Philosophy the Handmaid of Theology

1First Exercise. On being and essence.

Article I. The first division of real being is set out, and it is shown that God alone is necessary being.

Real being is first divided into finite and infinite — that is, into creator and creature. This division is commonly handed down and proposed in many other ways. Some put it thus: one being is from itself, another from another. Others thus: of beings, some are or exist by essence, others by participation. Others thus: one being is necessary, another contingent. The glorious God is infinite being, having existence from no other; he is likewise being by essence, and supremely necessary. Creatures, however, are finite beings, having existence from another; and therefore they are not necessary, but contingent.

2. The first two ways of proposing this division need no explanation; the last two are not so clear, and therefore they call for a longer account. I will begin from the last division, which is into necessary being and contingent being. The glorious God is called necessary being because it is necessary that he always exist in act. For God cannot deprive himself of his own being — that is, of the act of existence — nor can anything else do so, since he does not depend on another. Creatures, however, are contingent beings; that is, they exist contingently. For they hang upon the conserving power of a freely acting cause — that is, of God — who, before he gave them being, could have refused to give it, and after he has given it can take it away.

3. Many objections are usually raised here about the necessity of separated substances, of the heavenly bodies, of prime matter, of universal natures, and of necessary propositions, to which philosophers ascribe eternal truth. But because those thorny questions deter many by their difficulty and call them away from philosophical studies, I omit them and go on to other matters that are more necessary and more pleasant.

2Article II. The second division of real being is proposed, and it is proved that God alone is being by essence.

This division is into being by essence and being by participation. Being by essence is the glorious God, who exists by the force of his own essence. Beings by participation are created beings, which have no actual and real existence in the world except as communicated and participated from another by whom they were produced — that is, from God. But that it may be understood how God is said to exist by the force of his essence, let these foundations be held.

First: the existence of God is of his essence. That is, it is not something superadded to the divine essence, nor ought it to be conceived by us as something superadded to it, but it is something included in the very essence of God, no less than animality or rationality is enclosed in human essence. This is shown thus: every substantial perfection is of the essence of God (for the essence of God would not be of infinite perfection if some perfection were granted which his essence does not enclose in itself); but existence is a substantial perfection, as is plain to anyone; therefore it is of the essence of God. Just as, therefore, it is of the essence of a human being to be an animal, or a body, or a substance, so it is of the essence of God to be something actually existing.

2. On the contrary, it is neither necessary nor possible that the existence of a creature be of its essence. It is not necessary, because the essence of a creature is not of infinite perfection. It is not possible, because whatever is of the essence of a thing necessarily belongs to that thing, and its affirmation of that thing is necessary and of eternal truth. But existence does not stand thus in creatures: for I do not truly say, it is necessary that a rose exist, or it is necessary that thunder exist — for they can fail to exist. Yet I do truly say, it is necessary that a rose be a flower, or that thunder be a sound, even when rose and thunder do not exist. Hence it is plain that these latter are essential predications, but not those former. This reason proves not only that existence is not of the essence of a creature, but also that existence does not necessarily follow the essence of a creature or flow from it. For whatever is essential by flowing forth is necessarily affirmed of the thing to which it is essential; but actual existence (as has been said) belongs to creatures contingently. Meanwhile we admit that the capacity or potency for existence belongs not contingently but necessarily and essentially to every real being, whether created or uncreated; but the same is not to be said of actual existence.

3. Let the second foundation be this. If anyone asks whence it is that God exists and cannot fail to exist, no reason can be given except this one: namely, because his essence is of infinite perfection — that is, it encloses every perfection in itself, and therefore existence also. Hence it is plain that God is rightly said to exist by the force of his essence. But if the question is moved concerning creatures — whence it is that they now actually exist — one must not answer that this happens because such is their essence, or because that is the condition of their essence; for their essence is indifferent to existing and not existing — that is, it can exist or not exist at the will of God. Rather one must answer that the true reason of that fact is that their essence, which earlier was only possible and apt for existing, has now been given the very act of existence by God and by secondary causes. Creatures therefore cannot be said to exist by the force of their essence, but by the force of the causes from which they were produced, and chiefly of the first cause. Hence it follows that they are not beings by their own essence, but by participation and reception of existence from the first cause. Besides, the reason of this matter can be given from this very clear foundation: it is the condition of the divine essence that it cannot fail to exist, and that it cannot participate its existence from another; but it is the condition of a created essence that it can, at the will of the first cause, have existence or not have it, and that it cannot exist except by participating the act of existence from the first cause. Hence it is plain that the first cause exists by the force of its essence; but secondary causes, or created beings, do not exist by the force of their essence, but through the action of the first cause from which they receive actual existence.

4. Third foundation. The essence of a creature is rightly and truly called potency; but the existence of a creature may well be called an act superadded to the essence. This is declared thus: just as physical matter is called potency and physical form act, because matter in itself and from itself has no form, but is capable of form, or can receive form, so the essence of a creature can be called potency, because it neither encloses existence in itself nor has it from itself, but is capable of it, or can receive it and participate it from the first cause. But on the contrary the essence of God stands far otherwise: for in itself it encloses the act of existing; and therefore it does not stand toward existence as potency toward act — for no potency encloses act in itself, but is referred to act as to something external. And so much concerning the division of being into finite and infinite.

3Article III. The third division of real being is set out, and it is explained how God is pure act.

1. Third, real being is divided into that which is merely actual, that which is merely potential, and that which is partly actual, partly potential — or mixed from potency and act. Merely potential being is that which does not exist in act, but can exist: such a being is a rose in winter. It is to be noted here that philosophers commonly say that those beings which do not exist in act, but can really exist, are in objective potency. For the object of the productive potency which is in causes is that which is producible by the causes — or that which has not yet received existence from the causes, but can receive it. Therefore some possible being, so long as it does not exist in act, is the object of the productive potency of causes, and for that reason is said to be in objective potency, because namely it has that potency which belongs to things so long as they are objects of some causative potency. But when that being has been produced in act and has received existence from causes, it is no longer the object of the productive potency of causes, and on that account is said not to be in objective potency.

2. Merely actual being, or pure act, is the glorious God, to whom this supreme and perfect actuality is ascribed: first, to mark his simplicity. For every composition from potency and act is repugnant to him — that is, from some potential or imperfect principle, and an actual principle; that is, one that actuates and perfects that other principle, as we shall later declare in the doctrine concerning God. Second, to remove and exclude every potency that argues some imperfection. Now there are three kinds of potencies which, on account of their imperfection, cannot be ascribed to God: namely objective potency, which is nothing other than the producibility of a thing by its causes; second, passive potency, which belongs to things insofar as they can suffer and be changed by some agent; third, potency toward non-being. The first potency belongs to things that do not exist, and therefore cannot be ascribed to God, who exists necessarily and never could fail to exist; the two latter belong to things that do exist, yet are mutable and passible: but God is immutable and impassible. But of active potency the account is far otherwise. For active potency, as the metaphysicians have well observed, rather deserves the name of virtue or faculty than of potency: for each thing acts insofar as it is in act, whence the very power of acting is a certain actuality. But someone will ask: every potency is more imperfect than its act; and whatever is imperfect, whether absolutely or comparatively, is to be removed from God. It is answered that even active potency in creatures is often more imperfect than its act, and that because the perfection of a creature is placed in the operation and exercise of the potency, and it is more perfect when it acts than when it does not act: but God does not stand thus. For his supreme and infinite perfection, or beatitude, is placed in this — that he is God — and therefore he does not stand better or more perfectly when he acts than when he does not act.

3. Being that consists of potency and act is finite being actually existing in the world. And a being of this sort is said to consist of act and potency, or to be partly actual, partly potential, for two reasons. First, because in finite beings various compositions are found: namely from genus and difference, from matter and form, from integral parts, from essence and existence; from existing essence and subsistence superadded to it, from subject and accident. Now in all these compositions (that alone excepted which is from integrating parts) there is one potential and receptive principle, which on that account is called potency, and another actual and perfective principle, which on that account is called act: the principle of the former kind underlies in every composition, and the principle of the latter kind is superadded to it. Hence it is plain that finite beings are rightly said to be composed of potency and act. The second reason is this: finite beings, although they exist in act and thus have some act and perfection, are nevertheless not merely actual and perfect, but have those three kinds of potencies that argue imperfection. For first, before they exist, they have that objective potency toward existing. Second, when they exist, they have passive potency, and a receptive potency for new accidents. Third, they have potency toward non-being: for they can be abolished by the first cause and reduced to nothing.

4Article IV. The fourth division of real being is set out, which is drawn from the modes of existing.

1. A fourth division of real being can be drawn from the modes of existing — that is, from modes superadded to the act of existence. For in every being that exists in act these three things can be considered: first, that it has such an essence and nature by which it is constituted in a definite genus of being and is distinguished from all other beings; second, that it exists in act in the world, and so has an act of existing superadded to its essence; third, that it has such a mode of existing as suits its nature. For singular and complete substances are and exist in such a way that they are not in another, but exist through themselves. Singular accidents, by contrast — this whiteness, this blackness — are and exist in such a way that they do not exist through themselves, but in another. Hence it is clear that there are two general modes of existing, superadded to existence itself: the former is the perseity of existing, or the mode of existing through itself and not in another; the latter is the mode of existing in another and not through itself.

2. These things being laid down, the fourth division of real being can be conceived thus: every real being either exists in such a way that it can in no way inhere in another or be communicated to another; or it exists in such a way that it is in act in another, or at least can be in another. For example, this man, this horse, this stone in no way inhere in another by way of a part, or of an essential form, or of an accidental form, or of a quasi-form. By contrast their members inhere in them by way of parts, and their accidents inhere in them by way of accidental forms. I said "or at least can be in another" on account of human souls separated from the body, which, although they are not in act in another, can nevertheless be in another after the manner of parts. But that these things may be better understood, the kinds of those things which can in some way be said to be in another by way of a part or of a form must be enumerated.

3. First, accidents exist in their subject; second, parts both essential and integral exist in their whole; third, the total and singular nature of a thing is in that whose nature it is, after the manner of a form. For the nature or essence of a thing stands as a form; that of which it is the essence stands as matter. Therefore not only does a universal nature inhere in singulars, but a singular nature also inheres in that suppositum whose nature it is. Thus the singular nature of Peter is in Peter himself — that is, it is included in Peter. For Peter is not the humanity of Peter, but something consisting of his singular humanity and of the subsistence superadded to it; and therefore his singular humanity is said to inhere in him.

4. Whatever can be referred to these three classes must be said not to subsist, or to exist through itself, but to inexist in another (if one may so speak). Those things, however, which are referred to none of those classes are said to subsist, or to exist through themselves. For subsistence is nothing other than a certain mode of existing by which some being exists in such a way that it in no way inheres in another thing, but is underlaid and supposed to the other things that inexist in it. Hence a being of this kind is called in Latin a suppositum, in Greek a hypostasis.

5. It is to be noted here that these words hypostasis and subsistence are highly ambiguous and have six significations, of which the first three are less proper and not customary among philosophers, while the last three are more philosophical. First, hypostasis or subsistence is taken for the subsisting thing itself — that is, for a suppositum or person. Second, for true being, not for an empty appearance of it, and likewise for fixed and permanent being. Third, for that which underlies in any way: after which fashion in a building the foundation, in a column the base, in wine the dregs, in urine the sediment, are called hypostasis and subsistence.

6. But among philosophers, to subsist is taken first for being through itself — that is, not in a subject of inherence. In this way every substance, and substance alone — whether universal or particular, whether complete and total or incomplete and partial — is truly called a subsisting being, or a being through itself, not existing in another; accidents, by contrast, do not in this way subsist, but exist in another. Second, that is said to subsist which does not exist in another in such a way that it depends on it as to the act of existing — that is, so that because of its imperfect mode of existing it cannot exist outside that other and through itself. In this signification we deny that not only accidents but also universal substances subsist, and that because they depend on the first things as to actual existence; for they exist in them and by their benefit. Second, we deny that matter, and all substantial forms educible from the potency of matter, subsist in this way: for they so depend on the suppositum in which they inhere that they cannot exist through themselves and outside every suppositum. I said "forms educible from the potency of matter" to exclude the human soul, whose case is otherwise, as will presently appear. I said "outside every suppositum" because matter can indeed exist outside this or that particular suppositum — as outside Socrates or outside Plato — for when they are dead it can enter the constitution of another suppositum and be sustained by it; yet it cannot exist outside every suppositum. Third, we deny that singular substances themselves, when signified by abstract names — that is, the singular essences of created substances — subsist in this way. For the singular humanity of Peter so exists in Peter himself that it cannot exist through itself and outside every suppositum; likewise the singular humanity of CHRIST so exists in CHRIST that in an ineffable manner it depends in its being on his most glorious person. Although therefore singular men exist through themselves and in no way in another, singular human natures nevertheless do not exist through themselves, but in their singular supposita — that is, in men. Someone will say: a singular man and a singular human nature are the same. It is answered that that is most false; for a singular man is not a singular humanity, but something consisting of a singular human nature and of the subsistence superadded to it, as will appear in what follows. Hence the second person of the Trinity is said by the theologians to have assumed a singular human nature, not a singular man.

7. But on the contrary, in this signification we attribute subsistence, first, to all singular complete and predicamental substances — that is, those signified by a concrete name — such as this man, this horse; and likewise to the persons of the adorable Trinity, and that because all these exist in no thing as parts, or as essential or accidental forms. Second, in this sense we also assert that the Divine essence or Deity, although it exists in the three persons of the adorable Trinity, truly subsists; and we say the same of the human soul, although it is in the body as form in matter, and in the composite as a part in the whole — and that because neither does the essence of GOD depend in its being on the divine persons (for that would argue imperfection), nor does the rational soul depend on matter and the composite; for it can exist without them, and it really does exist when it is separated from the body.

8. Third, that is said to subsist which exists in another neither in act nor in potency — that is, which cannot be included in any suppositum. In this signification subsistence is denied to all those things which exist in some suppositum, whether or not they depend on it as to the act of existing. In this way we deny that the human soul and the most glorious essence of GOD subsist: for the former is in man as a part in the whole; the latter, in an ineffable manner, exists in the three persons of the Trinity. And therefore in this sense we say that only, and all,..supposita subsist and have subsistence: for every suppositum so exists that it can in no way exist in another suppositum, as an accident in a subject, a part in a whole, or a nature in that which has the nature. Hence it is that the philosophers say a suppositum is something incommunicable to many, and altogether unfit for existing in another. From these things it is clear that in this fourth division of being, subsistence is to be taken in this last way: for in it, by a subsisting being I understand that which in no way inheres in another, as an accident in a subject, a part in a whole, or a nature — whether universal or singular — in its suppositum. But by a being inexisting in another I understand that which is in some way communicable to another — that is, apt to inhere in another.

5Article V. An explanation of these words: Being, Essence, Existence, Subsistence, Suppositum, and Person.

1. Essence is accustomed to be described by the philosophers in various ways. First, thus: the essence of a thing is that which is explained by the definition. Second, thus: essence is that through which a thing is constituted in a definite genus of being and is distinguished from all others. Third, thus: essence is the first, radical, and intimate principle of all the actions and properties of a thing. For example, the principles of many human operations are habits existing in the souls of men; the principles of the habits are natural potencies flowing from the essence; the principle of the potencies is human nature or essence; but human essence itself, consisting of soul and body, has no productive and effective principle of itself existing in the man — that is, nothing can be found in the man himself from which his essence flows or is caused. I said that it has no effective principle existing in the man, because it is certain that it has constitutive principles, both physical and metaphysical. Since therefore the natural potencies of things, and the operations of the potencies, draw their origin from the essence, while the essence has no efficient cause prior to itself in that thing whose essence it is, it is rightly called the first, radical, and intimate principle of all the properties and actions of the thing.

2. Finally, essence can not inconveniently be described thus: essence is that which belongs to a thing most necessarily and first of all. I say "most necessarily" to exclude common accidents, which are contingently present to that thing whose accidents they are. I say "first of all" to exclude proper accidents, which, although they belong necessarily to their subject, do not yet inhere in it first; rather the essence inheres first, from which they flow. This, then, is the general rule: whatever inheres in a thing most necessarily, first of all, and intimately, that is the essence of the thing; but whatever inheres either contingently, or on account of another from which it flows — and likewise whatever is adventitious and not intimate — that is something superadded to the essence, not the essence itself.

3. Existence differs from essence chiefly in office and function. For the office of essence is to constitute a thing in a definite genus of being and to distinguish it from all others. Thus a man through his essence, inasmuch as he is a rational animal, is distinguished from all other beings. But the office of existence is to bring it about that a thing having such an essence is outside its causes (as the metaphysicians speak), or rather, that it is outside the virtue and productive potency of causes. For when a thing does not exist, it is said to be in the potency of its causes, because it is producible by its causes and can exist through their effective potency; but when it has been produced in act and has received the act of existing, it is no longer in the effective potency of the causes, but has been led out from the state of potentiality into the state of actuality. While that state lasts, it is not producible through the potency of the causes; for it must perish, and lose the act of existing which it already has, before it can again be produced by its causes and receive existence.

4. This office of existence differs from the office of essence in that the office of essence in all things is stable and perpetual; whereas the office of existence in some things is subject to various changes, because existence itself is now present, now absent. For example, the existence of a rose, or of thunder, at certain times exercises its office, but at other times does not — as in winter, when the rose or thunder are in the potency of their causes, as they say. By contrast, the essence of these and similar things perpetually exercises its office: for whether a rose exists or not, a rose is a flower, by nature and essentially distinct from all other flowers; and the physicists have science of the rose even when it does not exist, because they know the rose to be a flower distinct from other flowers not only by nature or essence but also by properties, virtue, and efficacy. For it is not to be thought that when a rose does not exist it loses its essential distinction from other flowers, or is confused with them as to essence. From these things this definition of existence can be gathered: Existence is a mode superadded to essence, bringing it about that a thing having that essence is outside its causes in the world.

5. These words — essence and existence — having been explained, it is easy to know what Being is. For Being differs from essence and existence as a concrete from two abstracts; and likewise as that which has, from those things which are had from it. For Being is nothing other than that which has essence, or existence. It is to be noted here that Being is taken in two ways, participially and nominally, as they speak. Being, as it is the participle of the verb "to be," signifies that which is existing in act; but Being, inasmuch as it is a verbal noun, signifies that which has an essence capable of existence, whether it exists in act or not; and as Suarez speaks, it signifies being itself, not as exercised in act, but in potency or aptitude. Thus "living," as it is a participle, signifies the actual use of life; but as it is a noun, it signifies only that which has that essence which can be a principle of vital operation.

6. Subsistence properly, and taken in the third signification, agrees with existence in this, that neither this nor that is Being itself, or the essence of Being, but a mode of Being. Yet it differs from it, first, in that existence extends more widely than subsistence: for the former belongs to all things, both substances and accidents; the latter belongs only to singular complete substances, inasmuch as they are signified by concrete names — to this man, this horse, this lion. For as I warned in the previous article, this singular humanity or this singular horseness do not subsist, but exist in their supposita and by their benefit.

Secondly, existence and subsistence differ by reason of their charge or office; for the office of existence is to make it so that some thing actually be in the world, outside the power or potency of causes; but the office of subsistence is to make it so that a thing can in no way be in another — neither as a part in a whole, nor as an accident in a subject, nor as a nature or essence in that which has the essence.

Thirdly, they differ as the determining and the determined; for just as essence is of itself indifferent to existing and not existing, so existence is of itself indifferent to being in another and to being through itself, that is, to subsisting: that is, existence is indifferent to the mode of existing by leaning upon another as sustaining it, and to the mode of existing through itself, without dependence on another that receives and sustains it. Subsistence, therefore, can be described thus: subsistence is a superadded mode of existence, from which a thing has it that it can exist not in another but through itself. Hence it is called by some the total perseity of existing.

7. From these things that have already been said we can gather that, in any singular substance signified by a concrete name, these three acts can be discerned: first, the act of the singular essence, through which that substance is such an individual, distinct from all others; second, the act of existence, through which the substance that has such a singular essence is outside its causes in the world; third, the act of subsistence, through which it is so outside its causes that it does not inexist, or lean upon another, but underlies those that inexist in it, and is supposed under them — whence, as was said above, it is called a suppositum.

8. The suppositum is easily known once the nature of subsistence is known; for a suppositum is nothing other than that which has subsistence, thus superadded to essence and existence — or that which, in the act of existing, leans upon no other, but is laid under and supposed by other things that lean upon it. It can also be explained thus: a suppositum is that which is in no way communicable to many, and likewise in no way can inhere in another, after the manner of a part or of a form. Therefore Peter's singular humanity is not a suppositum, because it is truly said to be in Peter; likewise the human nature of Christ is not a suppositum, for the same reason; but Peter himself is a suppositum, because he does not inhere in another as a part in a whole, an accident in a subject, or a nature in that which has a nature. In the same way Christ, and any other person of the Trinity, is a suppositum for the same reason. Accidents are not supposita, whether they are universal or singular, because they inhere in and lean upon their subjects. Universal substances also are not supposita, because they are communicated to singulars and inhere in them. Finally the glorious God, insofar as he is common, in an ineffable way, to the three persons of the Trinity, is not a suppositum — and that because it belongs to the account of a suppositum that it cannot be communicated, or inhere in another suppositum; but God, or the Godhead, is communicated and inheres in the three persons of the Trinity.

9. Person differs from suppositum in this, that every person is a suppositum, but not every suppositum is a person: for a person is nothing other than a suppositum endowed with reason — whence it is described by Boethius thus: It is an individual substance of a rational nature. Therefore suppositum in general is divided into rational and irrational. A rational suppositum is called a person; an irrational suppositum, as this horse, this stone, does not have a peculiar name imposed upon it. Person is divided into created and uncreated. The uncreated persons are three: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A created person is either angelic, as Gabriel, Michael; or human, as Peter, John.

6Article VI. Whether, in creatures, the suppositum and its singular nature really differ.

1. I have not resolved here to air that celebrated controversy concerning the distinction and diversity of essence from existence — whether namely it is real, or of reason alone. For that question has no usefulness in theology, and is more thorny and more difficult than can be grasped by those who are raw and beginners in metaphysics. Yet concerning the distinction of subsistence and of nature or essence I will say a few things: for the determination of that question has a notable use in theology.

2. This question is accustomed to be proposed in two ways. First, thus: whether, in created supposita, subsistence is something positive and really distinct from the singular essence to which it is superadded — or whether it is not. Second, thus: whether the suppositum and its singular nature really differ — for example, whether Peter and his singular human nature are in truth the same, or whether Peter, as Peter, includes something real and really diverse from his singular nature. Whether the question is proposed in this way or in that, it is the same controversy; and therefore I briefly answer that Peter and his singular nature really differ, as the including and the included, or as the composite and its constitutive principle. For every created suppositum, as Peter, includes the singular nature and something superadded to it — namely subsistence; or (to speak more plainly) every created suppositum is really composed of the singular essence and the subsistence superadded to it, which some call suppositality, others personality. If therefore we compare the suppositum to the singular nature, they are distinguished as whole and part; but if we institute the comparison between the singular nature itself and subsistence — as between Peter's singular human nature and Peter's subsistence or personality — then they are contradistinguished from each other as two extremes composing that created suppositum, namely Peter. But that this sentence may be established, first it must be proved that subsistence, or suppositality, is not a mere negation, as Scotus opines, but is something positive constituting Peter together with the singular nature, insofar as he is a suppositum. Second, that that positive thing differs not by reason alone but really from the singular nature with which it constitutes Peter. From this I will then manifestly infer that Peter really differs from his singular human nature, and that his human nature is truly and properly said to be in him. For if Peter, insofar as he is Peter, or insofar as he is a certain particular human person, includes these two — namely his singular humanity and his personality — as two constitutive principles really distinct, it is necessary that his singular humanity really differ from him, and be in him as truly as either his matter or his form is said to be in him.

3. Scotus, in book 3 of the Sentences, distinction 1, question 1, says that every suppositum, besides the singular nature, also includes subsistence, but he asserts that subsistence is a mere negation of the aptitude or potency of being in another suppositum. For singular natures have a potency of existing in a suppositum; but the suppositum itself, as Peter, cannot be in any other suppositum; and therefore on his view the suppositum, as such, is constituted by the negation of this potency of existing in a suppositum. This sentence is rightly rejected by Francisco Suárez, Metaphysical Disputations 34, section 2. First, because the subsistence which the suppositum adds to the singular nature is a certain substantial perfection; but a mere negation cannot be a substantial perfection; therefore a mere negation is not subsistence. Second, if subsistence, or personality, were a mere negation, the three persons of the Trinity would be constituted in their personal being, and would be distinguished from one another, by negation alone — for they are distinguished by their subsistences or personalities; but this is absurd, and plainly destroys the mystery of the Trinity. Therefore subsistence is not a mere negation, but something positive superadded to the singular essence for constituting the suppositum.

4. It must now be proved against Durandus, in book 1 of the Sentences, distinction 34, that subsistence is something really diverse from the essence or singular nature of created substances (for concerning God one must think far otherwise). And that is clearly shown by this reason: the Word assumed a singular human nature, but did not assume a human suppositum or human person — for thus he would not be one simple person, but twin. Therefore the human suppositum and its singular nature are really diverse; and therefore something is in truth included in the human suppositum besides its singular nature; and this can be nothing other than subsistence, or personality.

5. This reason is also accustomed to be proposed thus: those things which can be really separated are not really the same; but subsistence can be separated from the singular nature; therefore they are not really the same. The assumption is proved: the Word assumed a singular human nature; but he did not assume human personality or human subsistence, as all theologians confess; therefore they can be separated. This reason not only proves that subsistence really differs from the specific nature, which is common to all individuals, but also from the individual or singular nature; and therefore that their sentence is openly false who say that Peter's subsistence or personality is his individual difference. For Christ did not assume human nature in common, but a singular humanity; and he did not assume a singular person. In truth, therefore, the singular person differs from the singular nature, and includes something that is not included in the singular nature — namely subsistence and personality.

6. By these two reasons it is clearly proved that every suppositum, besides its singular nature, includes something positive really distinct from that nature — namely subsistence; and on that account that every created suppositum is really composed of its singular nature and subsistence, which others call suppositality. Someone will say: if subsistence is something real, really distinct from essence, it is either matter, or form, or the composite itself, or some accident of it. I answer: that which in the constitution of the suppositum is superadded to the singular nature is not some being properly so called, but a mode of being; and therefore it is neither matter, nor form, nor the composite, nor an accident of it.

7Article VII. What is the cause why philosophers attribute composition from essence and existence, and likewise from essence and subsistence, to created substances, but not to God.

1. Created singular substances can be considered in three ways, as was said above. First, insofar as they have such an essence. Second, insofar as they are beings actually existing in the world. Third, insofar as they have such a mode of existing, or insofar as they are supposita. If they are considered in the first way, they have composition from the physical parts of their essence, and from the metaphysical parts of the same: for example, if Socrates is considered insofar as he is a man, he is physically constituted from his matter and form; likewise metaphysically, or logically, from genus and difference — that is, from animal and rational. If singular substances are considered in the second way, they include two things, namely essence and existence, which according to our way of conceiving stand as potency and act, as I explained above: and therefore, since from potency and act there is always made some composite that is one through itself, we rightly say that singular substances so considered are composed from essence and existence — that is, from nature and the act of existing. Thus Peter, insofar as he is a man actually existing in the world, includes these two: human nature, and the act of existing; he includes them (I say) as two principles from which he is constituted.

2. If created singular substances are considered in the third way — that is, if they are considered insofar as they are supposita, not only having an essence actually existing in the world, but also such a mode of existing, namely through itself and not in another — if (I say) they are so considered, they include two things, namely an essence actually existing, and subsistence, or the mode of existing through itself, superadded to that existing essence: but the essence or singular nature of a created substance is potency with respect to subsistence, and subsistence is its act superadded to it and perfecting it; and therefore from an essence or nature actually existing, and from subsistence superadded to it, we rightly say that something one through itself comes to be — namely the suppositum itself. Thus Peter, insofar as he is such a person, includes a singular essence, through which he is a singular being, and a singular subsistence, through which he is a singular person.

3. Someone will ask what the cause is why these three compositions are not attributed to God: since essence, existence, and subsistence or personality are found in all the persons of the Trinity, no less than in human and angelic persons — for each person of the Trinity has its essence and existence, common to it with the remaining persons of the Trinity; it also has its own proper subsistence, or personality, through which it differs from the remaining persons. The answer is that none of their composition can be attributed to God, his simplicity being preserved, and likewise the infinite perfection and dignity of that most glorious nature. But this will become plain if we consider and weigh those compositions one by one and apart.

4. First, then, essential composition, both physical and metaphysical, is to be removed from God: the former indeed, because it overturns a spiritual nature; the latter, because God is contained under no univocal genus, as will afterwards be proved (God favoring) in the questions concerning God. Second, composition from essence and existence is removed from God for two reasons: first, because for every composition, whether it be real or of reason, it is required that one thing be superadded to another for the constitution of some third; but existence is neither in truth, nor according to our way of conceiving, something superadded to the essence of God, but rather is something included in God's essence itself, as I declared in Article II. Therefore the existence of God cannot concur with his essence to constitute some third thing. Second, composition from essence and existence is attributed to created substances because their being so stands as potency, and existence as an act superadded to it; but the essence of God cannot be called potency with respect to the divine existence, because it includes existence in itself, as was said in the place already cited: and no potency includes its act in itself, but is directed to its act as to something further and external.

5. Concerning the third composition, which is that of supposita from singular nature and subsistence, there is greater hesitation: for it seems that it ought to be attributed to God, because each person of the Trinity includes these two: the divine essence, which is common to all three persons; and its particular personality, through which it is distinguished from the remaining two persons; therefore it is composed from these two. If you reply that some person is not composed from nature and subsistence because subsistence is something included in God's essence itself, just as was already said of existence, you will easily be refuted: for if the subsistence or personality of the Father were of his essence, it would be common to the whole Trinity, just as his essence itself also is. But this is absurd: therefore that too. Concerning this controversy I will set out my mind in several assertions.

6. Assertion 1. The subsistence, or personality, of the Father (let the same be said of the hypostasis of the Son and of the Holy Spirit) does not differ from his essence by any kind of real diversity, neither as a thing from a thing, nor as a mode of a thing from a thing, but differs from it by a distinction of reason alone. This assertion is proved thus: first, whatever is in God is God. Therefore nothing is in God that in truth, and on the side of the thing (as they say), differs from his Godhead. Second, if the person of the Father is really composed from his essence and subsistence or personality, two absurdities will follow: First, that God the Father is not, absolutely speaking and in the highest degree, simple; for the highest simplicity takes away every composition, and above all a real one: second, that the Godhead is a part of some thing; but every part is something incomplete, and less perfect than that whole of which it is a part.

7. Assertion 2. God is not composed from nature and subsistence by such a composition as is seen in created substances. This assertion plainly follows and is inferred from the preceding: for if God is not really composed from nature and subsistence, he does not have such a composition from nature and subsistence as created substances have; for these are composed from nature and subsistence as from two principles distinct in the thing itself, and therefore their composition is real.

8. Assertion 3. Although the subsistence of the Father is not of his essence, but according to our way of conceiving is something superadded to his essence, it is nevertheless not lawful to say that the Father's person is composed from those two by a composition of reason; indeed we ought not to conceive those two in the Father as two parts composing him: for when we conceive the Godhead as a part of some thing, we form an enormous concept of God, and we invent for God an imperfection that is not small. Wherefore the modesty of those seems praiseworthy and to be imitated, who piously think and profess that essence and personality are included in the person of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, not by way of composition, but by way of an ineffable conjunction or union.

8Article VIII. This being laid down — that every perfection is of the essence of God — whether it follows that personal subsistence is of his essence; and whether God, insofar as he is communicable to the three persons of the Trinity, is a person, as Cajetan maintains.

1. From the preceding doctrine there arises a difficulty of no small weight concerning subsistence or personality: for since it has been established that every perfection is of the essence of God, it seems necessarily to follow that subsistence, or personality, is included in his essence; and therefore that God, insofar as he is common to the three persons of the Trinity, is a suppositum or person. The reason of the connection is this: because subsistence is a certain substantial perfection, and that not a slight one; for every suppositum has a more perfect mode of existing than the nature which exists in the suppositum. Here, therefore, two things are to be discussed: first, whether personal subsistence is of the essence of God; second, whether God, as God, is a certain person common to the whole Trinity.

2. That the former difficulty may be removed, after two observations have been set down beforehand, I will propose my sentence in several assertions. First it is to be held that subsistence is taken by the philosophers in three ways, as was said above: for (1) those things are said to subsist which do not exist in a subject of inherence; (2) those which do not so inexist that they depend, as to the act of existing, upon those in which they inexist; (3) those which in no way inexist in another suppositum, or can inexist in one. Second it is to be held that to these three significations of this word a fourth can be added, which, although it is less frequent, is nevertheless no less proper. For that being can be said to subsist which so exists that it depends in its being upon no creating or conserving cause: this mode of existing is proper to God, and cannot be communicated to any created being; and therefore it is without doubt the most perfect mode of existing.

3. These things being laid down, let this be Assertion 1. Subsistence taken in the first and second way is essential to God, and equally common to the Trinity: for just as it belongs essentially to God to exist in act, so also it is of the essence of God so to exist that he neither exists in any subject, nor depends, as to the act of existing, upon that suppositum in which he is.

4. Second Assertion. Subsistence taken in the third way, although insofar as it is in God it does not differ in the thing from his essence, nevertheless cannot truly be said to be of the essence of God: for whatever is of the essence of God belongs to God as God. If therefore personality is of the essence of God, God insofar as he is God is a person, and consequently all three persons, insofar as they are one true God, can truly be called one person: which is plainly absurd, and contrary to the principles of our faith.

5. Assertion 3. Subsistence taken in the fourth way is of the essence of God, or is an essential attribute of his: for to be the first Being, having its being from itself and not from elsewhere, is the very nature or essence of God.

6. Assertion 4. This word "perfection" is to be distinguished; for some are perfections whose negation imports imperfection — as to be or to exist, to live, to be a Spirit, to be good, to be just: for their opposites, namely not to exist, not to live, and so on, are manifestly imperfections. Others are perfections whose negation imports no imperfection: thus the most wise decrees of God concerning the creation and governance of things are perfections, but their negation imports no imperfection: for even if God had had no such decrees, indeed even if he had had decrees contrary to these, he would not have been more imperfect. So to walk, to run, to sit, to speak are perfections of a human being — for they are acts, and every act is a perfection: but the negation of those acts involves no imperfection; although the negation of the potencies from which they arise brands the thing to which it is attributed with a mark of imperfection. I say that the negation of these acts involves no imperfection, because a human being is not more imperfect when he does not walk than when he walks, or when he does not speak than when he speaks.

7. All perfections of the former kind are of the essence of God, and necessarily belong to him as God: but concerning perfections of the second order one must think otherwise; for they are not of the essence of God, nor do they necessarily belong to him as God — for example, the decrees of God concerning the eternal salvation and death of human beings, although they do not differ in the thing from his essence, are nevertheless not truly said to be of the essence of God: for if that were true, they would be in God by the necessity of nature, and thus the liberty of the divine decrees would be taken away. To this latter genus of perfections we refer personal subsistence; for although its negation, when it is attributed to the finite essence of creatures, involves imperfection, yet when it is attributed to the Godhead, or to the divine nature, it imports no blot of imperfection. The reason of the disparity is this: the divine essence includes in itself a certain mode of existing far more perfect than personal subsistence — namely the mode of existing without dependence in being upon any creating or conserving cause. I say that this mode of existing is more perfect than personal subsistence, because in it is placed the perfection of the first being; and on that account it cannot be communicated to creatures: but personal subsistence is communicated both to human beings and to angels. On the contrary, the finite essence of creatures includes in itself neither the act of existing, nor any mode of existing more perfect than personality: and therefore it is imperfect on account of the defect of personality, whereas the Godhead is in no way imperfect on account of the lack of such subsistence.

8. Francisco Suárez, On the Trinity book 3, chapter 10, brings forward another distinction of perfection; but a more obscure and difficult one, and therefore I will not propose it here. But this is carefully to be noted which he adds to that distinction — namely, that divinity, the personal relations or subsistences being prescinded, does not formally include their perfections; yet it includes them eminently, both because this is necessary for the infinity of that being, and because the Godhead itself is the root and foundation of all those perfections.

9. The latter question is easily solved once the former difficulty has been removed: for since that subsistence which is proper to supposita does not belong to God as he is common to the three persons, it is to be said without fear that God so considered is not a person. But (says Cajetan) God, insofar as he is common to the three persons, although he is not a person strictly and properly speaking, can nevertheless be called a complete person. I answer with Fonseca that in divine things novel and unused locutions, abhorrent from every custom of the Fathers, are not to be employed — especially since someone can be deceived by such a manner of speaking and suppose that the three persons are one person, or one suppositum.

9Article IX. Whether God, insofar as he is common to the three persons, is a singular substance; and whether the three persons of the Trinity are three singular substances.

1. Among the Latins, substance is so called from subsisting (as some will have it) and from standing under accidents (as others will have it). According to the latter etymology, God Most High is not a substance, but the principle and cause of all substances; but according to the former, he is most truly and most properly a substance — not indeed a universal substance, but a singular and individual one. For second substances stand in need of first substances, that they may exist in them; but God, even insofar as he is common to the three persons, stands in need of no thing in which to exist. But someone will object: God, insofar as he is common to the three persons of the Trinity, is predicable of several; therefore he is a universal, and a second substance. I answer that the definition of the universal is to be conceived thus: a universal is that which can be predicated of those things that are several according to the very name of the universal. Thus man is predicated of those that are several according to the name of man — that is, of several men. But God is indeed predicated of several persons; yet he cannot be said to be predicated of several according to the name of God — that is, of several gods. Others say that that is universal which can be predicated of several, in which it is divided and multiplied: but it comes to the same thing.

2. Second objection: no first or singular substance contains under itself other first or singular substances; but God contains under himself three persons; and each person is a singular substance. Reply: no singular substance contains under itself other singular substances numerically — that is, distinct by individual differences; yet one singular substance can contain under itself several persons that have one essence numerically, and are distinct only by modes of existing.

3. The other question proposed in the title is this: whether the three persons of the Trinity are three singular substances. The difficulty of this question is set here: that the orthodox Fathers hold the Son to be ὁμοούσιον with the Father — that is, as the Latin Church translates it, consubstantial, or of one and the same substance; so that Jerome rightly said in his Letter to Damasus, Who would dare with a sacrilegious mouth to grant three substances in God? On the contrary, since a person is a singular substance, there seem to be as many singular substances in the Godhead as there are persons in it.

4. The determination of this question can be comprised in two assertions. First: new and unused locutions are not to be employed in the mysteries of the faith; for all manners of speaking that seem to favor heretics, even in appearance, are to be avoided. Those therefore who speak of the three persons of the adorable Trinity ought not to use the aforesaid manner of speaking, saying that they are three substances — lest they seem to favor the Arians, the Macedonians, Valentinus Gentilis, and his followers. Second: that locution can in no way be admitted, but is to be rejected as openly false and tritheistic. For if the three persons are three substances, they are either three finite substances, or three infinite substances. They are not three finite or created substances, as is plain; nor yet are they three infinite substances, because there are not three gods.

5. The consequence is not valid of the argument brought on the other side. For I will give a like consequence which is plainly vicious and inept in the judgment of all: as if someone should argue in this way — Peter standing, Peter sitting, and every other aggregate of that sort, is a singular substance clothed with a certain accident; therefore as many as there are such aggregates, so many are there singular substances clothed with accidents. If (I say) someone should argue thus, the inference will be vicious: because Peter standing and Peter sitting are two such aggregates; yet they are not two singular substances, but one substance numerically and individually. Someone will ask what can rightly and legitimately be gathered from this antecedent — a person is a singular substance. It is answered that this is a just and lawful consequence: a person is a singular substance; therefore as many as there are persons, so many are there those things to each of which it belongs to be a singular substance.

10Article X. Whether Christ, insofar as he is man, is a person; and whether Christ, insofar as he is man, is everywhere.

1. These arguments seem to prove the affirmative part of the question. 1. Just as all singular oxen, horses, lions, and so on, are irrational supposita, so also all singular human beings are rational supposita, or persons: therefore Christ, insofar as he is a singular man, is a person. 2. Every complete singular substance, signified by a concrete name, is a suppositum, as all the metaphysicians teach; but Christ, insofar as he is a singular man, is such: therefore he is a suppositum; and every rational suppositum is a person. 3. A singular human being differs from his singular essence as a suppositum differs from the nature existing in the suppositum; therefore Christ, insofar as he is a singular man, is a suppositum, and consequently a person.

2. Next, if Christ, insofar as he is man, is a person, as has now been proved, he is either an immense person existing everywhere, or a finite person comprehended in a definite place. The latter cannot be admitted, because then there would be two persons in Christ, one finite and the other infinite; therefore the former must be said — namely, that Christ, insofar as he is man, is an immense person, existing in every place and beyond every place. And therefore it must be confessed not only that the proposition 'Christ the man is everywhere' is true, but also that 'Christ, insofar as he is man, is everywhere' is true.

3. That this question may be satisfied, I say first that the proposition 'Christ, insofar as he is this man, is a person' is ambiguous, and therefore to be distinguished. For as Suárez speaks on the third part of St Thomas, volume 1, question 16, article 11, that particle 'insofar as' either reduplicates the suppositum or reduplicates the nature — that is, either this is its sense: Christ, by reason of the human nature assumed by him, is a person; and so the proposition is openly false, for Christ neither has from his humanity that he is a person simply, nor has he from it any new subsistence or personality; for then there would be a double hypostasis in him; nor is it true to say that the humanity assumed by him has its own proper subsistence or personality, because it inexistes in another and does not subsist. Therefore it is to be denied that Christ is a person by reason of his human nature. Or this is its sense: Christ, insofar as he is a suppositum including human nature, is a person; and so the proposition is most true, as those three arguments placed at the threshold of the article prove; for that suppositum in which the humanity is, is a person.

4. Others answer more briefly that Christ, insofar as he is this man, includes two things — namely, the divine subsistence and the human nature — and they say that Christ, insofar as he is man, is a person with respect to the divine subsistence, which he includes materially, but not with respect to the assumed human nature, which that word 'this man' more formally and directly imports.

5. I say second that that manner of speaking — 'Christ, insofar as he is man, is a person' — is to be fled. 1. Because it seems to favor the Nestorian dogma by which two persons are attributed to Christ. 2. Because reduplication properly taken imports the proper reason or cause why the attribute is in the subject; but it is certain that the reason according to which personality belongs to Christ is not in the human nature, and therefore Christ is not sufficiently conveniently called a person insofar as he is this man. 3. Because when theologians discuss Christ and use those reduplications 'insofar as God', 'insofar as man', or 'insofar as this man', they do not look to Christ's personal subsistence, but to the nature: for they designate the nature according to which these or those attributes belong to Christ. But personality does not belong to Christ according to the human nature, and therefore that locution is unusual: 'Christ, insofar as he is this man, is a person'.

6. As for the other part of the argument, the answer is as above: Christ, insofar as he is this man, includes two things — namely, the divine subsistence and the human nature superadded to it. With respect to the divine subsistence, which he includes in a certain material way, it can be said that Christ, insofar as he is this man, is an immense person and defined by no place. With respect to the human nature, which that word 'this man' more formally and directly imports, it is rightly denied that Christ, insofar as he is this man, is an immense person existing everywhere; and that because his human nature has its particular ubi and is comprehended in a definite place.

7. For the rest, although that proposition is true in some sense, as has now been said, yet because it smells of the Ubiquitarians' error, and because the sense which the words of that proposition more evidently carry before them is absurd — namely, that Christ by reason of the human nature is immense, or that his humanity is immense — therefore it is to be rejected and carefully avoided.

11Article XI. Whether the Ubiquitarians' arguments drawn from the personal union are valid.

1. The first objection of those who invent a certain immensity of Christ's human nature is customarily put thus: Whatever is personally joined to the whole Logos exists wherever the Logos exists; but Christ's human nature is such: therefore. The answer is that the proposition is openly false; for from the personal union of the two natures in Christ it no more follows that the humanity is wherever the Deity is, than from the substantial union of our soul with the matter of the head it follows that the matter of the head is wherever the soul is — that is, that it is in the foot, because the soul is in the foot: I say that it is substantially joined to the whole soul, because the whole soul is in the whole body, and whole in each of its parts. If therefore the Ubiquists argue well and acutely when they construct such a syllogism, this argumentation will be good and effective: What is substantially joined to the whole soul exists wherever the soul exists; but the matter of the head is substantially joined to the whole soul: therefore it is wherever the soul is; but the soul is in the matter of the foot; therefore the matter of the head also is in the matter of the foot.

2. Second objection. The union of the two natures in Christ was made indivisibly and without interval: therefore one of them does not exist except where the other exists — that is, they coexist in all places. Answer: the adverbs 'inseparably' and 'indistantly', when used to explain the manner in which those natures are united in the person of the Logos, have a twofold use. First they are used to refute Nestorius's error, who not only distinguished these natures but divided and separated them, assigning to each nature its own proper hypostasis, and therefore did not join them into one hypostasis. Second, that we may know that that union is indissoluble, and that these natures, once they have been joined, can never be disjoined or separated. We therefore deny that consequence: the human and divine natures are indissolubly and inseparably joined in one person; therefore wherever one of them exists, there the other also exists. The reason is that by the distinction of the local presence of the two natures their union is not dissolved, but rather the truth of the natures is asserted and confusion is removed.

3. Someone will press first: If one of those natures exists there where the other does not exist, then one of them is separated from the other; but the former is true: therefore the latter also. Answer by denying the connection: for the human soul, which is whole in the matter of the head, is also whole in the other members in which the matter of the head does not exist; yet the union of the soul with the matter of the head is not by this means dissolved: for, as all know, the soul is torn away and separated from the head and the remaining members only by the death of the human being. Second instance: The soul, which exists whole in the matter of the head and whole outside it, is not united to the head by an adequate and complete union, but is united to it as to a partial and incomplete matter; whereas by an adequate and complete union it is united to the whole body, because the soul is so whole in the whole body that in no way is it outside it. Therefore, since on the Calvinists' view the whole Deity exists in the humanity and also whole outside it, the union of the Logos with the humanity will not be adequate and complete. Answer: the reason is unequal. For the union of the soul with the matter of the head is called incomplete because it is not a union of whole with whole — that is, of the whole form with the whole matter, but with a part of it; but the union of the Logos with the human nature is of whole with whole — that is, of the whole Deity of Christ with his whole humanity, in one hypostasis. The true reason, therefore, why the union of the soul with the matter of the head is inadequate is not that the soul exists outside the matter of the head, but that it is not a union of whole with whole — that is, of the integral form with the integral matter. Wherefore it is not that the Ubiquitarians should object against us that we dissolve the person of Christ, tear apart his natures, and invent an inadequate conjunction of natures for him; on the contrary, we grieve and marvel that such feeble arguments, such childish absurdities, could please and impose upon men distinguished for learning.

4. Third objection. The second person of the Trinity, after he assumed human nature, is always and everywhere GOD INCARNATE: therefore he is nowhere UN-INCARNATE, as Philip Nicolai insolently speaks. Answer: that argument concludes nothing against us, and therefore the whole of it can be admitted. For since the incarnation of God, once posited, consists in the assumption of human nature and its hypostatic conjunction with the divine, it is necessary that 'excarnation' (to speak with Philip Nicolai) signify the depositing, deserting, and dissolving of the union already made: but far be it from us to say that the most blessed Logos anywhere deposits, strips off, or expels from his hypostasis the flesh which he assumed in the Virgin's womb. Someone will press first: if the Logos exists outside the flesh, then he is somewhere un-incarnate; but the former is true on your view; therefore you are bound to admit the latter also. Answer by denying that connection; for just as the whole human soul exists outside the matter of the head with its union to the matter of the head preserved, so also the whole Logos exists both in the flesh and outside the flesh with his personal union to the human nature preserved; and therefore 'to be outside the flesh' does not necessarily infer excarnation, or the dissolution of that personal union. Matthias Martinius, a most acute theologian, answering an argument of this kind proposed by Balthasar Mentzer, says that the little word 'outside' is ambiguous; and that sometimes it is equivalent to 'beyond' — that is, it denies the inclusion of one thing in another; but sometimes it imports separation and denies union. In the former way he says the Logos exists outside the flesh assumed by him, but not in the latter way.

5. Someone will press second: If the Logos, in the former way, is outside the humanity, then somewhere he will not be man; but the Logos is nowhere not man: therefore he is nowhere outside the humanity. The assumption is proved: the Logos is always and everywhere man, for he is always and everywhere the God-man. Answer: Although Saint Thomas, and with him nearly all the scholastic theologians, think that proposition 'the Logos is everywhere man' simply false, yet I judge that a distinction is to be applied. For either this is its sense: the Logos everywhere is a person having human nature united to himself; or this is its sense: the Logos is a person having human nature united to himself everywhere, and therefore locally present to himself everywhere. In the former sense the proposition is true and is admitted by us, because it does not contradict our position; but in the latter it is plainly false, and therefore is never admitted by us. That there is a huge difference between these two senses of that proposition is clear from these examples: 'A husband everywhere, or wherever he exists, is a man having a wife' is a true proposition; but this, 'a husband is everywhere, or in all places, having a wife', is a false proposition. Likewise this, 'A master everywhere is a man having a servant', is a true proposition; but this, 'A master is a man, everywhere having a servant'.

6. Someone will press third: If the Logos does not have human nature united to himself everywhere and locally coexisting, then whole Christ is not everywhere, but only one of his natures, namely the Deity; but the latter is absurd: therefore the former also. Answer by denying the connection of the proposition; for from the antecedent of that connected proposition it follows well that the whole of Christ — that is, all the parts of Christ — is not everywhere; but it does not follow well that whole Christ is not everywhere. Why Doctor Jacob Andreae, and with him the remaining Ubiquitarians, should repudiate this distinction, I greatly wonder. For whole Christ is man, but not the whole of Christ; whole Christ suffered, died, and rose again; but not the whole of Christ — that is, both of his natures.

7. Someone will press fourth: Christ is not whole without the humanity: therefore if whole Christ is everywhere, the humanity of Christ is everywhere. Answer by denying the sequel; for the consequence of that argument is plainly ridiculous and unworthy of refutation, as is clear from these examples which contain a like consequence: Whole Christ is not without the Deity: therefore if whole Christ suffered and died, the Deity also suffered and died. Likewise, Christ is not whole without his foot: therefore if whole Christ is a man, the foot of Christ is a man.

12Article XII. Whether the personal subsistence of the Logos is communicated to his human nature; and whether they speak rightly who say Christ's humanity subsists everywhere by that subsistence.

1. From the common saying that the hypostasis, or subsistence, of the Logos is communicated to Christ's flesh, two corollaries are drawn. First, the Ubiquitarians gather from it that omnipresence — indeed all the properties of the Logos — are communicated to the human nature. The reason of the consequence is that the hypostasis of the Logos does not really differ from its essence, and therefore not from its essential properties either: if therefore it is true that the hypostasis of the Logos is communicated to the flesh, it must also be granted that his properties are communicated to it in the same way. Second, some even among our own theologians, who think Christ's flesh can be said to subsist in every place by the subsistence of the Logos although it exists in one place alone, reason from the same foundation thus: the subsistence of the Logos is communicated to Christ's human nature; since therefore the subsistence of the Logos is infinite and is enclosed by the bounds of no place, Christ's flesh, by that subsistence communicated to it, can be said to subsist everywhere. This latter argument is more dangerous than the former, because it so greatly pleases certain Orthodox theologians that they profess that in this controversy concerning the local presence of Christ's flesh we differ from the Ubiquitarians only by a dispute about words, and by a merely verbal disagreement — which, whether it be true, let those judge who have more carefully considered the history of the colloquy of Mompelgart and the polemical writings of Beza and of Jacob Andreae on this matter.

2. In order, then, that those two arguments may be clearly dissolved, the verb 'to communicate' must be distinguished, and it must be taught in what sense Christ's subsistence is communicated to the flesh. It is therefore to be held that something is said to be communicated to another in three ways. First, both inhesively and denominatively, in the way the odor of an apple is communicated to the hand; for that odor, at least the same in kind, inheres in the hand and denominates the hand — that is, is truly predicated of the hand. Second, something is communicated denominatively but not inhesively: in the way kings and emperors communicate the dignity of empire to their wives; for those wives are denominated Empresses and queens, not because they have imperial power or authority in themselves, but because their husbands have that authority. Third, something is communicated to another neither inhesively nor denominatively, but either effectively — in the way God is said to communicate himself to created beings, for those beings are called beings and goods by participation of the first being and the first good, as Zanchius speaks — or sustentatively, in the way a subject is communicated to its accidents, namely by sustaining them and receiving them into itself; or in some other similar mode. I say these are communicated neither denominatively nor inhesively, because God neither exists in creatures as an essential form, or as an accidental form in its subject, nor is predicated of them by true and affirmative predication; and the subject likewise neither inheres in its accidents nor denominates them, but on the contrary is denominated by them.

3. The hypostasis or subsistence of the Logos is communicated to his human nature in this third way: that is, it is communicated to it neither inhesively nor denominatively, but sustentatively only. The prior part of this assertion is declared thus: Christ's human nature (as Martinius well notes against Menzer) is void of all proper personal subsistence, and in no way subsists — that is, neither by itself nor by accident; or, to speak more plainly, neither by its own nature nor from the union. Therefore the subsistence of the Logos is communicated to it neither inhesively nor denominatively. The antecedent is proved: if Christ's humanity somehow subsists, it is somehow a suppositum or person, and therefore in some sense it will be true that Christ assumed a suppositum or a person; but the latter is absurd; therefore the former also. The connected claim is proved, because suppositum and subsistence reciprocate, so that every suppositum has subsistence, and everything that has subsistence is a suppositum. Someone will say: therefore Christ's flesh is plainly stripped of personality. It is answered that it is not stripped of personality in this sense, as if it were not united to some person — for it is united to the person of the Logos — but that subsistence properly and formally neither inheres in it nor can be attributed to it.

4. The same can also be demonstrated thus: if Christ's human nature subsists, either it subsists by itself — that is, has subsistence from itself — or it subsists insofar as it exists in the person of the Logos. The former will be admitted by no one; but neither is the latter free of manifest absurdity. Which is proved thus: Christ's flesh, insofar as it exists in the person of the Logos, has a certain mode of existing contrary to subsistence; therefore it does not subsist. The antecedent is proved: to be in another suppositum, and to subsist — that is, to be by oneself and outside every other suppositum — are two opposite modes of existing; but Christ's flesh, insofar as it exists in the person of the Logos, has the former mode of existing, that is, it exists in a suppositum; therefore it cannot have the latter, which is diametrically opposed to it.

5. The posterior part of our assertion is declared thus: the Logos graciously received and assumed our nature to his hypostasis, so that his hypostasis has the flesh intimately present to itself and bears it personally united to itself; but on the contrary the flesh clings in that hypostasis and is sustained. From which it follows that Christ's hypostasis, or personal subsistence, is rightly said to be communicated to the human nature sustentatively.

6. From this distinction of communication it is clear what is to be answered to either argument proposed at the threshold of this article. For since Christ's hypostasis is communicated to his humanity neither inhesively nor denominatively, it is evident that the Ubiquitarians cannot gather from the communication of the hypostasis of the Logos that his essential properties have been communicated to the assumed flesh, either inhesively or denominatively; and therefore all those inferences are to be denied by which, from that foundation, they conclude that Christ's flesh is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and so on. Likewise, since all those statements are false by which to subsist, or to have some personal being, is attributed to Christ's flesh — because, namely, it has no subsistence proper to itself, and no personal being, but a certain mode of existing contrary to them — it follows that Christ's humanity can neither be said to subsist everywhere by the subsistence of the Logos, nor to exist everywhere according to its personal being. Someone will say: Christ's human nature is joined to the person of the Logos, who is omnipresent and omnipotent; therefore the human nature can be called omnipresent and omnipotent personally. Answer: if that consequence is admitted, by equal reason these consequences also must be admitted: Christ's human nature is united to an infinite and eternal person; therefore it itself is infinite and eternal personally, or according to its personal being. Likewise, it is joined to that person who is God and Creator, and redeemer of the world; therefore these things belong to it personally.

7. Someone will ask here whether, just as the act of subsisting, so also the act of existing is to be removed from Christ's flesh. Answer: by no means. For Christ's flesh, although it does not subsist, nevertheless in truth has its own existence, distinct from the existence of the Logos, but dependent upon it. I say that it has an existence distinct from the existence of the Logos, because every created being has both an essence and an existence distinct from the essence and existence of the creator. I say that it has an existence depending on the existence of the Logos, because it cannot exist by itself and outside the person of the Logos.

13Second Exercise. On the origin of the soul and the propagation of sin.

Article I. On the diversity of material and immaterial forms.

So that we may settle the question of the soul's origin with a clear mind, I will first set down a few points about the kinds of forms, and about the different ways matter causes and receives the forms that enter it or are drawn out of it.

2. Hold first that effects made for a definite end — not at random or by chance — fall into three kinds, according as four causes, or three, or only two, concur in making them. Corporeal substances need all four: the two inward causes, matter and form, and the two outward ones, efficient cause and end, must join to give them the act of existing. Accidental forms or accidents, and every substantial form except the rational soul, are made by three — efficient, matter, and end. Angels and human souls are made by only two — efficient and end. Angels neither consist of matter and form nor exist in matter, so they can have no more than those two causes. Human souls, though they exist in matter, still do not consist of matter and form, and are not produced by the power of the matter they inhabit. Being spirits, they cannot be generated by any material power, as will be shown shortly; God creates them from nothing and introduces them into matter for the best end: his own glory and the eternal salvation of those persons.

3. Accidental forms such as whiteness or blackness need three causes if they are to have real being in the world. First, some end or purpose must stir and draw the efficient cause to act. Second, the efficient must apply its power — its active concurrence. Third, the matter-in-which, the subject of the whiteness, must concur passively and cooperate in giving that being to the accident: it does so by receiving the efficient's action that produces the whiteness, and by receiving and sustaining the whiteness itself. From these three the existence of whiteness and other accidents hangs — above all from the matter that receives them and, by passive concurrence, produces and sustains their being. Relative to efficient and end they depend only as to becoming; relative to matter or subject they depend both as to becoming and as to being. They cannot come to be without the concurrence of the matter in which they exist, nor keep the act of existing once that matter is gone. But if efficient and final cause are removed, an accident already produced can still persist in existence — as countless examples show.

4. Every substantial form except the human soul likewise needs three causes. For the form of a stone to exist in act, some end must move the efficient by what is called metaphorical motion; the efficient must, by its power in act, dispose the stone's matter to receive that substantial form; and matter, as a subjective cause, must concur in producing and sustaining the form. That form depends on matter for becoming, being, and operating: without the matter in which it exists it can neither come to be, nor be, nor operate. This dependence plainly shows that matter is a cause of the forms in it — not an active cause, but a passive, subjective one. Every dependence of one thing on another as on a prior in becoming and in being is a clear mark of causality. The human soul stands far otherwise. After a person's death it both exists and acts outside matter. Therefore it does not depend on matter for being or for operating, nor for becoming: matter cannot by any power or causal concurrence give being to a spiritual substance such as the rational soul, as will soon be proved, and so is in no way its cause. Hence the soul belongs with those things produced by only two causes — efficient and end. It is rightly called an immaterial form, independent of matter; every other form, substantial or accidental, is called material and dependent on matter. Fire's form cannot exist outside its matter, and without that matter it cannot heat or burn. A brute's form cannot exist without its matter — the body — and without that body it cannot sense or desire. The human soul not only exists outside matter after death; it also acts outside it, in understanding, willing, rejoicing, and grieving.

14Article II. On matter's double causality and potency, and the eduction of forms from the potency of matter.

1. First note that matter — the material cause — has a double causality: one toward the composite or mattered thing, another toward the forms that depend on it. Toward the composite its causality lies in constituting that composite as an essential part. Toward the forms that hang on it, its causality lies in concurring passively with the agent to give them being and to keep that being.

2. Second, matter's potency is of two kinds. One is only receptive, not causative; the other is both receptive and causative. Matter has the first kind toward the rational soul alone: it can naturally receive the soul into itself, but it cannot concur as a material cause in giving the soul being. It has the second kind toward every other form, essential or accidental: it can receive them and, by passive concurrence, cooperate with the agent in producing them.

3. Third, those philosophers go wrong who explain eduction by saying the form already exists in act in the matter before generation, only hidden under the confusion of potency, and that generation merely makes it manifest — as if actual being that was concealed simply becomes clear and is led out of matter's darkness into light. That account is bad. If the form already existed in act and united with matter before generation, the composite would already exist before it was generated — which is openly absurd, since matter and form existing in act and united necessarily yield the composite. Someone will object: if the form is not in the matter beforehand, how can it be educed or drawn out of it? Nothing is drawn out of what it is not in. Reply: the form is said to be educed from matter not from matter's substance, but from matter's causative potency. Before generation it does not exist in the substance of matter, yet it truly exists in matter's potency insofar as matter can produce it as a passive principle. To be in matter's causative potency is simply to be producible by matter as a passive principle.

4. Fourth, those also are wholly wrong who say forms exist in matter before generation according to an incomplete, imperfect being — by degrees of their entity — and through generation first attain complete, finished being in matter. That view makes a substantial form vary in intensity like an accident; and it absurdly packs into one and the same matter, all at once, every form that could be educed from it, total or partial — nearly infinite diverse substantial entities in one thing. Someone will object: if the form is nothing at all before generation, then every form comes from nothing and is therefore created. Reply: forms may be said to come from nothing if that means from no pre-existing part of themselves; not if it means from no pre-existing matter, which is the same as creation. Forms come to be from matter: matter concurs as a subjective cause in giving them being.

5. Fifth, it is also a bad account of eduction to say a form is educed from matter's potency merely because matter, before the form arrives, can receive it. If that were enough, every form without exception would be educible from matter's potency, since matter can receive any form — by a natural potency or an obediential one. Natural potency can be brought into act by a natural agent: wood's passive potency for heat is natural because fire can actualize it. Obediential potency cannot be actualized by a natural agent, but only by a superior agent of another order to which the matter is so subject that it must obey: wood or stone's potency for a statue's form is of this kind (art, not nature, actualizes it); so is the soul's potency for supernatural gifts — faith, hope, charity — which no natural power can bring into act, but only the creator's infinite power.

6. With that in place, eduction is easy to state. Nothing is educed from a thing except what was already in it. So only those forms are educed from matter's causative potency that, before they exist, are in that potency — producible by matter's passive concurrence. While they do not yet exist in act they can receive being from matter as a passive, receptive principle; when they begin to exist in act by the agent's active power and matter's passive power, they are rightly said to be educed from matter's causative potency, because they are no longer producible by it. What has once been caused is no longer in the cause's potency; it has been led from potentiality into actuality. A brute's form is truly educed from the causative potency of the seed's matter: before generation it was producible by that matter's passive power; through the generator's action it is produced and set outside that potency, and is producible by it again only if it loses the existence it now has. The human soul is produced in matter, yet it is not educed from matter's causative potency; it is induced into matter. It never lay in that potency, and matter never had a power, by passive concurrence, to give the soul being.

15Article III. Whether the rational soul is from a translate.

1. The real question is this: is the rational soul educed from the potency of the seed's matter by seminal and prolific power, as plant and brute souls are — or does God produce it without any concurrence of pre-existing matter, creating it and infusing it into the body? Nearly all modern philosophers and theologians favor the second view, and rightly. I do not recall any contrary argument weighty enough to pull even a moderately practiced mind into the camp of those who say our souls are sown by parents in carnal generation and not created and infused by God. For immediate creation by God, Scripture's witness and philosophical arguments from known principles of nature both count. Leaving Scripture to the theologians — especially Junius on Genesis 1 — I offer reasons drawn from physics and metaphysics.

2. First: if the soul is generable, it is corruptible; but the consequent is absurd, so the antecedent is too. A form produced in generation by matter's concurrence depends on matter so that, once separated from what gave and kept its being, it must perish. Opponents reply that human souls are of themselves corruptible — the argument shows they depend on matter in becoming and being — yet will last forever because God has decreed to conserve them. Asked why the soul considered in itself is corruptible, they say that if God stopped conserving souls they would at once sink into nothing. That answer fails. When substances are divided into eternal and perishable, eternity does not mean independence from God's conserving influx; it means no creature can destroy them by a physical action. On that score angels, the heavens, and rational souls alike may be called incorruptible. Further, those who answer so cannot deny that the human soul cannot be destroyed by any physical or material action; from which I infer it also cannot be produced by any such action. Why can no physical action destroy it? Because it is a spiritual substance. For the same reason no material power can produce it: what is repugnant to a spirit in destruction is repugnant to it in production. Generation is a physical, material action — done in matter, by seminal virtue.

3. Second: God willed human souls to exist outside bodies after death, and brute souls to perish with their bodies. Therefore he gave the rational soul a nature independent of matter, so that by that nature it can exist outside corporeal matter. As to its nature, then, the soul is independent of corporeal matter.

4. Third: only that form is educed from matter's causative potency which comes to be with matter's passive concurrence giving it being. The seed's matter cannot by passive concurrence give being to the soul. Therefore the soul is not educed from matter's potency; God creates it and pours it into matter. The major is clear from what went before. The minor: no active power acts beyond its genus — it cannot produce what is of a higher nature and order. The soul exceeds the whole order of corporeal nature as a spiritual substance; no corporeal power can produce it. They reply that the material force in the seed cannot of itself make a spiritual substance, yet can, as instrument of the generating soul, be elevated beyond its species to produce a spirit — as a phantasm, a sensible material species, by the soul's power impresses intelligible (spiritual) images on the patient intellect. That evasion is empty. A created agent cannot, by a purely material instrument, produce something immaterial; and the prolific faculty in the seed is purely material. The case of intelligible species is different: the soul uses the agent intellect as a principal instrument to excite and elevate the phantasm. Universally, a material power cannot be the principal or sole instrument in producing a spiritual substance, though it may be a secondary instrument in producing a spiritual quality.

5. Fourth: opponents are driven to hard, absurd conclusions. To dodge these arguments they must deny that the soul is a spiritual substance, and allow that a physical action can destroy it unless God specially preserves it — claims that strip our soul of dignity and leave us no purchase against atheists from immortality. If the soul by nature depends on the body so that it cannot of itself exist outside it, how shall we persuade them it is immortal? The same conclusions slight divine wisdom: to say God willed souls to exist outside bodies and yet denied them a nature fit for that is to say he did not produce the soul wisely enough.

6. Fifth: though we hold that God creates the soul and infuses it, so that the parent does not give the child a soul, we can still maintain that a human generates a human as truly as a lion a lion or an ox an ox; and we can maintain that the natural hereditary corruption called original sin is passed from parents to children, and explain how. Nothing forces us into an opinion that contradicts the soul's nature and so deeply detracts from its dignity.

16Article IV. Whether and how a human being is truly said to generate a human being.

1. Philosophers and theologians who deny that the soul is translated through the seed, or drawn out of it, still disagree about what human generation is and in what action it consists. Some, pressed with the objection that the generator does not give the child the soul through which he is human and therefore does not generate a human, answer that a human generates a human by supplying the matter — the body — from which the human is made. That reply is cold and unworthy of a philosopher. It yields only that a human generates a human body, not the whole human — which is exactly what the objection proves. No philosopher has made substantial generation out to be the production or supply of matter; if producing a substance were supplying matter for it, the man who hands an artisan marble for a statue would be said to make the statue — which is absurd. To generate a human is to give a human being; and human being or nature is neither soul alone nor body alone. If it were either, separating soul from body would not destroy human nature. Human nature is the union of body and soul — truly consisting of both. If the generator only makes the body and does not make the child something consisting of soul and body, he does not truly give the child human being, and so does not truly generate a human.

2. Others, seeing the first reply fails, offer another almost as weak. They say a human truly generates a human because he not only gives a body but prepares the matter to receive the form, and by prolific virtue reaches the conjunction of soul and body that constitutes a human as a physical composite. They do not say the father joins the child's soul to the body by seminal virtue — that they leave to God who infuses the soul — but that he prepares the seed's matter for the human form, after which preparation the conjunction follows at once. On their view, generating is only a prior alteration and preparation of matter. Nearly all the older philosophers held this, nearly all the moderns, and most Roman theologians; the Coimbra commentators on De ortu 1 admit they once held it because it was common. It satisfies the objection no better than the first. Preparation of matter is a change in quality — alteration — and generation is not alteration: they are specifically different motions, one ending in quality, the other in substance. So generation is not preparation of matter. Generation is one simple change; that preparation is many alterations before the form arrives — dilating, solidifying, increasing or decreasing humor as the form requires. So it is an aggregate of changes, not generation. To generate is to give being; human being is consisting of soul and body. If God couples soul and body by infusion, God gives that being, not the generator. And a human is begotten in an instant, not gradually; so production is instantaneous, not successive.

3. A third reply says the generator gives neither matter alone nor preparation alone, but also a form — not the specific rational soul (God alone creates and unites that), but a vegetative and sensitive soul educed from the seed's potency. This is the weakest view of all. It makes a human generate not a human but a living thing and an animal. Human being is consisting of soul and body; if the child does not owe the father that he consists of a rational soul and a body, human nature has not been communicated by the father.

4. Rejecting these, we follow Du Val, Ruvio, and the Coimbra professors in a fourth account: a human truly generates a human even though God creates the soul — not by giving only a body, not by preparing the body for the soul, not by producing a vegetative or sensitive soul of the child in or from corporeal matter, but because from the generator comes the very action by which the rational soul is substantially united to the body and begins to inform, inhabit, and fill the whole matter of the body. On our view, human generation is that action by which, through prolific virtue, the soul is bound to the body by an essential bond.

17Article V. Whether generation is placed in the production of the form or in the conjunction of form with matter.

1. To make our view clear I will first show that the generator's action — speaking of generation in general — is placed in the conjunction of matter and form; then I will say something more particular about the action that unites soul and body. Generation of a composite is not production of matter. Matter properly so called is ungenerated and imperishable: only the creator can make it.f a creature produced prime matter from no pre-existing matter, it would create it; no creature creates, for creation needs infinite power. When air comes from fire, air generates air by turning fire into air; it does not produce new matter, but introduces a new form into matter already there.

2. Substantial generation is not production of matter, as shown; nor is it production of form. That is clear for those who hold souls are created by God, and no less clear against traducians. First: human nature is consisting of soul and body. By the action that unites soul to body — whether the soul is from God or from the father — a human becomes a composite of soul and body. So by that action the human receives human being and is produced: to produce a human is to bring it about that a being consisting of soul and body exists. Second: a physical composite is never produced anew — by generation or any other change — unless matter and form are newly joined into one per se. Yet a physical composite can be produced anew even when its form is not newly produced. So making a physical composite is joining matter and form rather than producing the form. Proof from the resurrection: then humans will be newly produced and newly receive human being by a true substantial production, though extraordinary; yet their soul is not newly produced — it has existed since creation — but only newly united with matter. So production of a physical composite is uniting form with matter, not producing form. If anyone denies that the resurrection is a true substantial production: to produce a corporeal substance is to give it being; God then truly gives the dead — who while dead lacked the being of a natural substance, not consisting of united matter and form — the full being of a natural body by making them consist of body and soul. So by that action God truly produces natural bodies. The action differs from ordinary generation, yet it is a true substantial production: to produce a substance is to confer being on what did not have substantial being before. Further: God can create an infant's soul some time before generation and then, in generation itself, join that soul to the body. So there can be true substantial generation without producing the form.

3. On the second point: those of our opinion on the soul's origin say that in brutes the seminal virtue has a double operation — educing the form from matter's potency, and uniting that form with the composite — operations diverse only in reason, because one and the same action educes the form and substantially unites it with matter. In humans, they say, the seminal virtue has only one principal action: uniting the form — the soul — with corporeal matter (lesser actions of preparing the body for the soul also proceed from it). So in producing a human there are two actions from two agents: creation of the soul, and uniting it with matter. Creation is God's alone. Uniting soul and body is not the human's alone — God cooperates — but the human's and God's together. And generation is placed in that uniting, not in another action: as shown, producing a composite is neither producing matter nor producing form, but uniting form with matter. In the same instant God creates the soul in the body, the generating human by seminal virtue substantially joins the God-created soul to the body. God's action terminates in the soul's being simply; the father's terminates not in that simple being but in the soul's being in the body — the union of soul and body.

4. To the objection that a human is human through the soul, so if the father does not give a soul he does not give human being: they reply that a human is human neither through soul alone nor through body alone, but through the whole nature or human essence. By uniting soul and body through seminal virtue the father gives the child to consist of soul and body, and so gives the nature and essence through which he is human. A thing is such a thing through the whole essence, not through one part — for essence is that through which a being is a being. The common saying that each thing is such through its form means: through the form as the principal part of the essence, not as an adequate reason (the adequate reason is having such an essence). Comparing the parts of a physical essence, a thing is such through form rather than matter; comparing either part with the whole essence, it is such through the essence rather than through either matter or form alone.

5. A serious difficulty remains. If God infuses the soul, as all of this opinion say, the conjunction of soul and body seems God's rather than the generator's — for what is infusion into corporeal matter but conjunction with matter? Some answer that God is said to infuse the soul not because he alone couples them, but because he does it through seminal virtue used as an instrument — not a necessary instrument (he can connect them of himself) but an ordinary one, as in every animal generation. Others more probably say God is said to infuse the soul not by substantially but by locally joining soul and body: he creates the soul in the body and by creating it in that place makes it locally present. In that same instant the seminal virtue connects the parts by a substantial bond. Local presence of the soul is far different from substantial union with matter: an angel clothed in an assumed body is locally present to that body, yet not substantially joined to it as form to its matter.

18Article VI. Whether the preceding doctrine abolishes the propagation of original sin.

1. Those who deny that God immediately creates the human soul and hold instead that it is educed from the seed's potency commonly object that our doctrine abolishes original sin's propagation and leaves no way to explain how that sin passes from parents to children. To dissolve the cavil by the fact itself, I will name the quasi-integral parts of that sin and show how each is propagated.

2. Original sin has three parts. First: participation in the first parents' sin — the common sin of the whole human race. Second: lack of original justice, the defect of the gifts of intellect and will with which Adam and Eve were adorned before the fall. Third: propensity or inclination to evil. We not only lack the original justice that inclined us to good; when it was removed a contrary quality opposed to the law took its place and makes us prone to every baseness.

3. The first part is propagated neither through soul nor through body as such, but through natural generation — as lineage, nobility, and hereditary right are. Charles is heir because he is the king's son, and the king's son because the king begot him; he is noble because he descends by natural generation from noble parents. So Adam's sin is ours because we are his sons and heirs by natural generation from him. This coincides with those who say a God-created soul becomes corrupt and guilty through hypostatic union with the body: from that union comes the whole human who is Adam's successor and so guilty of Adam's disobedience.

4. Note three points carefully. First: this concerns only a successor begotten by natural generation — by the ordinary concurrence of male and female. Otherwise our Lord Jesus Christ would be guilty of Adam's sin, which is absurd and impious. Second: the blessed Virgin is necessarily guilty of Adam's sin. What makes us guilty of it is found in her; she descends from Adam as we do; therefore she is no less guilty than we.

5. Third: only the first human's sins pass to children, not later parents' sins. The first human received justice not for himself alone but for all his posterity: if he remained in it he would transmit it with nature; if he forsook it by sinning he would pour the stain with nature into all posterity. Later parents were not instituted under that law, so their sins — like their justice — are not propagated but remain singular and personal.

6. Parents transmit the second part — lack of original justice — negatively, as poor and ignoble parents transmit want and obscure lineage: children lack goods their parents cannot confer. So a newborn lacks original justice because the parents lack it and cannot communicate it. Why then do not faithful parents, somewhat restored by grace, transfuse those gifts? Because transmitting this gift to descendants was granted only to the first parents before the fall — not to later parents, nor even to Adam after he once sinned.

7. The third part is commonly said to be transmitted as leprosy is — through seed. Infection in a leper's seed is not leprosy formally and actually but only virtually, a hidden disposition toward leprosy. So spiritual infection in the seed is not sin actually and formally but a hidden disposition toward sin; thus a soul God creates in the body contracts vice from the body from the first, as in a foul place. The solid ground is the natural mutual sympathy — communication of passions and affections — between body and soul as substantial parts of one natural composite. When the body is badly affected, the soul is badly affected.

19Article VII. Objections against native corruption's propagation through parental seed are answered.

1. First objection: a body cannot act on a spirit by impressing a vicious quality; so concupiscence is not derived from body to soul. Pareus (from Augustine) answers that the soul contracts vice from vitiated flesh not wholly by nature but by God's hidden judgment for the first parents' fault — the body cannot naturally act on spirit, yet by the hidden justice of God's law it can happen. Others locate it not in flesh's action on soul but in natural concomitance between matter and form: as the soul communicates life and sense to the body, so the body's dispositions are communicated to the soul (a soul infused into a badly disposed body becomes dull, as in the naturally foolish — Esthius). Zanchi adds: infection comes from conjunction with the body not by physical action but by God's just ordinance — as Adam's justice would have flowed to children if he had not sinned, so when he sinned nature's corruption flows from him as head into all, through seed as the vehicle of the stain.

2. Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure: the soul is vitiated in an unclean body not by flesh truly acting on spirit, but because flesh stripped of original rectitude and rebellious to reason draws the mind down and warps it. Pareus: imagine the body prone to evils and unfit as an organ for good acts; the soul, robbed of original purity, follows that vicious temperament (Hommius likewise).

3. Second objection: if God thrusts a pure soul into so impure a prison he acts cruelly — which is blasphemous to say, so the premise is absurd. We concede the whole: we do not say God sends a just, pure soul into an impure body (that would make souls just before infusion — refuted in Art. VIII). Press: God infuses a soul that of itself has no sin into a contagious body, so he acts unjustly. Deny the consequence. Injustice is doing what equity binds one to do the contrary of. God is not bound to give Adam's children — who sinned in Adam and merited eternal death — pure bodies before infusion; by the threat In the day you eat you shall die he is bound not to purge them.

4. Third: the cause of a cause is cause of the caused; God causes union; union causes the soul's sin; so God causes sin. Zanchi: union is a cause of sin only per accidens — had Adam not sinned, God would have joined souls and bodies without sin following. Further: God creates souls in the body; parents by prolific virtue substantially unite them. Having souls in bodies is from God; having them created in impure bodies is from the fall. The rule applies to causes per se, not per accidens. God causes his law; the law causes sin per accidens (Rom 7:8–14); yet God is not the cause of sin.

5. Fourth: what the body lacks it cannot use to infect the soul; but soul-proper sin (ignorance, aversion from good) is not in the body. Answer: as leprous seed produces leprosy without having leprosy formally — only a hidden disposition — so flesh can infect the soul with only a virtual disposition toward sin. What the body has neither formally nor virtually cannot infect; what it has virtually can.

6. Fifth: in Adam sin was first in the soul and passed to flesh, not reverse; so in his children the soul is first-sufferer. Pareus: the order in vice from free choice differs from the order in vice generated from flesh. Or: the soul is still first-sufferer actually and formally, though the body has the disposition virtually first. Those who put original sin actually and formally in the seed before the soul are absurd: habit and privation concern the same subject; original justice cannot be in seed, so neither can its privation. If seed had sin formally, seed would have a law, face eternal damnation, and be able to be redeemed, repent, and believe — absurdities Keckermann says can scarcely be outdone.

20Article VIII. Several questions on the propagation of original sin are proposed and answered.

1. First: how can original sin be translated when its subject, the soul, is not? Esthius: accidents often pass by affection or infection without the subject's passing — as heresies, errors, and vices spread from one to many without the soul's passing. That holds for an accident the same in species, not in number; a numerically identical accident requires its subject's transfer too. Some philosophers similarly say that when odor passes into a handling hand, the fruit's subtler parts that proximately bear the odor also pass.

2. Second: Did the soul sin in Adam's loins? Distinguish. As to being simply, the soul was not in Adam's loins and did not sin there. As to being in the body and union with it, it can be said to be drawn from Adam, to have been in his loins, and to have sinned: the whole human was in Adam's loins by natural generation and so is guilty of Adam's sin; the whole human is not bound to punishment unless both soul and body are.

3. Third: Does God impress original sin by creating and infusing the soul? No. In creating the soul God confers neither justice and holiness nor impurity and propensity to evil, but only a spiritual essence and properties that flow from it. He does not breathe the lethal poison of concupiscence — he will not be evil's author — nor does he infuse holiness and justice, for the soul is created as a constitutive part of Adam's son and successor, to whom God is not bound to give spiritual gifts (Junius on Gen 2).

21Article IX. Lighter arguments against the creation and infusion of the soul are dissolved.

1. Objection: God finished creation in six days and rested (Gen 2; Exod 20), so new souls are not now created. Answer: after the sixth day he ceased creating new species, not new individuals. Souls he now creates differ from Adam's first-created soul in number, not in species.

2. Genesis 5: Adam begot a son in his image; a son is the father's image according to the soul; so Adam begot according to the soul. Answer: the likeness is chiefly of the whole person consisting of soul and body, not of the soul alone. Adam begot not only a like son but the very person composed of soul and body in which that likeness chiefly consists (Esthius).

3. Genesis 46: seventy souls went out from Jacob's thigh — supposedly translation by seed. Answer: souls stand synecdochically for humans. Or: souls went out from Jacob's thigh not as to simple being but as to existence in the body and union with it; the seed's virtue effected that union.

4. If generating does not produce a rational soul, humans are worse off than brutes and plants that produce their own vegetative and sensitive souls. Esthius: humans are better off even in generating, because generative power reaches the union of the noblest form with matter. It is dignity to have a soul so excellent that no natural power can produce it — which is why even angels have no generative power.

5. If the father generates only the body, he does not generate the whole human but the less noble part. Deny the sequel. Mary did not beget Christ's deity yet truly begot the whole Christ; fire from wood generates fire's form, not its matter, yet generates that whole fire (Aristotle: generation is change of the whole). Distinguish the whole human from the whole of the human: the father generates the whole human — all the parts.

6. If God creates each soul of whoever is begotten, he cooperates with fornicators and adulterers. Answer: God cooperates with natural generation, good of itself and nature's work — not with the vice by which they complete generation against his law.

22Article X. Whether a more convenient account of the transmission of concupiscence can be given than we gave as original sin's third part.

1. Those who reject the common view — that the soul is infected from a body disposed to sin — fall into four classes. First: Traducians, who attack soul-creation and claim their foundations yield a far safer account of sin's traduction than ours. Of them later.

2. Second class: they say a human naturally consists of flesh and spirit, sharing nature with beasts and with angels. By flesh he has a propensity to corporal, sensible good via sense and appetite; by spirit, to spiritual, intelligible good via intellect and will. From these contrary propensities, flowing necessarily from essential principles, they posit a fight between sense and reason and from it a huge difficulty of acting well.

3. Second, they say providence at creation added original justice as a golden bridle to remedy that diseased languor arising from the essential principles, holding sensitive appetite under reason.

4. Third, after the fall Adam lost that gift; so now concupiscence flows partly from the soul's essential constitution (sensitive and rational parts) and partly from lack of the original justice that subjected sense to intellect.

5. Our theologians rightly reject this. First: it underwrites the absurd dogma that concupiscence in the regenerate after baptism is not sin but a natural disease. Second: calling the sensitive appetite's rebellion natural insults God — as if the most holy God who hates sin impressed on human nature at creation a propensity to sin and to dishonest objects. Third: Bellarmine himself admits (Loss of Grace 5) that vicious concupiscence is also in the will, prone to honors, empty glory, and objects pleasant to sense and displeasing to reason — though it once held the contrary naturally. Here Bellarmine sticks until he takes our view of concupiscence in the regenerate.

6. Answering us (Grace of the First Human 7), Bellarmine says fleshly concupiscence was natural in the first state not as a good of nature but as a defect or disease following from matter's condition. So it is rightly called not from God, hate-worthy, evil, contrary to nature: it would have existed beside the author's intention if humans were created in pure naturals; and God had removed it, and by human fault it has place in us.

7. Crass and absurd. First: rebellion from nature yet not from God, nature's fount, is a contradiction. Second: God cannot produce what is contrary to his nature — goodness itself and propensity to good, contrary to propensity to evil. Third: on Bellarmine's view the supernatural gift of justice did not remove the sensitive appetite's natural propensity against reason's order (that would overturn its nature) but only restrained actual resistance. So Adam in integrity already had a propensity to evil in his appetite, though not yet broken into acts — and so was stained with original sin. What else is original sin than propensity to evil?

23Article XI. Two other opinions on the traduction of sin are considered.

1. Next are the third and fourth classes that reject the common view of the soul's infection from the body. Third class: original sin is translated by natural generation alone, without infection of soul from body. Generation explains why we are guilty of Adam's sin, they say, but not our blindness, ignorance, and propensity to evil. So this view can account for the first part of original sin, not the second and third.

2. Fourth class: they agree with us on the first and second parts, but say the third is propagated not through itself but through the second — lack of original justice, to which it is necessarily joined. Why is a newborn guilty of Adam's sin? Because he is Adam's son by natural generation. Why does he lack original justice? Because parents lack it and cannot confer it. Whence propensity to evil? It necessarily follows lack of justice, as darkness follows lack of light.

3. This does not satisfy. Lack of original justice is mere privation and non-being; non-being cannot cause a real being such as propensity to evil, which imports a positive real habit (Molinaeus ch. 8). So lack of justice has no real positive causality for producing concupiscence. Objection: blindness causes a fall; lack of light causes wandering — and those are real. Answer: privation is not a positive efficient cause but a condition sine qua non, or a cause per accidens.

4. For readers who have not met Molinaeus: his first assertion — that the intellect destitute of original justice and not yet called by the word neither knows nor can know spiritual and supernatural goods while that state lasts — needs no proof. Bellarmine (Grace and Free Choice 6.1): all theologians, Pontifical and Evangelical, agree those mysteries of faith cannot be known without divine revelation.

5. His further claims do not prove concupiscence arises merely from lack of justice. Concupiscence is not only proneness to excessive love of earthly things from ignorance of heavenly ones; it is also proneness to despising revealed heavenly goods known from the word, and to doing what we know from God's word to be base. So Paul (Rom 7:22–23): I delight in God's law in the inner human, but see another law in my members rebelling and leading me captive under sin's law.

6. If fleshly concupiscence were only inordinate love of earthly things from ignorance of heavenly ones, it would not remain after the word's illumination and regeneration — yet experience and Scripture say it remains in the regenerate. So explaining the third part by mere lack of justice is to be rejected.

24Article XII. Those who attack the creation of souls disagree among themselves; three of their opinions on the soul's origin are refuted.

1. After defending the common view on the soul's origin and sin's propagation, I meant also to propose and confute the adversaries' traducian opinions — for readers who have not yet met Molinaeus. Because I seriously reject eduction of the rational soul from matter's potency, it seemed worthwhile to confute one by one every opinion on soul-traduction I remember reading or hearing.

2. First: Jacob Martini (Miscellanies 3.7) — the child's soul is from the father's by a translate in an uninvestigable, unknown way. Easy, but dishonest, and unworthy of so sharp a man. Against those who hide in that den: what no natural cause produces per se in any way known to us cannot be said to be produced by a natural cause in an unknown way; but no natural cause produces the rational soul in a known way; therefore not in an unknown way either. Seeking ignorance's hiding-place when physical causes cannot be assigned destroys the opinion rather than strengthens it.

3. Second: those who say the soul is educed from the seed's potency — which Meisner keenly defends and which is rightly rejected. His own arguments: an accident (seminal virtue) cannot produce so noble a substance; the soul is an immaterial form, so not in the seed before arrival; material forms are educed from matter's potency, but the soul is spiritual. As these strike eduction from matter, they also strike a material translate.

4. Third: the parent emits with the seed a particle of his soul, so the seed is actually animated when emitted; the child's soul comes by division and a kind of diminution of the father's. Meisner rightly judges this unsafe: it makes the soul divisible and therefore material and corruptible — for what is divided and diminished is quantitative and material.

25Article XIII. Meisner's fourth opinion is refuted.

1. Meisner's fourth opinion agrees with the preceding that the soul is not educed from the seed's potency but translated from parent to offspring and infused with the seed into the womb, so the seed is actually animated as soon as emitted. It differs in holding that the soul in the seed is not cut off or partitioned from the father's soul but generated and produced anew by it. Meisner (p. 924): as soon as the parent transfers seed into the mother's womb, he transmits with it a soul — not his own or a part of it, but one like his own.

2. there are four ways something can come into being from something else: effectively (effect from efficient cause); materially (a small nail from a mass of iron); subjectively (educed from a subject's potency, as material forms from matter); constitutively (natural bodies from matter and form).

3. On Meisner's view the father's soul creates the child's. What produces from nothing creates; the father's soul produces the child's from nothing; so it creates and has infinite power. The child's soul is not from the father's by partition (Meisner admits); not subjectively educed from its potency (or it would exist in the father's soul as in a subject); not constitutively (the father's soul is not a constitutive part). So from nothing — creation by the father's soul — which is absurd.

4. The likeness from light is inept. Light is educed from matter's potency (Fonseca): no one doubts light is educed from air's potency; when another torch is brought to a shining one, flame is educed from the applied torch's matter.

5. A power to procreate like souls without eduction from matter would belong to the rational soul as such, not as vegetative — and that cannot be granted without creation.

6. Both parents emit seed (Scholastics on Sent. 3 — Scotus, Bonaventure, Major, Ockham, and others — and physicians from anatomy: Galen, Fernel, Lemnius, Vesalius, Laurentius). If both seeds are animated, two souls in one fused seed; if only one, why does generation not always follow when sufficiently disposed seed is emitted?

7. It is absurd that a true miracle should occur whenever a father emits sufficiently disposed seed and animation (hence generation) does not follow — yet that would follow on Meisner's view with nature's course miraculously held back.

8. Every rational thing is a human; seed actually animated by a rational soul would be a human before the body is formed — absurd.

26Article XIV. Bright's fifth opinion is confuted.

1. As I was finishing this disputation, Timothy Bright of Cambridge's On Health, Disease, and Death came to hand, with a new opinion on the soul's origin. He answers: neither the whole nor a part of the parents' mind is translated, nor is some accident a mind-rudiment. What then? A substance born from the soul — neither whole nor part — as an immortal seed of the soul, principle of the offspring's future soul. As corporeal seed cut from the parents' bodies is neither the body nor a member, so the soul is translated through a fertile soul-seed, not through the soul or a part of it. The integral soul is referred to the parents as received; but something seminal is shut out from soul as from body, and by the blessing of fertility goes forth into a rational immortal soul.

2. First confutation: that spiritual seed truly pre-existed in the parent's soul — real emission presupposes real inherence — yet it cannot really inhere there, so cannot be really emitted. Not as part in whole (Bright admits); not as accident in a subject (it is a substance); not as in a surrounding place or vessel (repugnant to the soul's spiritual nature).

3. Second: the spiritual seed comes from the whole father's soul, or a part, or nothing. Not from corporeal matter — it is spiritual, and Bright says it is born from soul not body. Not from the whole soul (the whole would convert into seed); not from a part (the soul is indivisible). So from nothing — which is creation.

4. Third: conversion of that seed into a soul is accidental or substantial. Not accidental: then it would differ from the soul only by degree of accidental perfection — an inchoate imperfect rational soul — contradicting Bright's claim that it is not actually a soul but a principle of a future soul. If substantial, it happens by abolishing the whole, or one part of the essence while the other remains.

5. Fourth: God could annihilate that seed and in the same instant produce a soul from nothing; then production belongs to God alone, not the father — a huge absurdity if their traducian doctrine is true.

6. Fifth: conversion cannot abolish one essential part while another remains. That would make the spiritual seed-substance corruptible and capable of substantial change like physical bodies; and would make it composed of physical matter and form or essential parts — for only of those is it true that when one is destroyed the other can remain in actual existence.

7. Sixth: if the spiritual seed converts into a soul, generation cannot occur without the seed's perishing; yet the seed's form (the soul) would remain, and substantial conversion requires the prior form's perishing. So Bright's opinion is no safer than the preceding.

27Article XV. All the adversaries' opinions on the translate have been confuted; none of them can explain sin's propagation more safely or easily than we who defend the creation of souls.

1. Those who hold the soul from a translate, not created and infused by God, must say either that it is educed from the seed's potency by matter's passive concurrence, or produced by the father's soul without the seed's matter — there is no middle. The first was confuted in Arts. III and XII. The second splits four ways: the father's soul produces the child's from its whole substance, or a part, or a spiritual seed, or nothing. I confuted the first in Art. XII, the second and the from-nothing case in Art. XIII, the spiritual seed in Art. XIV. So no traducian opinion stands that is not absurd and against sound philosophy.

2. No Traducian explains original sin's propagation more safely or easily than we who defend soul-creation. Meisner's argument, even limited, is weak. They say: if God creates and infuses the soul, original sin cannot pass into it, because an accident does not pass from subject to subject. But Arts. VI–VII showed how each part propagates without soul-traduction: the first by natural generation as hereditary right; the second negatively, by justice parents cannot confer; the third by a virtual disposition in the seed through body–soul sympathy. Soul-creation does not abolish sin's propagation — it best reconciles it.

3. Traducians who want the soul materially translated fall into worse absurdities: they make the soul divisible and corruptible, or give the parent creative power, or invent an inexplicable spiritual seed. Safer and easier, with the catholic church and the sounder philosophers: God creates and infuses the soul, and original sin propagates as we have explained.

4. End of the Second Exercise. The Third follows — On Faith, Knowledge, and related questions.

28Third Exercise. On Faith, Science, and Opinion.

Article I. On the firmness, certainty, and evidence of the mind's acts of assent.

1. Every intellective habit has knowledge — or assent — as its proximate end: the mind assents to those propositions whose truth it perceives and cognizes. It is therefore worthwhile to premise something about the mind's assent, its affections, and its species, so that the diversity of our mind's acts may be understood.

2. Assent of the mind is the judgment by which the intellect judges some proposition true. The mind assents to "man is an animal" by embracing and approving it — that is, by judging it true.

3. Philosophers have marked three degrees of perfection in assent: firmness, certainty, and evidence. Opposed to them are three degrees of imperfection: infirmity or vacillation, uncertainty, and inevidence.

4. Firm assent is without hesitation, doubt, or fear of the opposite side. Infirm or vacillating assent is when the mind so assents that it doubts the proposition's truth, or at least somehow fears that by assenting it may err.

5. Certain assent rests on some certain or solid foundation, not on a light or fallacious reason. Uncertain assent is the contrary. Note carefully: for certainty it is required that the foundation on which the mind rests while assenting not only be certain in itself, but also appear such to the one who assents. Unless he knows that the reason on which he rests is certain, his assent will in no way be certain and stable.

6. Evident assent is when someone, by the force of his own sense or reason and apart from another's information or testimony, perceives that the proposition to which he assents is true. When I see Socrates standing near me and assent to "Socrates stands," my assent is evident — not by another's report, but by my own sense. Likewise when I assent to "man is an animal," the assent is evident because by my own intellect I perceive that a sensitive nature is in man. Even if no one asserted it — even if all asserted the contrary — I would still judge that proposition true.

7. Assent is inevident when someone assents not because sense or solid reason demonstrates the proposition true, but either because a light reason persuades it (a light reason does not drive away the mind's darkness, and so leaves the assent obscure and inevident) or because another testifies that it is true. He who has seen Peter slain and assents to "Peter is slain" has evident assent; he who assents only because of that man's narration has inevident assent, because neither sense nor reason shows him that it is true.

8. These three degrees so stand that the second includes the first and adds something; the third includes both and adds something further. For firmness it is enough that the foundation appear certain and solid to the one assenting. Even if in reality it is not such, if it appears such he will assent firmly and without hesitation. So heretics firmly assent to their errors: though their foundations are neither certain nor solid, to them — such is their blindness — they seem most efficacious and valid.

9. For certainty, and freedom from error, more is required: the foundation must not only appear certain and solid to the one assenting, but really and in itself be such. Otherwise the assent is erroneous and false. We may grant heretics firmness in judging; we do not grant them certainty of judging. Certainty and error cannot stand together.

10. For evidence still more is required: the foundation must appear certain and solid, and be such in itself — and it must not be another's testimony or narration, but either sense or some solid reason that clearly demonstrates that the matter so holds.

11. Assent can therefore be firm without being certain — as in heretics who without fear assent to dogmas that conflict with the Catholic faith or with good morals. Assent can also be certain without being evident. He who assents to a proposition because of God's testimony in Sacred Scripture has assent that is without doubt very certain, resting on the most certain foundation — God's own testimony — yet it is not evident. The theologian does not assent because sense or reason shows him that the matter so holds, but because God asserts or says that it so holds.

12. These three degrees of perfection in the mind's assent therefore stand so that the first extends more widely than the second, and the second than the third — just as among the degrees of necessity the "in a respect" sense extends more widely than the "in itself" sense, and that more widely than the "in itself primarily."

29Article II. How knowing, believing, and opining differ from one another.

1. Every assent of the mind is an act of knowing, of believing, or of opining. Whenever we judge something true, either we certainly know it, or we believe it because of another's testimony, or we opine it because of a light and inefficacious reason.

2. The act of knowing, opposed to believing and opining, is taken broadly for any actual certain and evident knowledge. Science so taken appears not only in speculative disciplines but in practical ones. In moral philosophy we do not opine or believe but evidently know that acts of liberality are honorable and the opposed vices dishonorable. Skilled architects do not opine or believe but evidently know that foundations must be set to the level and columns to the perpendicular. This knowledge concerns singulars as well as universals: when I see Peter standing or hear him speaking, I do not opine or believe — I know that he speaks and stands.

3. The division is sufficient: every assent rests either on testimony or on reason. If on testimony, it is actual faith — an act of believing. If on reason, either on certain and solid reason (science) or on merely probable reason (opinion).

4. Assent on another's testimony is either divine faith (on divine testimony) or human faith (on human testimony), as the Scholastics speak.

5. Note the Papists' error in passing. They grant with us that faith resting chiefly on men's testimony is human, not divine; yet they boldly claim that our assent to the articles of faith and to Scripture itself rests on the testimony of the "representative" Church — bishops and pastors in general council — and of the "virtual" Church, the Roman Pontiff. They must either confess that all wayfarers' faith is human (divine faith abolished) or call their bishops not men but gods.

6. Compare science, opinion, and divine faith. Science is firm, certain, and evident assent. Divine faith is firm and certain, but not evident. Opinion is sometimes firm (without hesitation), yet often neither firm nor certain nor evident.

7. Science is firm because the knower assents without doubt or hesitation; certain because he rests on a solid foundation — else he would opine, not know; evident because he assents not because another testifies, but because by some evident argument he himself perceives that the matter so holds.

8. Divine faith is firm because believers in God do not hesitate about sacred history and the divine promises; certain because it rests on God's testimony, who is truth itself; yet not evident — for the believer assents not because sense or reason shows him that the matter so holds, but because God testifies and asserts it.

9. So the Apostle in Hebrews 11:1 excellently expressed divine faith's nature: calling it hypostasis he marks its firmness and certainty; calling it the evidence of things not seen he declares its inevidence and enigmatic obscurity.

10. Opinion can sometimes be firm — people take light reasons for strongest arguments and assent without fear of the opposite — but it is never certain or evident. The one who opines rests on light reasons or men's testimonies, which never yield certainty or evidence of judging.

11. Does this comparison derogate from faith's dignity, since any science would then be a more perfect assent than faith for want of evidence? Answer: science is more perfect than faith in a respect, because it is evident assent; but faith is more perfect than any science simply and absolutely — for two reasons. First, faith concerns the noblest object: that great mystery of godliness — God revealed in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached to the nations. Second, faith rests on the most certain foundation: God's own testimony, who is truth itself and can neither deceive nor be deceived.

30Article III. Whether faith is always the evidence of things not seen.

1. The previous article showed that every faith — divine or human — is inevident assent. Hence the Apostle in Hebrews 11:1 calls faith the evidence of things not seen. The same is confirmed by 1 Corinthians 13:12 (we now see through a glass, in an enigma) and by the Apostle's teaching that faith will cease and be evacuated in the homeland — not perfected, as charity is — because obscurity and inevidence belong to faith's very notion and essence. So Augustine on John 14 ("I go to prepare a place for you"): let the Lord go that he may prepare a place; go that he may be seen, be hidden that he may be believed. Gregory likewise: appearances have not faith but recognition; what cannot be seen is truly said to be believed.

2. To make this plainer I will solve arguments that put even seen or known things under faith's object. First, the Lord's word in John 14: I have told you before it comes to pass, that when it is come to pass you may believe — as if faith were sometimes of things known by experience and so seen.

3. Next John 20: Thomas said, unless I see I will not believe (Christ risen); the Lord said to him already believing, because you have seen me, Thomas, you have believed.

4. Third: the other Apostles, the Virgin Mary, and many faithful believed what they saw — Christ as man, suffered, dead, buried, risen, ascended, and much else in the articles of faith. So 1 John: what we have heard, seen with our eyes, looked upon, and handled of the word of life, we announce to you.

5. Fourth: a philosopher who knows by demonstration that one God is principle and cause of all can, becoming a Christian from a pagan, receive faith of the same proposition while the prior cognition remains — and so have faith and science together, faith having for object things evidently known or seen.

6. To remove these arguments I first set foundations, then confute Fonseca, Estius, and others on the supposed repugnance of faith and science. First: "faith" or "to believe" is often taken in Scripture and among approved authors for assenting in any way that something is true — as when one "believes his eyes," or dialecticians say an argument "makes faith."

7. Second: St Thomas and the other Apostles and faithful saw one thing and believed another — a man seen, God believed. Augustine: they beheld a living man whom they had seen dying, and believed God hidden in the flesh; a man appeared among men, offering man to those who see, keeping God for those who believe.

8. Third: faith is called inevident assent and the evidence of things not seen — not because the things believed are altogether unseen, but because insofar as they are believed they lack evidence from that on account of which they are believed. Science's foundation (the middle of demonstration) convinces by the thing's evidence, opening causes; faith's foundation (God's authority) convinces by its certainty and infallibility, not by the evidence of the thing assented to. Faith's office is not to make obscure things clear, but to make the intellect yield to the speaker's authority. So things believed, as believed, are inevident (see Pareus; Field). Yet they may be evident in another respect — to sense or reason. One proposition can be necessary as a demonstration's conclusion and contingent as a probable syllogism's; so certain articles of faith have clarity insofar as the Apostles perceived them by sense or we demonstrate them by reason, but insofar as they are believed because of God's testifying authority they lack that evidence and are rightly called things not seen.

31Article IV. Whether faith can coexist with science of the same proposition in the same intellect.

1. The question is whether one and the same person can at once believe and know the proposition to which he assents, or whether faith and science so repugn that they cannot coexist in one intellect. Opinions diverge so widely that two celebrated men scarcely agree. Scotus holds that neither act nor habit of faith and of science can coexist in the same intellect about the same subject.

2. Durandus holds the contrary: faith and science can coexist about the same proposition in the same intellect, as to both act and habit. Fonseca: the habits can coexist about the same subject, yet the act produced is not an act of faith but a certain supernatural science, because faith concurs in producing it. Estius: (1) the habits can coexist about the same object; (2) each can exercise its act at different times; (3) the act the habit of faith then elicits is not faith in the full amplitude of its meaning — not according to all required conditions — because it is not inevident knowledge of the thing.

3. The fifth and truest view is Antonio Rubio's: (1) these habits can be together in the same intellect about the same object; (2) each can exercise its act at different times, but not at the same time; (3) acts elicited at different times are true and proper acts of those habits, and the habit of knowing derogates nothing from the act of believing. Rubio speaks there of science and opinion, but the same reason holds for science and faith.

4. Against Scotus: the habits can coexist. What would impede them is chiefly repugnance of their acts — but that does not impede. Habits are easy potencies for acts; we can have at once potencies for repugnant acts exercised at different times (weeping and laughing, walking and sitting) though not both acts at once. Further: one who by faith knows God created the world can later acquire demonstrative science of creation without destroying that faith — else a Christian could not study metaphysics and physics, from which such demonstrations are gathered, and one may not do what destroys or diminishes faith.

5. Against Durandus: the intellect cannot in one and the same instant elicit both faith's inevident assent and science's evident assent. As sight cannot see the same thing at once distinctly and confusedly, so the intellect (the soul's eye) cannot perceive the same thing at once evidently and inevidently.

6. Against Fonseca and Estius: even while coexisting with the habit of science, the habit of faith can elicit a true and proper act of faith with all conditions required for believing — so faith and science can be in the same intellect about the same proposition as to acts, but elicited at different times. A believer, even after acquiring science of creation, can resolve: I so firmly assent that God created the world because of God's testifying authority that even if reason did not show it — even if corrupt reason said the contrary — I would still assent without fear.

7. That judgment comes from faith alone, not from science and faith together, and is a true act of faith. Neither science nor any natural habit can dictate such a resolve. The assent rests on the testifier's authority alone and is inevident: a foundation that yields certainty but not evidence makes the assent inevident; God's authority convinces by certainty and irrefragability, not by the thing's clarity. As the medium is, so is the assent — certain or uncertain, evident or inevident.

32Article V. On the division of faith into explicit and implicit; and whether the inevidence we ascribe to faith favors the blind and implicit faith of the Papists.

1. Theologians divide faith into explicit and implicit — Lombard's distinct and veiled or confused (Tilenus, Durandus, Thomas, Estius). Explicit faith believes something distinctly in itself and in particular. Implicit faith believes something not in itself but in another, as in a universal. Simpler Christians who grasp only what is absolutely necessary to salvation — articles, Decalogue, and the like — when they sincerely hold Scripture to be God's word and worthy of faith, believe that general object explicitly, and believe particular histories and dogmas of Scripture (Noah's three sons, Abraham's two, the scepter not taken from Judah before the Messiah) implicitly and by consequence in that general. Those who believe the whole Scripture true have implicit faith of all its histories, dogmas, and prophecies whose distinct knowledge they have not yet acquired.

2. May Reformed schools admit this division? First assertion: yes, if soundly conceived. Not only laypeople but the most learned theologians believe some things implicitly under the general that Scripture is God's word — things they have not yet distinctly understood. Daily progress in knowing Scripture shows not Scripture's obscurity (as Papists claim) but our mind's weakness and the immense wealth of heavenly mysteries poured little by little into the narrow vessel of the human mind.

3. Second assertion: taken as the Papists take it, the division is crude, absurd, and contrary to faith's nature. Their "implicit faith" is laypeople believing unknown dogmas under the general that whatever the Roman Church believes is true. That is human faith, not divine — resting on men's testimony, not God's; a light conjecture on a fragile foundation, not hypostasis or elenchos.

4. Does the inevidence Orthodox doctors ascribe to faith favor that blind Papist faith? That confused assent on Rome's testimony alone is most inevident — yet inevidence does not help them. It excludes only scientific knowledge (sense or evident reason from the thing's nature), not all knowledge. Certainty, faith's second condition, presupposes firm persuasion that what we assent to is God's word, not man's. That persuasion is opposed to Papist implicit faith; certainty cannot be found in it.

33Article VI. On the threefold light: of nature, of faith or grace, and of glory.

1. Scholastic theology draws several distinctions from nature, grace, and glory. First: God's kingdom — of nature (his empire over all creatures), of grace (reign in the Church militant), and of glory (reign in the Church triumphant).

2. Second: God's presence — natural or essential (everywhere), gracious (in the just, who are his temple), and glorious (in heaven, manifesting majesty to the blessed).

3. Third: works ad extra — of nature (creation, conservation, cooperation — in him we live and move and are); of grace (the Word's incarnation, humiliation, exaltation, threefold office; effectual calling, regeneration, justification, sanctification); of glory (the elect's glorification and the reprobate's damnation).

4. Fourth: human life — natural (animal and rational), of grace (spiritual life to God by faith and charity), and of glory (seeing God face to face in the homeland).

5. Fifth: God's decree as ordering things of nature, grace, and glory.

6. Sixth, and most to our purpose: the mind's light — of nature (fallen man's power to grasp self-evident principles and natural conclusions); of faith or grace (supernatural illumination believing what Scripture reveals above natural reason); of glory (the blessed's naked, intuitive vision of God).

7. Faith's light stands between nature and glory: above nature (loftier objects, surer foundation), below glory (not intuition but inevident assent on God's testimony).

8. Papists invent a further "prophetic" light by which Church doctors — especially the Roman Pontiff — judge faith infallibly. Scripture does not support it; it shifts wayfarers' faith from God's word to men's judgments.

34Article VII. Whether there is given to wayfarers any light clearer than the light of faith.

1. Theology divides into wayfarers' and comprehensors' — of the way and of the homeland. The first rests on faith's light; the second on glory's. Is any clearer light given to wayfarers so that they know faith's mysteries evidently?

2. Papists and some Scholastics posit a prophetic light or gift of understanding by which Church doctors judge mysteries more clearly than ordinary believers. The Orthodox deny any light clearer than faith as to the thing's evidence — though faith's own light may admit degrees of extension and firmness.

3. Faith's notion involves inevidence. A clearer light that made faith's objects evident would turn them into objects of science or vision. In the way there is not vision of God but faith: we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

4. That learned theologians grasp and explain more credibles comes from greater learning, Scripture study, and ministerial gifts for edification — not from a light above faith. Those gifts do not remove inevidence or make mysteries seen.

5. No light clearer than faith as to the mode of knowing is given to wayfarers. Glory's light belongs only to comprehensors in the homeland.

35Article VIII. Three questions solved: whether faith is well divided into infused and acquired; whether faith is more certain than the sciences; what it is properly to believe in God.

1. Infused vs acquired. Scholastics distinguish faith God creates by grace in the soul from faith gained by study and teaching. The Orthodox grant historical or acquired faith — even in demons and hypocrites — but deny that justifying, saving faith is acquired. It is God's gift, infused by the Spirit, not born of human industry.

2. Is faith more certain than the sciences? Divine faith is more certain than any created science — not as to evidence (science is evident; faith inevident), but as to the foundation's firmness. Faith rests on God's testimony, who can neither deceive nor be deceived; the sciences rest on created middles that, however certain, do not equal God's infallibility.

3. What is it properly to believe in God? Distinguish: believing that God is; believing God (what he says); and believing in God — resting trustingly on God as salvation's author. That last is proper to justifying faith and does not belong to demons, who believe and tremble.

36Article IX. The opinion of Nicolaas Grevinchoven is refuted — that the habit of faith is not infused but acquired.

1. Grevinchoven, a Remonstrant, holds that faith's habit is not infused by God but acquired by using the means and hearing the word diligently — as arts and sciences are acquired. The Orthodox reject this.

2. Scripture calls faith God's gift, not a human work (Ephesians 2:8; Philippians 1:29 — it has been granted to you to believe in Christ).

3. Justifying faith is supernatural; its objects surpass nature's grasp. It cannot be acquired by nature's powers; it needs God's infusion and the Spirit's operation.

4. If faith were merely acquired, it would differ only in degree from demons' and hypocrites' historical faith. Scripture and the Church teach that saving faith differs in kind — bringing charity and trust, produced by the regenerating Spirit.

5. Grevinchoven's view opens onto Pelagianism and Arminianism, giving man power to believe from himself without special prevenient and operating grace. It is to be rejected.

37Article X. Whether actual or habitual faith is in infants, or can be in them.

1. First: it is not absolutely impossible for infants to have both actual and habitual faith. Habitual faith is plain enough — in integrity infants would have been born with supernatural habits; in corruption God can create faith's habit in their souls by the Spirit, as in adults.

2. Actual faith is harder. Some deny infants any intellective acts. Others, with Augustine and many Orthodox, grant that God can elicit in them hidden, ineffable acts of faith in a manner known to himself — especially in baptism, where the Spirit works in covenanted infants.

3. Second: possibility does not bind us to assert that every baptized infant actually has faith. Covenanted infants' salvation rests on God's promise and Christ's merit, not on a demonstrable act of faith in them.

4. Third: parents' or the Church's faith is not formally the infants' faith. The Papist fiction of alien faith imputed to infants is rejected. Covenanted infants are saved by God's grace in Christ — baptism its sign and seal — not by alien faith as a formal principle in them.

5. In adults both habitual and actual faith are required for justification: habit as principle, act as the exercise that apprehends Christ.

38Article XI. Whether there is faith in demons.

1. Do demons have faith? James 2:19 — the demons believe and tremble — shows some faith is in them.

2. Distinguish: theirs is historical or dogmatic faith — intellective assent to what God revealed — not justifying or fiducial faith. They believe that God is and that much about Christ is true; they do not rest on Christ as Savior or love God.

3. So Augustine and the Scholastics: demons' faith is without love and trust — dead, and of no avail for salvation. Saving faith in adults is inseparable from charity and trust.

4. Is demons' faith an infused habit? Rather it is knowledge from experience and revelations, not a habit of grace — sanctifying grace is not in them.

39Article XII. Whether there was faith in Christ's soul; and whether the saints already translated to heaven have face-to-face knowledge of God.

1. Orthodox theologians commonly deny that faith was in Christ's soul as in ours. From conception he had clear beatific vision of God; faith and vision do not coexist in the same subject about the same object.

2. Some say Christ as wayfarer knew some things by faith in his outward humiliation. Safer: his knowledge of divine things was always above faith, because he was personally united to the Logos.

3. Saints in heaven have not faith but vision. Faith is evacuated in the homeland (1 Corinthians 13). Seeing face to face, they no longer walk by faith. They have facial knowledge of God — not infinite comprehension, but intuitive beatific vision according to creaturely capacity.

40Article XIII. Whether the Remonstrants rightly deny that Adam before the fall had the power of believing in Christ.

1. Remonstrants deny that Adam in integrity had power or habit to believe in Christ the mediator — the woman's-seed promise came only after the fall, they say, and justifying faith's object was not yet revealed.

2. Orthodox answer: Adam had power of obedience and trust in God as Creator and Lord; and virtually, in the root, power to believe in the Mediator if God had revealed him — his intellect and will were right and able for every supernatural good God might reveal.

3. That he did not actually believe in Christ before the fall we grant — incarnation and redemption were not yet revealed. Remote power is not to be denied.

4. Their denial tends to make justifying faith merely historical and tied to post-fall revelation, and to lessen prevenient grace's necessity in the fallen. Rejected.

41Article XIV. Whether the object of faith can be false.

1. Some say faith's object can be false — if God (which is impossible) revealed a falsehood, or if someone believes what is in fact false, taking it as revealed.

2. Formally, divine faith's object cannot be false. It rests on God's testimony; he is truth itself and can neither deceive nor be deceived. Believing a falsehood is error or fallacious human faith, not divine faith.

3. Faith about conditionals or future contingents does not make the object false: God reveals what is true, even about contingents, according to his decree.

42Article XV. How that Remonstrant argument is to be solved: that whatever each is bound to believe is true.

1. Remonstrants argue: each is bound to believe Christ died for him; whatever one is bound to believe is true; therefore Christ died for all and each — even the reprobate.

2. Orthodox answers: deny the major, distinguish the minor, or deny the minor. Denying the major is unsafe — as if God commanded the reprobate to believe falsehoods.

3. Safer: the precept to believe Christ died for you does not bind absolutely without condition, but under conversion and repentance. Those who own their sins and sorrow for them are commanded to believe Christ died for them.

4. The reprobate are not bound to believe they are elect, or that Christ died for them as they remain in malice; they are bound to convert and believe the Gospel. The unbelief that damns is refractory impenitence, not mere denial of historical assent.

5. So the sophism falls, and particular satisfaction for the elect stands with the Gospel's universal proclamation.

43Article XVI. Whether faith is a discursive assent; and whether the Papists use a circular discourse in establishing faith.

1. Assent is simple — to propositions clear by their own light — or discursive — to a conclusion because of premises.

2. Divine faith is discursive: we assent to the articles because God has spoken, or Scripture testifies. It is not simple noetic assent; faith's mysteries are not self-evident to nature's light.

3. Papists establish faith by a vicious circle: Scripture is God's word because the Church says so; the Church is infallible because Scripture says so. That tends to destroy divine faith.

4. Orthodox deny the circle. Faith's principle is God's word authenticating itself by intrinsic marks and the Spirit's internal testimony — not Rome's authority as first foundation.

44Article XVII. Whether knowledge is an act elicited from the habit of faith.

1. Bellarmine says faith is assent, not knowledge — knowledge only a prerequisite, not faith's own act.

2. Distinguish: knowledge of terms; of the proposition as proposed; and the judgment by which we assent. The first two precede faith's assent; the third is assent itself or joined to it.

3. Justifying faith is not bare historical knowledge but fiducial assent. If Bellarmine severs faith from knowledge entirely, reject that. Orthodox: faith includes knowledge, assent, and trust.

45Article XVIII. Whether trust is an act of faith.

1. Orthodox theologians differ on trust: some identify it with faith's justifying act; some call it distinct but inseparable; some take trust in several senses.

2. Trust may mean: firm persuasion of God's mercy in Christ; resting on his promises; courageous stance against dangers and miseries; or joy and peace of conscience over remission already obtained.

3. With most Orthodox: justifying trust is an act of faith — or justifying faith essentially includes the trust by which Christ and grace's promises are applied to us. Not mere historical knowledge or bare dogmatic assent.

4. Bellarmine's claim that certainty of particular remission needs special revelation in this life is rejected. Scripture urges trust and gives the regenerate signs of their share in Christ.

46Article XIX. Whether trust is an act of the intellect, and how it differs from assent.

1. Is trust in the intellect or the will? Roman Catholics commonly place it in the will. Orthodox distinguish.

2. As firm persuasion about God's promise, trust is an intellective act — not really distinct from faith's assent, but in reason: assent regards the testimony's truth; trust regards the promised good as applicable to me.

3. As loving motion and the will's resting on God, trust is a will-act — inseparable from faith in the justified, formally distinct.

4. Middle Orthodox view: justifying faith as assent and persuasion is in the intellect as proper subject; it belongs to the will by origin (will-commanded), concomitance (charity), and fruits.

47Article XX. Whether the object of saving faith is remission of sins already obtained, or remission to be obtained.

1. Is justifying faith's object remission already had, or Christ and the promise of remission through faith?

2. With the Orthodox: the primary object is Christ the Mediator and God's promise in him. Faith justifies not by believing remission already formally inheres, but by apprehending Christ, in whom remission is offered and by faith applied.

3. Bellarmine: if faith were trust of particular remission already had, it would presuppose the justification it causes. Solved: faith does not presuppose remission as inhering before faith; it follows and applies it. The object is the promise and Christ — not remission as prior possession.

48Article XXI. Whether and how far faith belongs to the will.

1. Estius puts faith with the will; others put it wholly in the intellect. We distinguish.

2. As assent and judgment, faith is in the intellect as proper subject. It still belongs to the will: by origin (the will commands the intellect to attend and assent); by state (faith directs the will); by fruits (love, trust, obedience born from faith in the will).

3. Unlike Estius, we do not seat faith in the will by origin alone, but relate it to the will by command, concomitance, and fruits.

49Article XXII. Whether charity is the form of faith.

1. Papists, after some Scholastics, make charity faith's form — faith without charity unformed and dead, formed by charity unto justification.

2. Orthodox reject this. Justifying faith is not shaped by charity as an extrinsic accidental form. Living fiducial faith justifies before charity formally considered — though charity inseparably accompanies living faith.

3. Dead (merely historical) faith is not the same kind as justifying faith. It needs not charity to "form" it, but the regenerating Spirit to make it living.

50Article XXIII. Whether religion is a theological virtue distinct from faith.

1. Aquinas makes religion a moral virtue (not theological) rendering due worship to God. Others call it a theological virtue distinct from faith.

2. Broadly, religion is whole worship of God — not really distinct from faith, hope, and charity, but their exercise toward God. Strictly, as directing worship, it can be told apart from faith, yet is not theological in the same sense as faith, hope, and charity: its formal object is due worship, not God as supernatural end by revelation.

51Article XXIV. That the theology of wayfarers is taken in three ways; and that theology in the first sense is not a habit really distinct from faith.

1. Wayfarers' theology three ways: (1) divine faith itself believing revealed mysteries; (2) a "scientific" habit deducing theological conclusions from faith's principles (some Scholastics); (3) an aggregate from faith and philosophy — scholastic theology.

2. In the first sense theology is not really distinct from faith — it is faith itself. Other distinctions multiply habits without need.

52Article XXV. Against Antonio Rubio: that theology in the second sense is not science but divine faith.

1. Rubio calls theology (deducing from faith's principles) true science. We deny it.

2. Aristotelian science rests on self-evident, evidently seen principles. Theology's principles (articles of faith) are believed, not seen. Discourse from them yields discursive faith — a faithful conclusion — not science properly so called.

3. Theology may be called science broadly, or wisdom — not Aristotelian science strictly.

53Article XXVI. That theology in the third sense — scholastic theology — is an aggregate habit from faith and the philosophical disciplines.

1. Scholastic theology uses faith's principles together with philosophical middles — logic, metaphysics, ethics — to explain and defend conclusions.

2. So it is not a simple habit but an aggregate of faith and philosophical habits: logic for arguments, metaphysics for being and causes, ethics for the Decalogue's virtues and vices.

54Article XXVII. That theology resembles every Aristotelian intellectual habit — and prudence most of all.

1. Taken broadly, theology is compared to Aristotle's five intellectual habits (understanding, science, wisdom, art, prudence). The point is analogy of office in theology's own order, not identity with those habits.

2. The closest likeness is prudence. Prudence steers human action toward an end; theology steers mind and life toward the supernatural end — God's glory and eternal salvation — by the norms God has revealed.

55Article XXVIII. Whether theology is a speculative or a practical discipline.

1. Opinions vary: merely speculative, merely practical, or mixed.

2. Wayfarers' theology is principally practical — its ultimate end is not bare contemplation but enjoyment of God through faith, hope, charity, and obedience — though it contains much that is speculative.

3. Homeland theology is more speculative or contemplative, ending in God's vision. Even in the way, theology does not shut out speculation; it orders it to the practice of piety.

56Article XXIX. Whether the theology of wayfarers can be called speculative from the speculation or vision that will be in the homeland.

1. Some call way-theology speculative from its end — God's vision in the homeland. That confuses way-theology with homeland theology.

2. Wayfarers' theology is not speculative from future vision as its present form — the present form is faith, not vision. It is ordered to homeland speculation as end; it is not merely speculative in the way.

57Article XXX. Whether true and properly so-called theology can be in an ungodly human being.

1. Can an ungodly person — hypocrite, heretic, or merely learned — have true theology?

2. As bare historical knowledge of articles and scholastic conclusions: yes. Demons and hypocrites know many true things about God.

3. As saving wisdom — living faith with fear of God and obedience: no. That theology is the Spirit's gift, inseparable from charity and saving faith.

4. Conclusion: theology properly so called is not in the ungodly; acquired theological knowledge and faith's history may be. End of the Third Exercise.