Cap. 5 Mem. 2 Elect Obj. 1: Immutability seems to force eternal actual reconciliation
Objection 1. Those who say that toward the elect themselves, before their faith and repentance, God is only placable and reconciliable—not actually reconciled and placated—seem to put acts and potencies in God, and to admit that God can be what he is not. But God is pure act and altogether immutable. It is therefore impossible that he should now be what he was not before. So if he is reconciled to Peter or Paul after they are known to repent and believe, he was already reconciled to them from eternity. Otherwise some variation would seem to be given in God, who is purest act and altogether immutable. Yet no sane person will deny that such variation is utterly alien to the divine nature, which is free of mutability on every side—especially since that conclusion agrees not only with the dictates of right reason and with the sounder philosophy (which teaches that the same, as the same, always does the same: that is, what remains the same way always produces the same effect), but can also be confirmed and settled by not a few, and those the clearest, places of sacred Scripture: by Malachi’s prophecy (Malachi 3:6), “For I the Lord do not change” (Junius: “I Jehovah do not change”); likewise by Numbers (Numbers 23:19), “God is not as a human that he should lie, nor as a son of man that he should change.” A plainly similar place gives support from the Epistle of James (James 1:17): “Every good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of turning.” So far is any change from belonging in God that in him there is not even the least shadow of turning. But if one may say of God that he is now placable, now placated, now only reconciliable, now reconciled, one may fairly and not without cause doubt whether God always remains like himself and always holds himself in exactly the same way. Placability seems to suggest only a prior disposition and an inclination toward a future placating; reconciliability likewise suggests a readiness and propensity in God toward reconciliation—which at last, when human beings believe, is drawn out from potency into act.
Latin
Obj. 1. Qui statuunt Deum ipsis electis ante fidem illorum & paenitentiam placabilem solummodo & reconciliabilem, non autem actu reconciliatum & placatum, illi videntur in Deo ponere actus & potentias, & admittere Deum posse esse quod non est: At Deus est purus actus & prorsus immutabilis; Impossibile est igitur illum nunc esse quod ante non fuit: Si ergo reconciliatus est Petro aut Paulo postquam illi paenitere & credere cognoscuntur, fuit utique illis reconciliatus ab aeterno. Secus enim videri posset dari in Deo, qui purissimus est actus, & usquequaque immutabilis, aliqua est variatio; Quod tamen a Natura Divina omnimodae mutabilitatis experte alienissimum esse nemo sanus non fatebitur: maxime cum non solum rectae rationis dictatis consonum, saniorisque Philosophiae placitis consentaneum esse videatur, quae docet, quod idem qua idem semper facit idem, hoc est, idem eodem modo se habens eundem semper producit effectum; verum etiam non paucis, iisque disertissimis sacrae Scripturae locis confirmari ac stabiliri possit; illo utique testimonio ex Prophetia Malachiae c. 3. v. 6. Ego enim Dominus & non mutor (secundum Junium, Ego Jehovah non mutor), item Numerorum c. 23. 19. Non est Deus quasi homo, ut mentiatur: nec ut filius hominis, ut mutetur. Quibus consimilis plane locus suffragatur ex Epist. sancti Apostoli Jacobi, c. 1. v. 17. Omnis donatio bona, & omne perfectum munus est superne descendens a Patre luminum, apud quem non inest transmutatio, aut conversionis obumbratio: tantum abest ut in Deo sit mutatio quaevis, ut in eo ne minime quidem sit conversionis obumbratio. Quod si de Deo affirmari possit, quod modo placabilis sit, modo placatus, modo reconciliabilis tantum, modo reconciliatus, dubitari sane, nec immerito, potest, an Deus semper sui similis existat, atque eodem plane modo semper se habeat. Placabilitas enim praeviam quandam tantum dispositionem, & ad futuram placationem inclinationem, innuere videtur, ut & reconciliabilitas, facilitatem & propensionem in Deo ad reconciliationem, quae hominibus demum credentibus ex potentia in actum elicitur.