Our ignorance of the mode does not weaken certainty of the fact: light, the moving of limbs, the imagination of pregnant women
Yet this does nothing to weaken the certainty we ought to have both about God's foreknowledge and about human freedom. Each of them has a sure and unshaken foundation in Scripture, with the light of reason agreeing; and human freedom has our own experience besides.
How many things there are, not only in divine matters but in nature itself, indeed in ourselves, whose existence we cannot doubt! Yet our mind cannot investigate how and why they are without entangling itself in snares it cannot get free of.
What is clearer than that light and sight exist? Yet what is harder than to fathom and explain the nature of light and how sight happens? What is better known than that the limbs of the body move in countless ways at a mere nod of the will? Yet how hard it is to understand and teach how that comes about!
What is more firmly confirmed by daily experience than that pregnant women, by the power of the imagination alone, produce many extraordinary marks in their unborn children? Yet what have the philosophers worked out on the matter that would satisfy a sensible person even slightly?
So if in human matters the fact itself remains certain even when the manner of it is uncertain or entirely unknown to us, this must apply all the more to divine matters, which lie beyond the senses and far exceed the grasp of our mind.
Latin
XLIV. Neque etiam illud quicquam officit certitudini quam habere debemus, tum de Dei Praescientia, tum de humana libertate, quorum utrumque in scripturis certum & immotum fundamentum habet, astipulante rationis lumine, & quod attinet libertatem humanam, ipsa nostra experientia. Etenim quam multa sunt, non dico jam in rebus divinis, sed in ipsa natura, imo in nobis ipsis, de quorum existentia dubitare non possumus, & quorum tamen modum & rationem mens nostra inquirere & scrutari non potest, quin se in laqueos induat, unde ipsa se non potest expedire? Quid clarius quam esse lumen & visionem; sed quid difficilius quam penetrare atque explicare quae sit natura luminis, & quomodo fiat visio? Quid notius quam corporis membra solo nutu voluntatis innumeris modis moveri: Verum quam arduum est capere & docere, qua ratione istud fiat? Aut quid experientia quotidiana magis confirmatum est, quam mulieres praegnantes Phantasiae sola vi prodigiosa multa in foetibus suis creare; & quid tamen super ea re Philosophi commenti sunt, quod tantillum prudenti viro satisfaciat? Ac proinde si in rebus humanis, res ipsa certa esse non desinit, quanquam rei modus nobis incertus, aut plane ignotus sit; multo magis id locum habere debet in rebus divinis, quae sunt a sensibus remotae & mentis nostrae captum longe superant.