System of Sacred Theology — Book 3

3.1.1BOOK THREE. On the subject, namely man, insofar as he is a citizen of the kingdom of God, capable of the right and life of God and of eternal salvation.

CHAPTER ONE. On man, as he can be subjected to God and beatified, in common.

Thus far there has been the first thing treated by the common part of sacred Theology, namely the absolutely highest and last end of man: there follows the second, namely the subject, which is man, insofar as he can, as a citizen, be subjected to God his eternal King, by whom he was created and redeemed, be united to Him, be beatified forever, and attain his highest end.

3.1.2The reason of order requires that, after we have explained how great and of what kind that highest good is which is both man's most absolute happiness and his perfection, we treat here of man, the citizen of God's kingdom, because he himself is the one to whom by this discipline, built and founded upon the divinely revealed Word, we show the way by which he may decline the extreme misery into which he fell when the bond of conjunction with God was broken, and may return to the highest beatitude, righteousness, and life of God.

For since sacred Theology, dealing with the divine kingdom, does not inform both God the King and man the subject at once — as politics, dealing with a human commonwealth, informs both the prince and the subject citizen — but directs only man fallen into misery toward recovering beatitude; therefore we call its subject especially man, insofar as he is to be subjected to God his King, united to Him, and forever kept, as was declared in Book I, chapters 1 and 4-7. For in this the kingdom of God chiefly consists (Luke 17:21; Matthew 13:23; Luke 8:11; Romans 14:17-18).

We will therefore not teach everything about man that can be known of him, but only those things which declare his character in any way in order toward the kingdom of God and eternal life. And so this part of Theology will hand on that divine saying Know thyself, and thence the other no less necessary: Know GOD, your Creator and Redeemer.

3.1.3II. But here his origin and states are to be considered, through which he is led to the state of highest perfection.

For neither can the theologian attain his end unless he knows these things, and has so far explored the nature and condition of man — whose return with God his King into grace and eternal salvation he seeks — that he may know how man depends on his Creator and King; to what end and into what state he was placed and created by Him on the sixth day; how, eating the fruit of the forbidden tree which is called the knowledge of good and evil, he soon fell with his whole race; and that Christ obediently handed Himself over to death to God the Father for lost man, and on the tree of the cross became for the whole human race dead in Adam the bread of life, which by faith one may break, eat, and therewith be satisfied and beatified.

For this is the sum of all the mysteries of the kingdom of God and of Christian doctrine, which if each person, according to the measure of his faith, understood more deeply, weighed more loftily, and recalled to his mind with simple study, truly Christ with the riches of His heavenly blessings would be sought by us hungering with unsatisfiable desire, and He Himself would satisfy our hunger and thirst with His banquet.

3.2.1CHAPTER TWO. On the origin of man specially, where namely of the existence of GOD.

The origin of man has a principle and a mode. We are not treating here of the principle of time in which man began to be, which is the sixth day of the world's creation, but of the principle of production, from which he is and by which he is ruled.

3.2.2I. The principle of man is God. For man was created by God (Genesis 1:26-27).

But since man is from God and depends on Him above all else in theological reflection place to treat of God. For the theologian cannot lead man back to God his King and principle, and onward to eternal life, unless he has God known.

Hence the Apostle too (Acts 17:24-31) proclaims God the creator; and now commands all everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day of judgment through Christ raised from the dead.

3.2.3II. But God, as He is in Himself, can be known by no one except by Himself (1 Timothy 6:16); yet as He has revealed Himself to us, He is seen as it were from behind (Exodus 33:23), not clearly but enigmatically (1 Corinthians 13:12). But what has been revealed about God suffices for us to live well (Deuteronomy 29:29).

III. Now this which can be known of God is His sufficiency and efficiency. These two are the pillars of faith.

IV. God's sufficiency is that by which He in Himself has enough for Himself and for us: almighty, needing no one and without defect. V. God's sufficiency is considered in His existence, essence, and subsistence.

3.2.4VI. God is, that is, He actually exists. The first and highest foundation and axiom of all true religion is that God is, according to Hebrews 11:6: whoever comes to God must believe that God is.

That God is is indeed known in itself according to nature; yet not according to us, whose knowledge begins from the senses, and therefore we assent only by some prior discourse (Romans 1:20; Acts 17:28; Wisdom 13).

When we speak of God, by the common conception of minds we understand the most perfect being, the first, most powerful, most wise, and best, the producing cause of all things and the governor of all.

3.2.5Yet it can be demonstrated from the senses against those who deny that God is, such as Diagoras and Epicurus.

Although it is known to every rational creature that God is, and all the pious are persuaded by Scripture and the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit: yet because of the impudence of this age's atheists it must briefly be demonstrated not a priori but a posteriori from effects — by theoretical axioms, by nature's public voice, by the perpetual consensus of all nations, and by the practical axiom which conscience dictates.

3.2.6The first reason is based on the axiom of things' singular existence and coordination. We perceive by sense is from itself. Therefore some one being necessarily pre-exists from which as first cause all draw origin. But this first being is God.

THE SECOND REASON is founded on the axiom from first wisdom. Every primary efficient cause is more excellent than its effect. Therefore there is one supreme and most wise mind. But this is God.

THE FOURTH REASON is founded on the axiom from first love. All things love to be. This love is not through itself but participated. Therefore there is a first love through itself. But this is God.

3.2.7THE FIFTH REASON is founded on the axiom from the universe's existence. The world was not always, because it consists of parts. Therefore it was produced from nothing. But this is God.

THE SIXTH REASON is founded on nature's public voice. Magnitude, multitude, variety, beauty, and perfection cry out that all are from some one. But this is God.

THE SEVENTH REASON is founded on the order of things and their disposition to an end, even of those that lack reason. Every order is from one. But this is God.

THE EIGHTH REASON is founded on the temper and enmity of contraries; a moderator is needed. But this is God.

3.2.8THE NINTH REASON is founded on the body's fabric so skillfully ordered. Only by a most wise craftsman. But this is God.

THE TENTH REASON is founded on contemplation of the stars revolving with marvelous art. But this is God.

THE ELEVENTH REASON is founded on the fatal and necessary harmony of things. But this is God.

THE TWELFTH REASON is founded on the human arts. If man is ruled by art and wisdom, the whole world must be ruled by art and wisdom. And therefore let us believe God.

3.2.9THE THIRTEENTH REASON is founded on miracles that exceed the whole force of the created universe. Therefore there is a cause that surpasses the universe. But that is God.

THE FOURTEENTH REASON is founded on the preservation of social, academic, political, and religious institutions, which could not be maintained except by one all-powerful. But that one is God.

THE FIFTEENTH REASON is founded on predictions of future things and their fulfillment (Isaiah 41:22-23).

THE SIXTEENTH REASON is founded on the authority of the best men: Moses, the Prophets, the Apostles, and the better philosophers proved it by miracles, holiness, martyrdom, and prophecy.

3.2.10THE SEVENTEENTH REASON is founded on the perpetual and universal consensus of all nations and lawgivers. All assert that God is. Whoever denies this consensus will also deny that Rome is and that Caesar was.

THE EIGHTEENTH REASON is founded on the practical axiom which conscience dictates. In all there is a conscience which in good deeds cheers, in evil torments (Romans 2:15; Wisdom of Solomon 17:11). From which it is gathered that there is a supreme judge. But this is God.

For the rest, whether from motion it can be concluded that God is: those who with Aristotle prove from this labor under a double paralogism. But the reasons by which we have demonstrated that God is can suffice for the present.

3.3.1CHAPTER THREE. On the knowledge of God; where the way, mode, and reason of knowing GOD are shown.

We have seen that GOD is: now we will show the way, mode, and reason by which God's nature can rightly be known by a Christian. For in vain we seek what is unknown unless we first know by what way and power it is to be investigated.

His nature cannot be known a priori, because it is first of all (Isaiah 44:6; Revelation 1:8). It is adequately known by God alone. By us it is known to some extent, but infinitely lower (1 Corinthians 13:12). Tertullian: nothing at all can be comprehended of God except that He is incomprehensible. Augustine: God is that which no opinion attains.

3.3.2I. Now God is known by us either immediately or mediately.

II. Immediately, by clear vision of Him as He is (1 John 3:2; 1 Corinthians 13:12), proper to the blessed in heaven.

III. Mediately, through analogical images and signs — God's outward actions, works, and word (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:20). This knowledge is called seeing through a mirror in mystery, proper to pilgrims.

IV. Mediately God is known from His works or word in three modes: affirmation, negation, and eminence. V. The first mode is affirmation. VI. Negation removes imperfections; eminence raises perfections above the manner of creatures.

3.3.3FIRST ASSERTION. God, by our outward sense, is imperceptible in Himself and in His nature.

Often in the Scriptures we read that God was seen; whence someone might doubt whether God can be known by bodily eyes. But that cannot be done: first, by reason of the object — God is incorporeal and immense; second, by reason of the subject and organ — sense knows only through bodily organs. Therefore Isaiah saw an appearance of God sitting, not God in Himself. If the eyes do not see God in Himself, much less do the other senses.

3.3.4SECOND ASSERTION. God is indeed known by the natural discourse of our mind, but in a most imperfect way.

Since God cannot be perceived by sense, we inquire whether we can perceive Him by reason. But we know God much more faintly from His effects, which are infinitely surpassed by God. Hence Nazianzen, correcting Plato: God's nature can be explained by no words, and by mind and intellect can be comprehended still less.

3.3.5THIRD ASSERTION. God can be known in this life not through an image by which His essence would be represented, but by intuition and the swiftest discourse of a mind strengthened by the light of grace.

For this reason Paul says: we speak God's wisdom, which none of the rulers of this age knew, but God has revealed it to us (1 Corinthians 2:7-10). For God can reveal things thoroughly unknown through sensible words, and form notions in our spirit.

3.3.6IX. From what has been said a closer distinction of the knowledge of God is to be observed.

X. First, one is mediate, another immediate. That is in the present; this in the life to come.

XI. Second, that is philosophical or natural, or truly theological. That is drawn from nature's principles by discourse, and is crude, unclear, and limited... This is perceived from God's word, and is more learned, plainer, and fuller.

XII. Third, this is theoretical or practical. That is merely historical and bare; this includes the obedience prescribed by God's word, joined with piety's affection and saving.

3.3.7XIII. The use of the knowledge of God is contained in these rules.

1. Although God cannot be known a priori, yet He is known a posteriori (Exodus 33:23). 2. Implicit knowledge of God alone is of no moment for salvation; one must distinctly know God as one and three, eternal, almighty, creator, redeemer, sanctifier. 3. Some knowledge of God is naturally implanted as the seed of religion. 4. Natural knowledge of God suffices that you are without excuse (Romans 1-2). 5. Perfect knowledge of God for salvation is completed by knowledge of His nature, will, and works. 6. Knowledge of GOD is saving only when practical and filial. 7. Natural knowledge of God is not killed but perfected by knowledge above nature. For the book of nature is explained by the book of Scripture.

3.4.1CHAPTER FOUR. On the unity of God, where it is shown that God is one.

Thus far we have proved that God is, and by what way and power we may know Him: now we will demonstrate that the same is one, against the fictitious number of gods.

There is therefore another axiom of our faith, the ASSERTION: GOD IS ONE. Tertullian (Against Marcion): Christian truth directly pronounces, God, if He is not one, is not. But He is one in the sense the Apostle declares (1 Corinthians 8:4). And Isaiah 44:6; John 17:3 — the only true God.

3.4.3The first is taken from the order of the universe's parts. Where there is order, there must be something one to which the rest are reduced. Aristotle: a plurality of rulerships is not good; let there be one ruler. Athanasius: a multitude of gods is a nullity of gods.

THE SECOND: God is highest unity, highest truth, highest goodness, which cannot be except unique and pure.

THE THIRD: if there were many gods, they either differ altogether, or are altogether one, or partly both: the first is absurd; if the second, they were already not many but one.

3.4.4THE FOURTH: either God is one, or if there are many there must be infinitely many; but there cannot be infinitely many.

THE FIFTH is from the unanimous consensus of all the wise.

THE SIXTH: most names of the Gentiles' gods designate one God under diverse attributes. Jupiter and Pluto, Phoebus, Dionysus are one. God stands as one in all. The philosopher On the World to Alexander: though God is one, He is called by many names.

3.4.5THE SEVENTH is from the sense and confession of the pagan crowd. Orosius: pagans confess that they do not follow many gods, but under one great God venerate many ministers. Tertullian (Apology 17): the soul, when it comes to its senses, names God alone — O testimony of a soul naturally Christian! Lactantius: when they swear or give thanks, they name not Jupiter or many gods but God.

THE EIGHTH: nothing can champion a multitude of gods. Hermes Trismegistus: one performs all these. Therefore God does all things. For this reason God is customarily compared to unity.

3.4.6If with the Gnostics, Manichaeans, and Encratites you object that evil mixed with good cannot be from the good God, and gather that another God from whom evils arise must be posited: we answer,

1. that no efficient cause of evil is to be sought, but a deficient one, which is not God — from whom nothing but good can be — but the creature itself falling from its goodness, because evil's nature consists in privation.

2. If God were the cause of evils, He would be the highest evil; but there cannot be a highest evil, because it destroys itself. 3. If this God is the highest evil, He will neither act nor know nor live nor be at all, because action, knowledge, and life are goods

3.5.1CHAPTER FIVE. On the nature of God in general.

And so we have shown that God is one: now we will see what His nature is, and of what sort He has revealed Himself to us both by works and by the Word. For knowledge of this is exceedingly necessary for us, both because it discriminates the true God from all fictitious divinities, and because it stirs us to fear, love, and honor Him, and to place our trust in Him.

What then is God? I. God is being simply, the highest, living integrally and independently. From what we taught in chapter 3 it is plain that God's essence cannot be explained by a definition, which is also clearly concluded from this principle: whatever things are properly defined consist of genus and difference. But God has no genus above Himself, because He transcends all genera, nor does He admit a true difference, because that is nowhere found without a genus which contracts and determines it — which will be more fully demonstrated in the attribute of infinity, and was rightly asserted among the Gentiles by Plato. Yet He can be described in some measure by certain attributes which declare the excellence of the divine nature and are as it were marks by which God is distinguished from all other things.

3.5.2But the common ratio which we conceive in God is that absolute which we are accustomed to think of as a certain common grade in every being. The proper ratio, however, is a certain proper perfection, which we can declare partly by comparison to our concept — that according to His nature it is conceived only positively — partly by comparison to the opposite, which excludes every imperfection of the creature, by which the creature is in a manner non-being: and that we intimate when we call God infinite (chapter 9).

And so we explain God's perfection by negation of a ratio. For to deny imperfection or non-being is in the truth of the thing an affirmation, but one conceived in the manner of a negation because of a preceding fiction by which non-being is conceived after the likeness of being. And that God's own grade of being may somehow be understood, all the partial or graded forms of perfection which we see distributed in any way in created things are to be considered: these gathered into one, we will think that all which are divided in creatures are in God most simply and infinitely even more — much more than we say all the grades of light that appear more sparsely in other bodies are at once eminently and in a more perfect manner in the sun.

Such descriptions are frequent both in the divine letters and among ecclesiastical and pagan authors. We choose this one for the present, both because it sufficiently distinguishes God from all other things, and because it grants us a certain principle that is as it were a foundation on which all the remaining attributes of God may be built.

3.5.4Which is variously established. 1. God is not in a genus, but exceeds all things. But Being prescinds every generic mode of existing and leaves the significate in its infinite amplitude. For Being cannot be limited, but this and that being can. Being surpasses times, places, and modes of existing in them.

2. This vocabulary makes our mind wander to the infinite sea of the divine essence, so that we do not find where to stay the intuition. But he who thinks he finds something beyond Being has not yet had the ratio of being. 3. Being says the present of eternity, taking away future and past. For those are not in God, but in things that suffer succession. But succession is from mutability. Therefore it also indicates eternity and immutability. But no creature can be exquisitely named by this name insofar as it is a noun, but insofar as it is a participle. For they participate some entity, yet are not beings, but some beings. So man is not being, but some being. And although Being is predicated of all without addition, yet it is always understood with addition and contraction, but of God absolutely. And this is the difference between predicable being and first being, as in Thomas Aquinas in the little book On Being and Essence. For God is all things eminently. Therefore His name is every name, as Trismegistus said.

4. In every thing accident is found except in God. But accident differs from the substance of a thing. Therefore no thing can say of itself, I am what I am, since it also is otherwise than it is. For a man, besides being a man, is also white. But to be white is other than to be a man. But for God to be just is not other than to be God, to be good, to be wise — according to the judgment of Bernard to Eugenius and of Augustine, namely according to the nature of God.

3.5.5Moreover these vocabularies have been taken and invented by us not for signifying one and the same thing, but many formal rationes. For being is said of what has essence; wise, of him to whom things taste as they are; good, of him who is lovable from this, that he helps others. Yet all these rationes are one in God. For He is not good by one thing, being by another, just by another, but by Himself is all those: indeed He is who is, not what is, as Bernard says. For these are not divided in Him, even if they are such in us. Nor yet, when we enunciate these distinctly of God, do we trifle, but as we have said above, we say many formal rationes which yet all, though they were infinite, express that one which is God, founding in His infinity all these rationes distinct by reason and, so to speak, ideally — not in the foundation, but in the term of the reasoning and in the exemplar of our things. things. Things.

We said Being is said of God and creatures analogically. God therefore is being through Himself; the other beings are not except with respect to Him, just as urine is not healthy except with respect to the health of the animal, of which it is an effect and sign. It is therefore most proper to God to be that which is. Nor is the word God a more essential name for Him than Being, except as regards us, who not grasping the infinity of Being name God from some particular effect.

For here this rule holds: Concrete names, when they are said of God, do not argue any composition or concretion, but show that He Himself is a thing subsisting through Himself, or a suppositum.

3.5.7II. The nature of God is viewed in essence and persons. Knowledge of the one essence is sought from the book of nature and of Scripture jointly: knowledge of the three distinct persons from the book of Scripture alone.

That the name of essence truly belongs to God we understand from this, that He is the first and highest being, on whom all other beings depend. But if He is being, He certainly has essence: since by it being is necessarily defined. And because God has essence from Himself and not from elsewhere, and therefore possesses it perpetually, He is also said to be essence in the abstract: from which Jerome (tome 2, letter to Damasus): One, he says, and only nature of God, which truly is. For that which subsists does not have from elsewhere, but is its own. The rest which are created, even if they seem to be, are not, because once they were not, and can again not be what they were. God alone, who is eternal — that is, who has no beginning — truly holds the name of essence.

Concerning the name of the persons from Scripture (1 John 5:7; Hebrews 1:3) it will be seen more inwardly.

3.6.1CHAPTER SIX. On the essence and names of God in particular.

The essence of God is a singular nature, common to the three persons. It is also called the form of God (Philippians 2:6). For although essence, nature, and form differ in the philosophers' judgment, yet according to the holy fathers in the doctrine of God these three are the same, as Damascene testifies in the Isagoge, chapter 1. Likewise also divinity (Romans 1:20). It is singular, because numerically it is so one that it is at once unique (Deuteronomy 4:35). It is common, because it equally belongs to the three persons (1 John 5:7).

3.6.2RULE. 1. God is so one that He is unique, and does not have many essences. The reason of the former is that it cannot happen that there be several first or highest and infinite principles. The reason of the latter is that God through one and the same essence is immutable, eternal, wise, good, omnipotent. Therefore God does not have many essences diverse or opposed, extreme or moderate, real or accidental, general and specific partial: but an essence so one in number or individual that it does not admit a principle of individuation.

2. The essence of God is common to the three persons: yet it is not one in genus or species. For it is not multiplied in the persons as a universal thing: but equally is in each as an infinite singular thing. 3. The multitude of God's attributes does not fight with the unity of God's essence; because all those attributes are one in essence. For they are nothing other than one and the same essence of God related to various objects and effects. So God's eternity is God's very essence insofar as it has no beginning, succession, and end of duration. God's omnipotence is God's very essence insofar as it can effect every good.

3.6.4IV. But of the divine names a distinction is to be noted, a review of the chief ones, and the use of all. V. Their distinction is multiplex. First, some divine names are in the Old Testament, some in the New. Those are for the most part Jah, Eheje, El, Elohim, Schaddai, Adonai, Heljon, etc.; these Theos, Kyrios, Father, Son, Abba, Spirit, Sabaoth.

VI. Second, some note God's essence, others properties of the essence. Those are Jah, Eheje and the like: but these El, Elohim, Schaddai, etc. VII. Third, some properly belong to God alone, as Jehovah: some are common to God and creatures, but by a diverse ratio, as Elohim. Those discern God from all created things insofar as they note God's altogether incommunicable perfections: but these declare Him the author of every good nature, since they are predicated of God and creatures analogically.

VIII. Fourth, some of them are absolute, as God omnipotent: some respective, and that either toward the divine persons, as Father, Son, Holy Spirit, or toward created things, as creator, savior, King of kings, Lord of lords. IX. Fifth, some are affirmative, as omnipotent, some negative, as infinite.

3.6.6The SECOND name is JAH (Exodus 15:2; Psalms everywhere), by which they exhorted one another to praise GOD. The THIRD is EHEJE (Exodus 3:13-14), denoting God's absolute existence and necessity. The FOURTH name is EL (Isaiah 9:6), signifying God's fortitude and power.

3.6.7FIFTH is ELOHIM (Genesis 1:1 and in countless places). Sometimes it denotes all three persons of the Deity. The SIXTH name is Adonai (Daniel 9:17; Psalms everywhere). SEVENTH is Schaddai (Genesis 17:1), the Almighty. EIGHTH is HELJON (Psalm 9:2 etc.).

3.6.8NINTH from the New Testament is ho Theos, God. TENTH is Kyrios, LORD (Matthew everywhere).

XIII. This is the review and use of the chief names of God. Although no name of God perfectly expresses the infinite essence: yet many are His names which impress His properties. For God by His Word has revealed many things about Himself. Names imposed by God in the Scriptures usefully increase the knowledge of God; names invented by men are not easily to be admitted.

3.7.1CHAPTER SEVEN. On the attributes of God.

Thus far have been the divine names: there follow the attributes, which are after the manner of properties naturally connected to the nature of God as it was somehow sketched for our capacity, by which every perfection of God's essence is more fully declared to us.

That attributes first found use in divine matters, Daniel Heinsius, a man of wide learning, teaches learnedly (Aristarchus sacer, chapter 2, p. 42). They are commonly called essential or natural properties and perfections of God, which indeed are not qualities that happen upon God's essence, but God's very essence itself. For which reason they are not distinguished a priori or in the thing itself from the essence or among themselves, but formally and by our mode of conceiving, nor do they admit more and less.

3.7.3III. Attributes of the first genus are those which designate the absolute perfection of the divine essence, by which it stands above all, by the removal of those imperfections which commonly inhere in creatures. For this reason, if we speak accurately, they can in no way be attributed to creatures.

IV. But they are six, namely: 1. absolute necessity of existing; 2. infinity; 3. simplicity; 4. immutability; 5. immensity; 6. eternity. To these the rest which others have been accustomed to add can without difficulty be reduced. But to these the properties of creatures are opposed, which, because they signify imperfection by which those fall short of God's highest perfection, ought to be removed from God — as are 1. contingency; 2. finitude; 3. multiplex composition; 4. mutability; 5. local presence defined to a certain and determined space; 6. finite duration.

But these which we have called attributes of the first genus are all negative, because they are conceived and explained by us through negations: yet to them in God there answers a positive perfection which is the foundation of that negation.

3.7.4V. But here general CANONS are to be observed. 1. The attributes of God, or His essential properties, are many in one manner, because we cannot comprehend the whole infinite perfection of the divine essence in one concept, but only apprehend it to some extent.

2. In the attributes of God there is not prior and posterior except as regards us. For since all are one with the essence, in themselves they do not admit prior and posterior. 3. The attributes of God do not admit more and less in themselves. But their effects can admit intensification and remission. 4. The attributes of God are not contrary to one another. But their effects can be contrary, as the sun by one and the same virtue hardens mud and melts wax.

5. The attributes of GOD viewed in themselves are altogether incommunicable. For they are God's very essence itself. Yet they are not wrongly distinguished into communicable and incommunicable, because some impress their image on creatures, as wisdom and goodness, some scarcely a vestige or thinnest shadow. 6. The attributes of God are not multiplied in the persons of the Holy Trinity. For just as there is one essence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so also there is one eternity, omnipotence, etc. Therefore although the Father is omnipotent, and the Son omnipotent, and the Holy Spirit omnipotent: yet there are not three omnipotent ones, but those three are one omnipotent GOD.

3.7.57. The attributes of GOD divide universal theology. For in all theological comments, disputations, and sermons regard is to be had to the attributes of God, lest anything contrary to them be established. And in the whole Christian life these attributes are as a cynosure, that we may revere and imitate God, and perceive solid consolation.

3.8.1CHAPTER EIGHT. On God's absolute necessity of existing.

Thus far concerning the attributes of God which stand in place of properties consequent upon His essence in general: now, about to speak of the several ones separately and distinctly, there occurs before the rest I. Absolute necessity of existing, which is that perfection of God by which He so is or exists that He cannot not be.

The sacred letters point out this attribute by the names of immortality and incorruptibility (1 Timothy 6:16-17; Romans 1:23). It is called a perfection of God for the foundation of that negation by which we declare this necessity, which is a positive perfection that truly exists in God, which materially, as they commonly speak, is signified by this attribute. But its formal ratio is placed in the negation of some imperfection which commonly inheres in all creatures and is called contingency.

3.8.2But he errs who thinks this attribute ought to be reduced either to immutability or to eternity. For just as for things to be changed properly is not for them either to be produced so that they are, or to be destroyed so that they are not, but with existence remaining safe to acquire or lose something formally — so conversely to be immutable is not the same as not to be able not to be; but properly signifies not to be able to acquire a new perfection, or to be deprived of any, with existence remaining safe.

From which it is gathered that necessity of existing and immutability differ not a little; since this is opposed to mutability, that to contingency. But eternity is nearer to this necessity, although they differ in this, that this denies the beginning and end of duration, but that denies contingency or the power of not existing: and therefore, as immutability is a certain cause of eternity, of which it is the prior cause and reason, so this necessity is a cause of eternity. And so we conclude that God is eternal — that is, lacks beginning and end of His duration — from this, that He Himself is a necessary being, to whom not to be is altogether adverse.

3.8.3But we assert that this absolute necessity of existing is so proper to God that it can be attributed to no creature. For created 'necessaries' only in a certain respect

3.8.4But we demonstrate that God is an absolutely necessary being, FIRST, by the testimonies of sacred Scripture (1 Timothy 6:16-17; Romans 1:23; Psalm 102:27-28), where God is called immortal and incorruptible and is opposed to corruptible things, and is established always to remain, to declare absolute necessity of existing. From which also Augustine (On the Trinity 1.1): Although, he says, the soul is said to be immortal in a manner, the Apostle would not say, Who alone has immortality, unless because true immortality is incommutability, which no creature can have, since it belongs to the Creator alone.

SECOND, by the Name of God, Eheje (Exodus 3:14), by which absolute necessity of existing is indicated, as Nazianzen (Oration 24 / 2 on theology) and Augustine (On True Religion, chapter 49) testify. For this reason God also attributes Being to Himself alone, as He who alone is necessarily (Isaiah 42:8; Amos 5:8).

THIRD, by reason. For every independent being, and what exists from itself, is absolutely necessary. God is an independent being, existing namely from Himself, as was demonstrated in chapter 2 on God's existence. Therefore God is an absolutely necessary being.

3.8.5The major is proved in two ways. First, because an independent being or one existing from itself exists by the force of its essence or nature, and therefore existence belongs to it as necessarily as essence. Second, because an independent being neither could once not have been, nor hereafter not be. Therefore it is absolutely necessary.

FOURTH, also by the confession of Gentile philosophers. For Orpheus spoke of the necessity of all things — that is, a substance which is necessarily through itself, and on which all the rest depend, but itself on none. Aristotle calls God a necessary, perpetual being. Apuleius: I would judge necessity itself to be called nothing other than God. Avicenna: That holy thing is the necessary being which is from itself, but not the remaining beings, even if they have necessity of existing from another.

3.9.1CHAPTER NINE. On the infinity of God.

And these things concerning the first attribute of God, namely absolute necessity of existing: there follows the second, namely I. Infinity, which here is the highest perfection of the divine essence, without any limit or boundary. The vocabulary of INFINITY we here borrow from those things which otherwise are properly attributed to quantity.

But God is said in two ways to lack a term of His perfection, namely extensively and intensively. Extensively, because His nature is not precisely limited to one genus of perfections, but in itself encloses all genera of perfections whatever can be thought or be in any way, and that infinitely. And so God is called simply and absolutely perfect, because every perfection so necessarily inheres in Him that none at all can be lacking to Him.

3.9.2The formal consists in the negation of a term, which is both any perfection of a being with the precision of the other perfections, and any grade of perfection with the precision of the remaining grades. But this property so belongs to God that it is found in none of the creatures, because every creature necessarily takes from God the fountain of every perfection a certain and definite number of perfections, and of all of them a definite and limited grade.

3.9.4THIRD, I prove that God is extensively and intensively infinite thus. For every finite being something else can be more perfect and greater. For God nothing can be more perfect and greater. Therefore God is not a finite being.

FOURTH, God has every perfection of being, because the absolute first, on which all the rest depend, necessarily exceeds all remaining beings by His perfection. Therefore He contains every perfection of theirs in Himself in a more eminent manner, and powers which can never be so exhausted that they cannot bring forth new species and perfections of things.

3.9.5FIFTH, that every perfection of essence which is in God is also intensively infinite — that is, inheres in Him without measure and term — I show thus. A being existing from itself by the necessity of its nature cannot be limited to a certain grade of perfection. But God is a being existing from itself by the necessity of its nature, as was demonstrated in chapter 8. Therefore God cannot be limited to a certain grade of perfection.

And from this we attribute infinity to God not only absolutely, but also join it with other attributes, especially affirmative ones, as when we say infinite wisdom, power, and goodness are in God.

3.9.6SEVENTH, by the consensus and authority of orthodox antiquity. Dionysius (On the Divine Names, chapter 5): Unity, he says, God contains according to His supersubstantial simple infinity. Damascene (Orthodox Faith 1.12): The universe, he says, that which is, as a certain immense and infinite sea of essence He contains in His embrace. Bernard: For God this is to be, which is to be all these things. Mercury Trismegistus calls God the interminable and infinite Good. Orpheus calls God the infinite end. So Xenophanes, Parmenides, Melissus say that that which is — namely God — is infinite.

3.10.1CHAPTER TEN. On the simplicity of God.

And these things concerning the second attribute of God: there follows His third attribute. First, simplicity, which is God's highest perfection, by which He is free from every composition. The word SIMPLICITY we borrow from corporeal things. But it is called simplicity because it notes not something positive, but chiefly the negation of composition.

3.10.2This property so belongs to God that to creatures we attribute only a thin shadow. Nor do we think a composition of reason — not real — fights against the divine simplicity. Therefore God's simplicity is not the same as that in creatures, but more eminent, removed from every substantial and accidental composition.

3.10.3We demonstrate that God is simple. First, by the testimonies of sacred Scripture, which declare God spirit, light, and not constituted from parts. THIRD, because our Savior (John 4:24) attributes to God that He is spirit: yet it is not true that when God is called spirit something corporeal is indicated. Fourth, because He is the first being. For the first being exists from itself and is composed from none. For whatever is later from its components is therefore not simply the first being, nor altogether independent.

3.10.4Sixth, and this is the most evident of all, from God's infinite perfection. SEVENTH, that God is free from every composition whatsoever. For whatever is composite is more imperfect than that which is simple; and an infinite being does not suffer composition.

3.10.5The FIRST genus of substantial composition is that distinguished from genus and difference. Every true genus is univocal. But there is no common genus for God with the other things, nor a difference properly so called. God cannot be restricted to some predicament or genus, but is above all genera and outside them. To this first genus of composition we have also reduced composition from essence and existence.

3.10.6The THIRD genus of substantial composition is that from matter and form. But that composition does not fall upon God. The Fourth genus of composition is that by which a substance is from integral parts. The FIFTH genus of substantial composition is from the actual and the potential. But these do not fall upon God, because they are refuted by open Scripture and reason.

3.10.7THUS FAR we have seen that no substantial composition falls upon God. There follows concerning the accidental. God is not mutable, as will be proved below. He is not integral, because God is not measured or spread out.tal in creatures is in God the substance itself.

3.10.8God is not the soul of the world, nor a term of matter produced by an agent, because He is the first being. The idea in God is not other than God. God is the governor of the world, but not as a soul, nor as a sailor needing a ship, but far more eminently governing and vivifying all things by His goodness alone, with no necessity.

3.10.9It belongs to pious and theological prudence so to instruct the Church concerning this attribute of God that nothing of those things remote from the people's capacity be brought to the pulpit; but especially these two are to be inculcated. 1. That is always to be attributed to God which is both most perfect and can be perceived by an intellect divinely illuminated. 2. That the mind is not to be tormented by those things which fall out to the contrary, but rather to acquiesce in a sane confession of our ignorance, that meanwhile the unimpaired glory of every perfection may remain for God.

3.11.1CHAPTER ELEVEN. On the immutability of God.

Thus far there has been the third attribute of God, namely simplicity: there follows the fourth, namely immutability, which is God's highest perfection, by which He always remains the same as He isIMMUTABILITY, which certain Greeks render as unchangeableness, is expressed from the sacred letters not by a distinct word, but by like and opposite words of power.

3.11.2It is of like power that of God it is affirmed in Psalm 102:27, But You remain. And in verse 28, But You are the same. And Malachi 3:6, I do not change. So Romans 1:23 says the incorruptible God. 1 Timothy 6:16, who alone has immortality. Opposite words of power are denied of Him in James 1:17: with whom there is no change or shadow of turning.

The material in this attribute also is the same as in the rest, namely God's most eminent perfection. But its formal ratio consists in the negation of every change by which God in His essence would become other and other. For He never acquires a new perfection, nor loses that which He possesses.

3.11.3That God is in Himself plainly immutable I show in this way. FIRST, from His most eminent unity. Whatever is most eminently one is in itself plainly immutable. But God is most eminently one, as was demonstrated in chapter IV of this book. Therefore God is in Himself plainly immutable.

SECOND, from the absolute necessity of existing. Whatever exists by absolute necessity is in itself plainly immutable. But God exists by absolute necessity, as was demonstrated in chapter VIII. THIRD, from the infinite perfection of essence. Whatever is endowed with infinite perfection is in itself plainly immutable. FOURTH, from simplicity. Whatever is absolutely simple is in itself plainly immutable, because it is capable of no accident. But God is absolutely simple, as was demonstrated in chapter X.

3.11.4FIFTH, from an induction of the modes by which an intelligent nature can be changed: as to existence; as to accidents; as to knowledge; as to decree or purpose of will. But by none of these modes is God changed. SIXTH, from independence. Whoever is independent is plainly immutable in Himself. But God is independent, as was proved in chapter V.

SEVENTH, from the state of a being in potency. Whatever is mutable is somehow in potency. But God is in no way in potency. Pure act, indeed the purest, is God alone. EIGHTH, from the nature of motion. That from which every motion and change is, is simply immobile and immutable, as Augustine and Boethius assert from Aristotle. But from God is every motion and change.

3.11.5Conrad Vorstius in his Notes on Disputation III On God seems somehow to deny this attribute of God, writing that the fifth species of change can have a place in God insofar as He exercises certain immanent actions according to free will.

But of old certain doubts were objected to the orthodox consensus by the scholastics: first, that God began to act; second, that yesterday He knew the sun would rise today; third, that His liberty would be taken away if He could not change His will; fourth, that He was made man; fifth, that God was changed because He suffered and died. Each of these arguments has its proper seat below. Meanwhile, since it is certain that God is entirely immutable and immobile, a few rules are here to be observed, useful for solving contrary arguments.

3.11.6RULES. 1. Change properly is according to substance, but motion according to accident. Hence, since God is in potency neither in substance nor in accidental forms, He is altogether immutable. 2. God is said to move Himself by an effect of nature, or of grace, or of glory; such motion is not referred to God, but to His effect. 3. God governs the world by a motion which is from Him, not which is in Him; the preposition in, when He is called unchangeable, does not deprive Him of active power of moving, but denies passive power of being moved.

4. Motions of approach and withdrawal are not referred to God except according to effect. 5. God does not now hold Himself otherwise than from eternity; He is called creator and conserver by a relation that denominates Him only extrinsically. 6. From habit to act only those are changed which so act that they can suffer. 7. When God is said now to will what He did not will before, that says a change in the thing willed, not in the one willing. 8. The ratio of personal relation in the divine is other than that of other relations in creatures.

3.11.79. God is always the same because of His essence, intellect, will, and power, as stated in Psalm 102:27-28. 10. God repents, not because He changes counsels, but benefits and judgments, as He decreed to change them. 11. What God under condition decrees, commands, promises, threatens, or does, argues His liberty, goodness, or severity, not mutability. 12. God does not depend on creatures, but decrees that He will do something through creatures and about them.

13. God, by creating, redeeming, and doing other things outside Himself, is not changed, but freely applies His omnipotence, clemency, and justice to various objects. 14. God from angry becomes placated and vice versa, not by change of essence, but by exchange of judgment with benefit. 15. Prayers, holiness, and evil life do not change God, but the works of God according to His decree. 16. The immutability of God serves faith, lest we take for God what changes; consolation, that we may be persuaded God will never change His goodwill toward us; and piety, that we too may be constant and immutable in the love of God and neighbor.

3.12.1CHAPTER TWELVE. On the immensity of God.

These things concerning the fourth attribute of God, namely immutability: there follows the fifth. Immensity, which is GOD's highest perfection, by which He is free from circumscription and from local presence defined to a certain and determined space.

The material in this attribute also is the same as in the others, namely GOD's most eminent perfection. But the formal consists in the negation of circumscription and of defined local presence. From which, creatures and places now being posited, there follows omnipresence or ubiquity, which can be considered in a threefold ratio: of knowledge; of voluntary operation; of essence — which third we chiefly allege when we call God immense and hence omnipresent.

3.12.2But God is said to be everywhere to the measure of our grasp, when rather things are in GOD, from whom, through whom, and in whom are all things in Romans 11:36 and Acts 17:25, 27-28.

Parmenides argues: If the One is, it is not in itself, nor in another. But that does not strike us, because we say God is in Himself according to our mode of understanding, and we explain it negatively: God is in Himself, that is, not in another. Yet Jeremiah 23:24 also attributes to God that He fills heaven and earth. Scripture teaches both, because each sense is true: that one worthier of God, this one more fitted to our intelligence.

3.12.3We will demonstrate three things. I. That God fills all places and spaces of this world through the boundlessness of His beings being, or is present everywhere. FIRST reason: Whoever is at heavens, in the grave, at the extremity of the sea, in the lowest parts of the earth, fills all places and spaces of this world through the boundlessness of His beings being. But God is at once in all these places, as Psalm 139, Isaiah 66:1, Jeremiah 23:24, 1 Kings 8:27, Acts 7:49 and 17:27, and Ephesians 4:6 testify.

SECOND, from God's infinite perfection. THIRD, from inconvenience or absurdity: if God according to substance is nowhere but in heaven, it follows that Christ sojourning on earth was not true God. FOURTH, from God's immediate operation. FIFTH, from the catholic consent of pious antiquity — Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Athanasius, Tertullian, Justin.

3.12.4II. God according to His substance is not defined or circumscribed by this world's spaces, but is also outside this world. FIRST reason from the testimony of sacred Scripture: 1 Kings 8:27, The heaven of heavens cannot contain You. Job 11:8, Higher than heaven and deeper than hell. SECOND from infinity. THIRD from catholic consent — Chrysostom, Augustine; Hermes Trismegistus: God is a circle whose center is everywhere, circumference nowhere.

Outside this orb God is in Himself, as before this orb was founded. Outside the world He is in only one mode, by substance. III. No creature can be present everywhere by immensity of essence, because God's absolute perfection cannot be formally communicated to any creature.

3.12.5Therefore Conrad Vorstius errs, deceived by Scotus, Bodin, and Taurellus, in Notes on Disputation III On God p. 232, because against the catholic consensus and the most learned Zanchi he teaches that God according to His substance is nowhere but in heaven. He alleges seven reasons.

But that error is from a double confusion: it does not distinguish Scripture's proper from improper speech about throne and dwelling; and from the aspect of special presence it overturns the very immensity of essence. For God is in a special ratio in Christ's humanity by hypostatic union, in the saints by knowledge and love, in the Church by help, in heaven by majesty and glory — the immensity of essence nonetheless remaining everywhere.

3.12.6RULES. 1. God's immensity is regarded absolutely or relatively — absolutely from eternity; relatively partly as omnipresence, partly as incomprehensibility. 2. The mode of divine immensity is to be conceived without any multiplication, extension, or division of parts. 3. God is in every place not as located, but as cause and lord of each place. 4. God is everywhere not by extension of His essence, but by comprehension. 5. God is outside the world not by physical size, but by infinity of essence.

6. God is so in the heavens and saints by His majesty, grace, and glory that He is nonetheless everywhere by essence and power. 7. When God is in the saints by grace, presence sometimes is hidden, sometimes open. 8. God's presence is general, special, and most special. 9. To be everywhere is not unseemly for God. 10. Scripture places that attribute greatness, throne, house to God are to be understood as far as they suit the immensity of His essence. 11. We ought to imitate God's immensity by immense desire of eternity.

3.13.1CHAPTER THIRTEEN. On the eternity of God.

There follows GOD's sixth attribute, namely eternity, which is His highest perfection, by which He is free from finite duration. The word eternity properly notes a standing duration without beginning, middle, end, without flux of past, present, future.

Among the ancients Boethius defines thus: Eternity is the whole, simultaneous, and perfect possession of interminable life — or it is interminable, indivisible, and independent duration.

3.13.2It differs from time, as Clement of Alexandria is authority. Improperly it is attributed both to things which, though they have a beginning of time, will yet have no end — as angels, demons, rational souls — and to those which are long-lasting.

Hence Albert the Great: Eternal is said in two ways, namely by essence and by participation. By essence God alone is eternal. But by participation that is said to be eternal which participates some property of eternity — immutability and lack of end — analogically, not univocally.

3.13.4Conrad Vorstius contradicts this doctrine in Notes on Disputation III On God p. 226, contending that the common opinion of eternity existing all at once is false. For that reason we hand down certain foundations and rules here.

1. God's eternity is not an accident, but God's substance — for it is in reality nothing other than God's duration, and duration nothing other than persevering existence. 2. God's eternity is indivisible and entirely simultaneous, and has no parts succeeding one another. 3. God's eternity, being indivisible, necessarily exists with all differences of times — not that all parts of time exist together among themselves, but that each part of time, while it is in act, exists with eternity.

3.13.54. God acts in time not by being subject to time, but by subjecting a finite thing to time. 5. In God there is prior and posterior not by reason of essence or time, but by reason of order among the persons of the Holy Trinity and among His attributes, by reason of our intellect. God's inward works are an act always lasting; but outward works are finished according to God's free will.

6. All things are present to God not by reason of existence, but of knowledge. 7. Eternal years and days of eternity are not said of God because of a division of eternity in itself, but because of the division of perpetuity and time, which He contains under Himself excellently. 8. We ought to imitate God's eternity by constant activity of the good, by unceasing desire of blessed eternity. For that reason I seal the chapter on God's eternity with this monition: THINK ON ETERNITY.

3.14.1CHAPTER FOURTEEN. On the life of God.

The former attributes agree and declare God's absolute perfection as a being negatively: now there follow attributes of the second genus, which affirmatively note God's highest perfection as spiritually living — that is, evidently with respect to intelligent life. And these exist in God as principles of actions; for which cause they are also attributed to creatures, not indeed as they are in God with the degree of supereminence, but in their own limited mode, namely by participation and according to some likeness, which still infinitely falls short of God's perfection.

Hence it is that men are said to be made in God's image (Genesis 1:27) and to become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). But these second-genus attributes are affirmative, because first and formally they indicate a positive perfection, and therefore are also rather conceived and expounded by us through affirmation or position. Yet the mode of supereminence added to them always includes a negation. The life of God is His highest perfection, by which His essence is excellently active.

3.14.2The life of God is said ambiguously: either that by which He Himself lives in Himself, or that by which He lives in us. Of the latter Paul speaks in Ephesians 4:18, saying the Gentiles are alienated from the life of God. Of which also Irenaeus, Against Heresies book V chapter 13: The life of man, he says, is twofold, natural and spiritual.

Natural is that life which we have through the first generation in Adam, and is nothing other than the function of the rational soul in moving, sensing, and reasoning; of this it is said in Acts 17:28, In Him we live and move and are. Spiritual is that life which we have through the second generation in Christ, and is nothing other than perfect motion from the action of the Holy Spirit, who is as it were the soul of the regenerate man: and this is that life which to the Ephesians is called the life of God, and in 2 Corinthians 4:11 the life of Jesus.

Not of this, but of that we chiefly treat here — namely that by which God lives in Himself, which is God Himself, and is conceived by us as the second moment of the divine nature. The material in this attribute also is the same as in the others, namely God's highest perfection; but the formal consists in the position of the most supereminent mode of spiritual life by which God is active in Himself and outside Himself.

3.14.4SIXTH, to these is added the consent of orthodox antiquity. To Dionysius named from the Areopagus God is self-life and living through Himself, eternally living; and with him Gregory, the archetypal author of life. Irenaeus: God is life and incorruption and truth. Cyril of Alexandria: There must be in the true God incorruption and freedom from destruction, and indeed that He live and can grant life to those in whom He wills life to be. Basil the Great; Augustine: There is no life that is not from God, because God is indeed the highest life and Himself the fountain of life.

SEVENTH, the Gentile philosophers subscribe. Aristotle, Metaphysics XII: We say therefore that God is a living being everlasting and best. Therefore life and continuous eternal age are in God. Orpheus; Hermes; Zeno of Citium called God an animal, that is an immortal living being.

Here also Conrad Vorstius departs in Notes on Disputation III p. 247, saying it seems some diversity is in God, so that one thing is God's living substance itself, another the life or force by which He lives. But they wisely know who know divine things well, and attribute to God those things whose likeness exists in creatures only with the mode of supereminence and negation of every imperfection.

3.14.5II. But concerning these second-genus attributes, and so concerning the life of God, RULES are to be held. 1. When second-genus attributes are painted in God, they are to be measured to the norm and form of first-genus attributes, so that they are attributed to Him infinitely, most perfectly, most simply, immutably. So God is called living infinitely and most perfectly, because nothing of His life is wanting and He lacks every bound extensively and intensively; simply, because His life is entirely without composition and is His very active essence; immutably, because as God never began to live, so neither will He cease.

2. Whatever like and analogous to these attributes is found in created things is finite, imperfect, mixed, subject to turns of motion and change, and finally accidental and adventitious. 3. From attributes of this genus it is understood especially that God is the first true cause of all — whence He can be called the first living. 4. By His life the true God is distinguished from idols — Joshua 3:10; Jeremiah 2:13; 10:9-10; Daniel 6:26; 1 Thessalonians 1:9. 5. Because of His life God is to be worshiped — fear, Deuteronomy 6:13; honor and adoration, Hebrews 9:14; Revelation 4:9; oath, Jeremiah 4:2; hope, 1 Timothy 6:17.

III. The life of God consists in an intellect penetrating all things, a will wholly free, and a ready power of acting which none can resist. These are as it were God's vital faculties, to which we refer all attributes.

3.15.1CHAPTER FIFTEEN. On the intellect of God.

The intellect of God is His highest perfection, by which He distinctly, most inwardly, and most perfectly knows all and each things which in any way are, were, will be, or can be, and the order, connection, and various respects of all and each among themselves which they have and can have, and their opposites.

Intellect, so called by the Latins from inter and lego, by force of etymology notes the power, act, and habit by which we know so as to have choice between this and that — which is to know so as to discern. The material in this attribute also is the same as in the others, namely God's highest perfection. But the formal consists in the position of the most supereminent mode of spiritual life by which God most perfectly understands all things.

3.15.2That this truly belongs to God we prove in this way. FIRST, from the clear testimonies of sacred Scripture: Genesis 6:5; Job 28:23; Psalm 94; Acts 1:24; 15:8, 18; 1 John 3:20; 1 Samuel 2:3 — Jehovah is the strong God endowed with all knowledge. SECOND, from the infinity of the divine nature. To whose essence is infinitely perfect, intellect belongs, and indeed infinite intellect.

THIRD, from spiritual life. Whoever lives spiritually also has intellect. But God lives spiritually — demonstrated in chapter XIV. FOURTH, from God's outward operations: whoever by the Word produces, preserves, bears, governs, and orders all things has intellect; and whoever grants intellect to others and illuminates it has intellect — Exodus 36; Psalm 16:7; 32:8; 119. FIFTH, from the consent of Gentile philosophers — Hermes Trismegistus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus, Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Zeno.

3.15.3II. But in the divine intellect there are to be distinctly considered act, object, order, mode, and use. III. The act is the comprehension of all knowables insofar as they are knowable — or, what amounts to the same, one perfect cognition. We say the act of the divine intellect according to itself and its substance with respect to all intelligibles is one and simple, seeing it is in reality God's very essence and intellect; yet from the varied termination of God's knowledge to diverse objects it is commonly conceived by us as manifold and receives diverse names — of wisdom, science, foreknowledge — which yet do not multiply the substance.

IV. The object of the intellect's act is every intelligible, or everything that can be known. Therefore God is called omniscient — Hebrews 4:13; 1 John 3:20. V. And it is primary, namely God Himself, or secondary, anything besides God. The divine essence is the primary object of the divine intellect by primacy of dignity, order, power, and adequation.

3.15.4VI. The order of knowable objects is threefold. First, of those which are simply necessary, and which from eternity always were, and all possibles insofar as they are only possible — such is God Himself and whatever naturally is in God. VII. Second is of those which are not eternal and simply necessary, yet truly are existing each in its own mode, either by proper act or at least in their causes — heaven, earth, angels, humans; accidents; past, present, future.

VIII. Third is of those which are necessary neither simply nor from hypothesis, but either only possible, or even altogether impossible and contradictory — as David betrayed by the men of Keilah if he had remained (1 Samuel 23:11); the Tyrians and Sidonians if the Gospel had been preached (Matthew 11:21); that it is impossible for God to perish or lie. From which it is gathered that nothing at all escapes Him.

3.15.5IX. The mode of knowing is to be estimated both from the condition of the knowable object and from the nature of God's intellect. For God understands no thing otherwise than as it itself stands, because He is the God of truth. But God knows in a divine mode — most perfectly, not through intelligible species, not by discursive reasoning, but by thoroughly penetrating all things with His intellect through His own essence alone, except evils which He knows through opposite goods.

X. That mode of knowing in the divine intellect is considered in genus or in species. In genus, these theorems explain it: (1) As is the nature of knowables, so also is their science in God. (2) God first knows Himself. (3) He knows Himself wholly and adequately. (4) Other things besides Himself He knows wholly — excellently as in Himself, adequately as in their proper natures. (5) God's understanding is His being and essence. (6) God does not understand successively or by discourse, but by a simple and infinite intuition. (7) From eternity He knows all things, nothing newly. (8) He knows all things immensely. (9) He knows all things immutably. (10) By one individual act He knows all things. (11) God understands all things holily. (12) God's intellect depends on no external cause. (13) God's intellect is always certain and can never be deceived, not even in future contingents.

3.15.6XI. But in species the schools distinguish God's science, which in itself is unique and most simple, according to various objects and respects to objects. XII. It is science of simple intelligence or of vision. In the first instant of reason they place science of simple intelligence; in the second, decrees of free will; in the third, science of vision. Some set a fourth instant after the first, in which they consider a middle science before free will's decrees.

XIII. Science of simple intelligence is the cognition of all possibles, preceding in God the free act of will. XIV. Science of vision is that by which God, after the decree of will, knows besides Himself all other things which are, will be, or have been. XV–XVII. It is natural or free — natural nearly the same as simple intelligence; free that by which God after the free act of His will distinctly understands all future things. XVIII–XX. It is theoretical or practical. XXI. These and like distinctions are taken from our mode of knowing. I do not deny the thing itself of middle science, but make it a part of simple intelligence; a science distinct from simple intelligence and vision does not seem needed.

3.15.7XXII. Still concerning mode: there follows a manifold use. The first is theoretical, both for confirmation of orthodox faith and for elenchus and refutation of various error. XXIII. For this doctrine confirms the catholic faith concerning God's omniscience; and it refutes those who confuse the distinct modes of divine science, who set absolute foreknowledge of things certainly future before the divine decree, make it the cause of things, and from the certainty of divine foreknowledge take away the contingency of things.

Things are not future because God knows them, but because they are future they are known by God — Origen, Chrysostom, Ambrose; Augustine speaks of active science joined with will and power. XXIV. The other use is practical: pedagogical, corrective, consolatory — that we may live holily in God's eyes (Psalm 139); that we may beware evils of fault; that the conscience of things well done may be consoled against unjust judgments, by the argument of Psalm 7; 1 Corinthians 4:5; 2 Corinthians 10:18.

3.16.1CHAPTER SIXTEEN. On the will of God.

This is God's image: will is that life of His by which God is borne toward a known good. That will is rightly attributed to God, both the perfection of God's essence and intellect, and Scripture, and the consent of men abundantly confirm — Jonah 1:14; Daniel 4:17; Romans 9:18; James 1:18; Psalm 115:3; Matthew 20:15; Ephesians 1:11.

But when it is defined as rational appetite, the learned Molina rightly notes that it is not properly attributed to God in this sense, because reason does not properly belong to God.

3.16.2III. The object is the good known by the intellect. For will is borne toward a known good. That God truly wills we prove from the testimonies of Scripture, from perfection of essence, from intellect, from spiritual life, from inward and outward operations, from the consent of the church and of the philosophers.

The will of God is His highest perfection, by which His essence is excellently borne toward the good known by Himself.

3.16.3VII. FIRST, God's will is natural or free. VIII. Natural is that by which God wills according to the necessity of His nature. X. SECOND, God's will is free. XI. The will of sign is that by which God signifies to creatures what He wills to be done by them. XII. The will of good pleasure is that by which God establishes with Himself a decree concerning things to be done or permitted.

3.16.4XVI. THIRD, God's will is absolute or conditioned. XVII. Absolute is that by which God wills something without condition. XVIII. Conditioned is that by which God wills something under a condition. XIX. FOURTH, God's will is antecedent or consequent.

Antecedent will is that by which God wills something before particular circumstances are considered; consequent that by which, circumstances being posited, He wills. This can be called judicial will — as a magistrate by antecedent will desires all citizens to live, by consequent will some to die for crimes; so God by antecedent will wants all men to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4), by consequent will confers righteousness on believers and inflicts eternal death on the impenitent.

3.16.5XXII. FIFTH, God's will is approving, or efficient, or permitting. Others distinguish in the same sense into the will of approbation and of decree. XXIII. Approving is that by which God loves something as a possible good not dissonant from His nature, which yet He does not effect. XXIV. Efficient is that by which God wills to produce something, and to work something in or through something. XXV. Permitting is that by which He wills something to happen which, though He hates it, He does not impede because of a joined good — so God willed to permit the fall of the first parents, Romans 9:17; Acts 4:28.

3.16.6XXVI. SIXTH, God's will is arcane or revealed. XXVII. Arcane is that which is hidden from the intelligent creature as long as it seems good to God — the good pleasure of Ephesians 1; it is not to be searched out, Deuteronomy 29:29. XXVIII. Revealed is that which is made plain by God's sign or by the event of the thing — the will of sign.

XXIX–XXXI. And it is precise or modified. XXXII–XXXIV. And it is ample or limited. XXXV–XXXVIII. And it is exploratory, promissory, or minatory — as Abraham's sacrifice in Genesis 22; promises and threats under a tacit condition.

3.16.7XXXIX. God's will is either ordinary or extraordinary. XL. Ordinary is that by which God constantly keeps the order once established by Himself in the works of nature and the gifts of grace. XLI. Extraordinary is that by which God acts beside and above this order according to His wisdom and choice — hence miracles.

XLII. EIGHTH, God's will is through itself or for another and by accident. XLIII. God's will through itself is that by which God wills things simply good. XLIV. God's will for another is that by which He wills things which in a certain respect are evil, yet ordainable unto good — it is lawful for God to will that sin should have happened with Him permitting, because of a joined good.

From these things rightly established concerning God's will it can be obscure to none that nothing is better than God, nothing kinder, nothing holier, nothing more just — the foundation of all our religion and consolation. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, On God's executive power, follows.

3.17.1CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. On Gods executive power.

And these things also concerning the will of God: there follows the power of acting, which is Gods life by which, according to the liberty of His will, He can work outwardly — whatever He can freely will, He works, whatever He freely wills.

That power is rightly attributed to God, the sacred writings sufficiently declare — Genesis 17:1; 28:3; 35:11; Jeremiah 32:18-19; Psalm 91; Luke 1:37; Revelation 4:8; 11:17; 19:6.

3.17.2But by the name of power here we do not understand passive power, which cannot fall upon God as pure act, nor the act by which God inwardly in Himself always acts from the necessary perfection of His nature, and therefore neither the power of generating and spirating, by which He acts naturally and inwardly: but active or executive power, by which He can work outwardly and, whenever it pleases Him, does work.

Under this operation we also will to comprise impeding, permitting, and ordering, which, with the intellect directing, the will commands. Nor do we attribute this to God in the notion by which Aristotle in Metaphysics V defines a principle of change into another according as it is other: for such active power belongs to created and finite being, in which act and power differ. But to God active power is attributed according to perfection, not according to participation, and in Him power and act are the same. Hence Richard of Saint Victor: It is certain that God is powerful by fullness of power, not by participation of power.

3.17.4IV. Its condition is threefold: universality, immensity, perfection in the work. V. Universality is that by which God can do all things which He can will. VI. Immensity is that by which God's power reaches and surrounds all things. VII. Perfection in the work is that by which God does most excellently whatever He does. Hence Moses in Genesis 1:31: Then God looked upon all things which He had made, and behold, they were very good.

Finally, to this power of God what is already done is not subject under the reason of the done, but under the reason of being done. And therefore by the same power by which He could create the world, it is not as already made, but as to-be-made, which is in the power of the maker and not already made in act.

3.17.5VIII. The distinction is that by which Gods power is absolute or ordained. Absolute is so called because it is not limited by the universal law of nature, as if beside and above that God could not do something; and so it is said in comparison with the ordained, by which He acts precisely according to the common law and order of His decrees.

IX. Absolute power is that by which God can do whatever He wills and can will, beside the order of nature placed by Himself through providence, and the universal laws, and the particular judgment drawn from them. It is also called extraordinary, by which God works miracles beside, above, and, if you speak with the Greeks, against the universal and common laws of nature placed by Himself. Nature is said in three ways according to Augustine: 1. the accustomed course of nature; 2. active and passive force; 3. nature naturing, namely God. Therefore some things are above nature, some against nature, some beside nature. God therefore does against nature in the first sense in all miracles; but against nature in the second and third senses He never does anything. Thus God does nothing against nature, but above and beside it.

X. Ordained is that by which God works precisely according to the order constituted by His providence, conformably to universal laws and particular judgments drawn from them. It is also called ordinary; by this God still either conserves or governs or destroys all things created by Himself; by this He commonly works all things in all, according to the good pleasure of His will.

3.17.6XI. But there are certain useful observations concerning Gods omnipotence. 1. Omnipotence belongs to God alone, and cannot be communicated to any creature as such. For of the power by which the world and the things in the world are created without compulsion, without hindrance, without subject matter, without instrument, without external exemplar, the creature is not capable. For every creature works in subject matter; and every created essence is finite and limited by its own bounds, and therefore it is impossible that it be referred to all things.

2. God's power, considered in itself, is not bound by time, and is only related to time through a temporal act or effect that is subject to omnipotence. Believable articles abstracts from time: yet according as it is compared to believers according to diversity of times it is signified diversely. Hence the ancient fathers believed Christ was to be incarnate, to suffer, and to rise; we believe Christ has been incarnate, has suffered, has died, has risen. But Augustine says: Times have varied, faith has remained unchanged. So also concerning power: it is the same power which is toward one and the same according to every difference of times; but it is determined to diverse times when it is said He could create the world, and the world could have been created by Him.

3.17.73. Because a thing in itself varies according to difference of time, therefore when we speak of power as referred to the thing, it is necessary that we use diverse forms of speaking. Thus God at one time was about to make from power, and at another time from the same power He makes, and at another He has made. To be about to make is not to make, and to make is not to have made. And therefore it does not follow: whatever God could do, He can always do, because before the thing He could do something when the thing was only in potency, which He cannot do when the thing is perfected. But it rightly follows: whatever He could at some time do, He can always do, provided the makers power is always toward that.

4. It is indeed true that whatever is in God is act and nothing in potency: yet it does not follow from this that whatever He could do He can always do. For power is with respect to that which can be done, and not with respect to that which has been done. Therefore this proposition — whatever God could at some time do, He can always do — is simply to be denied. But this is true: whatever God could at some time do and is of the subject of divine power, this He can always do.

5. From Gods omnipotence it cannot be concluded that something is or will be, unless it is established concerning Gods will. The reason is this: because Gods free will determines power to doing this or that, and God therefore does something because He wills to do it — Daniel 3:17-18; Romans 4:20-21; Matthew 8:2; Luke 1. Therefore here that saying has place, that reason is to be taken captive under the obedience of faith, namely when Gods will is established, even if our mind does not grasp the possibility of the thing. Compare Calvin, Institutes 4.16.24. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN, On Gods attributes of the third genus, follows.

3.18.1CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. On Gods attributes of the third genus.

These things also concerning the attributes of the second genus, which belong to God as living with respect to intelligent life: there follow the attributes of the third genus, which are attributed to Him with respect to His integrity, and affirmatively note His highest perfection by which He lives integrally.

These attributes of the third genus contain the eminence of divine ethics, just as the attributes of the first genus declare the eminence of divine metaphysics, and those of the second genus the eminence of divine physics: and they commonly stand under the name of moral integrity or perfection, rectitude, justice, and holiness — Deuteronomy 32:3-4; Matthew 5:48; Leviticus 11:44; 1 Peter 1:15.

3.18.2II. But God is virtue and blessedness.. Gods virtue is the integrity of His intellect or will. Virtue in God is not an accident, and therefore not a quality or habit of intellect or will, but God's very essence considered in order to the true and the good, and a certain eminence of that which in our virtues and affections is most perfect. For He Himself is to Himself the right reason of all things knowable and to be done.

IV. Integrity of intellect is wisdom and prudence. V. Wisdom is integrity of intellect by which God knows what agrees with each thing and what is alien from it. By this God most inwardly knows Himself and all things — possible, future, existing in act, past — Job 11; 1 Samuel 2:3; Psalm 139; Romans 11:33; 1 Timothy 1:17; Hebrews 4:13; 1 John 3:20.

VI. Prudence is integrity of intellect by which God knows how to accommodate to all things in order to practice what is fitting. By this God decrees and does all things from the most wise counsel of His will — Isaiah 40:28; Jeremiah 10:12.

3.18.3VII. Integrity of will is that which in God is conceived after the manner of affections or of virtues or moral habits. VIII. What is conceived after the manner of affections can be referred to two genera: those we can call primary, and those which arise from the primary. IX. Primary affections are of union, as love; of separation, as hatred opposite to this; or of communication, as goodness with its progressions — benignity, grace, mercy.

Love is the affection of union by which God is borne toward Himself as the highest good, and toward things like Himself, toward order and the good of justice, toward the creature and its happiness. Gods love is active or passive; the active has a double object — God as highest good, and creatures as a lesser good. With respect to God the act is merely natural and necessary; with respect to creatures partly approval, partly favor or benevolence — John 3:16; Romans 5:8; 1 John 4:8-10.

XI. From what has been said of Gods love we gather three rules: 1. Gods love as benevolence toward creatures is wholly gratuitous and the fountain of all goods. 2. Gods love is wisely ordered in certain degrees according to the series of lovable things. 3. Of Gods special love by which He embraces us in Christ we can be made more certain from the very effects of divine love. XII. Hatred is the affection of separation by which God turns from the injustice and misery of creatures, and loves creatures less than Himself and others. Its primary object is sin; He also hates sinners inasmuch as they are alien from the study of piety — Psalm 5:5; 139:21-22; Zechariah 8:17.

3.18.5XVII. And these things concerning Gods attributes which have analogy with affections as it were primary: there follow attributes that resemble affections, as if arising from the primary, which are occupied not about good and evil commonly, but in species about that as present or absent, and are distinguished from the mode of our consideration inasmuch as they are conceived either in the concupiscible or in the irascible.

XVIII. In the concupiscible first is desire and abomination, then joy and grief. XIX. Desire is as it were Gods affection of obtaining things agreeing with His nature — faith and works of piety and justice prescribed by Himself to intelligent creatures and performable through His grace. XX. Abomination is that by which God execrates things abhorrent from His nature — unbelief, works of impiety and iniquity, and omission of remuneration.

XXI. Joy is that by which God delights in a good thing as present and agreeing with Himself and His will. XXII. Grief is that by which God holds Himself toward the sense of present evil. XXV. Hope is that by which God pursues the best good. XXVII. Confidence is that by which God with great spirit pursues the desired good. XXVIII. Fear is that by which God declines evil as a possible future. XXIX. Wrath is the affection of driving away by which God wills to punish the sinning creature.

3.18.6XXX. These are Gods attributes which have analogy with affections: there follow those which are analogous to moral virtues, as moderators of those affections; they look either to all affections generally, as justice, or to some only, as patience which moderates wrath and punishments from wrath.

XXXI. Justice is that by which Gods will is constant toward rendering to Himself and to each other what is his. Gods justice is indeed through itself and in the thing itself one, just as His essence is one. XXXII. Universal is that by which God directs His actions conveniently to the rectitude of His infinite nature. XXXIII. Particular is that by which God, according to the status of the person which He regards in some certain action of His, renders to each his own.

XXXIV. And it is first toward Himself or toward creatures. XXXV. Toward Himself is that by which God renders to Himself and wills to be rendered by others that glory which is owed to Him as highest good. XXXVI. Toward creatures is that by which God does injury to no creature, whatever He decrees or does concerning it. XXXVIII. Disposing is that by which God most wisely orders all things.

3.19.1CHAPTER NINETEEN. On Gods blessedness.

Thus far was the integrity of Gods life, which stands as virtue: there follows that which stands as blessedness, and it is the act of Gods life by which He so enjoys His infinite perfection fully known through the intellect and supremely loved through His will that He wholly rests in it.

All who confess that God is, throughout the whole world, call God most blessed. Thing His blessedness consists, many doubt, reasoning about His blessedness from our satiated appetites.

3.19.2The Machiavellians of our time place blessedness in dominion alone. But they err (1) who constitute it in power and dominion alone, or in conservation of oneself by resisting power long in that. For horse and lion are more powerful than man, who yet rules them by wisdom; and a strong man without wisdom is not conserved, and tyrants themselves are of all the most unhappy. Thus a stone would be more blessed than an eagle or a man.

(2) Nor does it consist in wisdom of external things, because that comes about in us not without prior passion; and the wise man, if powerless, is exposed to many miseries, nor is he preserved by his wisdom if he is not good; and though he be best to himself, yet if he considers something better in another, he does not think himself blessed but becomes wretched by envy.

(3) Nor in the sole full enjoyment of pleasures of love. For who enjoys while ignorant and does not taste the enjoyment, nor can conserve himself in it — who will be blessed? Better is he who knows how to abound and to suffer want than he who abounds without sense. (4) Love of self also falls short of blessedness when something better is seen elsewhere, or what is loved cannot be made eternal. Therefore all who think blessedness consists in power alone or wisdom alone or love alone or any other private good err.

3.19.3More rightly Boethius defines the state as perfect by aggregation of all goods, which yet in God are not aggregated but are essentially one, since He can, knows, and loves all things, and so is Himself sufficient to Himself.

If you ask in which of these three perfections blessedness chiefly consists: you will not easily say in any one, but equally in the three. Yet if one ought to be judged more potent, love will be more potent, whose object is the good which formally blesses; but as known it is not the good. Love presupposes power and wisdom, and so as it were completes essence and blessedness.

Power does not suppose wisdom and love: but wisdom precedes love and is as it were ordered to it, although not formally but radically all blessedness is in power and likewise in wisdom and love. It begins as it were in power, proceeds through wisdom, is consummated in love.

3.19.4But you will say: if God is blessed because He can, knows, and loves all things, He seems not perfectly blessed, because He holds many things in hatred, as sins, and many escape His power, because He cannot make what is done undone.

Reply: Gods blessedness is God Himself, the adequate object of His love, and of wisdom and power. For blessedness is not from outside and accidental to Him, as Bernard puts it, but for God to be and to be blessed are the same. Hence the being all things, and the knowledge of Himself which is at once of all things, make Gods blessedness.

But to be able outwardly, as regards active or passive power, and likewise to know and love exterior things, is not essential blessedness but a flight from and remedy of need, as in us who love food, wife, honor, by which we are conserved because we cannot be conserved in ourselves and through ourselves. Therefore in us to be and to be blessed are not the same. But God is not so, since the infinity of His perfections is without beginning of deficiency and need, and their object is the same as they themselves. It can be said that God outwardly can all things, knows all things, and loves all things, while in Himself He can be what He is, and knows Himself and loves Himself. For all things participate His likeness. But God is said not to be able and not to know and not to will certain things which are not truly beings — sins, contradictions, privations — concerning which it is certain that to be able, know, and love those does not hang on power, wisdom, and love, but on impotence, folly, and, so to speak, dislike, or a share of these.

3.19.5But Gods blessedness is an essential property, indeed the essence itself, which can be communicated to no creature — Isaiah 42:8; Jeremiah; 1 Corinthians 15:28; 1 Timothy 1:11; 6:15; Psalm 16:2,11. And yet it is the beatific good of intelligent creatures by reason of the object completing the act tending into the object and resting in the same, in which two the creatures blessedness consists and shines. For the object is the good which we enjoy. But the act is that by which we enjoy the good.

And it is glory or joy. III. Glory is that by which, on account of His infinite perfection, He excels all things. And so this attribute is indeed from Gods perfection, but with a certain respect outwardly, because He variously manifests His excellence above all things and His infinite perfection by external acts — Romans 1:23; 9:5; Psalm 8; Deuteronomy 32; 1 Timothy 1:11; 6:15.

And that either through unusual flashing and shining of light and splendor, or through opposed and split darkness, or through production of works which agree with His perfection and excellence — Matthew 17:2,5; Luke 2:9; Exodus; Psalm 19:1.

3.19.6It is manifest that God is not only His own blessedness objectively and formally, but also of all things objectively and effectively. For all things are blessed in some measure by some good, and especially intelligent creatures; but God is the efficient and exemplar cause of every good, and every good is a certain participation of Him. There are indeed those who think God is also formally the creatures blessedness, because He is more intrinsic to things than their own act: but they err. For God is indeed in us, yet not some part of essence or our whole essence formally, but only causally and eminently.

And if indeed the highest good for each is its own being and conservation: yet because they neither are nor are conserved from themselves but from God: therefore they are also blessed by Him, and love Him more than themselves while they love themselves. For they love not only what they are, but would wish to be that always and everywhere and seek extensive and intensive infinity, which is in God alone, in whom there is never or anywhere any defect of goodness — which blessedness is called eternal life, which God does not acquire from elsewhere by His virtues, but by them gives it to others.

IV. Joy is that by which He pleasantly enjoys Himself. This is not a variable affection. For God is affected with perfect joy and perpetually delights in Himself, to use Lactantius word — Zephaniah 3:17. If you ask a philosopher concerning Gods blessedness, Aristotle of Stagira in On the Heavens book 1 chapter 9 attributes to God a life most sufficient to Himself. Nothing truer than this saying was brought forth by this pagan. CHAPTER TWENTY, On Gods figurative attributes, follows.

3.20.1CHAPTER TWENTY. On Gods figurative attributes.

Thus far were Gods proper attributes: there follow figurative ones, which are predicated of God by trope. But these are to be resolved and reduced to the proper, according to the rule: An improper locution ought to be resolved into a proper one, which is its standard and basis.

II. And some are metonymic, some ironic, some metaphoric, and finally some synecdochic.

3.21.1CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. On the most holy Trinity.

Thus far we have treated of GOD as to existence and essence: next is that we consider Him according to His subsistence, according to which the one and highest God is the eternal Father, the Son begotten from eternity from the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from both — undivided TRINITY and unmixed UNITY.

This mystery was handed down somewhat obscurely by the ancient Church of the Jews in the Old Testament, but more clearly and illustriously explained by the LOGOS Himself, the second person of the Trinity, after He assumed flesh, in the New Testament, in which the interpretation of the Old is contained, and this secret is more expressly set forth and more frequently inculcated.

3.21.2It is indeed of the same madness to acknowledge no God and to assert many gods with the ancient Sabaeans, in Averroes and Maimonides, to whom Moses law was chiefly opposed — Deuteronomy 6:4. We understand God to be one when we understand that He is, as our weakness bears. For that must be unique which is best, greatest, and most perfect. Nor is he highest who has a superior or equal. And if two are set as equals, neither will be highest.

Therefore we no less execrate the delirium of Cerdo, Marcion, and the Manichees bringing in two gods unequal in nature and office, than either the Valentinians multiple offspring of Aeons, or the Sabaeans and other pagans innumerable swarms of deities. But that the same is threefold in persons is a secret unsearchable to human reason, to be adored with humble faith and piety, not searched with curious or scrupulous rashness.

For this Trinity can neither be demonstrated from its cause, which it has none, nor from effects, which do not declare this distinction of persons precisely and evidently, but only what belongs to each person. But whatever may be learned of this secret is to be learned from Gods word, and one must piously rest in the measure of this divine revelation.

3.21.3For what is read in Trismegistus, Plato, Plotinus and other Platonic philosophers concerning three principles — mind, word, and spirit — is altogether alien from this secret, because those men invent three hypostases and therefore three separate gods; though this opinion of theirs seems to have flowed from the ancient doctrine of the Hebrews and Chaldeans and remnants of pure religion.

Among the Scholastics Scotus, Gandavensis, Bonaventure and others try to demonstrate this mystery by natural reasons: whom our Keckermann in his theological system somewhat emulates. But experience teaches that no one would have thought of it unless some tradition from the patriarchal family had spread to the Gentiles. Yet once revelation is given, it is not hard to dissolve the adversaries gathered reasons.

Around the most fundamental things certain least-fundamental problems can arise, which the ancient fathers, if they had been raised in their age, would never have tried to define with the danger of stirring or continuing schism among the churches — as the most reverend father Dr. John Davenant, bishop of Salisbury, warns. That God is one in essence, threefold in persons distinct among themselves, that the Son is begotten from the Father, that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Father and Son, that these three persons are coeternal and coequal — all these have rightly been defined and placed among fundamental articles.

3.21.4Moreover, by the word Trinity here we do not signify a ternary numbering number simply, but persons distinct in one essence. A person in God is a hypostasis or individual subsistence, incommunicable, living, rational, willing, powerful, and active John 5; 14.

But there are three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not three Gods, because the essence or deity is one — Colossians 2:9; 1 John 5:7. Thus the orthodox fathers established the distinction from the words ousia and hypostasis. There are not three Gods, three Lords, and so on.

Person with the relations by which they are constituted are subsistences — John 14. Yet they are distinct not by reason alone but in the thing itself, by reason of a certain property and relation.

3.21.5If the Father alone begets, it is proper to Him to beget; if the Holy Spirit alone proceeds and is spirated, it is proper to Him to proceed and be spirated. And there is a similar relation in mode between Father and Son.

But a notion is nothing other than a property or notional act, which by synecdoche of the genus denotes relation. Hence in the schools there are in all five notions of the divine persons, concerning which besides the ancient scholastics and most learned men Jerome Zanchi and Franciscus Junius, see the Leiden theologians Synopsis of purer theology, disputation 7 theses 21-24.

The Trinity of persons can in some way be illustrated by likenesses from the book of nature: but it ought to be demonstrated from the book of Scripture alone. For from finite things to Gods infinite essence the consequence is too weak, and this secret is higher than natures light.

3.21.6In the order of persons we set the begetter before the begotten in thought — Matthew 28:19; John 5:26-27. Active generation is attributed to the Father; generation properly so called comes about by communication of the whole essence.

We rightly assert that the Father has begotten the Son from Himself: the principle which begets is the Father; the principle by which generation comes about is nature. Hence the begetting and begotten person constitute opposite relations.

The Trinity of persons can in some way be illustrated by likenesses from the book of nature; but it ought to be demonstrated from Scripture alone. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO, On GOD THE FATHER, follows.

3.22.1CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. On God the Father.

The Father is the first person in the most holy Trinity, who brings forth His eternal Word, and together with the Son spirates the Holy Spirit. He is called Father not tropically but properly. For just as He properly is, lives, understands, wills, acts: so also He properly begets, though He does not beget as bodily things do.

Hence wisely Basil the Great in book 1 against Eunomius: I judge that no dogma is more important and greater than that faith in the Father and in the Son is in the gospel of our salvation.

3.22.2II. But here there are certain useful observations and rules. 1. The first person is called Father properly, not tropically.

2. The person of the Father is to be considered in three ways. Absolutely in Himself, because He is devoid of every origin, whether we regard according to essence or according to mode of subsisting. In order to the Son, whom in the common essence shining from His perfection in the Son He begets by an internal and eternal act. In order to the Holy Spirit, whom together with the Son in the common essence He spirates from the perfection both of His own and of the Sons shining in the Holy Spirit.

3. The begetting by which God the Father begot the Son from eternity differs more than in whole genus from every physical begetting. For in physical things it is transient; in divine things it is pure immanent act. Nor has place here section, or extension, or propagation and multiplication, or derivation and transfusion or effusion.

3.22.3Yet this secret is not placed in speculation alone, as genera and species are conceived in our intellects operation, but even when our intellects operation ceases, there is a true multiplication of hypostases, and a true distinction of them, without any confusion or separation among themselves.

Therefore to reduce the mode of this generation to the laws of human nativity or of any created thing is inept, impious, even sacrilegious. Therefore those who love to speak cautiously and circumspectly avoid certain of the ancients kyriologies, such as: the divine essence begets or is begotten; essence begets a person; God from His essence begets God.

But truly and properly it is said that the Father has begotten the Son, person a person, hypostasis a hypostasis, not from essence but in the unity of essence, which the Father gave wholly to the Son, not by alienation but by communication. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE, On the SON, follows.

3.23.1CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE. On the Son.

The Son is the second person in the most holy Trinity, the Logos of the Father by communication of the same deity which the Father has without origin, begotten from eternity from the Father.

We call Him Son neither by creation properly so called, because all things that were created were created through Him — John 1:3 — nor by adoption, because all who are adopted sons are adopted in Him — John 1:12; Ephesians 1:5-6 — but by generation, as Son by nature, having the whole divinity communicated from the Father — Micah 5:2. He is called Person in the same signification as the Father, because He is a subsistence, individual, incommunicable — John 1 — of living nature — John 5 — understanding — John 1:18 — willing — Matthew 11:27; John 5:21 — powerful — Philippians 3 — acting — John 5:17,19. And indeed a person in the most holy Trinity, that is divine, or, what is the same, that one and highest God, coessential with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

3.23.2We demonstrate this chiefly by four distinct classes of arguments. II. The first class is from the names attributed to the Son by Scripture. For (1) He is called God not only attributively — John 1:1; Romans 9:5 — but also subjectively — 1 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 1:8-9; Titus 2:13. (2) He is called Son of God properly and univocally — Romans 8:32; John 1:18. (3) He is called King of kings and Lord of lords, Lord of glory — Revelation 19:16; 1 Corinthians 2:8.

IV. The third class is from divine works. V. The fourth class is from proper worship of God. VI. The fifth class is from testimonies.

From these things well established is gathered agreement and distinction between Father and Son. Agreement is in one and the same nature and essence — Philippians 2:6; according to the Nicene synod homoousios with the Father. Distinction is in the mode of subsisting by which each has divinity. For the Father has it from none, the Son has it communicated to Himself from the Father.

3.23.3Against these things Johannes Crellius the Frenchman, with his Socinus, in vain argues, denying the eternal generation of the Son of God from the Fathers essence — (1) because the son would be son of himself, (2) because there would be infinite sons, (3) because the Son of God from eternity both would have been and would not have been, (4) because the Son of God would still be being generated and would have to be generated into all eternity — which absurdities arise from a sinister confusion of finite and infinite nature.

To these with his Socinus also contradict Smalcius, Ostorodius, and before them Servetus, Valentinus Gentilis, Alciati, Blandrata, Franciscus Davidis, and the patriarchs of all these, Photinus bishop of Sirmium condemned in the year 351 by the Sirmian council, and Paul of Samosata. Compare Sozomen, Epiphanius, Augustine on heresies; among juniors Ursinus, Calvin, Zanchi, Junius, Polanus, Tarnovius, Gerhard; among pontificals Bellarmine book 1 on Christ chapter 18.

3.23.4CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE continued. On the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the third person in the most holy Trinity, who emanates from the Father, is sent by the Son, and proceeds from both as distinct according to hypostasis. Spirit signifies (1) properly and adequately a being most simple and subtle in first act and essence, but in second act and efficacy most active. By singular property it is attributed to the hypostatic virtue, or third person which is in God, and that not rarely with the addition Spirit of Elohim, Spirit of the Lord, Holy Spirit — Genesis 1:2; Isaiah 11:2; 63:10; Matthew 12:28.

II. But concerning the Holy Spirit four things chiefly are to be proved: (1) that He truly is a person; (2) that He is an infinite person, or true God; (3) that He is a person proceeding from Father and Son; (4) that according to hypostasis He is distinguished from Father and Son.

3.23.5VI. Secondly, that the Holy Spirit is true God the divine names, divine attributes, divine works, and divine worship show. XIV. Thirdly, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father — John 15:26. XV. And that the same proceeds from the Son — John 16:7; 20:22. For just as the Son is generated from eternity from the Father, so the Spirit is spirated from eternity from both.

XVI. But the difference between generation and procession consists in the mode of production. XVIII. Fourthly, the Holy Spirit is distinguished from Father and Son not only according to name but also according to hypostasis — Isaiah 48:16; 61:1; John 14:16,26; 15:26; 1 John 5:7.

Let the reader set a limit to curiosity, and not fetch upon himself troublesome and perplexed disputations more greedily than is fitting, as Calvin Institutes 1.13.19 piously and prudently warns, and Twisse: whenever it occurs that one must treat of the Trinity, I desire the matter to be dispatched in as few words as possible. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR, On creation in general, follows.

3.24.1CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. On creation in general.

Thus far we have seen concerning GOD, prince and king of man and of all things, as to His essence and subsistence, by which His sufficiency is contained, as the primary object of Christian religion — both what His nature is or what sort God is, and who He is, or why this nature is to be attributed, lest something unsuitable be attributed to the highest true God, or another or alien GOD be held for that true and highest: there follow His efficiencies, as causes on account of which religion is owed to God, namely creation and the restoration of man.

The necessity of Christ and of Christian religion hangs and shines chiefly from these two causes, on account of which God rightly demands it from men — both as creator and as savior in the Son of His love, under which is also contained that He wills to be glorifier.

3.24.2At length indeed and learnedly there are commonly inserted here dogmas concerning divine decrees and counsels, whose consideration, as it is hard and abstruse, so will be undertaken most well and safely of all a posteriori in their own places: lest we further divide the German churches already long enough divided by dangerous altercations concerning predestination, reprobation, providence, as some years past happened, alas, in neighboring Belgium.

But soberly and with great religion, without scrupulosity, we must think and speak concerning the Lords counsels and ways — Isaiah 55; Romans 11:33-34. Nothing here can flesh and blood, but all things are to be sought from the heavenly Fathers Apocalypse, which Genesis 1:1 God in the beginning and before all things made known through the act of CREATION of these heavens and this earth, which certainly is the revelation of revelations, and by its power embraces all the rest. This is the alphabet of every notion and action.

3.24.3II. But creation is to be considered both in itself and in order to creatures. III. Creation considered in itself is Gods action by which God the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit produced from nothing heaven and earth and all things that are in them — Genesis 1:1; Psalm 33:9; Hebrews 11:3; Revelation 4:11.

Creation is production of a thing from nothing of itself and of subject, or, as they say, from negative and privative non-being. And therefore, when we speak of permission, there is something middle between doing and hindering lest someone do; but creation properly is the effective fulfilling of the decree through Gods will and power.

3.24.4IV. And it is immediate or mediate. Immediate is that by which God without a creatures medium, by His single will things — as heaven and earth in the beginning, angels, the rational soul.

VI. Mediate is that by which things are produced from principles already created, God yet primarily acting — as plants, animals from earth and waters on the following days.

VII. But the existence of things mediately created hangs no less from God than of those immediately created; for God works in all things.

3.24.5XIII. Nor is creation of all things efficiently from God alone only, but also no creature can create. XIV. But the impulsive cause of creation is Gods communicative goodness, or the love by which God willed to communicate His good outwardly.

Matter properly so called did not lie beforehand for created things; for creation is from nothing. Those who invent eternal matter with Aristotle, or two principles with the Manichees, wander from the truth.

3.24.6XXVII. The form of creation is the divine command itself or fiat — Psalm 33:9. From which God is called FOUNTAIN. XVIII. The final cause of creation is Gods glory, and the good of creatures subordinated to Gods glory — Proverbs 16:4; Romans 11:36; Revelation 4:11.

XX. Inequality of things is not from matter but from Gods most wise ordination, that there may be order and harmony in the universe.

XXII. And these things concerning creation commonly: there will follow creatures, which are regarded either jointly or discretely. Regarded jointly they come under the name WORLD: discretely they are called the works of the beginning, of the first night, and of the six days. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE, On the world, follows.

3.25.1CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE. On the world.

The world is the fabric of heaven and this earth and of all things in these most beautifully and intensely ordered, produced by GOD the Father through His Word and Spirit from things not apparent — Hebrews 11:3.

Mundus among the Latins, Pliny being author, is so called from perfect and absolute elegance. Among the Hebrews olam hazzeh, on account of a beginning remote from mens memory; and among the Greeks aion — Hebrews 11:3 — not as if it were eternal and had always been, but from the stable order of things which God established in it. Also to pan, the universe, because it embraces all existing things besides God. Also kosmos on account of the adornment and beauty of singular things.

3.25.2The world is one, not many; finite, not infinite; it has a beginning of time, it is not eternal. Those who invent an eternal world with Aristotle oppose Scripture — Genesis 1:1; Psalm 90:2; John 17:5.

The world was created in time, or with time, not in a pre-existing time. For time is the measure of the motion of creatures.

3.25.3The world in itself is good — Genesis 1:31. Non-being formally is nothing, but effectively God: not because He effects nothing, but because He uses it, and orders it to the number and distinction of things.

For since in the production of things God shows the riches of His goodness participable in innumerable ways, and cannot be wholly or totally exhausted by one thing, He makes many things, but ordered to one, by using non-being, that multitude may stand. Hence in God there is one idea of Himself, which, as participable, is multiplex without end. Therefore non-being always distinguishes.

More, if you wish, see in Jerome Zanchi, Zacharias Ursinus, Amandus Polanus. For here I am forced to break off the web. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX, On those things which were created in the beginning, follows.

3.26.2III. The heavens were produced in the beginning of time, and with them the Angels, intelligent spirits, created by God immediately.

Angels are spiritual substances, complete, incorporeal, understanding, willing, powerful. They are not eternal but created; they are not everywhere by essence as God is, but where God has willed them to be.

Orders and hierarchies are distinguished, concerning which one must judge soberly from Scripture, not from Pseudo-Dionysius.

3.26.3Earth in the beginning was produced incompletely, as is clear from chapter 24. It was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep — Genesis 1:2.

That chaos was not eternal matter, but a created subject from which God on the following days brought forth distinct species. The Spirit of God was brooding upon the waters — Genesis 1:2 — preparing the matter for the Hexaemeron.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN, On the Hexaemeron or the works of the six days, follows.

3.27.1CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN. On the Hexaemeron, or the works of the six days.

The Hexaemeron is the third act of creation, by which through the Word (And God said) God completed, in a threefold ordering across twice three days, every part of that earth which the Father had produced as a threefold unity in the beginning and which the Holy Spirit had brooded over in the first night: (1) on the first day light from darkness; (2) our visible heavens and the air from the waters; (3) dry land and seas, herbs and trees from the dry land; (4) for the distinction and government of darkness and light, or of day and night, and for the illumination of this our earth, other luminaries — namely the stars, the sun, and the moon — placed in the watery heaven; (5) from the marine waters under the expanse, fishes and birds that would multiply in those waters, in the air, and on the earth; (6) finally from our germinating earth animals, and us human beings, and besides our multiplication together with fishes and birds, food of herbs for every living soul and of trees especially for us.

In this third act of creation it is especially worth noting that the works of the fourth day answer the work of the first, those of the fifth the work of the second, and those of the sixth the work of the third, as autopsy and comparison of the Mosaic text clearly show from Genesis 1:3 to the end of the chapter.

3.27.2Three things are not unfittingly noted in this Hexaemeron from Augustine. (1) That in the work of creation, though it is most miraculous, God instituted nature, and what was made is not to be sought as miracles but as natures and natural laws. (2) That the historical truth Moses narrates concerning creation must be firmly held and not twisted to human imaginations. (3) That no opinion of any philosopher or holy man is to be opposed to sacred Scripture when it narrates the beginnings of things. Here that saying truly holds: whatever is most ancient is most true.

II. The work of the first day is light, the most subtle part of that mass which God by the Word called upward from darkness and so distinguished that light received the name of day and darkness the name of night. It is worth noting that God did not say Let heaven be made from earth — because heaven and earth were produced from nothing, not made from something — and to declare simple emanation He first said In the beginning God created heaven and earth; but light was made. When God said Let there be light, He commanded that heat dispersed through so great a mass be united and manifest itself. That self-manifestation is light, as the Apostle testifies in Ephesians 5:13.

On the first day light was distinguished from darkness — both with respect to place, since light was made in one hemisphere and darkness in the other, and with respect to time, since light is called day and darkness night. This agrees with true philosophy and disagrees with Aristotelian physiology, which invents heat and light as arising accidentally from the attrition of air rather than as a most noble being made by God, as Moses testifies. That same physiology takes darkness, which is the face of real matter, for a mere privation; yet Moses testifies that God divided light from darkness, and darknesses, though less noble than light, are not mere nothing — Genesis 1:4; Isaiah 45:7; Job 26:10; 28:3.

3.27.3III. The works of the second day are heaven and air, produced by GOD through the Word by expanding and distinguishing between some waters and others.

Someone may ask how heaven, created in the beginning, is now said to have been made on the second day. Reply: in the beginning the angelic heaven was created from nothing; here, however, the expanse from the watery part of the earth produced in the beginning and dissolved in the first night, the earthly thickness removed, received the character of heaven and air, and seems properly called shamayim by the Hebrews, as if where the waters are. Bede and Strabus say the empyrean heaven was created on the first day — which we with Moses said was produced in the beginning — and on the second the starry heaven, and that this is the firmament of which Basil the Great, Ambrose, Bonaventure, Telesio, and the Pythagoreans speak. The watery heaven or expanse distinguishing upper from lower waters is therefore the work of the second day.

3.27.4V. The work of the third day is the distribution of the waters into seas, the appearance of dry land, and the production of herbs and trees.

When the sea has been formed, dry land appears, which is called earth. Augustine thinks this happens formally on the third day and only materially on the first; other fathers think the name — or rather the nature — is then revealed, as Basil teaches against those who assign things an unknown nature in the Peripatetic school beyond what always lies open. Finally the uncovered earth, immediately fertilized by heat and moisture, brings forth herbs and trees by God's command before the creation of the sun, so that it germinated, Ambrose testifies, not from the sun but from God's precept; the sun afterward executes God's commands — and so do the other elements. He omitted stones and minerals because they are nearest to earth. On this third day the adornment of the elements begins after their distinction. Summarily, then, there are four works of the third day: (1) Sea, (2) Dry land, (3) Herb, (4) Trees — of which more fully in geographic and botanical writings.

3.27.5The work of the fourth day is the production of luminaries in heaven — sun, moon, and other stars — to carry light upon the earth. Moses narrates that the earth germinated before the sun and stars were made, because he first teaches which substances God made. The sun was therefore made the executor, not the institutor, of nature, and fittingly on the fourth day, as Moses teaches in Genesis 1:14 and following.

Moses speaks of the stars with respect to us to whom he was giving the law. For they can be considered, Aquinas testifies, either according to their own act, or with respect to God whom they serve, or with respect to us for whom they are useful — whence Deuteronomy warns us not to adore the sun, moon, and stars which were made for our ministry. When Moses says God made the greater and lesser luminary — the SUN and the MOON — he speaks to humans of our system, for whom to sense the moon is the second luminary presiding over the night. And he explains the use of the luminaries: that they make all things manifest by illuminating; that they distinguish day and night; that they are for seasons, days, and years.

We also condemn here the Muhammadan delirium that the moon was made by God equally bright as the sun, but that the angel Gabriel, flying by chance, extinguished it by the wind of his wings. What is more foolish than that so great a work of God could be extinguished by an angel by chance, and was not so made from God's intention for the utility of the earth and other causes?

3.27.6XVIII. The work of the fifth day is the production of fishes and birds for the adornment of the waters and the air. For just as on the fourth day stars are made for the adornment of heaven, so on the fifth fishes and birds for the adornment of the waters, and on the sixth walking things and reptiles for the adornment of the earth. Therefore, as if by critical correspondence, the first answers the fourth, the second the fifth, and the third the sixth. God said: Let the waters bring forth the creeping thing of living soul and the flying thing upon the earth. This precept is the institution of nature, completed by power, wisdom, and love, and is called the art of God implanted in things, leading them to their ends.

XIX. The work of the sixth day is the production of all the living things of the earth of three kinds. XX. And it is of brutes or of those endowed with reason. Concerning the creation of brutes Moses in Genesis 1:24–25, teaching, constitutes three genera of them — namely some cattle and tame, reptiles, others wild and sylvan — of whose nature and use philosophers treat more fully and more subtly in Physics. These were fittingly produced on the sixth day from the earth, which answers the third; and after the less perfect species the more perfect are made, and finally humankind, the most perfect of all.

3.28.1CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. On the mode of production, parts, marriage, possession, and chief dignity of humankind.

Thus far concerning the origin of humankind as far as concerns his principle, namely God, whose being, existence, self-sufficiency, and power variously weighed: there follows the MODE by which humankind arose, which is his production from red earth with the breath of the spirit of life according to the image and likeness of the Creator.

Humankind, as he was the last of creatures, was also the compendium of all creatures both immediately and mediately perfect, participating their nature as to spirit and these as to body: the epitome of the world, the horizon of time and eternity. He was moreover also the end of those mediately perfect, and therefore viewed in them and above them with respect to the Creator's intention. Therefore he is said to have been created in another mode than the other creatures. For those were produced by the Word alone: Let there be light, let there be an expanse, and so on; but humankind as if by greater counsel and deliberation: Let us make humankind — Genesis 1:26 — whose image's reason is declared to us by (1) Christ's human nature, pure and whole as in Adam before the fall; (2) human nature glorified in heaven; (3) universal sin, which succeeded into the place of this lost image; (4) begun renovation, by which it begins to be restored in us — Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24.

3.28.2II. Humankind is the last of creatures, made by GOD through the Word from the dust of the earth, and by breath into his nostrils made a living soul, endowed with immortal rational spirit according to the image of God after His likeness. Briefly and in the philosophical manner humankind is defined a rational animal; we here, considering him in order to his creation, have described him from the biblical text — Genesis 1:26–27; 9:6; Ecclesiastes 7:29; Acts 17:28; 1 Corinthians 11:7.

III. In humankind there are to be considered essential parts, sex, and finally proper affections. IV. His essential parts are the animated body and the rational spirit. V. The human BODY is his visible part, a fleshy structure supported by bones and covered by skin, animated by breath — Genesis 2:7; Job 10:11; Matthew 6:25; 1 Corinthians 12:12. VI. The rational and immortal SPIRIT is the invisible part of humankind, powerful with intellect and will, so united to the human body that nevertheless it can be separated from it — Genesis 2:7; Zechariah 12:1; Matthew 10:28; Acts 7:59; 2 Corinthians 5; 12:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Revelation 6:9. VII. This spirit, though it dwells in the body, is through itself an essence without body.

3.28.3We believe that to the well-formed body and living soul — which humankind has in common with all fishes and birds of the fifth day and terrestrial animals of the sixth, Genesis 1:20 and 30 — adorned, the mind sent in by God is coupled, which we confirm by these REASONS to be more divine than the vegetative and sensing soul. (1) Because no effect is elevated above its principal and adequate cause. Therefore the human soul is in reality more divine than the sensing spirit. The human mind, both by understanding and by seeking, thinks above the sun and the heaven of heavens and worlds however many, and always understands something beyond what it knows, into infinity. From which we conclude that it is not an effect of sun and elements, as the sensitive spirit is, but the offspring of the Infinite whom we call God.

VIII. The faculties of the rational soul are these. IX. Intellect is the faculty of the soul by which we apprehend, discern, and either approve or disapprove objects under the reason of truth — theoretical and practical; here observation and conscience. See Ames, Book 1 on conscience. X. Will is the faculty of the rational soul which seeks objects under the reason of good and turns from evil. The nature of this faculty is not to be compelled, and according to its first institution to be restricted by no necessity to extremes. XI. Executive power is the faculty of the soul by which we effect or impede or at least permit practical objects.

3.28.4XII. So much concerning the essential parts of humankind: there follows sex, by which, distinguished by the organs of generation, he furnishes origin to his descendants. XIII. And humankind according to sex is male and female. This difference of sex is necessary for generation, and so for the perfection of the human race. For each being is then called perfect in physics when it can generate its like. Therefore, since the male alone cannot generate, he is not altogether judged perfect for the consummation of his genus unless he also have the other portion of himself. On that account Christ in Matthew 19:4, praising Moses' text, says: Have you not read that the Maker from the beginning made male and female? And Moses in Genesis 2:18: It is not good that the human be alone; I will make him a help that is before him. And in verses 21–22 the Lord God caused Adam to sleep with deepest sleep, drew out one of the ribs, and constructed the woman from that rib.

XIV. Sex shines forth both in the first parents and in their descendants. XV. The first parents are the first humans. XVI. Adam was the first man, divinely formed; Eve the first woman, constructed from Adam's rib.

3.28.5XIX. MARRIAGE is the covenant by which male and female are joined into one society of life for mutual help, the generation and education of offspring, and the conservation of chastity. Concerning the marriage of Adam and Eve see Zanchi on the works of God and others.

That garden of paradise was so prepared that it was most conveniently inhabited by the first parents: a pleasant place, distinguished by the trees of life and of the knowledge of good and evil, irrigated by rivers. Yet it is to be held that paradise did not lie open so widely as the whole world, nor is it to be sought everywhere by the allegorical deliriums of the Origenists. All those views are to be rejected which either invent paradise as merely allegorical or place it outside this earth against Moses' historical narration in Genesis 2:8–15.

3.28.6There follows the affection of humankind, which is that the whole human, both by soul and by body, was created according to the image of God and after His likeness, in which his highest perfection is beheld. Image differs from likeness as species from genus; among some, likeness is the exegesis of image, as if it were said the most similar image of God — Genesis 1:27; 5:1.

The word image signifies either the archetype itself to whose exemplar another is made, or that which is made toward another. In the former acceptance only Christ can be called the image of God; in the latter, the image of God is beheld in no visible thing except in humankind. We assert that its subject first and through itself is the rational soul, most beautifully adorned with the gifts of justice, holiness, and truth. Yet we do not altogether exclude the human body from the reason of this image. Rightly, therefore, the whole human is said to have been created according to the image of God — which is clear even from the restoration of this image, in which not only the soul but the whole human, and even the body itself, is so restored as to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. And the image of God exists not in the man only but also in the woman, though in the man it is more illustrious.

3.28.7The parts of this image can be distinguished thus: some are natural to the human, some supernatural; some essential, some accidental; some belong to him wholly, others according to some part — namely soul or body. What is natural and essential to the soul is to be a spirit and endowed with the faculty of understanding and willing both according to nature and according to the mode of freedom. What is supernatural and accidental: the knowledge of God and of things required for eternal salvation, which comes under the name of wisdom, and the rectitude and holiness of the will according to that knowledge. Immortality is thus far essential to the soul that it cannot die unless it cease to be; but supernatural and accidental insofar as it is from grace and the assistance of conservation. To the body, immortality is wholly supernatural and accidental. To the whole human externally belongs dominion over creatures.

Moreover that image of God which humankind is said to have lost in the fall was not wholly natural but supernatural, granted by God's peculiar gift — justice, innocence, integrity: in the intellect, supernatural knowledge of God's essence and will; in the will, the highest inclination to known good, or the highest obedience and subjection toward God; in the appetite, the highest concord with reason. Finally the end for which humankind was thus created is that he would acknowledge, love, and worship his Creator God and live blessed with Him forever — by which act of creation God most clearly exhibited the glory of His wisdom, goodness, and power.

3.29.1CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE. On the governance of God in general.

Creation finished, God rested — that is, He did not go on founding new species of things, but rested in what He had founded: there follows governance, which is God's actual providence, by which He conserves, rules, and orders the whole world and cares for each creature and its actions and passions, decently and as befits them, so that nothing in this universe of things subsists, acts, or is moved without Him, nor falls out otherwise than as seems good to Him, unto the good of the creatures themselves — especially of the godly — and unto the declaration of divine perfection.

For order requires that, after we have treated the doctrine of creation as the first foundation of God's kingdom in time according to His eternal counsel — which God's sabbath followed (Genesis 2:2; Exodus 20:11; Hebrews 4:4) — we now come to governance, as is clear from chapter 24, aphorism 2. Governance, otherwise commonly called actual providence, does not signify some property of God, nor a quality or power or habit, but an act — not inward and within Himself, but outward and external, about an object other than God, and that not as united to God from eternity in His intellection, but as separate and existing apart: an act, I say, of practical intellect or of will using the intellect, not finished in a single moment but continuous through the moments of duration; which, viewed as powerful and continuous, you may not badly so name.

3.29.2And He rules all things universally (Nehemiah 9:6; Ephesians 4:6; Amos 3:6; Lamentations 3:37–38; Acts 17:25; Hebrews 1:3) — specially the necessary (Exodus 12:46; Job 5:10; 37:5; 38:26–27; Psalm 104:13–14), the contingent (Exodus 21:12–13; Job 1:21; Proverbs 16:1, 33; Matthew 10:29–30), the rational (Genesis 45:8; 50:20; Exodus 4:11; 2 Samuel 16:10; Psalm 34:16, 21; Proverbs 21:1; Isaiah 10:5; Lamentations 3:37; Daniel 4:32; Acts 4:27–28), and things without reason (Job 37 throughout; Psalm 104:9; Psalm 135:6–9) — so that nothing falls out otherwise than as seems good to Him (1 Samuel 2:25; Isaiah 8:10; Romans 8; 11:36; 1 Corinthians 9:9–10).

Yet God does not thereby become the author of any sin (Genesis 18:25; Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 5:4–6; Jeremiah 19:5; Habakkuk 1:13; John 8:44; James 1:13, 17; 1 John 1:5). He also rules those things in which chance is present of itself (Exodus 21:13; Ecclesiastes 9:11; 1 Samuel 6:9). By these and like testimonies it is proved that the object of providence is not only heavenly and incorruptible things, as some wished (Job 22:12–14), but that no thing of higher or lower nature is to be excepted. Nor is it beneath God's majesty if He also rules the least things, since He is creator and Lord of all, and He is not made low who looks to low things (Psalm 113:5–6); and the greater care with which He pursues humankind, the more its actions are subject to His providence than the actions of things without intellect (Psalm 33:14–15). Whence hearts, wills, and human actions are said to be in God's hand, power, and disposition, and all the events and outcomes of our actions (Proverbs 21:1; Genesis 45:8; Exodus 4:11; Philippians 2:13; Jeremiah 10:23; Proverbs 20:24). For neither in the actions of free choice is humankind exempt from the order of providence. See Chrysostom, Theodoret, Salvian, and others.

3.29.3II. In governance there are to be distinguished: (1) parts; (2) grades; (3) the great influxes into created things. III. First, its parts are conservation and ordination.

IV. CONSERVATION is the first part of governance, by which God makes things founded in the world so that they continue to be. See Psalm 104 throughout, a most clear mirror of such providence. Opposed to conservation is destruction, by which God abolishes some substance or accident. Conservation is the formal continuation of a thing's own being. For from the same principles from which being originates, it ought also to be continued and kept — not from contraries, which destroy, nor from diverse things, which contribute nothing: but like is kept by like, especially by the more powerful, and what is being by participation is kept by that which is being by essence. So fire is fostered by fire, cold by cold of itself, being by being — most of all by the greatest Being from whom it has that it is. Therefore it is written, from Him and through Him and in Him are all things (Romans 11:36) — that is, they emanate, are ruled, are kept. And Gregory: All things, he says, would be reduced to nothing unless conserved by the operation of divine power.

V. Conservation of things is immediate or mediate, and that direct or indirect. For God conserves things not only through Himself but also through other causes. VI. Here there are certain notables: (1) God conserves all things principally; second causes secondarily; and those nearer to God conserve more. (2) What can be made by God alone through creation, and not otherwise, can be conserved only by God. (3) Because the multitude of things is so great and diverse, God inserted necessity, fate, and harmony, by which second beings are kept as long as needed and transmuted when needed. (4) God distinguished many systems mutually keeping and moving one another, as wheels in a clock. (5) Inferior things have a certain sympathy with first and superior seeds.

3.29.4VII. ORDINATION is the other part of governance, by which God directs all things to the last end most wisely appointed by Himself. VIII. And it is (1) effecting or permission; (2) motion or restraint.

IX. DIVINE EFFECTING is the ordination by which God produces goods of every kind and evils of punishment: in the same sense providence is called efficient. X. DIVINE PERMISSION is the ordination by which God, knowing and willing, lets something come to be. This looks chiefly to evils of fault, which God so permits or does not impede that He directs them to the best end: and therefore providence is also called permitting. XI. DIVINE MOTION is the ordination by which God so moves all things with respect to principle, means, and end that He either effects and directs the motion, or only directs it. XII. DIVINE RESTRAINT is the ordination by which God impedes a creature's action.

XIII. SECOND, as to grades and modes, governance is (1) ordinary or extraordinary, that is, customary or unusual. XIV. ORDINARY GOVERNANCE is that by which God governs things in the order He instituted in the first creation. Hence things are said to happen according to nature, from God's common good pleasure (Hosea 2:21–22; Acts 14:17; 17:25–28). XV. EXTRAORDINARY is that by which God governs things otherwise than He instituted in the first creation. Hence something is said to happen above or beside nature, from a singular dispensation. And here miracle excels: an extraordinary and evident operation of God exceeding the force of all created nature. XVI. Governance is mediate or immediate. God is said to govern immediately what He rules without second causes; mediately, what He procures by their ministry. Yet sometimes both an immediate and a mediate action concur about the same work.

3.29.5XVII. Third, governance is general or special. XVIII. GENERAL governance is that by which God governs all things in common. It is also called universal, and likewise common providence; and this does not admit of more and less.

XIX. SPECIAL governance is that by which God governs singular things as befits their natures. This is also called singular providence, and it has certain grades of its own. XX. And it is of merely corporeal creatures, or of corporeal and incorporeal together, or of the incorporeal simply — that is, of angels and of humans.

XXI. Merely corporeal creatures God governs with less labor, yet so that what was given them He either conserves in them, or raises, or brings low; some again He rules as things without sense, others as things that sense. Compare Deuteronomy 28; Psalm 104; 146:6–9; Psalm 147 throughout; Isaiah 42:5; Acts 14:15–17; Job 36–41; Proverbs 6:6–8; Jeremiah 5:22; 8:7; Jonah 4:7; Matthew 5:45; 10:29.

3.29.6XXII. The governance of intelligent creatures is that by which God governs them through teaching and through action. And He governs them as befits their nature (Genesis 28:15; Psalm 103:6–7, 11–12).

XXIII. God teaches first either without condition, or with a condition sometimes expressed, sometimes tacit. XXIV. Then He teaches either simply, outside the reason of a covenant, or compositely, in a covenant. XXV–XXVI. Simply He teaches either by narrating or by defining something about creatures. Narration is that by which God only sets forth the truth in things to be known — simple doctrine, prophecy, history — to which faith ought to answer. XXVII. Narration is here specially called admonition when God sets forth truth in things to be known for caution.

XXVIII–XXXII. Further, about intelligent creatures God defines something when by law He designates something to them — by commanding, forbidding, or conceding — or pronounces something concerning them. Precept teaches holiness in doing; interdiction, holiness in omitting; concession, middle things to be done or omitted prudently for our liberty. XXXIII–XXXVI. The mode by which He pronounces something concerning creatures is by promising, by threatening, or by indulgence. Promise teaches His mind concerning kindness to be exercised; threat, concerning severity; indulgence, concerning neither notable kindness nor severity. XXXVII. There follows the composite mode of teaching, by which God strikes a covenant with intelligent creatures, solemnly joining modes of teaching and constituting mutual obligation.

3.30.1CHAPTER THIRTY. On the three great influxes of God's governance into created things.

Thus far concerning God's governance as to its parts and modes: now, THIRDLY, we treat of its three great influxes, which are as it were the instruments of a most exalted unity, by which He communicates His power, wisdom, and love, and modifies them in things.

II. They are necessity, fate, and harmony. We have seen the principle and governor of all things, whom the nations call God: it remains to speak of His great influences — namely necessity, fate, and harmony — which depend upon His power, wisdom, and love, and through which we see the generations, mutations, essences, operations, and relations of all things brought to completion.

3.30.2Examples are ready to hand in nature and in the arts. In nature: rain comes about by necessity, because the sun necessarily lifts vapors upward, and when condensation is added they are turned into rain, which, grown heavy, falls downward of necessity. And this happens by a certain fate, when vaporable earth, the sun's action, and condensation from the dispensation of heaven and of time concur; and at last it results in harmony, because the earth is renewed by rain, sprouts herbs, and nourishes animals.

The same appears in the excretions. For of necessity, while the blood is cooked, burned feces remain; and this happens by fate from the concurrence of many causes — namely bread eaten, heat acting in the narrow liver, and the spirit that separates — which causes met by fate; and this too results in harmony, and for the better, because when the blood is cleansed the feces (as melancholy) serve to excite hunger in the stomach lest the animal perish if it does not eat, and to stimulate the spirit toward fear of evils and toward contemplation.

3.30.3We find the same in the arts. For the architect necessarily sets the heavier and larger stones in the foundation, lest if placed in the roof they fall downward by their weight into the ruin of the house; the light ones and the timber he sets in the roof, because by necessity light things tend upward and heavy downward.

And this too happens by fate from the series of causes, that some things are light and small, others large and heavy, and that at the fitting time the architect needs them. And this at once results in harmony, because it is better for heavy things to be below and for light above — for their own sake, for the house more aptly formed and strengthened, and for the inhabitants' sake. And because what is better looks to love, what is ordered looks to wisdom, and what must be looks to the power of causes, therefore we call the influx of power necessity, of wisdom fate, of love harmony.

3.31.1CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE. On the necessity and contingency of things.

NECESSITY is the influx of divine power giving things a mode by which they so are that they cannot be otherwise. For all call necessary that which cannot hold itself otherwise. And what cannot hold itself otherwise must so hold itself as it does. And what is so and cannot be otherwise is either from nowhere else — as God, the first and independent being, of whom we treated above — or is from the causes of things.

II. And it is either from the end, or from the agent, or from the idea, or from matter, or from form.

3.31.2III. Necessity of the end is twofold: either simply, or unto the better. So unto salvation, according to the preaching of the Gospel, faith is necessary simply; but knowledge of the holy languages and reading of the sacred letters are unto the better — because without faith no one is saved; without these one is saved, though not so well.

IV. Necessity from the agent is likewise twofold: violent and natural. Violent, as when that rich man of the Gospel is dragged into Gehenna against the inclination of his will. Natural, when the rich man's spirit is moved by musical sound, because spirit is by nature movable and is invited by sound to its proper operation. And necessity is partly violent and partly natural when dry wood is kindled — inasmuch as dry it is disposed by heat to receive more heat, but inasmuch as burning wood is against its nature

V. Necessity from idea is that by which, according to the idea of God or of humankind, things so hold themselves that they cannot hold otherwise. Hence two and three make five, and number progresses to ten among us, yet not among all nations — for among some Africans it does not pass six. Hence also letters and syllables are so formed among this or that people and not otherwise. And this necessity concurs somehow with the formal; but because it can hold itself otherwise at the artisan's pleasure — whence other nations have other letters and other words — therefore it is not intrinsic necessity as the formal is.

3.31.3VI. Material necessity is that which depends on a thing's matter as divinely determined. VII. Formal necessity is that which depends on the thing's form. Both are called by some absolute, and likewise essential, according to which a composite cannot hold itself otherwise at all. So it is necessary that humankind be a rational animal. But things that lack determined matter — as number, triangle, circle, which can be made in wood, stone, and everywhere — have necessity not from matter but from idea alone.

So humankind is necessarily endowed with flesh and bones by necessity of matter; necessarily rational by formal necessity, because form is the principle of actions and operations. And from this essential necessity arises necessity in syllogisms. Whence it follows that every necessity is from the first Necessary, as number looks to unity, and every passive power to the active.

All voluntary things are necessary by natural necessity, not violent. When we will, we necessarily will — the necessity of supposition, which arises from the thing's state, not from a condition. Do all things except God share the necessity of supposition? No necessity seems to be that is not of supposition, except the divine. For that God is most powerful, most wise, and best is necessary by absolute necessity. But that humankind is a rational animal is necessary with God's will supposed deciding to make humankind of this essence. Whence certain ancient theologians not unfitly place necessity simply in God alone, and in the rest only in a qualified sense.

3.31.4VIII. So much concerning necessity: Contingency is a withdrawal from the necessary, by which things so are that they can be otherwise. The contingent is a certain withdrawal from the necessary; and the necessary consists in one, but the contingent in many, and it is spoken of in as many modes as the necessary.

Whence Cajetan (Summa I, question 13, article 13) says that the contingent has the character of plurality, motion, and disformity, because it can hold itself otherwise; but the necessary has the character of one and of the uniform, because it is impossible to hold itself otherwise. And the contingent proceeds from the necessary naturally, as plurality from unity, and not the reverse.

3.31.5I. Do future contingents fall under God's knowledge in any way? It is to be affirmed. For God knows contingent things as they are, because as they are they necessarily are, however they may be. God's knowledge does not impose absolute necessity on things, but regards them as in their causes and in the eternal decree.

II. God knows future contingents in two modes: in themselves, inasmuch as they are present to His eternity; and in their causes, inasmuch as He decreed to produce or to permit them. Whoever wants more, let him read after the scholastics in Philip Melanchthon's Loci the place on the cause of sin and on contingency. So necessity of power, fate of wisdom, and harmony of love prepare the passage to the chapter on fate.

3.32.1CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO. On Fate.

FATE is the great influx of divine wisdom granting things a mode by which in causing they are ordered toward one another. Therefore the SECOND great influx put into things is Fate, differing from necessity — which seems chiefly to consist in simple things considered alone — inasmuch as fate itself seems to be in the concurrence of many things and to pertain to ordering wisdom, as necessity pertains to power giving each thing to be according to its mode.

Whence fate is said from speaking (fari), as Blessed Augustine witnesses, as if the things that happen by fate were ordered and decreed by someone speaking and commanding. Yet he thinks the name of fate ought to be exploded, because he says this was given to the stars by the Astrologers — in which Doctor Gregory agrees with him. Moreover even the more ancient philosophers who gave God the world's generation and the distinction and regimen of things say the name of fate is vain and false, as Anaxagoras, Alexander witnessing in the book On Fate and the second On the Soul; and in sacred Scripture you will not find the name Fate, even if lot, chance, and fortune are sometimes found there.

3.32.2For what some theologians and philosophers attribute to fate, Moses attributes to God when he says (Exodus 21:12–13): If anyone kills a man not willing it of his own accord, but because the axe slipped, he killed him because the Lord delivered him into his hand. Yet Alexander says that whoever denies the name of Fate cries out against common credulity and usage of speech, and therefore is not worthy of faith. But the fathers cry out not against true but against false credulity, and they do not take away the name of Fate except where there is danger of fallacy in the intellect.

And philosophers anxiously inquire what fate is, and the common opinion is that it is an order of causes. Homer and Ovid indeed introduce Jupiter weighing the fates and unable to do anything beside fate. These same things today's Machiavellists and atheists of our time often press — that if God truly gives laws, yet we do not keep them, acting otherwise by a certain fate; and when He wills to punish us He cannot. So atheists under the pretext of Fate corrupt the secrets of the Christian religion.

3.32.3The Chaldean and Egyptian wise men thought fate can be changed by sacrifices and prayers, because God, the orderer of things, did not bind His own hands so that He cannot do other than He decreed from eternity. The Peripatetics do not admit this mutation in God, but rather that some things happen by chance beside His intellect and will from the concurrence of inferior causes, and that the series of fate can be cut by our choice and by fortune.

Astrologers deny this, because every accidental cause is reduced to a superior cause of itself: whence the series of fate seems infallible to the Arabs in Averroes, and namely to Avicenna with the Stoics against Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas (lecture 3 on Metaphysics VI) thinks Aristotle's reason neither takes away fate nor providence, and is fallacious because it regards particular causes, not universal — which Boethius also teaches by the example of two servants. And a triple cause is to be posited: (1) the most universal and immutable, as God; (2) universal but mutable, as heaven; (3) particular, ordered to its proper effects.

3.32.4But because not all effects can be reduced to heaven, other contingencies still remain with respect to heaven. First, because human souls, angels, and demons within the order of concausing things — as Augustine and Boethius witness — are not subjected to heaven except accidentally, inasmuch as the soul bound to bodies is affected through organs according to sense — and they themselves can master sense by repressing anger, shaking off sloth, perceiving remedies against plague and other deadly influxes of heaven, and helping themselves by hidden modes through prayers poured out to God. Therefore not every effect of heaven is necessary.

Next, because the matter on which heaven acts is variously disposed, and otherwise receives heaven's action as strong and necessary, otherwise as weak and contingent, as is plain from meteorology. Therefore although the aspects of the stars in heaven are necessary, yet from the defectibility of inferior things they are modified unto contingency.

3.32.5Therefore fate, as Boethius teaches in book 4 of the Consolation of Philosophy, is an immobile disposition inhering in mobile things, through which providence binds each thing to its orders. It does not follow that all things happen necessarily, but that it is necessary that some effects happen necessarily, others freely, others contingently, according as God prepared causes for them — whose proper work is to give being, while others use being once given unto necessity or contingency.

With respect to heaven inevitable fate is not given, but with respect to the most universal cause, whose order he calls providence and not fate, to which it pertains to make every being as it is. So fate of ordering wisdom prepares the passage to harmony, which is the great influx of divine love — of which the thirty-third chapter.

3.33.1CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE. On the harmony of things.

Thus far concerning fate: next comes harmony, which is the great influx of divine love, granting things a mode by which their order sounds together toward a good and delightful end. Because no order exists for its own sake but for an end, and the end is the best among things, therefore the respect of order to the end is for us harmony — the sounding-together of many things toward one delightful good. We have taken the word from music, where on one instrument many strings, varied, thick and thin, stretched in various ways, with art going before and cooperating, when struck by the musician produce a sweet melody for the delight of the soul.

Therefore harmony seems the object of love, and indeed of love as active influx, just as fate is of active wisdom; and as love is the offspring of wisdom, so harmony is the offspring of order. The harmony of the whole world may be hunted out from its parts. We see every agent act for an end, and when the end is gained the action ceases, and the agent rests in the good of the end — as a stone tends downward because it is preserved among like body and, once among its like, rests as if the cause of motion were confessed; but fire goes upward and, joined to heaven, is carried round with heaven as if it had attained the end that consists in the conservation of the thing.

3.33.2Yet because all things are bound together by place, coexistence, and compact, we see some to be ends of others — as the end of navigation is merchandise, of shipbuilding navigation, of hewing timber shipbuilding, of cutting hewing — and yet these arts do not communicate among themselves. For the cutter of timber does not cut so that it may be hewn, but that by such labor he may seek his living. He who hews does not understand the building; that is understood by the one who hired him, while he himself looks to his wage. He who builds a ship for navigation, insofar as he is hired by another, does not look to that further end but has his own; the sailor does not ask whether the wares are good or useless, but that he may finish his voyage; of the merchandise the merchant cares, but of trade and of all the other arts together the commonwealth cares, because its happiness consists in their communication.

Hence Aristotle too thinks the good of the universe is order; but we mean that for the sake of which order is, speaking of the intrinsic good. Of the extrinsic it is plain that it is God Himself. And because whatever happens necessarily is so ordered that it happens for the better — as necessity is referred to power, order to wisdom, and the harmony of the better to love — all things happen necessarily from a certain coercion, either pure or mixed with love, or else altogether free. Freedom altogether is in the one God alone.

3.33.3For other things are driven to their proper work by two goads of His wisdom — namely pleasure and pain — from which arise desire and fear, grief and indignation. All things somehow sense their own being and love it; but they sense and love exterior things insofar as they sense themselves changed and affected by them. Hence if they are affected well toward their own conservation, they delight; if badly toward destruction, they hate and grieve.

Next, all things seem affected partly by force, partly spontaneously — that is, by pain and love — with necessity always going before. For to love ones own being belongs to each because it does not know a better: as a dog loves being a dog, and wood loves being wood, since they know their own being as best and are ignorant that other things are better. They are forced to that ignorance by the limitation of their being, and therefore forced also to love this one thing, not to love simply. Hence human beings who from religion or reason are persuaded that another life and being suit them after this one despise the present life, afflict themselves, and long to be dissolved and to be with God. Love of life therefore seems somehow forced, since whatever we do while ignorant of the better we do in part by force. Hence also Seneca in the Tragedy: O how sweet an evil added to mortals — the dread love of life.

We are forced also to love exterior things — food, clothing, labors, and all by which we are somehow preserved in ourselves or in others. We are forced also to regard things good in themselves as evil to us — fire because it burns us, the serpent because it bites, hemlock because it poisons — although in themselves and toward the world and toward like things they are all most excellent and most beautiful.

3.33.4But eternal wisdom uses our ignorance for our life. For if each thing knew that all other things are beautiful, they would do nothing against one another, nor preserve their own life, and all would turn into chaos. Therefore, since all things are good and safe, it is best for the worlds order that some things appear to others evil and foul, lest they fall back into chaos. And truly, whoever lifts himself to the Author of things and with Him looks upon this as a comedy in which all things are masked by certain disguises — some appearing good and beautiful, others evil and deformed — sees that when the masks are laid aside they agree beautifully.

Affections and actions are brought forth from coercion and love together; and coercion is truly such when things are driven against their propensity and against the love added to them. But that things may be kept in the life they are allotted, God gave them pain and pleasure. For a human being rejoices to be among things that conserve his nature, and grieves among things that destroy it. And this is fate: that they exist for so long as has been decreed by the divine power, as for playing Its play and comedy.

But you say: why do things grieve when they are corrupted, and as it were resist death? It is answered, first, lest other living things also wish to die before their time; second, that while dying they may resist the causes bringing death and modify them for fates uses. Since therefore all corruptions and generations of things and actions are not for the sake of the things alone — because they themselves are driven by pain and pleasure toward others ends — it follows that the ordering cause draws from such order a great and divine good, which we call HARMONY, founded in the being and order of things, that is in necessity and fate. For all things come by necessity for the sake of fate and harmony. From these results the harmonic goodness that is the end of things.

3.33.5II. Now of each thing produced by GOD there is a threefold end: first, conservation of itself, to which it is driven by pleasure and pain; second, the use of others, to which it is driven by fear and desire; third, the order and integrity of the universe, which is for God in the harmony and concurrence of causes and in the first necessity. So a plant makes fruit for its own conservation, to which fear of death and love of life drive it; from this results the second end, the nourishing of animals from its fruits, since imperfect beings exist for perfect ones; and the life of animals is for the integrity of the world. Therefore the end of the plant is the worlds integrity. But those that more immediately attain the last end are nobler than the rest.

Besides their proper end, things have many other ends that beget harmony for the world; and whatever is evil and excrementitious has most excellent ends. So choleric humor is gathered in the gall lest it infect the blood; and because it goes to its like, it is vital to the gall, and then serves great uses. From which it is plain there is a Craftsman of things who so disposed and tempered them that while each acts for itself it is at once useful to others, and all to the whole, and the whole is dedicated and set under sail for Gods glory. Harmony therefore does not consist only in each things acting for itself, but in this: that while it acts for itself it acts at once for others, for the whole, and for God.

And this reason of order is from the first wisdom. But the beauty rising from order is from the first love; and beauty itself, not as a sign by which we are carried to the notion of the good, but as an influx from active love, is the seat of harmony. Therefore, since the Craftsman of things is most wise and can and knows all things and wills according to His nature, He must dispose and order all things. Nothing therefore is by chance with respect to Him. Otherwise many things would happen beside necessity, beside fate, and beside harmony, and He Himself would be subject to fate and not fate to Him — which is as foolish and absurd as subjecting the inventor of an art to the art rather than the art to the inventor.

From all of which it becomes plain that the Epicureans, Muhammadans, and others gravely err who against harmony think all things happen by chance, breaking Gods power, wisdom, and love, by which ends are appointed even to harmful animals, serpents, flies and the like, and even to infirmities. Nor are wars, plague, famine, and death itself excluded from this harmony. For these too are useful to the world, as the discord of heat and cold — for inventing doctrines, for changing kingdoms, for punishing sins, and for the exercise and varied demonstration of virtue.

3.34.1CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR. On the governance of angels.

Next, the special governance of GOD is of ANGELS or of HUMAN BEINGS. II. The governance of angels is that by which they are governed by GOD only spiritually. Their governance must be considered here because God variously uses their ministry concerning human beings (Psalm 91:11 and 34:8; Isaiah 37:36; Hebrews 1:14) and other creatures that serve humankind.

III. It is the conservation of their essence and the direction of their actions. IV. Conservation of their essence is that by which each is eternalized without propagation. For they are spirits, and so incorporeal, created immediately by God from nothing, as shown above in chapter 26, and not made for generating (Matthew 22:30). Actions is the prescription of law and the ordination of the event that follows from it.

3.34.2VI. That law is that by which obedience is required of them — the same in substance as the Decalogue prescribed to human beings. Yet here must be excepted all that regards either the nature of the human body or the condition of this mortal life: many duties of the second and fourth commandments; many of inferiors toward superiors, as of children toward parents in the fifth; many concerning the propagation of the race in the seventh; and some concerning the way of gaining livelihood in the eighth — which do not suit them.

The offices of angels are roughly fivefold. They are first singers, second orators, third ambassadors, fourth protectors, fifth war-leaders. Their first and chief task is always to love God and never cease praising Him; they so love that they burn for God, and so love that with a sleepless harmony of praise they praise Him together. Who will make the concert of heaven sleep? Job asks (38:37). Otherwise in heaven the angels sing and make the pleasure of their music more lasting: they begin and never leave off; they satisfy and create no weariness. Isaiah heard and wrote the words of that heavenly oratory (chapter 6), where the Seraphim cried one to another: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.

Their second office: they are orators (Revelation 8:3). Third: ambassadors in affairs of highest moment. Fourth: they are protectors (Psalm 91). Fifth: they are war-leaders, and such that whenever they will they have victory standing on their side (Exodus 23:20; Joshua 5).

3.34.3VII. Ordination of the event is preservation, confirmation, or permission of a fall and hardening. VIII. Preservation is that by which certain angels are kept from falling. IX. Confirmation is that by which they are made firm in the good.

X. There are many modes by which good angels work concerning human beings: they open tongues and hand on divine speech (Isaiah 6:6); they heal the sick (John 5:4); they refresh the weary (1 Kings 19:7); they allow themselves to be overcome by the dear (Genesis 32:28); they console the afflicted (Genesis 21:17); they exhort to doing good (Acts 8:26); they pass from heaven to earth (Genesis 28:12; John 1:51); they animate those who pray (Judges 13); they love and defend the chaste everywhere most ardently (Judith 13:20).

It may be asked why no holy angel (so far as I know) has ever seated himself in a dear human body, though fugitive angels have so often dared it. I answer: first, the human being is a temple sacred to the Deity; angels, led by reverence and love, refuse to invade their Princes chamber by their own entry. Second, since God so ennobled human origin by the wondrous conjunction of divine and human nature, angels will claim so little license over a human being that they endure to be called not only servants of the Deity but servants of the human as well.

3.34.6XIV. Canons are to be noted concerning them. First, the Devil was evil from the beginning not of creation but of defection (Augustine; Thomas; Zanchi). Second, the impious are children of the Devil not with respect to their substance but in view of the accident of malice. Third, the Devil is the first author and fountain of sin — of malice both in his own nature and in the human race (John 8:44; 1 John 3:8). Fourth, fallen angels retained their substance with intellect and will, and great power besides, but by all these they are borne only to evil. Fifth, the Devil abuses intellect, will, power, and all his forces not only to propagate his malice but also to root out Gods kingdom.

Sixth, the Devil does not know human thoughts except through outward signs and probably, or impure ones that he himself suggests. Seventh, Satans power is great, but under Gods omnipotence. Eighth, the Devil can do wonders, but not true and properly so-called miracles. Ninth, the Devil does what he can when God permits; what he can, he does not do when God forbids. Tenth, no human being by his own powers can drive back the Devil and resist him; it is Gods grace and power alone to overcome him and to free the repentant and believing human being from his snares.

3.35.1CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE. On the governance of human beings.

Thus far concerning the governance of angels: next follows the governance of human beings, by which God governs them both spiritually and in body. This part of the governance of Gods kingdom we chiefly consider in Theology, because it brings us nearer to a more distinct knowledge of the theological subject. Yet the governance of angels was not to be wholly set aside, because it also illustrates that of humans. God governs human beings both spiritually and bodily, because they are mixed of both natures. Hence Chrysostom (Homily 83 on Matthew): If you were incorporeal, God would have handed you naked incorporeal gifts. But since your soul is joined to a body, things to be understood are handed to you in sensible things.

3.35.2II. And first it is one thing before the fall, another after the fall. For the human being, so adorned by God the creator as shown above, was placed in the garden of Eden, which we call paradise, that there he might enjoy most sweet contemplation, propagate his race, and lead a blessed life without all trouble, diseases, and death — both by Gods singular providence and by the benefit of the life-giving tree — from which he would be transferred to the most blessed life. Truly God, the highest good, that inexhaustible fountain of love, had adorned the first human with most excellent gifts, and so delighted in him that He lived, walked, dwelt, and worked in his intellect, will, and other powers, and uniquely willed to be loved again by him from the whole heart, mind, and strength.

Therefore, when the supreme Lawgiver had impressed the universal law on the human, He also enjoined a lighter command, by His right as creator and to test obedience, concerning a thing in itself indifferent — neither good nor evil (Genesis 2:16). But Satan, driven by burning envy and hatred against God and all creatures obedient to God, tried to overthrow this noblest work of the creator. Therefore, covered in a serpents form, he approaches the woman as the weaker and more open to deceit, corrupts Gods words and command, and interprets them slanderously. Humans ought indeed to have clung to Gods word and declined the serpents snares; and they could have, had they been willing to use the gifts they possessed; indeed, as Paul witnesses (1 Timothy 2:14), Adam was not deceived. Therefore knowingly and willingly they set Gods command aside, obeyed the Devil, and cast themselves into ruin.

3.35.3III. Second, governance is one thing by way of instinct, another by way of institution, another by way of fulfillment. IV. By way of institution God governs human beings by teaching. V. Thus in a more notable respect God teaches humans both immediately and mediately. Immediately, when by Himself, by the Son and Holy Spirit, by angels, by revealed word, by the law of nature impressed, by conscience, by dreams and visions, by miracles and wonders, by special inspiration. Mediately, when through parents, teachers, ministers of the word, magistrates, and other humans to whom He commits His word. Those mediately called are to be obeyed with this proviso: if they add nothing to the principles, take nothing away, or teach nothing contrary (1 Thessalonians 5:21; 1 John 4:1).

3.35.5XII. By way of fulfillment God governs human beings when He permits or impedes something spiritual or bodily, or effects it while benefiting or afflicting them, or tolerates it in them. You will see these modes of fulfillment in 2 Peter 2:4 and following. But in truth, by the fall of the first parents the salutary modes of teaching were weakened, and the modes of fulfillment impeded, as will appear from the following chapter 37.

3.36.1CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX. On the first state of the human being.

There stand the states through which the human being is led to the highest perfection for which he was made. II. And it is either the first or that which followed the first. Theologians commonly distinguish four states of the human: of creation, of falling, of regeneration, and of blessedness — or of constitution, defection, restoration, and perfection — or of innocence, sin, grace, and glory.

III. The first is that in which the human was made by God the creator and circumscribed by a peculiar law. The formula of the law prescribed to the human in this state stands in Genesis 2:16-17 and is repeated in Sirach 15:14-18. Adam could easily keep it and violated it compelled by no necessity. For if he had necessarily violated it, that necessity would have been from nature, or from the Devil, or from God. It was not from nature, because the human was made of free choice; nor, if it were otherwise, would Adam have concealed it when laboring under accusation of himself (Genesis 3:12). Nor was it from the devil, because he could persuade, not compel. For the devil would not have deceived the human unless he had already begun to please himself, as Augustine says (City of God XIV.13). Nor from God, because He made him good and after His own image (Genesis 1:27; 5:1).

3.36.2IV. And this state was both animal and spiritual.we may more rightly understand what has been said of the image of God, and so have a fuller and more distinct knowledge of our subject, we must consider in detail both what is natural and what is supernatural in the newly created human — or what and how much he could do in the state of pure naturals; whence afterward it is easily drawn out what, the supernatural gifts now lost, he can do in the state of sin.

V. It is animal insofar as, from the natural union of body and soul, the soul procures goods for its body, and by the body in turn the soul is ready for the offices of nature and for desires fitting to it. This part of the first state in which the human was made is founded on the natural union of soul and body and on the life the soul naturally lives in the body. From that union and life it is that the soul procures its goods for the body, and the body is ready for the soul unto offices congruent with its nature. And according to this state there is a mutual respect between the human and the goods of this world, which makes it that the human can desire them and put forth the effort he judges necessary and fitting for acquiring them. Which part of the first state, if considered alone and without order to spiritual or supernatural things, is called by the schools the state of pure naturals.

3.36.3VI. It is spiritual insofar as the human, from Gods special grace and favor, was endowed in the intellect with divine light, in the will with uprightness and holiness, and in the affections with harmony and order, so that he knew God, loved Him, and obeyed Him from the whole heart, and neighbors as himself. In this state the first image of God consisted, not in the mere immortality of the soul or use of reason, but in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10), by which the human pleased God and served Him. He had a lucid intellect without culpable ignorance, an upright will without a crooked inclination to evil, and ordered affections without disturbance. He was able not to sin, yet he was not unable to sin — that is, liberty toward both, not necessity toward the good alone. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in paradise were signs of this state and of its probation.

3.36.4VII. Observations are to be noted concerning this first state of the human. First, the human in the first state was created whole and would have remained whole had he not sinned by free will. Second, dominion over inferior creatures was given him (Genesis 1:28), not tyrannical but paternal and household-like. Third, labor in paradise was not a punishment but a delight and exercise. Fourth, death was not subject to natural necessity in this state, but was the punishment of sin as denounced. Fifth, conjugal society was instituted before the fall in holiness and mutual love.

Sixth, the first parent had received from God the happy integrity of the image of God of the first state, as author of the human race, so that through it he might wholly please God and serve Him. This observation is plain from what has been said. Here there was no stain, but highest purity; no culpable ignorance, but outstanding knowledge; no aversion from God, but whole love.

3.36.5In the first state also there would have been one political order without the division of empires introduced by sin. The first and sole lord of the circle of the earth was Adam, the second Seth, the third whoever was best among the descendants — and therefore empire was divided, because humans sinned, and divided fields and dominions, and usurped kingship. And the law of nations was introduced through iniquity, as holy Clement teaches, which is retained by permission, not by Gods command, who willed all to live in common, as the same witnesses, and Ambrose, and Chrysostom, and the better fathers. Hence also Solomon says: because of the sins of the land, many are its princes.

For in the beginning the same one would have been king and father and highest priest of the commonwealth and supreme in the whole world, depending on God, as Melchizedek. And therefore Christ recalled all princes under the empire of Himself as one shepherd, when He came to restore that age (Ezekiel 34:23; John 10:16). Nor will wars, famine, heresies, schisms, and plagues cease until all the princes of the earth, brought under one power, have one senate and live in concord. Which will plainly happen when from this warfare and pilgrimage we pass into the homeland of eternal rest and triumph. For the Chiliasts are vain who hope this on the earth of this warfare, and the papal party who violently grasp at it.

3.37.1CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN. On the state following the first, and the freedom of the human will, and its powers in this state.

The state into which the human, made after Gods image, falling from the first — God permitting — by his own free will transgressing the law, lost his innocence for himself and for his posterity, and rendered himself and his whole race liable to death. In the preceding chapter we treated the first state of the human, which is followed by this one now to be treated — by far the most miserable and most fertile of evils.

3.37.2II. Here are to be considered the will, free choice, and its powers in this state. The will is the rational appetitive power of the soul by which the human tends toward the good apprehended by the intellect. Free choice is the faculty of the will of choosing among objects proposed to it without coercion.

III. Before the fall free choice was flexible toward good and evil, but inclined to the good from original gifts. After the fall free choice indeed remains as to natural and civil acts, but as to spiritual saving good it has lost its powers unless restored by new grace. The fallen human cannot raise himself to true conversion, nor fulfill Gods law spiritually, nor merit eternal life from works (Romans 8:7-8; 1 Corinthians 2:14; John 15:5).

3.37.3IV. Its object is the good proposed by the intellect. Natural, civil, and spiritual good must be distinguished. Toward natural and civil goods the fallen human even now retains some liberty and powers, though weakened and often bent toward evil. But toward spiritual good — which is true conversion toward God, saving faith, and new obedience — natural powers do not suffice. Hence Augustine and the Reformed theologians teach that free choice in spiritual things after the fall is a slave — not so that the human does not act, but so that he cannot will the spiritual good unless prevented and helped by the Holy Spirit.

3.37.4V. In the intellect after the fall there arose darkness and culpable ignorance concerning God and divine things (Ephesians 4:18; 1 Corinthians 2:14). VI. In the will there arose aversion from God, inclination to evil, and impotence toward spiritual good (Romans 8:7).

VII. Second, the darkness of the intellect is followed by the perversity of the will and the disturbance of the affections. The human loves himself and creatures inordinately, hates Gods spiritual law, and is drawn by concupiscences (Galatians 5:17; James 1:14-15). This corruption does not take away the substance of the soul nor liberty as to acts, but deprives of original uprightness and brings guilt and punishment.

3.37.5VIII. Third, to the blindness of the intellect and the crookedness of the will is added impotence toward beginning, advancing, and perfecting the work of salvation without the grace of the Holy Spirit. With respect to the beginning toward the good, or the first motion of conversion, the human can do nothing from himself (John 6:44; 15:5). With respect to progress, even the regenerate needs the continual help of grace. With respect to the end, perseverance and glory are gifts of God, not our merits. Therefore in this state free choice, unless elevated by grace, is not a principle of salvation but of sin and misery. Of sin itself the following chapter must treat; of the permission of sin, chapter 39; of the obligation to death, chapter 40.

3.38.1CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT. On the sin of the human being.

Thus far concerning the state after the fall and liberty: next follows sin. Sin is the transgression of the divine law, or a falling short from Gods law as the norm of uprightness (1 John 3:4; Romans 4:15). II. And it is either the first or arising from the first. III. The FIRST is the transgression of the law concerning not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, committed by the first parents in paradise (Genesis 3). This sin is called originating sin, because from it original sin in posterity and all actual sins took their rise.

3.38.3VI. Certain points are here to be NOTED. First, Adams sin is imputed to posterity not by imitation alone, but by a real communication of guilt, because all were in Adam as in a head and root (Romans 5:12). Second, propagation happens through natural generation, not through creation of the soul as sinful by God. Third, original sin is not a substance, but a privative accident and a positive habit of evil. Fourth, it does not take away free choice as to natural acts, but deprives of powers toward spiritual good. Fifth, baptism and regeneration do not remove all corruption in this life, but the guilt and dominion of sin (Romans 6-7).

3.38.4VII. ACTUAL sin is called by the Scholastics and theologians every act, whether inward or outward, contrary to God's law is distinguished into sins of commission and of omission; into sins of heart, mouth, and work; into sins against God, neighbor, and oneself.

XII. Sin against the law of works is the transgression of the moral precepts of the Decalogue and of the law of nature. Sin of omission is the neglect of a due office. Communication with others sins is also sin, which the ancients expressed in these verses: I counsel, I command, I consent, I provoke, I praise; I do not uncover the fault, I do not punish, I do not rebuke, I do not withstand, but I command and defend anothers sins.

3.38.5XVI. Sin in necessities is either against affirmative or negative precepts that oblige absolutely. XVII. Sin in adiaphora is when things in themselves indifferent become evil from the circumstance of scandal, contempt, or bad intention (Romans 14; 1 Corinthians 8-10).

XXI. Sin of infirmity is when one sins from weakness of nature or sudden passion, not from destined malice. It is distinguished from sin of ignorance, which arises from defect of due knowledge, and from sin of malice or presumption, which is committed from deliberate will against a known law. Sin against the Holy Spirit is obstinate and malicious repudiation of known truth, to which remission is denied in this age (Matthew 12:31-32; Hebrews 6:4-6; 10:26-29).

3.38.6XXIV. Sin against conscience is when someone acts against the dictate of conscience, whether right or erroneous — for even an erroneous conscience, until corrected, obliges one not to act against it (Romans 14:23). XXV. Sin not against conscience is when an objectively evil act is committed without actual contradiction of conscience, whether from ignorance or from a hardening habit.

Actual sins are not only those that happen from stubbornness, destined malice, and an hardened custom of sinning, but also those committed from infirmity and ignorance — and not only by committing, but also by omitting or by communicating with others sins. Of the permission of sin the following chapter must treat.

3.39.1CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE. On the permission of sin, and its foundation, opposite, connections, and consequences.

Thus far concerning sin: next follows its PERMISSION, which is an act of divine providence concerning it, by which all impediments that God knows would stop the sin if applied to human power or will, and also compelling forces that efficaciously drive toward doing what one abhors, are suspended. This locus on permission the most learned Twisse inquired into; Arminius also attempted it more than once. Ignorance of this doctrine makes it that when some could not understand whence sin is — inasmuch as it is the highest evil that is given, which cannot be from God who is most highly good — they denied Gods providence itself.

3.39.2VI. In the permission of sin there is to be weighed its foundation, opposite, connections, and the consequences around the progress and consummation of sin. III. The foundation is partly the liberty of choice that God the creator planted in the rational creature, and whose use the Creator's constancy does not allow to be taken from that creature; partly Gods infinite wisdom and power, by which He knows and can produce good from evil.

Hence God permits whatever He permits: not unknowingly of creatures powers and affection, because He knows all things; not unwillingly, for He could have not produced a creature that would be of free choice, and could reduce one produced to nothing or change it in various ways.

3.39.3IV. The opposite of permission is impediment and coercion. Impediment is that by which an obstacle is set to the creatures power and will lest it sin. Coercion is that by which someone is efficaciously driven toward doing what he abhors. VI. By reason of efficiency it is either efficacious or inefficacious. VII. By reason of the object an impediment is set either to power or to will. VIII. An impediment set to power takes away the faculty; one set to will, without taking away the faculty, bends or holds it back. Permission is not a positive law of sin, nor is God the author of sin; but the suspension of impediments and the non-impeding of the act of a creature freely sinning.

3.39.4XII. Connected to permission in beginning, progress, and end are: foreknowledge, decree, ordination, direction, and determination. XVI. Direction is the divine providence by which the act of sin, though evil in itself, is directed by God toward good ends, whether toward an object or toward an end. Examples: Joseph sold by his brothers (Genesis 45:8); Job afflicted by Satan (Job 1-2); David and Absalom (2 Samuel 12; 15-16). God is said to do evils wrought by wicked humans and by Satan himself, because the chief parts in those actions by directing and determining were Gods, and because the power of harming effected no more than God determined.

3.39.5XVIII. Direction into an object is when God so moderates the sinners action that it falls on this object, not that — as He permitted David to resolve concerning Nabal, but did not permit him to pour out innocent blood (1 Samuel 25); He permitted him to flee to Achish and feign folly, but not to fight against Israel (1 Samuel 21; 27; 29). XIX. Direction into an end is when God draws from sin a good end, whether of justice or of mercy.

XX. Determination of sin is the act of providence by which God circumscribes the measure, time, mode, and limit of sin, lest it be able to rage beyond what He Himself wills (1 Corinthians 10:13; 2 Corinthians 4:8-9). Thus God by permitting does not cease to reign, nor does sin escape outside the limits of providence.

3.40.1CHAPTER FORTY. On the humans obligation to death.

Thus far concerning the permission of sin: the human's obligation to death is his penal condition, into which by the just judgment of God offended by that fall he has been reduced, so that he is liable to eternal curse. From chapter 37, aphorism 2, it is plain that after the dogma of the permission of sin there is place for the doctrine of the fallen humans obligation to death or the undergoing of punishment, of which Genesis 2:17 speaks.

This obligation presupposes partly Gods offense from sin, which has before it Gods prohibition and the denunciation of punishment if the human should not obey Gods law. From offense there is born in God the affection of avenging, by which God seeks to assign to the sinner for the evil of fault the evil of punishment. And from the affection of vengeance and from guilt or obligation to punishment follows the punishment itself, whose equity is from guilt, but whose infliction is from the affection of vengeance or the wrath and rigor of justice, which is joined with Gods truth in keeping the threat — unless it is tempered by new grace, by which eternal curse is turned into eternal blessing joined with temporary chastisement.

3.40.2II. The penal condition therefore is of eternal curse or of paternal chastisement. III. Eternal curse is that which, the guilt of the human race having been transferred onto Christ, remains for those who do not receive Him. The matter is clear in Mark 16:16: But whoever does not believe will be condemned. John 3:36: But whoever does not assent to the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him. Revelation 21:8: But for the fearful and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and fornicators and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars (that is, those not receiving Christ, the truth) their portion is in the lake where fire and sulphur burn, which is the second death. A type of this was the ejection from paradise, insofar as paradise was a figure of the heavenly dwelling. Of eternal curse and death we treated above in Book II chapter 15; it remains only for those who do not receive the testimony of Christ.

3.40.3IV. Paternal chastisement is that by which, for sinners looking to the blessed seed of the woman, their old nature is reformed through a temporary cross after the manner of an adult. Hence the Apostle in Romans 8:1: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. And verses 28-29. V. And this is either of the first parents or of posterity. On the first parents were laid: expulsion from paradise, labor, pain of childbirth, subjection, temporal death (Genesis 3:16-19). To posterity the same were transmitted with original sin.

3.40.4VIII. EVES penalty has four parts: multiplication of pain in childbirth, desire toward the husband, the husbands rule, and death. Adams penalty: the curse of the ground, labor in sweat, return to dust.

XI. As to the natural state, the force of nature was loosed and left to itself, and is no longer ruled and repressed by that peculiar providence of God by which under the state of innocence it was held back lest it bring any trouble on humans, as we taught above. As to the spiritual state, it is partly the loss of Gods first grace and favor, partly — what followed this — the grieving of Gods good Spirit and His departure from the human, which continuously the darkness of mind and ignorance or crookedness of will followed, and the disturbance, perversity, and sinister turn of all the affections.

3.40.5XIII. From this fountain and Lerna of evils there flowed to Adams posterity, who descend from him according to the mode of nature, the universal fault of our nature, which is circumscribed by the name of original sin, with its whole and unhappy brood of sins and punishments, which — like the hydras heads — the new grace of the blessed seed at last cuts off savingly in those who receive this by living faith.

Of originating sin we saw in chapter 38; and of its brood in what follows. In its compass theologians chiefly understand three things: first, the guilt of both deaths, which passes to posterity by a triple way — namely (i) by participation of fault, because all posterity were in Adam by seminal reason, as in a head or root, fountain and common principle of the whole nature; (ii) by imputation, because Adam so stood in grace that if he sinned the whole posterity with him would fall from it; (iii) by natural propagation, because through the parents generation we share the condition of the guilty; second, the privation of divine grace and the defect or lack of wisdom, righteousness, and holiness; third, a horrible darkness in the mind, and in the will, affections, and so the whole human a proneness and crookedness toward sinning.

Book III COMPLETE. Book IV begins at physical page 1005 On the principles and means of human salvation; Chapter 1 On the grace of paternal compassion.