totius effecti. And we grant that God's causing Impress on the will is such on some, (and perhaps on all in the act of special sanctification) as ex vi causae will infer the effect, and is unresistible, and doth not only determine the will, but so determineth it as overcometh all moral power or disposition to the contrary.
But yet that there is a Grace or adjutorium of Christ, which giveth a power either not necessitating the act, or when the act followeth not, such as he calleth sine quo non, I think for these reasons:
1. Because else no man can do anymore good or less evil, than he doth: which I believe not.
2. Because else All men that perish are damned only for original sin, and its consequents which they had never power to avoid: which is quite contrary to the tenor of the Scripture.
3. And then God would judge them only by the Law of Innocency: whereas he will judge them by Christ and by his Remedying Law, for rejecting the remedying grace.
4. And then the Conscience of the damned, would have nothing to torment them with, or accuse them for, but original sin, and its unavoidable consequents: And it would give them this excuse and ease, God never made it Possible for me to do otherwise.
5. Because it teacheth men great ingratitude to say, I never had any help of Christ.
6. And so it teacheth them impenitently to extenuate their sin, if they do but find themselves wicked, and to say, I never sinned against any Grace of Christ.
7. And it feigneth God to give men all that reprival, and mercy which the reprobate have, from some other Cause and not by Christ; And so to make a kind of grace common in the World which the Scripture knoweth not, nor is according to the Covenant of Innocency or of Grace.
8. Because God is Immutable, and too gross mutations are not without proof to be imputed to his Laws and Government: Therefore it seemeth to me an injurious fiction to say as Jansen, that God had such Laws as supposed man's self-determining will, and governed so as to use sufficient Grace or adjutorium sine quo non, to man and Angels, at the first, and tha • now he hath no such at all, but only a moving efficiency. I should sooner yield to the Dominicans and Hobbes that no other than necessitated Volitions are possible or ever were, than to hold as he, that there were other before the fall, and none ever since. For as to his great argument (vitiated nature) I answer it, 1. Man is man still; And therefore God ruleth him as man; And that in via. And if then man and Angels were supposed to have a self-determining free-will, that could do this or not do it, we have reason to think it is so still. Why is not grace merely sufficient as consistent with Lapsed as Innocent nature? (supposing that it is not the same help that is now sufficient to salvation as then.) 2. Consider the great difference between perfect Innocency, and someone commanded act: And 3. Consider that the helps afforded by grace are very great, and that Habitual Grace doth in some measure heal lapsed nature, or else what is it? He that is Habitually Prompt to Love and duty, hath some cure, and some ability: For to be prompt is more than to be able. And therefore it is an incredible thing, and a reproach of habitual grace, that Adam was more able to live and persevere without any sinful thought, word, or deed, than a Holy soul is to think one good thought, or speak one good word, or restrain one blasphemy or other sin. Therefore it is as credible that Christ's repairing habitual Grace enableth godly men (and his commone • grace common men) to think or do somewhat better than they do, as that Angels and Adam had no other grace, and could without other, live without any sin.
Therefore I take Jansen to do well in opening Original pravity, and the power of God's grace, and his special intent to save his chosen. But I think he so earnestly studied for that side alone, that he injuriously overlooketh the whole frame of sapiential Government, and the common grace which is presupposed to the special, and greatly wrongeth Christ and his grace, by denying him to give to men in common, that which our experience assureth us they possess.
Ad X. When he maketh ineffectual Velleities to be Christ's unresistible grace, either he thinketh that men are saved with such only, or not; (for he speaketh not his mind plainly in that that I can find:) If yea, then he abaseth the grace of Christ, to think that many are saved by it, that love a Whore or any sin much better than God and Grace and Glory. If not (as I think he held) then he holdeth that most that have the effectual grace of Christ are damned, and had no possibility (properly) of escape. And why doth he make so harsh a thing of men's asserting a sufficiency of some ineffectual grace, and say to what purpose is it; and yet assert that to most men the grace of Christ had not so much as any sufficiency to save them, nor put them into any true possibility of life?
Ad XI. I. It seemeth to me a contradiction to say (as in the second branch of his distinction) that Homo potest Velle, and yet that aliud adhuc adjutorium necessarium est ut de facto velit. For necessarium est sine quo res esse non potest: Therefore the non potest is present wherever the necessarium is wanting. But if they talk only of a passive or obediential power, and say, [Man can believe because God can make him believe,] and so denominate man Able to do that, which they mean God is able to make him do, this is but to play with words.
II. His saying that now there is no sufficient grace, is before disproved, and by him not proved. That it is the same with that of the state of Innocency, is vainly said: It is the same in general, as man is the same; and Intellect and will the same: But to be able to live without sin, and to be able to forbear one sin or to hear a Sermon, or do one commanded act, are not the same. And to hold none but this with Pelagius, is not all one as to hold this with a more special grace.
And that it is pernicious to the lapsed is rashly said: For in the reprobate it doth them no harm but good; and in the elect it tendeth to higher grace. And he mistaketh in saying that it supposeth nature sound: For if it were proved that nature without grace hath no good inclination, yet why may not unsound nature, receive grace ad posse? Is not that grace some cure of its unsoundness? and tends to more?
III. But as to his saying that the more men have of it the more miserable they are, and the more damnable, and that no man ever used sufficient grace or will do, I answer, 1. The good man it seemeth forgot that all the same may be said as truly of his special Grace, both in them that come short of faith and Justification, and them that apostatize from it (as he holdeth many do.) 2. But it is not true, that having it maketh them damnable anymore than having life, health and riches; but it's the abusing it. 3. That never any used sufficient grace, by his leave and the School-men's, is unproved: viz. that no man since the fall ever did any good, or forbore any evil, obediently, by such grace as left him able to have done otherwise in the instant before the act, or as inferred not his volition as necessary exviillius causae. 4. And that all that which cometh short of the effect, is none of the Grace of Christ is unproved, unless he mean only the adequate immediate effect. The Law doth make Duty, and so hath its effect; And God's motions make their various Impressions on the soul, and so have their effect: But whether a Godly man's will could not by that same motion have produced a better effect in his will than was produced by it, he must better prove.
Ad XII. I. Whereas Paul opposeth the Law of works, and the Grace of Christ, he opposeth, or too far distinguisheth the Law of Christ and the Gra • e of Christ; Just as Sir H. V. in his Meditations. He taketh all spoken and written precepts or Laws, to be the Law, which is distinguished from Grace, which is mere Alteration of the soul. But this is confusion, and subverteth true Theology. For the Law is the instrument of signifying God's mind, and the Spirit worketh with and by it on our minds: And both go together both before the fall and under Christ: And both are Grace now even as body and soul are one man: The Gospel is oft called Grace in the New Testament: It's true that a Law merely as a Law may be distinguished from the Spirits operations on the soul: And so Paul and Augustine oft show that the Jewish Law as a Law could not make men righteous without grace. And we deny not but the Law of Christ merely as a Law is insufficient without the Spirit • Grace. But to conclude hence that this is the difference between the Old • ovenant, and the New, and the Righteousness of each of them (of men under them), that one is obedience to a written Law▪ and the other is the effect of the Spirit, is not sound: For under each Covenant there was both Law and Spirit, though with difference. Adam had Grace as Jansen confusseth: And the Fathers before the Flood had Law and Spirit. And the Godly • ews had Law and Spirit: And all Christians are subject to Christ their King, and obey his Laws, though by the Grace of his Spirit: And it is not two Righteousnesses that relate to Law and Spirit, but one as an effect of two concauses; The doctrine of faith and Law and promises of Christa • e the Means which the Spirit useth in operating our Faith, Love and Obedience. And it is not two Covenants that give these two: but as soul and body make one man, so the Word of Christ and his Spirit make up one total cause of our sanctification. The Spirit causeth us to believe that which the Word revealeth, and to love the good which it proposeth, and to obey the Precepts of the Word: Therefore the Gospel is Grace, and the Spirit is Grace, that is, a free gift of God to miserable sinners for their recovery, and inward holiness is the effect of both. And to feign that all obedience as it is performed to Christ's Law upon its proper motives is therefore not of the Spirit, or is our own Righteousness opposed to Christ's, because our own reason and free-will is exercised in it, is Phanaticism, and subverteth the Gospel, and the Prophetical and Kingly Office of Christ.
II. God never gave a Law, no not to the Jews, only to convince them that they could not keep it; but to be the Rule of their obedience; And the Just did keep it in sincerity. But the Law of Moses as separated by the ignorant Jews from the promise and grace of Christ could not be kept by any to Justification. To say that Christ's Laws now have no higher end than to tell us that we cannot keep them, is Antichristianity. Are we commanded to repent, believe, love God, only to tell us that we cannot do it? It's true, that without the Spirits help, we cannot. But it's as true, that the Command is the Rule of our duty, and all the Gospel and Covenant of Grace, is the means of exciting us to our duty, by which the Spirit worketh in us faith, repentance, love and obedience. But, saith Jansen, the Law of Christ is to humble men in the sense of their disability, and drive them to seek to Christ for his grace. I answer▪ 1. Is not humbling men, and driving them to Christ, a good effect? If so, then his Law is the means of all that good. 2. Were the Gospel and all the Apostles Epistles written only to drive men to Christ, and not to edify them and make them perfect to salvation? Were not the Precepts of Love and Holiness means of working Love and Holiness in men? Is not the Word the seed that begetteth men to eternal life? and is not the receiving of this seed into good and honest hearts, made by Christ the cause of holiness and salvation? Were not the Disciples clean by the word that Christ spake to them? and doth he not say, that his Word was spirit and life, as being the concause of the Spirits vivification? He that never received more benefit by Christ's Doctrine, Law and Gospel, than to be convinced that he cannot believe, repent, obey or love God, hath not yet the benefit which they are principally intended for.
But suppose that by Law he had meant the mere penal part or threatening (as some words would make a man suspect:) 1. It's a strange description of a Law, to exclude the precept and premiant part, and include only the penal part which is the last and least. 2. As it is the same Man that hath Love and Hatred, Hope and Fear, so it is the same Law of Christ which hath precept and prohibition, promise and penalty: And it is the same Holiness, or New Creature which is a conformity to all together. Of which more anon.
III. He can never prove, that all unbelievers have no Power to •• e any means which tendeth to • aith, by a preparatory grace; nor that the use of all such means is Impossible to them.
XIII. His distinction of Natural and Moral Impotency is good▪ But then that Moral Impotency itself must not be made the same with the Natural: else there will be the same reason for excusing sin by it. If man's Will had been made by God such as could not possibly love him or holiness, it would not have left a man inexcusable in judgment, that his enmity was Voluntary: It is reason enough for a man to kill a • oad or Serpent as malum sibi natural, because it is a hurtful creature; But this is no Moral Evil in them, nor is their death their punishment: nor yet in any ravenous creature, which preyeth on the rest that are innocent. And so would it be with bad men, if God had made them bad▪ Indeed if Adam have made them all bad, and God have given no Savior▪ Grace or Remedy, they are con • emnable and inexcusable, as they were virtually in Adam, if judged only by the Law of Innocency as made to Adam: But they are excusable if judged by Christ by the Law of grace, which condemneth no man merely as not innocent, or a sinner, but as a rejecter of grace. These things are so plain and weighty, that Ja • senius should not join with the Antinomians in opposing them.
XIV. While he confesseth that Christ so far died for all, as to procure them all the mercy which he giveth them, I have no further quarrel with him, but to prove that a Condition pardon of sin and grant of Life eternal, with much means and help to make men perform the Condition, which is but a suitable Acceptance, is indeed mercy.
XVI. That Christ's grace is Love, or Complacency in good, is a truth which I highly value: but with all these exceptions to his doctrine. 1. It is the Heart of the new Creature, and that which must communicate itself to all the rest, or else they are lifeless and unacceptable: For the will is the man in God's account; And complacency, or love, or appetite is the first act of the will; which is it that he calleth with Augustine Delectation: Grace lieth principally in a Placet. But the man hath more parts than his Heart: And all other parts of sanctification are graces of Christ▪ in their several places, and not love only.
2. Though no man is to love himself as God, nor instead of God, nor above God, nor as the noblest ultimate object of his love▪ yet all men are necessitated by nature to love themselves; and therefore to desire their own felicity in loving God, next to God as the final object of that love; And so our end is finis amantis vel amicitiae which includeth mutual complacency and union, though not in equality. And to such an end, grace causeth us to use the means: And Christ is proposed to us as our Savior, and all his grace as for our good, and all God's commands as necessary for our happiness, and sin is described to us to be hated as our o •• evil and destruction, and against our good as well as against God's will and honor. And with us this is denied scarcely by the Antino • ians themselves: Much less by any judicious Christians.
3. It is past the reach of any of us, to prove that our actual love is the first effect of the sanctifying Spirit on the soul. I mean not only, Whether some other acts (as Intellectual perception, and belief) be not in order of nature before it, and in time with it, and real parts of the same new creature, but also, Whether a • Alvarez and others say, there be not such a divine motion or Impulse on the soul tending to this love, and antecedent to love itself, in nature, (love being an effect of God's will and m •• s,) which J •• s • nius denieth.
But 4. If it be not so, but really love be the first effect of God on the soul, then the controversies are all at an end, about the difference of suffici •• t and effectual, equal and unequal grace. For then it would be as Ja • senius saith, and there is no grace but the effect itself, and so there would be no question, but Whether all men love God, and all alike. But I yet believe that there is soe preparatory grace of Christ which tendeth to the love of God.
XVI. I believe that the will is the prime seat of Morality, and that love or complacency is as the spirit of all saving special grace. But yet it is ill said, that Christ's grace is necessary only to love or delight. For the soul of man hath three faculties, which must be conjunctly sanctified, viz. Vital active power, Intellect and Will; and sin is in all; And the Spirit reneweth them by a threefold effect, Vivification, Illumination and Conversion (or love.) And hatred of sin, and fear of sinning, and of God, are graces of Christ also, (as are obedience, patience, &c.) though below love.
2. There is an Analogical good that is done by self-love and fear, which hath a tendency to man's recovery, though not such good as is true holiness and hath a promise of salvation.
XVII. I. Here we come to a difficult case: 1. Whether indeed any ungodly man or Infidel, do love God sincerely amore amicitiae & propter se: The doubt is, because to love him less than sinful pleasures and the creature, seemeth to be a loving him as less amiable or good. And to love him as such, is not to love him as God, nor indeed to love God, but an Idol of the imagination. I think we must say, 1. That no man loveth God adequately; for no man hath an adequate conception of him. 2. But yet that there are some essentials of such true love as is necessary and suitable to our dark and weak condition, which all must have that will be saved (either distinctly or confusedly): As to know and love him as the Infinite Spirit the first cause and last end of all, most powerful, wise and good, our Owner, our Ruler and our Benefactor and chief good: Father, Word and Spirit; the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier; the Author of Nature, Grace, Glory. 3. That no wicked or unholy person truly loveth God thus, viz. As his own Governor to make him holy, and save him from the Flesh and World: and as the Author of those holy Laws, by which he governeth, and a righteous Judge according to those Laws. 4. Therefore Jansen 's little sincere Love in sensual men is but a love of aliquid Dei, somewhat of God, and not properly of God as God: speaking of God as the object of love itself. 5. Yet the same person may have all the • or • said Notions of a Deity, and may notionally call them all good and laudable; but his Practical Judgment is not such of God as his holy Governor, Judge and End, as to bring him truly as such to love him. 6. Yet this may be called a Love of God analogically, as he is said to love the King who loveth him as great and good to the Common-wealth, though not as a governing restrainer of his lusts. By this I would have that explained which I have said of this subject in my Saints Rest.
II. But here I am at • further loss. Did he mean that this love called sincere, is in none but those that are saved o • not? As I said before, If he did, then a common Drunkard, Adulterer, &c. may have this love and be saved: But I suppose he meant Negatively: And if so, methinks hence all his opposition to sufficient Grace turneth back upon himself: And to him it may better be said, Why do you feign Christ and the Holy Ghost to give men such a Grace, such a Love to God, as no man ever was or will be saved by, without more? Is it anymore dishonor to Christ, to give men some such Power to do some more good • han actually they do, as Ad • m had to have continued innocent, than effectually to give so many persons sincere love which shall never save the • ? (Whether these be they that he will adjudge to Purgatory I know •• : If so, he will stretch the rank of Venial sins to those that other men call Mortal.)
III. But yet my greatest difficulty remaineth: I am in doubt Whether he that denieth common sufficient grace, and extendeth the grace of Christ seemingly but to few, do not really either make it the same thing with Nature, or extend it to all: For I suspect that all or almost all men on earth, (till they have sinned themselves into diabolical desperate malignity) have this which he calleth Amor amicitiae and sincere imperfect love to God and Justice. For Intellectus est Entis & veri intellectus, & Voluntas est Boni. Good apprehended such, is the Wills necessary natural object. And a simple complacency in apprehended good, is the wills first necessary act. Nature telleth man, that there is created goodness; and that the Creator who giveth it, must needs have more than all his creatures: And nature tells men, that the World, or millions are better than one person; and their good to be preferred: And how can it be then, that he that taketh the World to be so much better than himself, and God to be better, that is, more amiable than all the World, should not have the least simple complacency in thinking of him▪ All men take Wisdom and Goodness, and Beneficence for amiable: And they that believe that God hath most of these, must needs have some Love to him, not only as good to them, but as most excellent in himself: Insomuch that as Adrian the sixth before cited saith, in some sort a bad man may love God better than himself; and he is scarce worthy the name of a man, that would not rather be annihilated, or wish that he had never been born, than that there were no World, or no God, (if per impossible he supposed he could live without them.) And if you tell every man that he hath that sincere love to God which is Gratia Christi, who hath the least love to God and Justice propter se, though he have more love to his fleshly interest and sinful pleasures, I doubt you will not much differ from Pelagius, and will have no way left but to say, that it is not of Grace by Christ that Nature is reprieved and supported: Or at least that this is of a common sort of grace. We may presume of many things as received from our Teachers: but it is hard to prove, that Adam the next moment after his sin was totally deprived of all degrees of love to God, and goodness, and so was privatively as bad as Devils; or that all mankind are naturally so: Though I believe that it was of grace, even God's first pardoning act as our Redeemer, not so totally to execute the Law, nor take away his grace, and leave man to the utmost penalty of his sin, but to keep nature from being as bad as else it would have been. But sure Man is Man still, and not a Devil: And I speak with few or none that seem not to have some liking of God and goodness, or Justice as such; though they love not God or goodness, as contrary to their fleshly lusts, nor love God as their Sanctifier and Ultimate End. And thus the Carnal Mind is Enmity to God, being not subject to his Law, though this be consistent with loving him secundum quid.
IV. I believe him that there is a faith, such as the Devils, which may be without Justification, both in habit and act: But that the same Faith which after justifieth, can be many years Habitually before Justification (that is, Sanctification as he meaneth it) I believe not: Seeing God hath promised that all that believe (thus) shall be justified and have his Spirit.
V. Jansen seems to me to set too light by Habitual Grace, as if it were some common thing in comparison of the Act: Whereas I take a Habit of love to God to differ from an act, either as a Spring or Rivolet from a drop, or as Honesty from an honest act, or Learning from a learned exercise, or as a fixed friendly Inclination which is like to Nature, differeth from a friendly action, and to be more excellent than a particular act.