Celebriores Controversiae in Primum Sententiarum Ioannis Scoti — Tomus Alter (de Scientia Dei et Ideis)

Article V.

Whether the decree is the medium on the side of the object of the foreknowledge of future things?

Summary.

The opinion of Aureolus, and of the more recent authors; universally rejecting that the decree is the medium on the side of the object of the infallible foreknowledge of future things. Nu. 1. Other objections against the decree, not involving the hypothesis to be purified by free choice. Num. 7. Another opinion of Suarez, maintaining that the predefinition is the medium of the foreknowledge of supernatural acts; yet not the first, but presupposing another. Nu. 10. The text of Scotus, and the foundations for the true opinion: wherein it is shown against Suarez that the subordination of the second cause to the first is overthrown, if the decree of God involve the condition of the cooperation of the second cause to be purified by free choice. Num. 13. The opinions of Herice, Lessius, and Alarcon are examined, who deny the priority of nature, or of the "from which", in the concourse of the first cause. Num. 21. The first argument for our opinion, directed against the person of Suarez and others, who reject predetermination through the extrinsic decree of the divine will, and admit the predefinition of supernatural acts. Num. 23. The other, physical argument for the opinion of Scotus; which is drawn from the potentiality of the created will with respect to such an individual act. Num. 27. The dilution of the opposed arguments. Nume. 30. Satisfaction to other objections, wherein that hypothesis of Scotus is treated, concerning the composition of the divine power with the created free choice, if God were an agent determined to one thing ad extra. Nu. 34.

Confuted hitherto are the other media on the side of the object of the foreknowledge of future things; now there presses a more painstaking examination of that solution which Scotus embraces, namely, of the absolute and unimpedible decree, from which the determinate scibility of the future contingent is produced.

1 Concerning the question at issue: Aureolus, at the place cited, from 1 Sent., dist. 38, art. 1, §. Quid dicendum sit secundum veritatem, vigorously assails the decree, which can be the sufficient medium on the side of the object of the foreknowledge of future things; whose arguments we do not transcribe here for this reason, because they press specially the determination of the divine will, which is the medium of the foreknowledge of wicked acts; concerning which, because of the grave clash of the authors, the following article will be woven in specially.

The whole school of the Jesuits follows Aureolus, with one exception, Vázquez, who judged the decree to be a sufficient, though remote, medium of the infallible divine judgment; in which he plainly fell short of the consequence of the doctrine, as we showed in the preceding article.

But that the decree is not a sufficient medium of the foreknowledge of future things is maintained by Bellarmine lib. 2. De amissione gratiae, cap. 2, 4, et 7; Molina in Concordia, disp. 28 and 32; Leonard Lessius lib. De efficacia gratiae, cap. 3; Francis Albertinus tom. 1. corollariorum, q. 2, theologica, in secundum corollarium ex 4. principio philosophico, à n. 9 usque ad 11; Valentine of Henrique(s), tract. 1. de scientia Dei, disp. 6, cap. 3, praecipuè n. marg. 37.

2 This opinion is first propped up on the ground that such a decree must either be an insufficient medium of the foreknowledge of future things, or must acquire an iron force of predetermining the created will, and of infusing the future consent, which tramples the laws of liberty.

Namely, because either such a decree, by which in Scotus future things are infallibly foreknown, is the will applying the omnipotence of God so that it be present to the created will for operating; without the conjunction of which executing divine faculty, the created cause cannot be understood as in the nearest proximity to influx, because of that essential dependence upon the first principle which it implies.

Which conjunction, or application of the power of God to the created will, so that the latter may be constituted proximally valid for influx, is not placed in the local indistance alone, or in the entitative contact, which befits God by the force of His immensity filling all things; since this kind of conjunction could also subsist, even though no operative force should be available to created things: therefore a composition in the genus of efficient cause is exacted between the executing divine faculty and the created will for the common influx.

Therefore either that decree, applying the power of God so that it be present to the created will for acting, offers, or seeks, the concourse of the second cause to only one side of the contradiction; and thus the created cause would be proximally valid for that side, and not for the opposite; and hence it would incur antecedent necessity, inasmuch as it would belong to the force of a principle proximally furnished for acting.

Or it offers, and provides, the concourse ad utrumlibet; and accordingly in the will thus concurring with the created cause ad utrumlibet, the future consent could not be determinately apprehended.

3 Or that decree, in which in Scotus God inspects future contingents, does not concern the immediate conjunction of the divine power with the created cause for operating; but the very consent of the created will itself. Concerning which a disquisition presses: whether that will of God decrees absolutely the consent of the created will, not involving a condition on the side of the cooperation of the created cause? So that God unimpedibly constitute the future conversion of Peter, with the cooperation of Peter not awaited; and then such a decree would crush the rights of liberty.

Or such a volition of God imports the condition of the cooperation and concourse of the created cause; so that it intends the conversion of Peter upon the hypothesis that Peter be willing to consent, and not otherwise. And then the mere intuition of the divine decree could not afford the medium of the infallible foreknowledge of the conversion of Peter; but the inspection of the cooperation of the created cause would be required.

Which, since in Scotus it does not carry within itself a determinate truth, but rather its cause is in the decree; it follows, that if it is not foreknown in the decree because that decree involves the condition of the cooperation of the created cause: then neither can such a conversion be apprehended in itself; since no free future contingent, in Scotus, acquires within itself a determinate truth, but in the decree alone.

4 Next, secondly, it is shown that such a decree utterly destroys liberty by those efficacious arguments which Scotus frames against his own doctrine in 2. dist. 37, q. 2, §. Iuxta secundam viam, sub numer. margin. a, where he subjoins:

Secondly it is argued thus: that which is determined by another to something has not that perfectly in its own power; the created will, upon the hypothesis, is determined to this by the divine volition; therefore.

The minor is proved; because either one will determines another, and it is not ours that determines the divine; this is evident because the temporal is not the cause of the eternal; therefore the converse; and the proposed conclusion is had.

Or neither determines the other; and then neither will be the moving of the moved; nor will there be an essential order between them.

Nay, if the divine will does not determine ours, as the second argument urges, it could will something that would not come to be, because of our will not according with it.

5 Furthermore, the second way argues thus. That is not contingent because of the relation of itself to some cause, to the outcome of whose cause the superior cause is determined; and the determination of which cause all the inferior causes follow of necessity.

Example; were my will now determined to one side about writing tomorrow; and were it not impedible nor mutable; my writing tomorrow would not be contingent ad utrumlibet, by reason of its relation to my hand; because just as the will is now determined to the other side, so in it virtually are all the inferior causes for the same.

Likewise; since that has been determined, whose determination a determinate effect shall be; the outcome of that effect is not simply indeterminate to either: at least its being is not contingent because of the power of the inferior cause.

But were the divine will the immediate cause of my volition, there would already be some determinate cause with respect to it; because the will of God is eternally determined to one of the contradictories.

And the determination of this cause is necessarily accompanied by the determination of my will with respect to the same; otherwise God's willing this and this not coming to be would stand together: therefore that willing is not contingent ad utrumlibet because of the power of my will.

6 From that doctrine of Scotus, and especially from those things which he there hands down about the essential order between the second cause moved, and the first moving, through the immutable and unimpedible decree, the following objection is furnished.

From the condition of the participated agent it is essentially required that it not be able to influence except inasmuch as it is moved by the first agent; by that motion of an efficacious design, which cannot be at all hindered by a refusing created appetite; nor indeed ought such a decree involve the condition of the cooperation of the created cause, so that it can be the sufficient medium of the foreknowledge of the free consent. Yet it is not in the power of the created will to be moved, or not moved, by the efficacious volition of the uncreated God; therefore neither is that causality of influx free to the created will, which, because of the essential subordination of the second cause to the first, premits an efficacious motion by the absolute decree of God.

This is illustrated by Scotus's example of the hand writing of necessity, because of the antecedent and unimpedible design of the commanding will. For thus the action of writing, although it is free by the relation to the will, is nevertheless necessary by the order to the hand executing such an action; because the hand premits an unimpedible decree about exerting such an action, the supposition of which decree is in no way in the power of the writing hand.

But it is not within the competence of the created will to be moved, or not moved, by the absolute decree; and the created will, upon the hypothesis of the divine determination, remains fixed to one side of the contradiction; therefore it suffers an antecedent and a simply [absolute] necessity.

Other objections against the decree not involving the hypothesis of a condition to be purified by free choice.

7 Moreover; that the composition, or non-composition, of that [decree] cannot in any way be subject to the nod of the created appetite, is evident from the following.

Because were such a supposition able by any reason to be submitted to the created will; it would be chiefly by reason of some act of our will meriting to be thus premoved by God; but concerning any act of positive disposition, in view of which God approaches this absolute decree, the same disquisition presses: by what reason is it in the power of the created will?

Since, because of the essential subordination of the created will to God, the absolute decree of God is also necessarily pre-required, unimpedibly decreeing the futurition of an act which behaves like a positive disposition, in view of which God efficaciously destines the created will to assent; we must therefore halt at that absolute statute of God, which falls not at all under the power of the created will, and with which premised, it is not within the competence of the created will to dissent from such a motion; and hence the antecedent and absolute necessity can by no escape be eluded.

If you object out of the doctrine of Cabrera of the Hieronymian order among the Spaniards, 3rd part, quaestion. 18, art. 4, disputat. 2, §. 11, numer. 137, who asserts that the efficacy of prevenient grace hangs upon the negative disposition of liberty of our will, namely upon the negation of resistance. For in that author the will of itself confers that it not resist the efficacious help of God; on account of which quasi-negative preparation foreseen by God, the will is granted the efficacious help with Cabrera, which the refusing will is deprived of; which is foreknown by God as restored to efficacious motion.

So in the matter at hand: the supposition of the decree which God makes concerning the consent of the will could be asserted to be free to the created will because of the negation of resistance; on account of which God made, or constituted, such a supposition of the decree, which decree He would not have made had He not foreseen such a negation of resistance.

That manner of speaking is widely refuted by Alvarez in opusc. de concordia liberi arbitrij, lib. 3, cap. 6; but we forestall the frivolous evasion thus, with no difficulty.

Because every disposition, whether positive or negative, under that respect under which it appears to be the substrate of a form, of which it is the disposition, ought to precede that form; as is evident. But that negation of resistance in no way antecedes the decree, which is assigned to be the sufficient medium of the foreknowledge of future things; since it does not involve the condition of the cooperation of the created cause, and hence does not await the will as about to consent or not; but by the energy of an inimpedible [power] infuses the consent.

For were it to involve the condition of a second cause cooperating to be purified by free choice, it could by no reason be the sufficient medium for the infallible apprehension of the future consent, as we plainly uncovered in what precedes; therefore the composition of the created will with the decree of God is not in the power of our will by reason of that negative disposition of non-resistance which Cabrera invented.

Next; since the negation of resistance, or the will not going to dissent from the decree, is a future contingent, the difficulty is not put to sleep; nay the same presses concerning such a future: how is it foreknown by God? Whether in the determinate truth of such a future? which we denied in the preceding article with the decree set aside. Or in a decree antecedent to such a truth, inasmuch as it is the principle of its scibility? And hence the composition of the absolute decree, which is altogether outside the power of free choice, could by no reason be avoided.

If, therefore, the future negation of resistance does not import an objective determination, which could be the reason on the side of the object for the infallible foreknowledge before the decree; therefore it cannot be apprehended by God before the decree, and hence neither can that negation of resistance, known by God, avail to be the reason why God thus freely premoves our choice.

8 Thirdly it is argued from the doctrine of Scotus in 1. dist. 39, q. unica, §. Tertia positio dicit, num. margin. 12, whose text we proposed supra art. 2, sub num. marg. 8, where he establishes that the created will does not influence except as moved by God; so that were God a necessary, and not a free, agent, the created will by that force of its quidditative subjection, by which it relates to the first cause, would act not freely but of necessity: from which such an objection is drawn forth.

Were God a necessary agent, and not a free one, and hence one also necessarily compelling the created will to one side of the contradiction; He would behave with respect to the will in no other way than He in fact does, upon the supposition of Scotus's principles, when He decrees the future consent of the created will, with the science of its cooperation not awaited.

For this seems indubitable: that on the side of the consent of the created will no intrinsic mutation responding to a necessarily operating will is assignable in that hypothesis; since the consent is compared to the will de facto upon the same account (when Scotus pronounces the created will to be a free principle) as also in that supposition which premits God to be a certain agent necessarily drawing, by the force of an unimpedible decree, our will to one side of the contradiction.

If you respond out of what was prescribed in the aforesaid art. 2, under marginal number 41, that in the impulse of the will an intrinsic physical mutation is not exhibited in that hypothesis that it would of necessity flow forth from God and the created will; but that the act has the same intrinsic character on its own part, whether it be elicited necessarily or freely; and that only a difference should be assigned in the will itself, or the impelling faculty, considered in act first.

Which disparity is placed in this: that were God to concur with the created will as a necessary agent, He would not apply His power to the created will with indifference in act first to contraries and contradictories, but would fasten it in act first to one side only. Which is otherwise upon the supposition of the Catholic truth, which professes God to be a free principle ad extra; for He adapts His power to the will with an indifference ad utrumlibet, which contributes to this: that the will, in the account of the first act, would behave otherwise when necessitated by God than it does de facto, when it is freely premoved by the first cause to influx.

But contrarily; because, given that God decrees beforehand absolutely, or institute, the consent of the created will without the foreknowledge of the cooperation of that same will, the like preparation of the divine concourse toward either side of the contradiction seems vain and fictitious.

For then such an application of the divine power ad utrumlibet, whether to contraries and contradictories, would be usefully and wisely brought forward when God does not premove the created will by an antecedent decree, but leaves it in the hand of His own counsel, that it may contract itself at its own discretion to either side of the contradiction, and for each nod avail itself of the aid provided for it; for were God about to predefine unimpedibly either side of the contradiction, with the cooperation of the second cause not awaited, to what purpose was the concourse ad utrumlibet provided for the created will?

9 Fourthly it is argued, from the aforesaid doctrine of Scotus, that sufficient grace is destroyed. Because that virtue, or power, of acting is asserted to be insufficient for the act, which in the whole collection of the supposita, none excepted, does not break forth into act; as is certain, and constituted in every philosophy. But that absolute decree destroyed, which Scotus asserts; no sufficient grace is assignable, by the force of which a sinner is in fact converted; therefore that whole collection of men whose conversion God does not intend by the absolute and premoving design of His own will does not receive sufficient grace unto salvation.

That Henrice(s) labors to establish, 1st part, tract. 2, disp. 19, cap. 2, n. 8, out of that passage of Isaiah cap. 5, where God is introduced expostulating with the people about the transgression of the law in these words: Nunc ergo habitatores Hierusalem, et viri Iuda iudicate inter me, et vineam meam; quid est, quod debui vltra facere vineae meae, et non feci ei? An quòd expectaui vt faceret vvas, et fecit labruscas.

Wherein, given that by the vineyard, with which the Lord expostulates, is understood the house of Judah, and Benjamin, and, under these two tribes, the whole collection of the faithful of Synagogue and Church, the following argumentation is produced:

Either God, making that decree as a pre-definition, proceeded concerning the salvation and honorable operation of all the faithful; and hence no one has committed a deadly sin, nor has any vine of this vineyard brought forth wild grapes; since the right and pious operation is asserted to be unimpedibly connected with the decree of God instituting such a pious operation.

Or God has not decreed by the absolute and unimpedible design of His will the pious and right operation in all the vines of this vineyard; and thus it would not be true what the Lord so seriously insinuates: that He ought to have done nothing further for His vineyard, and did not do it. For one could complain of that; that God could have so premoved all the powers of His vineyard to good by an absolute decree, that they should bring forth the sweet grapes of good works, and not the wild grapes of impieties.

Lastly, that decree which antecedes the consent of the created will is assailed out of Chrysostom, Hom. 12. ad Hebraeos, where he says: Quòd non antecedit Deus sua voluntate nostras, ne nostrum laedatur arbitrium.

And out of Damascene lib. 2 de fide, c. 30, where he teaches. Deum praescire omnia, non praedefinire; ea enim, quae in nostra potestate et arbitrio sita sunt, praescit, non praefinit; quia virtuti vim non affert. The opinion of Suárez, maintaining that the predefinition is the medium on the side of the object of the foreknowledge of supernatural acts; yet not the first, but presupposing another.

But the predefinition is not the first medium of knowing in Suárez, but a right, conditional science is premised. For before God infallibly institutes the conversion of Peter, He apprehends by conditional science; that if He be excited by such a congruous vocation, he will infallibly be converted. So Francis Suárez opusc. 2. de praescientia futurorum contingentium, lib. 1, cap. 6, num. marg. 4, to whom many of the more recent Jesuits adhere, who all constantly teach that, with such foreknowledge of conditionals set aside, the predefinition of supernatural acts would injure liberty.

Which difference interposes between the opinion of Suárez, and the sentiment of Scotus That opinion is commended by the difference which interposes between it and the sentiment of Scotus, who asserts that God premove the created will to act by the efficacious decree of His will.

Premotion in Scotus is the causality of God ad extra, altering the object. For such a premotion, which is furnished through the medium of the uncreated volition of God, as a causality, and by the use of the executing divine faculty, compels the will physically to one side of the contradiction; so that it is not within its competence to strive toward the opposite side, because of the lack of that physical premotion which is required for the influx of the second cause, because of its essential subordination, and dependence upon the first moving cause.

In Suárez only an internal predefinition is admitted But in Suárez, and his adherents, the predefinition of supernatural acts does not behave like the use or the causality of the divine power, or of the executing faculty, which would fasten immediately ad extra, or would physically, or by a physical influx, compel the created will to one side of the contradiction; since it only decrees the supernatural act, by the mode of an internal and immanent design, or of a mere intention, not passing, by the force of its causality, to the external execution that would alter the condition of the acting of the created appetite; therefore the aforesaid manner of speaking of Suárez is not intercepted by those knavish tricks, from which Scotus and his men scarcely extricate themselves.

Ground of Suárez: that the predefinition is not the first medium of foreknowledge. 11 But that such a predefinition cannot be the first medium on the side of the object of the foreknowledge of future things, but that it necessarily premits the truth of those things, as it is attained by conditional science, is thus shown.

A conditional science of the object is premised in Suárez. Because one who acts through intellect and will, unless he conduct himself imprudently, cannot efficaciously institute some end without foreknowing the means by which the end ought infallibly to be committed to execution; therefore, if that statute of God, by which He predefines the supernatural motion of the created will, is credited with such an energy as that it be implicatory, upon the hypothesis, that such an act of the created will be not put into being; an infallible science is necessarily pre-required in God, through which He should know that congruity of vocations which the created will will not at all reject; otherwise God, imprudent, would make a rash statute about the conversion of Peter, were He not to foreknow: if I shall excite Peter thus, or thus, he will infallibly be converted.

The predefinition is asserted. Suarez. 12 Moreover, the predefinition of supernatural acts Suarez eruditely defends, Opuscul. 1, On the aids of divine grace, book 1, chapter 16, number 5, where he shows that it pertains to the efficacy of the power and preordination of God that He can pre-establish absolutely the act of the created will; so that the opposite would be to enervate, or to elevate, the most powerful and hidden powers of the wisdom and providence of God; and so to subject the power of God to the created appetite, that, the condition of created liberty being preserved, it be not in God's power to decree its act absolutely.

Against the mind of Augustine, so often inculcating that it belongs to the omnipotence of God, that He be able to soften the rebellious strivings of man unto repentance by an unimpedible force; especially lib. 1. ad Simplicianum, quaest. 2, where he teaches; that God was able to bend the soul of Pharaoh to a good issue, had He willed. Which he follows out luminously in the books, de gratia et libero arbitrio; de praedestinatione sanctorum; et de bono perseuerantiae; so that nothing is more familiar to Augustine.

There is added an elegant and pressing testimony of Augustine, ex tomo 7. libr. de Corrept. et gratia, c. 14, where, speaking of the election of Saul as King, he subjoins. Quando Deus voluit Sauli regnum dare, sic erat in potestate Israëlitarũ subdere se memorato viro, siue non subdere, Quòd vtique in eorum erat positum voluntate, vt etiam Deo valerent resistere; qui tamen hoc non facit nisi per ipsorum hominum voluntates, sine dubio habens humanorum cordium, quò placeret inclinandorum, omnipotentissimam voluntatem. Thus Augustine.

But toward what would that most omnipotent energy of the divine will, concerning the created free choice, tend, were it able to decree beforehand or institute the designs of free choice, or of the human heart, only by a conditional velleity, and not by an absolute decree?

And the following words of Augustine press this the more. Si ergo, cùm voluerit Reges in terris Deus constituere, magis habet in potestate voluntates hominum, quã ipsi suas. What could pressing more?

And a little before, in the same cap. 14, the Holy Doctor speaking of the assumption of David as King of the Israelites, and weighing those words of Abisai to David ex 1. Paralipom. 12. Tui sumus Dauid, et tecum futuri fili Iesse. Augustine subjoins. Nunquid ille posset aduersari voluntati Dei, et non potiùs eius facere voluntatem, qui in eius corde operatus est per spiritum suum, quo indutus est, vt hoc vellet, diceret et faceret. Et subdit. Ac per hoc Dominus omnipotens, qui erat cum illo adduxit istos vt eum Regem constituerent. Et quomodo adduxit, nunquid corporalibus vllis vinculis alligauit? Intus egit, corda tenuit, corda mouit, eosque voluntatibus eorũ, quas ipse in illis operatus est, traxit.

Hence also tend the words of Augustine at the beginning of the same cap. 14. Deus, cui volenti saluũ facere nullum hominum resistit arbitrium. Et in cap. 12. in fine. Fortissimo quippe dimisit, ac permisit facere, quod vellet; infirmis seruauit ipso donante, inuictissimè quod bonum est vellent, nec hoc deserere inuictissimè nollent. Let every prudent man weigh: whether these voices of Augustine, concerning the designs of God for the salvation of men, imbibe a conditional volition, to be purified at the nod of the created choice, with respect to the future being or not being?

That assertion countless testimonies of Sacred Writ confirm; for in Job 12 it is said: Qui immutat cor principum. And in Prov. 21. Cor Regis in manu Dei est, et quaecunque voluerit inclinabit illud.

There is added also that celebrated prayer of the Church ex Dominica, 4. post Pentecoste. Ad te nostras, etiam rebelles, compelle propitius voluntates.

Let Suárez be consulted eodem opusc. 1. lib. 3. à n. marg. 8, where he shows that it seems incredible that the consent of the immaculate Virgin to the conception of the Redeemer was not absolutely praedefinitum by God; but that the decree awaited the consent of the Virgin by a conditional velleity. For with that word, and with such emphasis, Paul thundered ad Galat. 4, that God awaited that point of the fullness of the destined time, that He might destine His Son for the redemption of the world; in those words. Postquam venit plenitudo temporis misit Deus Filium suum.

Add; that those arguments by which he disproves the predefinition of supernatural acts also censure the absolute volition of giving glory before the foreknowledge of merits; for they intend that that absolute decree infringes the rights of liberty. Which being premised, it would also consequently have to be asserted that that almost immense heap of graces and merits which the divine preordination destined for the Blessed Virgin flowed forth from an inefficacious volition of the divine maternity, and not from the absolute purpose of her election to an inaccessible degree of glory, on account of the dignity of the Mother of the Word. Whatever Vazquez may snarl, 3rd part, tome 1, disp. 74, chapter 6, num. 39; for one may not tarry on these things.

The text of Scotus, and the foundations for the true opinion, wherein it is shown that the subordination of the second cause to the first is overthrown, if the decree of God concerning the actual concourse involve the condition of the cooperation of the second cause to be purified by free choice.

IN the preceding article we proposed what Scotus in the Oxford writing on the Books of the Sentences had asserted concerning the medium on the side of the object of the foreknowledge of future things; now that text is to be transcribed which he furnishes us in the books of the Reportationes Parisienses, which he afterwards published; so that it may become clear even openly how consonant the mind of Scotus was concerning the absolute decree not involving the condition of the cooperation of the created cause, which he assigns as the medium of the foreknowledge of future things. Thus, therefore, it stands in the said work of the Reportationes, or Repetitiones, of the questions on the four Books of Sentences, lib. 1. dist. 38, q. 2, §. Dico igitur ad quaestionem, n. mar. 7, of the edition of Hugh Cavellus.

13 I say; that whatever precedes the act of the will in God is merely natural; since therefore the essence of God offers all quiddities: therefore God knows all by a natural necessity in simple intelligence.

That simple intelligence does not determine the intellect to the cognition of a complex truth, unless it itself is included in the account of the terms, or follows necessarily from the truth included in the account of the terms; but contingent truths have neither relation to simple cognition, because nothing is known from the account of the terms, nor does it follow necessarily from the virtue included in the account of the terms, unless it be necessary: therefore before the act of the will God is indifferent with respect to future contingents, just as I am with respect to this, that the stars be equal.

14 Therefore the natural apprehension of simples is followed by either willing, or nilling; and thus He can choose the union of the extremes, or the division; and thus He wills Socrates to be blessed, uniting Socrates and blessedness; and He divides blessedness from Judas; and then He knows the complex truth.

But this can be understood in two ways: either that the intellect of God sees which part His will will choose, and thus it sees the determination of the will, and its omnipotence; just as if I knew that tomorrow you will wish to run, and your will is immutable, and that it can be impeded by none; then I would know that you are going to run tomorrow.

15 But because this seems to posit a discourse, it can be said secondly: that this proposition (Sortes is blessed) offered to the divine will is neutral before the acceptance of the will; when it accepts, then it is a certain made truth; and in whatever way this is true, the essence of God is the ratio of knowing that truth.

And thus God knows that truth, either in the first mode; because this is a truth made by the will conjoining blessedness with Sortes: or in the second mode, that by the act of the intellect the extremes are conjoined, and the proposition still remains neutral, and by the acceptance of the will it has been made true, and then the essence is the ratio of knowing that made truth.

But, you ask, does God know infallibly? I say: that because His will is immutable and omnipotent, therefore whatever He knows is infallible. Or if it is posited that the essence is the ratio of knowing this contingent necessarily, the same is the ratio of determining the will.

16 To this text from the Reportata, or the Parisian Repristinations, besides those things which we noted in the preceding article, transcribing the letter from the first book of the Sentences of the Oxoniense, which coheres with and corresponds to the whole present text; the following things are to be observed.

First; upon those words, from num. 14. But this can be understood in two ways; either that the intellect of God sees which part "His will will choose, and thus He sees the determination of the will, and its omnipotence. Where Scotus seems to concede that the divine intellect sees the determination of His will for some moment of reason before such a volition is exercised; for those words seem to signify this. The intellect of God sees which part His will will choose. Because the verb (eliget), since it is in the future, appears to insinuate that Scotus holds that the divine decree is known as it were in the state of futurition before it exists in the thing.

But it must be said that that futurition does not fall upon the act, but upon the object; so that it is an actual, and exercised termination to a future object for some difference of time. For the decree of God is not knowable according to its determinate contraction to one side of the contradiction, before its exercised existence and actual termination to such an object; because the free propositions of the divine will, before the actual as-it-were budding forth of reason, or of the logic, from the faculty of impulsion, or of appetite, do not have a determinate truth which could be the infallible medium of foreknowledge; as we showed more fully below in the following distinction, on the foreknowledge of future conditionals, article 5, especially from marginal number 17 up to 20.

That, however, this is the genuine interpretation of the aforesaid letter, is clear from the context itself under the same number 14. Just as if I knew that tomorrow you will wish to run; and your will is immutable, and that it could be impeded by none: then I would know that you are going to run tomorrow. Here it is evidently apparent that Scotus speaks of an actual and exercised volition, and of an absolute resolve of running tomorrow; for if not only the running, but also the resolve of running were future in Peter, an infallible science of the future running could not be had, even if it were foreknown that the will would be immutable and unimpedible regarding the execution of those things which Peter had decreed absolutely: since for the present he had constituted nothing about having a future running, but was potential to either.

The apt interpretation of the aforesaid text is also confirmed from the preceding article, under marginal number 11, where we transcribed the letter from the Oxoniense expressly proceeding about the science of the decree as present, and not future; for thus it has it. The divine intellect sees the determination of the divine will; namely that it will be so for (A.), because that will determines it to be so for it; for it knows that will to be immutable and unimpedible. Where clearly that word (determines) is of the present; for he does not say, it will determine, of the future.

Secondly to be observed, in those words of the letter of the present article transcribed under num. 15. But because this seems to posit a discourse, it can be said secondly. That this text, which is somewhat obscure, receives its elucidation from the text of the preceding article transcribed under marginal number 12, where Scotus has it thus. Or otherwise, because this way seems to posit a certain discourse in the divine intellect, which having sought from the intuition of the determination of the will, and of its immutability, concludes this to be.

Where Scotus rejects that foreknowledge of futures which savors somewhat of discourse; insofar as from two acts distinguished by reason, of which one comprehends the decree of the divine will, and the other inspects the attribute of immutability, by reason of which any shadow of vicissitude stands in God's way, so that it fall short of the absolute resolve: from these two acts of science, as it were from premises, it would infer the infallibility of the future object.

Therefore Scotus drives away this way of upholding the foreknowledge of futures, and receives two others: either that the divine intellect proposes to its will contingent complexes, as neutral with respect to truth or falsity, and that the divine will, immutably the complex proposed by the intellect objectively toward being or not being, renders it determinately true and intelligible. Or that the divine intellect offers to its will terms contingently, and composable toward either, without an actual nexus and composition of terms; and that the will of God makes this complex, because the will is a collative, or comparative potency, which by the union of terms can produce in objective and volited being.

For to this refer those words of Scotus, transcribed in this text, under n. 14.

Therefore to the natural apprehension of simples there follows either to will or not to will; and thus it can choose the union or the division of the extremes, and it divides blessedness from Iuda, and then it knows the complex truth. And those words also from number 15. And thus God knows that truth; because this is a truth made by the will conjoining blessedness with Sortes. Where Scotus calls the act of prosecution a conjunction, because it makes the conjunction of Sortes and blessedness; and the act of flight he names division, because it divides blessedness from Iuda the damned.

17 Thirdly to be observed; in those words from num. 15. And then the essence is the ratio of knowing that made truth. This letter is also explained from the pronouncements of Scotus transcribed by us in the preceding article under marginal number 12, where Scotus has it thus.

Not that those truths move the divine intellect, nor even their terms, to apprehending such a truth; because then the divine intellect would be cheapened, because it would suffer from another apart from its essence: but as the divine essence is the ratio of knowing simples, so also such complexes. Where the Doctor intends that God does not apprehend any created thing in itself, or by the intentional motive force of it, but by the motion of the Deity; with a similar reason to that by which, in the ninth controversy on the Vision of God, distinct. 3, on the Act of vision, subdistinct. 2, ar. 4 and 5, we showed that possible and future creatures are inspected by the blessed through the beatific act not in themselves, but in God; because creatures do not terminate the beatific gaze by the motive force of their intelligibility (which is to be seen in themselves), but by the motion of the Deity as clearly and quiddatively visible.

This being supposed, we say: that future contingents (even before the decree contracting the contingent complex, and determining it to one side of the contradiction) are not foreknown in themselves, or by their own motive force, in such a way that the truth of such futures would move the divine intellect, so that it be terminated to such an object: but they are foreknown by the motion of the Deity, which, as conjoined with the absolute decree establishing the futurition of the thing, performs the function, as it were, of an impressed species for science, and the expression of future creatures in God.

Wherefore that text of Scotus about the cheapness of the divine intellect, if it were to regard some created being in itself, or by its intentional motion, and not by the motion of the Deity performing the duties of a species; is to be understood according to those things elucidated by us in this controversy on the Science of God, distinct. 1, ar. 2, on the science of possible creatures in God, especially under marginal number 12, where from the mind of Scotus it has been shown that it implies in God some science which is not Theological, or which does not inspect creatures in God and by the intentional motion of the Deity, but by the motion of the truth participated from creatures, which is to see creatures in themselves. For otherwise the science of God would hang from creatures as from a specifying motive object; on which see the citation, the article on the science of possibles in God, under num. 13 and 14. Which dependence of the science of God upon a created object as upon a motive and specifying object, so that with the object removed some intrinsic predicate of God could be taken away; Scotus rightly called the cheapness of the intellect of God, and that it would suffer from a created object; for Scotus judged such a dependence to be a thing unworthy, that the divine intellect should suffer from a moving and specifying object.

From what has been said about the science of futures in God, and not in themselves; it follows that it does not stand in the consequence of the doctrine of those who, while admitting the beatific vision of future contingents in the Word, deny in God the science of futures in the Word essentially taken, or in the essence of God, as conjoined with the free resolve immuting creatures to futurition. Since that determination on the side of the object, or the objective infallibility, which suffices for the termination of the beatific act, which imbibes an infallible judgment; would also suffice to terminate the divine science regarding future creatures in the Word, or in the essence of God. On which see those things we treat below in this article, under n. 26, assailing Molina and Suárez falling short of the consequence of doctrine. 18 Fourthly to be observed, in those words from n. 15.

By the act of the intellect the extremes are conjoined, and the proposition still remains neutral; by the acceptance of the will it has been made true, and then the essence is the ratio of knowing that made truth. But why did God will infallibly? I say, that because His will is immutable and omnipotent.

Where Scotus plainly establishes that every ratio of the knowable and of the true in a future contingent is produced from the good pleasure of the divine will; but the infallibility of the divine judgment regarding such objects is sought from an immutable or unimpedible will, which it would not be if it involved the condition of the cooperation of a created cause.

But because Scotus asserts that from the predefinition of God, as from an unimpedible principle, is drawn the determinate scibility of the future contingent; and that the absolute will of God can be brought down into an efficacious resolve by the mode of intention and by the mode of execution; it remains to inquire, from which decree does the pronouncement of Scotus proceed?

Wherefore I premise: that every decree of the divine will, from which as from a principle the truth of the future flows forth, must be asserted to be prevenient and antecedent to that truth or scibility of the object which it produces; since every principle under that habit of causality under which it inflows into its principiates, whether according to the real mutation and existence, or according to the objective existence and mutation, must go before its effect; as is more evident than to need proof.

Therefore, if with Scotus the absolute will of God pertaining to the order of intention produces the future in objective being; or accepts it as determinately about to be, for some difference of time; (in which sole ratio of futurition, sought from the decree unimpedibly, is posited with Scotus the whole truth of such an object,) although that will pertained to the order of intention alone, and meanwhile of resolve, nor would the thing be drawn immediately by the force of causality from the eminence of the cause to the state of real and positive actuality; still such a will must go before, according to the order of intention, that object which it constitutes in the being of determinately true and intelligible.

Therefore what we assert of the will of God according to the order of intention, we consequently pronounce also of the same will according to the order of execution. Namely, that the decree of God, insofar as it performs the function of the causality of the divine faculty executing ad extra, must go before, by a priority of nature, the influx of the second cause, which is produced from the decree of God as from the action of the same first cause. For the school of Scotus constitutes the action of God ad extra, not in the influx of the second cause as hanging from God, but in the very uncreated volition of God; consequently it constantly defends, in accordance with what it had asserted of action as such in all its community and abstraction, that it does not suffer inexistence in the thing acted upon, but inheres in the agent.

Wherefore just as, with Scotus, the executing faculty of God, or its operative potency, in no way dissents from the attribute of will, as we shall unfold more diffusely in the controversy on the Omnipotence of God; so also the use, action, or causality of such a faculty can be nothing else (if it intrinsically coheres with God) than that very uncreated and inelicited volition, inexisting in God from eternity by identity, and drawing the object from nothing in the course of time.

19 Moreover; just as that volition which is asserted, by the mode of intention, to be the principle of the determinate truth of futures, must be absolute, and not involving the condition of the cooperation of a created cause; otherwise it could not be the principle of infallible futurition, as we have often shown; so by a like reason, that volition which, by the mode of the use, or of the causality of the executing potency of God, attains the object, must also elicit it so as to be in it unimpedibly, and in the sense of composition, nor involving the condition of the cooperation of a created cause; unless we should wish to invert the essential subordination of the second cause to the first, so that we assert the second cause determining itself first in the order of nature, the first indeed as a follower, and first in name only, but second in reality.

But that the opinion of Scotus may be established more firmly; there must be premised from Suárez the exposition of the opposed opinion, which he delivers in Opusc. 1, on the Auxiliaries, lib. 1. cap. 15, marginal number 3, asserting: that God offers the concourse to the created will for acting in a confused and potential reason for this reason: that although the decree of God does not predetermine the created will to such a species of act, nor does it absolutely decree that species of impulse, for example, assent; but involving the condition, if the created will should wish to cooperate. Nevertheless, because God most clearly foresees all the individual acts which the created will is able to elicit here and now, and under that confluence of circumstances, or composition; He applies His potency to concurring with the created will toward this action in number, and not another of the same species; therefore such an application of the divine potency to the concourse is not to be judged potential and confused, but contracted and most special, since it regards and intends such an individual of action, and not another within the same species.

20 But the aforesaid mode of holding, insofar as it constitutes that concerning contracting the created will to this action in the individual, and not to another within the same species of impulse, is to be discussed below in the present article; and it must be treated by us that it does not cohere with the doctrine of the same Suárez about the volition of God involving the condition of the cooperation of a created cause.

But as to that which he asserts of the decree offering the concourse under that condition, if the created will consent; now it must be shown that, together with the aforesaid pronouncement, the subordination of the second cause to the first cannot stand; but that the action of the creature necessarily antecedes, by a priority of what and of nature, the concourse of God.

Because when two concauses are composed toward a concourse under condition; that one acts by a priority of nature which applies the condition required by the confluence. For example; the resolve of Peter to walk with Paul, if Paul should consent, just as he applies the locomotive potency of Peter, not absolutely, but from the hypothesis that Paul wills, so the absolute will of Paul, by an order and anteriority of nature, antecedes the absolute decree of Peter, so that he attain local motion. Which is done for this reason: that Peter so adapts himself to the nod of Paul, that he does not decree the walk, except from the hypothesis of the will of Paul establishing such a concourse of walking: wherefore just as Paul purifies that confluence about walking, and renders it absolute, while Peter contracts himself efficaciously toward walking; so the walking of Paul antecedes, by a priority of nature, the walking of Peter.

But the will of God applies the concourse to the created will with an explicit, or implicit hypothesis, of the cooperation of the creature; therefore while the created will purifies that as-it-were confluential application of the divine potency, and contracts it to assent, which of itself was indifferently pre-stood toward dissent, it antecedes, by a priority of nature, the absolute and efficacious volition of God; and consequently also the influx which proceeds from God by the mode of the use of the divine executing faculty.

And thus some assignable instant of nature could be posited, in which the assent of the created will could be conceived as hanging from a created cause, and not from God; which although in every participated being it bears an absurdity, yet in supernatural motions it sounds more dissonantly; as is perspicuous.

The opinions of Herice, Lessius, and Alarcón are shaken out, denying a priority of nature in the concourse of the first cause.

21 Wherefore Valentin de Herice, 1. part. tract. 1. on the Science of God, disput. 6. cap. 3. num. 47, does not approve the doctrine of Suárez, which he even judges insufficient for untying the knot; indeed, that it had given an occasion of offense to adversaries.

Wherefore, exhibiting another elucidation of the aforesaid view, he adds, under num. 48, that that hypothesis concerning the cooperation of the second cause which the will of God imports does not carry the character of an antecedent or predetermining condition, but of a concomitant one. Which he illustrates by the example of supernatural habits, in that hypothesis that they were endowed with reason and will; for then such habits would so adapt their operative force to the will for concourse, that they would predetermine our will, nor would they will, nor could they, since such a force of predetermining is not available to them; and consequently they would exhibit a simultaneous concourse with the will.

But Herice ministers slight succors to Suárez; for the example does not elide the force of the opposition. For if, with reason and liberty, a supernatural habit flourished, and offered to the will as it were as a concause the concourse to contraries and contradictories indeterminate, importing the condition of the cooperation of the will; by what reason could it be done, that the impulse of the will purifying the condition would not contract, by a priority of nature, the habit to such a species of influx, which habit, before the foreknowledge of the cooperation of the will, had intended, not absolutely, but conditionally? Wherefore Herice vainly labors to open the unknown by the more unknown.

But if you respond on behalf of Suárez: that the contraction of the concause of an efficient cause can be understood without a priority of nature in the concourse of the other comprinciple determining to such a species of causality.

Just as the intellect, which is pure potency in the genus of intelligibles, and altogether indeterminate toward the birth of such a notion, is contracted by the other concause, namely by the intelligible species, without a predetermination, or a presupposition of the influx of such a species: otherwise the vital act, namely intellection, would be pre-conceived as hanging from the species, before it was from the intellect, which is the vital faculty.

Next; the agent intellect is a potential principle toward the effecting of this rather than another impressed species; but it is determined by the material phantasm, which is illuminated by the agent intellect, and elevated as the instrumental comprinciple of the impressed species; yet such a contraction of the agent intellect subsists without a priority of the causality of the phantasm itself contracting the universality, or potentiality, of the agent intellect; for otherwise the causality of the instrumental principle would go before, by a priority of nature, the influx of the principal cause.

But the aforesaid instances do not aid Suárez; for the causality of the phantasm contracting the agent intellect to such a species of intentional influx is not posterior by nature to the causality of the agent intellect; because the phantasm does not apply to the agent intellect, nor offer to it a concourse indeterminate toward contraries and contradictories, but altogether contracted to such a species of intentional causality; which we likewise asserted of the possible intellect compared to the intelligible species with respect to the generation of the mental word.

For if those concauses, which hold themselves on the side of the object, and contract the indifference of the intellect toward the production of the image of this rather than another object, composed the agent and possible intellect toward operating only conditionally, and from the hypothesis of the cooperation of the potency; with the aforesaid application of such comprinciples holding themselves on the side of the object with an indifference toward contraries and contradictories premised, a priority of nature in the influx of the intellect could not be avoided: if the intellective faculty should purify the conditional application of the concause holding itself on the side of the object, and contract it to such a species of influx and not another.

By a similar reason, as the created will purifies the condition which the decree of God involves, defining the assent of Peter, if Peter wills; endowed with that application of the divine concourse toward dissent, so that, the substance of the same divine decree surviving, Peter can in fact dissent, and in the sense of composition with the decree.

22 That, however, neither is the assertion of a decree involving a condition to be purified by free choice avoided, it being granted that God and the creature come together equally and simultaneously to operate, so that neither is God moved by the creature to such a species of influx, nor conversely the creature by God; is clear from those things which we treated above in art. 2, of this distin., under marginal number 63.

Where, against the pronouncements of Lessius and Alarcón, we showed that the aforesaid authors either precisely defend: that the eternal decree immuting objectively the assent of free choice imports a hypothesis to be purified by the created will; or that such a decree is made free, predefinitive, and predeterminative.

Whence that assertion about the simultaneous cooperation of the first and second cause toward acting is pulled up by the roots, if the disputation is recalled or drawn back to the resolve from eternity immuting objectively the act of our will toward being or not being; insofar as if such a decree involves in that moment of eternity the hypothesis to be purified by free choice, it must be that also in time the executing action of God is contracted by the action of free choice. Or if the divine decree immutes our acts objectively toward absolute futurition, not involving the condition of the cooperation of free choice; that would be absolutely to pre-establish and predetermine the acts of free choice.

Wherefore that paint of the solution, or the painted evasion, which the adversaries have devised, about the simultaneous, and as it were blind, composition of the first and second cause toward acting, without any determination on the side of some comprinciple; utterly vanishes, if the disputation is recalled to the eternal decree of God immuting objectively the acts of free choice toward a determinate being or not being, involving, or not involving, the condition to be purified by free choice.

But if it be objected: that that decree immuting objectively the operation of free choice toward futurition is not executing; but pertaining to the order of mere internal intention, from which the physical predetermination of free choice cannot be sought.

That would be to fall back into the position of Suárez about the predefinition of acts without immediate execution; which opinion we refuted at length from n. 23, as being of that kind which, on account of the inconsequence of the doctrine, is driven away by the majority of Jesuit authors.

The first argument for our opinion, pressing Suárez ad hominem, and others who reject predetermination by the extrinsic decree of the divine will; and who receive the predefinition of supernatural acts.

23 Premising the foundations laid down, we judge the more probable the opinion of Scotus holding that, in the absolute and antecedent decree of the divine will, future contingents are foreknown by God without prejudice to freedom. So all those authors whom we shall cite in the following article, asserting that future contingents of depraved acts are known by God in the absolute decree of futurition, the moral malice being the substrate; excepting those who subscribe to Scotus, Durandus, in 1. distin. 38. qu. 3, and from the more recent theologians Villegas, Primarius Complutensis, lib. on God as one, controversy 3. cap. 2 and 3, where he treats at length that future contingents do not have truth in themselves, but in the decree.

Therefore it must be strenuously maintained by us that future contingents are foreknown by God, not only in that predefinition by the mode of mere intention, and of the internal absolute resolve of the divine will, which Suárez asserts; but as it performs the function of use ad extra, or of causality, of the divine executing faculty.

Because if the internal predefinition of supernatural acts, which is affirmed to be the absolute resolve decreeing the futurition of such acts, nor involving a condition on the side of the object, does not conflict with freedom, indeed and even it must be conceded from the sense of the holy Fathers; the consequence of doctrine urges, that neither should the absolute will of God, by the mode of execution or concourse ad extra of the executing potency, diminish the rights of freedom; since all those instances which militate against that will by the mode of execution also assault the predefinition by the mode of intention. Which I thus lay open against Suárez and his followers.

Because therefore the will of God, by the mode of influx ad extra prefining the assent of the created will, not involving the condition of the cooperation of a created cause, conflicts for this reason: that such a decree would import an antecedent supposition, which would not be subject to the command and nod of the created cause, and which would necessarily infer a created assent. But the absolute will, by the mode of intention, although it does not immediately execute the assent of the created will toward which it efficaciously and absolutely intends; is yet such that it unimpedibly infers that will, by the mode of execution, immediately attaining by physical influx the assent of the created will absolutely predefined, and not expecting a condition; so that it implies that God thus predefines the assent of Peter, and that Peter dissent, or that God does not apply His executing faculty, so that it unimpedibly obtains the assent.

Therefore, if the decree, by the mode of concourse ad extra, injures freedom; because it is not in the power of the will to be composed, or not composed, with this absolute volition of God premoving toward assent; so also the internal predefinition, which is also not subject to free choice (for it is not in the hand of man to be predefined, or not predefined, toward assent,) and which infallibly applies the executing potency toward the assent, so that the created will cannot struggle against it, breaks the rights of freedom.

For little it avails that free choice be injured, that the absolute volition of God forces our will mediately or immediately to one side of the contradiction; if it be not integral to our will to strive toward the opposite side.

24 If you object: that on that account the predefinition does not take away freedom; because with Suárez it premits the free assent of the created will, as apprehended through conditional foreknowledge. Wherefore the predefinition ought not to be estimated an antecedent supposition, since it supposes the free impulse of our will, as the object of conditional foreknowledge; because God absolutely pre-established such an assent, because He foreknew that the will, excited by such a congruent vocation, would infallibly consent.

On the contrary; if on account of the conditional foreknowledge of a future assent the use of freedom is not precluded from the divine will absolutely predefining the assent, nor involving the condition of the cooperation of the creature, although the created will be fixed unimpedibly by the force of that predefinition to one side of the contradiction; therefore whoever has admitted the conditional foreknowledge of a future assent will also be able to defend the predetermination, or extrinsic premotion, by the absolute decree of God; since the created cause is not less infallibly contracted to one side by the predefinition, which Suárez gladly receives, than by the premotion through the antecedent decree, which Scotus asserts; although that consequence is expressly against Suárez and the school of the Jesuits.

Next; that the aforesaid instance could be urged against Suárez, not only because, given the conditional foreknowledge, and the absolute predefinition of good acts admitted, he would be forced also to maintain that that premotion, which is offered by the mode of concourse from the uncreated volition, does not injure freedom; but neither that intrinsic predetermination, by the mode of principle and first act, which is attributed by some Thomists. For if the predefinition preserves freedom, not because it is drawn from the extrinsic form of the divine volition without the intrinsic immutation of the created will, but because it predecrees that which is apprehended as future, through conditional foreknowledge; that also would have to be asserted of predetermination by the intrinsic form, the same conditional foreknowledge being applied.

25 Moreover it is shown that that sufficiently inculcated opposition, by which the aforesaid authors labor to press us, is retorted with the same force against the adversaries; namely, that the application of the divine concourse toward either would be futile, if the will of God, not involving the condition of the cooperation of a created cause, did not predefine absolutely one side of the contradiction. For by the aforesaid assault (if it be efficacious) who does not see that the predefinition of Suárez is struck by the same force? For if the assent of Peter has been absolutely predefined, why is a concourse prepared for Peter toward dissenting?

Whence a good part of the authors of the Society assail the predefinition of supernatural acts, on account of the consequence of doctrine. So Vázquez, 1. part. disp. 99. cap. 3. num. 14, to whom Herice accedes, 1. part. tract. 3. on Predestination, disp. 23, especially under number 106. But as far as Vázquez is concerned, we showed him not to cohere with himself, in the preceding art. 4, under num. 17, because a decree sufficient as the medium of the foreknowledge of futures can by no reason be assigned, if it involve the condition of the cooperation of a created cause; or if it be not absolute.

Next I show: that if the predefinition injures freedom if it does not premit the conditional foreknowledge of a future assent; the predefinition with such a foreknowledge applied is also against freedom.

Because therefore the absolute predefinition of the assent of our will diminishes freedom, the conditional foreknowledge being set aside; because it would not premit the free use of the created will, as viewed conditionally by the science of God, but the whole ratio of the infallibility of such an impulse would be sought from the decree predefining and going before our assent. But the whole ratio also of the truth, or of the determinate scibility, of the object of the conditional foreknowledge is produced from the free conditional decree, without which the assent would claim to itself no objective determination; therefore the conditional decree would be an antecedent supposition, not subject to the nod of the created will; and consequently breaking the rights of freedom.

And thus the same opposition would be retorted against the object of conditional science, which the adversaries object to us against the decree predetermining futures absolutely; unless they contend that the conditional assent is determinately true of itself, and not from the decree going before; which by design we shall assail, in the following distinction on conditional foreknowledge. Where we shall show, that the foreknowledge of conditionals is useless for conciliating freedom: because the conditional truth necessarily pre-requires the free conditional decree wholly antecedent to our assent future under condition; and consequently there holds the same difficulty about this decree, that it infers necessity, since it is not subject to the nod of our will.

26 Another also and an excellent proof, holding that future contingents are foreknown by God in the determination of the divine will; is to be sought from the text transcribed under marginal number 15, and elucidated under marginal number 17. By the act of the intellect the extremes are conjoined; and the proposition still remains neutral, and by the acceptance of the will it is made true; and then the essence is the ratio of knowing that made truth. There must be added besides, from contr. 9, on the Vision of God, diss. 3. subdist. 2. art. 5, on the comparison of the vision to creatures, as they involve an actual or future existence, from number 14 up to 16, and also number 19, where from the mind of Augustine it is asserted that the vision of future contingents is in the Word; and consequently the determinate truth of future contingents must necessarily be upheld in the determination of the will; as there we make clear, striking Suárez and Molina ad hominem.

Because, if the blessed does not intuit futures in themselves, insofar as the ly [the word] "to see futures in themselves" is opposed to the vision of futures in the Word, or sounds a vision outside the Word essentially taken, or outside the essence of God; but the blessed introspects such contingent complexes in the essence of God through the beatific gaze; it is evident, that God knows future contingents in the essence of God, with which He joins the free determination in no way distinct from the substance of the Deity.

Then therefore thus against Molina and Suárez ad hominem; the blessed, inspecting the individuals of future contingents in the essence of God as conjoined with the free decree, which he intuits such futures of contingent acts (even depraved ones) in the absolute decree not involving the condition of the cooperation of free choice, to be purified by free choice; and consequently such a decree would be prefining, even of depraved acts, as regards their matter.

Or that decree, in which the blessed inspects such future creatures as free, involved the hypothesis to be purified by free choice; and consequently such a decree would not furnish the medium of infallible science (such as the beatific is), since the Deity, nor anything identified with the substance of God, can furnish the medium of infallible judgment, the cooperation of free choice not inspected in itself; by which accensing the decree of cooperating is purified, and from the conditional and inefficacious passes to the absolute and efficacious, especially regarding the matters of depraved acts.

Therefore neither the Deity, nor any predicate identified with God, can import, with Molina and Suárez, a sufficient medium on the side of the object toward a certain science of a future contingent; and consequently such futures are not seen by the blessed in God, but outside God, and in themselves. Since neither the Deity, nor anything identified with it, can be a sufficient motive on the side of the object toward the determinate vision of a future contingent, which has no objective and absolute determination in the potency of God, nor in His decree, unless the decree pass from the conditional to the absolute, on account of the foreknowledge of the cooperation of free choice known in itself, or in its determined truth, and not in the decree.

But you will say on behalf of Suárez: that the decree, as purified and absolute, on account of the foreknowledge of the future contingent in its determined truth, could be a sufficient medium for the blessed, so that in the decree he apprehends future contingents.

On the contrary; therefore the blessed does not see, by the beatific vision, creatures. I prove the consequence; because the beatific act inspects nothing except by the intentional motion of the beatific object; nor does it pre-require the motion of a non-beatific object; but the operation of free choice, as true in itself, and as purifying the condition of the decree (so that it pass from the conditional to the absolute,) is inspected in itself, and not in God; and consequently science not beatific; therefore neither is the decree, as absolute, seen by the beatific science, since, as such, it premits a non-beatific science, and the motion of a non-beatific object.

Or conversely, since the same reason holds in the comparison of the objective infallibility of futures by their relation both to the science of God and to the beatific vision; (for each assent, whether divine or beatific, demands an objective infallibility corresponding to the infallibility of the judgment) if with the aforesaid authors the Deity with the decree is a sufficient medium of beatific science with respect to futures, so also of the divine science.

Another physical argument for our opinion; which is sought from the potentiality of the created will toward such an individual of action.

27 But, because the proof premised strikes ad hominem only those authors who admit the predefinition of good acts; but not those who universally disallow every absolute resolve of God destining efficaciously the acts of our will toward futurition, without expecting the cooperation of the second cause; a universal argument must be constructed, which, drawn from physical principles, assails all the adversaries.

Which we bring forth from the common consent of metaphysical proofs; of those maintaining that a free cause is left altogether indeterminate and potential for eliciting this individual action rather than another of the same species; so that it needs the first cause to contract such potentiality and indetermination. Which is common to a free cause together with the whole collection of inanimate agents, and those which lack liberty; concerning which, on account of the necessity of the doctrine, we shall raise a physical digression at the end of this article.

Therefore it must be treated by us that such a physical doctrine in no way stands together with the pronouncement of the adversaries asserting that God does not prede absolutely such a species of act, but only from hypothesis, involving the condition of the cooperation of a created cause; so that there is offered to our will by God a concourse indifferent to such or such a species of act, and the created will contracts the community and indetermination of such a concourse.

28 Thus therefore I form the argument; the created will is not premoved by God first and principally toward such a species of impulse, for example, toward love or hatred, as the adversaries themselves are forced to assert; for otherwise the created will would be contracted first and principally by God toward the species of the act of hatred, by that reason by which it is asserted that the created will is determined first and principally to this individual of action before another within the same species.

And consequently, just as it is pronounced that the created will is of itself altogether indeterminate toward such an individual of influx, and determined by God, in such a way that that physical contraction of God may be the ratio or principle wholly antecedent to the determination of the created will toward such an individual of action before another, so that the second cause could not respond, unless the decree of God concerning such an individual action to be elicited was premised. So also it would have to be asserted that our will is physically indeterminate toward the absolute futurition of such a species of act, for example, perjury, hatred of God, and so of the rest, and would await the determination from the first cause: therefore it would follow that God would premover our will toward the matters of depraved acts; which is taxed and proscinded by the adversaries as an absurd and incongruous pronouncement.

The consequence is clear; because the supposition of the specific predicate toward the grade of individual being is essential; therefore that physical influx, which attains the act first and per se, according to its numerical condition, cannot not pre-intend the specific predicate, which is essentially presupposed toward the ratio of an individual such action.

Further, that contraction of the second cause to such an individual action, which is furnished by the first cause, is not conceivable, or a matter of reason, but physical and real; therefore it does not curtail its tendency in the terminus, nor does it reach it under one metaphysical grade of being and not under another; and consequently, if it is primarily attributed to God, and not to the second cause, that the created will be physically contracted to such an individual action rather than another, then to God likewise must be deferred the decree furnishing absolutely that predicate of the species of which he preordains the individual.

29 That opposition greatly shook Suárez, as is clear from his repeatedly insistent presentation of it, glossed back; for he often attempted to extricate himself from the aforesaid knot, and did not succeed; as is plain from Opusc. 1, lib. 1, cap. 7, from num. 4 up to 7, and often elsewhere, and in Metaph., tom. 1, disp. 22, sect. 4, num. 35, where he teaches that the contraction of the created will to such individual causality springs from the will of God, not absolute, but involving a condition on the side of the cooperation of the created cause; yet since that concourse which the divine will offers to the created will for operating regards not only such an individual of this species but many individual acts of other species (for example, within the species of hatred, such an act in the individual; within the species of love, likewise such an act in the individual; and so on), it follows that the created will, within any species of impulse whatever, is contracted by the divine will to such an individual action, and nevertheless is left indifferent as to whether to use the divine concourse or not to use it; or to use the concourse in this species of acts or in that.

But on the contrary; that just as the essential supposition of a specific predicate to the numerical degree of being is inevitable; so also it implies a contradiction that the contraction of the will to the individual degree of the act, and not to its species, could be assigned to God: or on the other hand; if God commits and leaves to the created will that it determine the universality of the divine concourse to such a species of act; therefore also to its individuation. Whereas such a contraction is not some conceivable precision, but a real and physical causality attaining the product, not under any abstraction of the metaphysical degrees, but under a contracted and individual reason of effecting, such as is that by which the physical influx is conveyed.

Wherefore, on account of the real identity of the specific and the individual grade in the impulse of the will, if the physical contraction of the indifference of the will to such a species of impulse is not attributed to God, neither will the physical contraction of the indifference of the will to such individual causality be able to be deferred to him.

Hence the aforesaid doctrine of the community of the divine concourse to several species of actions (in such wise that the contraction to such a species is drawn from the created will) seems in no way to cohere with the physical pronouncement about the contraction of the created will by the first cause to elicit such an individual action; and consequently, consistently, Scotus, just as he derives the physical determination of the created will to such an individual action from the first cause, so also wills its physical determination to such a species of impulse: so that the contraction of such a species is drawn from the absolute decree first and per se. But on this see below, under num. 59.

30 But if you object: that the rationale is altogether disparate regarding the determination of the created will to such a species of act, and regarding the contraction to such an individual.

Because the will is determined from within to such a species of act precisely because it imports an intrinsic principle of such a determination as regards the species of the action, namely the cognition of the object to be pursued or fled; yet it is not cognized that the object is to be pursued or fled under this individual impulse and not another within the same species. Wherefore the contraction of free choice to this individual in preference to another is deferred to an extrinsic principle, namely the first cause; and the contraction to such a species of impulse is attributed to the intrinsic principle, namely to the free agent itself operating from cognition.

But on the contrary, this: the reason we argue that the created will is determined, besides the intrinsic principle, also by an extrinsic principle, namely by God as regards the species of the act, is that the intrinsic principle does not determine to the individual of the action; and it becomes an impossible physical causality reaching a specific grade not contracted to such an individuation of the form. For if the will has no intrinsic principle by which to contract itself to the individual of the action, then neither to the species of the action.

You will say: from the premises it is only inferred that God determines to the species of the act materially and identically, or on account of the real identity of the specific grade with the numerical condition of the act; not however formally. By a similar rationale as that by which the light of glory, to which supernaturality is formally attributed and corresponds in the act of vision, materially and identically reaches the predicate of vitality, on account of its real identity with the predicate of supernaturality.

On the contrary: therefore God, at least identically, or on account of the identity of the specific and numerical grade in the substrate of sin, determines to the material data of wicked acts. By that rationale by which, although vitality of vision is not deferred to the light by way of some accommodation, yet in reality and physically vitality is attained by the infused habit, on account of the identity of supernaturality with vitality. Therefore, although the will is not determined by God to the matter of sin formally as regards the species of the act, it is nevertheless contracted materially and identically.

Next; that it would follow that the creature would not contract God absolutely and simply to such a species of influx; but only, by comparison, or accommodation of the aforesaid formality, in which respect it is not composed into the term of a physical action. So that God and the free choice would conduct themselves on an equal account with respect to determination to the material of sin; insofar as they determine one another, God contracting the free choice as to the individuation of the act, and the free choice determining God to the species of influx; whereas nevertheless the material of sin (as the term of a physical action) does not subsist in reality except as it expresses the species composed with the numerical degree; so that the material of sin corresponds equally to God and to the free choice; and to each primarily in its own order of acting, or of contracting.

Therefore, just as with the adversaries, even granted that God determines to the individuation of the action, it is not asserted that he determines to the matter of sin, because he does not contract to the species of the action; so also vice versa, neither would free choice be determined by God to the matter of sin, if free choice did not contract to the individuation of the act; since the physical existence of the action is thus implicative on account of its indetermination according to species, just as on account of potentiality as regards individuation, and conversely.

As regards the intrinsic indetermination of the will to such an individual action in preference to another, and that it does not presuppose the cognition of such an individual action insofar as it is numerically distinguished from another, note the acute doctrine of Gregory of Rimini, transcribed by us below in art. 6 of this dist., under num. 77, where he has it:

When the will effects some evil act, the created will stands indifferently disposed toward any one of them, and it distinctly cognizes none of them; and for that reason neither can it will to produce any one of them distinctly. Ad locum citatum.

Examination and discussion of the opposed arguments against the foreknowledge of future contingents in the decree not involving a condition on the side of the object.

31 The opposed foundations are difficult; not, however, such that they cannot be diluted.

Wherefore to the first we say: it plainly obtains that future contingents are not foreknown by God in the decree applying its power to concur with our will, since the power of the decree offers to our will a concourse to either in the first act; whence it must necessarily be asserted that such futures are apprehended by God in the decree furnishing absolutely the unimpedible futurition of the acts of our will, as is clear from what has been said.

To the second argument: that therefore the action of writing, inasmuch as it is deferred to the hand, is not free but necessary, because neither does the hand have at its service the free power of operating, as is perspicuous; and because, once the absolute decree predefining the writing has been posited, there is not furnished to the hand, by force of the decree, a free concourse to either in the first act; just as, once the absolute determination of the divine will with respect to one side of the contradiction is supposed, there is offered to the will a concourse to either in the first act; as we have said, and as will become more evident from what is to be unfolded below.

To the objection urging that in no way is that absolute predefinition, not involving a condition on the side of the object, to be subjected to our will; since in our will it is not within our power to be thus or thus predetermined by God.

It is answered: that for the rationale of a free cause only this is exacted, that before the influx of the help it be supposed with sufficient virtue by way of first act, namely with intrinsic indifference expedited for operating, and that there stand ready to it a concourse to either in the first act by force of the decree of the prime mover; not, however, that it be exacted that whatever is necessary by way of actual premotion on the side of the first cause lie subject to the nod and arbitrament of our will; so that God under a condition only decree the impulse of our will on the hypothesis that it wills.

Because that would be so to compose God and creature for operating that our will held first place in such a concourse; which is against the condition of a participated entity, as we showed in n. 20 and 21.

But you will press from Suárez, opusc. 1, lib. 3, de auxiliis divinae gratiae, c. 8, under n. 4, at the end: that although that predetermination which Scotus constituted does not pertain to the rationale of first act in a free cause, but only to actual influx, it ought nevertheless to be such as to be subjected to the free cause, unless we wish the agent to be simply necessary.

Because the moral and proximate power of free action ought not only to be complete in its own order of acting by way of first act, but also to import within its power whatever is pre-exacted for operating actually; otherwise it would not be conceived in the last readiness for acting, or as a proximate faculty, but only as remote and insufficient.

It is answered: that if the aforesaid objection pressed us, it would also touch Suárez; because although our will be situated in the first act, complete for acting by force of sufficient help, yet the exercise of this action would never be entered upon without a congruous vocation ex the foreknowledge of the future consent. Yet it is not within the power of our will to be forestalled by God with a congruous vocation; and yet the congruous vocation is so necessarily exacted for infallible assent, that without it no one would in fact consent, even granted he could assent and possesses a proximate and expedited faculty for assenting; therefore it is not of the rationale of a free cause that within the compass of its power it circumscribe whatever is necessarily exacted on the side of the first cause for actual operation, so that according to its nod it be composed to the position or negation of it.

And lest it be asserted that it is within the power and pleasure of man to be congruously called — since in punishment of sins he is deprived of congruous illumination on the side of the intellect and inspiration on the side of the will, though he would receive a congruous vocation had he not placed impediments of sins — let the argument proceed from the first operation of man, not presupposing another fall.

We say, therefore, that for the rationale of a free cause proximately expedited for operating, only this is required: that in the first act it not be affixed to one side of the contradiction, but that before the actual influx it be supposed with a concourse to either furnished in the first act, by force of the decree of the first cause. For that premotion which is furnished by God by way of actual concourse is according to the exigency of that same will endeavoring freely upon the object; although it is not within the nod of the created appetite to be thus premoved or not premoused de inesse, in the composed sense with respect to the second act, according to the sense to be weighed below. Just as neither, with the adversaries, is it subjected to our power to be called congruously or incongruously; for if such an option were made to man, no one would be called incongruously before the fall: and consequently neither would he perpetrate mortals throughout his whole life. On which see art. 7 of this controversy, num. 36.

32 But if Suárez's opposition should touch us, affirming priority of the "from which," or of nature, between the predetermination of the divine will and the influx of free choice, insofar as it would not lie within the counsel of its own power to be composed or not composed de inesse to the divine premotion; by the same force it ought not to militate against the adversaries, while they deny that the influx of the created will is prior by nature to the causality and motion of God. For this motion and causality of God ad extra could be conceived, by that very rationale alone, beneath the nod of free choice, insofar as it would be integral to it to be composed or not composed de inesse, and in the second act, to the divine causality, if the influx of free choice preceded as the ratio contracting the exercised divine determination, as regards its position and negation.

But if God, not expecting the determination of the second cause in the second sign of nature, exerts his causality equally first in the same sign of nature, then he does not subject his motion to our arbitrament, as regards the position or non-position of such a determination de inesse, and in the very composition of actual and exercised cooperation. Although in the divided sense the motion of God ought to be judged subject to our free choice, inasmuch as it is consonant with the laws of liberty, as being furnished by the first cause which introspects the exigency and proneness of free choice; and inasmuch as it can be removed in the sense of division, or inasmuch as the first act, or power of operating, is divided from the concursive premotion: because the premotion of actual concourse does not pertain to the cointegration of the power in the rationale of first act, even proximate, but to the bare exercise of operation. But on these see and consult the cited place from art. 7 of this controversy, on the reconciliation of our liberty with foreknowledge, where we press these points seriously and deliberately.

We add further; that when it is objected by the adversaries that the divine pre- A twofold state of free choice is set forth for settling the disputation. motion ought to be beneath the nod of free choice, as to its position, or negation; either they proceed concerning that whole duration which antecedes the actual cooperation of free choice, in which we assert the created will to be proximally ready in act first for contraries and contradictories, and with the furnishing of the divine concourse ad utrumlibet in act first.

In sensu divisionis praemotio exercita subijcitur libero arbitrio And in this sense, as is certain, it is integral to the created will to operate thus or thus in the sense of division and separation from the exercised premotion of the concourse; such also is its signed power, or by way of first act, that it can be composed to the divine premotion toward such causality, or to the negation of such premotion, while in the first act, or in the sense of division, it can be composed to the premotion of the opposite influx.

In sensu compositionis cum praemotione concursiva, qualiter non subijciatur arbitratui voluntatis creatae. But if they speak of the very instant of the cooperation of free choice and of the exercised divine premotion to such a species and individual of action, the composed sense of actual concourse is already involved, because that premotion is only a concourse, and in the same sign in which, or instant of time, it is exhibited to the will, that it contract it not to the power to, but to the mere exercise of influx. This premised, it is true that the exercised premotion of God, as regards its position and negation, lies subject to free choice considered in the first act, and in the sense of division, before that cooperation itself; just as it is indubitable with us that the created will is furnished and expedited with a concourse in the first act to contraries and contradictories. For if there is offered to the will, before actual cooperation, a concourse in the first act to assent and dissent, the consequence is that before the exercised cooperation it is integral to it, as it exists in the first act and in the sense of division, not to be composed to the divine causality premoving, in the second act, to dissent, while it is also expedited by an extrinsic principle proximately in the first act for assenting.

Exaratur, et illustratur doctrina praecedens. In the second act, however, of actual concourse, since it expresses the hypothesis of the composed sense, the premotion is not subjected to the arbitrament of our will, as regards the position and negation of such premotion de inesse; just as neither does the cooperation of the very will itself lie under free choice, so that when it exists, it could not exist. For we pronounce the whole causality of the divine premotion merely concursive, such that for no instant in which, or of time, does it antecede the cooperation of the created will; although it antecedes it for the sign "from which," or of nature.

Compositio cum cursu divini cum libertate ex Rubio atque Basolio Which contraction de inesse together with the indifference of the created will to compose itself, from possibility, with the divine determination, or with its negation, is expressly handed down from the old disciples of Scotus by William of Rubio, a pupil of Scotus, transcribed by us below in the present dist., art. 6, under num. mar. 53; and Bassolius likewise, a pupil of Scotus, transcribed in the same art., num. mar. 48.

Oppositiones adversariorum oppugnant decretum concurrendi Rather, if the aforesaid objections pressed in predetermination concursive, or by way of the bare exercise of concourse, as regards the point that it does not lie under the arbitrament of the exercised will of the created will to be composed de inesse, and in the second act, to such concurrent premotion or not composed; they would also impugn the absolute will of concurring with free choice; since God concurs at least equally first with the creature without any posteriority of sign on the side of the action of God. Therefore no reason appears why it should rather be attributed to the creature that it concur thus than to God, if God does not expect, in the posterior sign, the antecedent, in the prior sign, contraction of the action of the creature in the same sign of nature of the concurrent; if, therefore, God and creature concur equally first to such an influx (for example, to the matter of sin), then no reason is available why it should rather be attributed to the creature that it operate thus and not otherwise, since it cannot operate otherwise de inesse without the influx of God; and God, the cooperation of the creature not awaited, concurs thus and not otherwise.

Occursus Unless it be alleged, with Suárez and Vázquez, that the will of concurring involves the condition of operating thus, if free choice so wills.

Praeludiatur And that would be to ascribe openly the priority of nature of free choice to the concourse, since free choice would purify that conventional application of the power of God for operating thus: on which see art. 2 of this dist. 4, n. 49 up to 63.

But if it be objected with Lessius and Alarcón (that such a composition of the divine power with free choice, involving a condition to be purified by free choice, may be avoided), that God assists free choice quasi blindly, with a pact of concurring posited, so that neither does free choice contract the first cause to such a species of influx, nor conversely does God free choice — the aforesaid mode of thinking we premise as refuted in this art., under num. mar. 22.

33. To the third argument, from num. 8, which touches that axiom of Scotus: that if God were a necessary agent, the created will, on account of its essential subordination to God the mover, would operate not freely but necessarily.

We say: that the aforesaid pronouncement abundantly shows a consort of the doctrine of Scotus about the absolute decree of God anteceding the consent of our will. For if God were not to pre-determine absolutely the acts of the created will, but only by convention or condition that it should will — even granted that God were a necessary agent, he would not diminish the expedited power of free choice; since God would have decreed nothing regarding the endeavors of our will except according to the nod and pleasure of our will, and on the hypothesis that it should offer assent. But since Scotus expressly maintains that if God were a necessary agent, the created will could not inflow freely, this demonstrates, clearer than light, the constant judgment of Scotus about the decree furnishing the acts of our will.

Wherefore, wisely Gabriel Vázquez, 1 part., disput. 100, capit. 3, numer. 6 and 7, saw fit to reject the absolute decree of God anteceding our consent, and accordingly, consequentially, asserts that although God were a necessary agent, the will would still retain its own indifference in operating.

But that he has herein proceeded inconsistently, nay, and has failed manifestly from the consequence of doctrine, we have laid open; since, when he had demolished with all his nerves the decree not involving a condition on the side of the cooperating created cause, he pronounced the decree involving a condition to be a sufficient medium ex parte obiecti for the foreknowledge of futures.

Satisfaction to other objections, wherein is treated that hypothesis of Scotus about the composition of the divine power with created free choice, if God were an agent determined to one thing ad extra.

34. To that objection from the same num. 8, contending that if God were a necessary agent, no other rationale of the elicited impulse of the will would be available than de facto. Indeed, in that hypothesis, the whole necessity of the impulse of the will would be placed in this, that it were pre-intended by God absolutely, not involving the condition of the cooperation of the created cause; which in fact the School of Scotus asserts the same, while it professes that God furnishes the acts of our will absolutely, and without the condition of the cooperation of the second cause. For the impulse of our will, elicited by God operating freely, does not otherwise stand than it would stand if it issued from God as from a necessary principle.

To which opposition, succumbing, Vázquez, 1 p., disp. 99, cap. 8, num. 51, asserts: that not only in fact has God not absolutely pre-defined our free actions before the determination of our will; nay, that he could not even have furnished it. Because our impulse could not otherwise be compared to God, nor otherwise stand, if God pre-determined it absolutely; whereas in fact, according to the thought of Vázquez, it is intended only conditionally, and on the hypothesis that our will wills.

But it seems harsh thus to enervate, or to elevate, the powers of the first cause regarding the motion of the acts of free choice; so that God cannot even from His absolute power absolutely pre-establish the motions of free choice. Whereas Augustine, transcribed under num. 12, declares the most omnipotent power of God in the direction of human hearts, to be inclined whither it pleases; so that God has the wills of men more in His power than they themselves have their own.

Nor do I see why the Jesuit authors reject the opinion of the Thomists asserting that God cannot even by absolute power necessitate created free choice, given a deliberate proposition of the object to either; if they assert with Vázquez that God cannot, even by absolute power, pre-decree absolutely the operations of free choice; since either opinion appears equally to enervate the unlimited energy of the power of God regarding created free choice.

It is answered, therefore, from what was said in art. 2 of this distinct., under num. mar. 39, and from num. 49 up to 63, where the composition of the divine power with free choice to either is treated: that for God, regarding the acts of our will, to bear the contradictory denominations of a free and a non-free principle, no intrinsic mutation or physical dissimilarity on the side of the effect is exacted, on account of the rationales which we formed there.

Nevertheless, on the side of the created will considered in the first act, an extrinsic physical disparity, by habitude to the first cause, would intervene in either supposition; because to our will in fact there is furnished in the first act a concourse to contraries and contradictories, and the divine power stands ready for either; but granted that God were a necessary operator ad extra, then he would affix the will in the first act to one side of the contradiction, nor would he compose the executing power with free choice to either, or by the force of the free decree of the first cause apply a concourse by way of first act indifferent to contraries and contradictories; on which, to the cited places. For if God were a necessary agent, determined to one thing, he could not furnish to free choice a concourse to either; as is evident.

35 But when the objection presses: that the furnishing of such a concourse to either would be futile and frustraneous, the doctrine of Scotus being supposed, asserting that God furnishes our consent, the condition of the cooperating second cause not awaited.

It is answered: that the aforesaid objection also militates in the opinion of Suárez, admitting the predefinition of good acts; for if God has already pre-ordinated absolutely the act direct and of supernatural honesty, not involving the condition of the cooperation of our will, to what purpose does he offer the concourse to contraries and contradictories, indeterminate?

And that the objection may be turned against all the adversaries of physical predetermination, it also assails those who reject the predefinition of good acts in the congruous vocation from the infallible foreknowledge of the future consent. For if God decreed to call thus, that with moral infallibility, from the conditional foreknowledge of the future consent, he should affix the created will to assent unimpedibly; to what purpose was the concourse to dissent furnished?

We say, therefore: that although God, on account of the essential dominion of the first cause, cannot not premove the second cause absolutely to such a species and individuation of the act — because it would offer a concourse altogether indeterminate and contractible by the created will to such a species, and the order of agents would be inverted; by that rationale, that the created will would hold first place in operating, inasmuch as it would purify the condition from that conventional application of the divine concourse to assent, if the will wills.

Nevertheless, although the preordination of such an act absolutely, for example of assent, is essentially pre-required from the subordination of the second cause to the first; yet in order that it be elicited freely, and with the indifference of a principle ready ad utrumlibet, the application of the divine power offering concourse in act first to contraries and contradictories is altogether necessary, that the will, according to its intrinsic indifference, may be able to strive to either. Which application of the divine power ad utrumlibet in the manner of act first being supposed, it is the office of the first cause, according to the exigency of a free cause valid ad utrumlibet in act first, to contract our will in act second to one side, and to pre-decree the act as infallibly future, through a volition discharging the office of action; to art. 2 of this distinction, from num. 49 up to 63.

But that it does not attain its effect in those whose conversion to good fruit God does not intend absolutely does not diminish the sufficiency of the virtue of that help, which of itself furnishes a proximate and expedited power, although in the second act it be not composed to actual operation; for it is one thing for an operative faculty to be proximately valid for the act, another to be composed to actual influx.

But such an objection is turned back against the adversaries; because if the sufficiency of help were enervated or diminished, so that, the premotion of God set aside, it does not issue into act — it can be objected even to those (who reject physical predetermination, sustaining only moral excitation) that the sufficiency of help would be enervated in that whole collection of supposits to whom there is not available a congruous vocation importing the foreknowledge of infallible consent; since no one not endowed with such a vocation is converted in fact, although he receive a help furnishing toward salvation and simply sufficient. But on the sufficiency of this help again in art. 7 of this distinct., where will be weighed how the certainty of divine foreknowledge with our liberty stands according to the principles of Scotus?

37 To the objection from the same num. 9, which Henrique produces from Isaiah 5: What is it that I ought to have done further to my vineyard, and have not done to it? It is answered: that there the Lord, expostulating with his vineyard about the transgression of the law, intends only that he has provided most sufficiently for the salvation of his vineyard; nor is it excusable that it bore wild grapes instead of the fruits of justice on account of the weakness of the helps; for it stood endowed by God with helps in abundance.

But if (ly, what ought I to have done further?) should be extended beyond the supply of sufficient help to that whole efficacious immission of vocations by which the Lord could have drawn from the treasures of his wisdom and power for softening the hardness of the human heart — even to a heart hardened and impenitent, upon the supposition of the adversaries' principles, an objection could be raised against God. Why, Lord, pouring out thy compassion upon thy beloved vineyard, dost thou so seriously assert that thou oughtest to have done nothing further to it which thou hast not furnished; if, being able, by a congruous vocation from the foreknowledge of the future consent, unimpedibly to allure it to the pursuit of good, thou didst not wish to confer that benefit upon the vineyard?

But that the aforesaid testimony of Isaiah ought not to be extended to all those helps which could be furnished by the power of God, but to the supply and sufficiency of help furnishing abundantly toward salvation — such as is the whole collection of sufficient helps — is clear from those words: what ought I to have done further? Where he said not: what could I have done further, but what ought I to have done further? Because if God in the justification of a sinner conferred all those gifts of grace which he can exhibit, no one would be damned; whereas nevertheless he supplies those helps of grace which he ought on the hypothesis; the will of the good pleasure of giving glory to all being supposed. For thus the aforesaid place is elucidated by our John de Sepúlveda, a theologian of good note; and by Ecclus., in his Quadragesimal, Feria 6 after Domin. 2 of Quadragesima.

38 To the authorities of Chrysostom and Damascene, which are objected against us by the same Henrique, we can satisfy with one answer; if first it be observed that Damascene is cited mutilatedly. For thus it stands in libr. 2, Orthodoxae fidei, capit. 30:

That must be known, that God indeed foreknows all things, but does not pre-finish all things. For he also foreknows those things which are in our

It is necessary to know this, that God foreknows all things indeed, but does not predefine all things. For He foreknows even those things which are in our own power and choice; but He does not likewise predefine them: for He neither wills that vice be admitted, nor again does He take force from virtue. Wherefore the divine command joined with foreknowledge effects predefinition.

Where (if by the name of command Damascene intends only the insinuation of the law or divine precept together with foreknowledge of the work to be carried out in execution; as is evident from those words, Wherefore the divine command joined with foreknowledge effects predefinition) Damascene would also strike the adversaries, and the whole assembly of Theologians asserting that in God commanding a right work, or forbidding a wicked one, there is from eternity a foreknowledge of our operation; which can be denied by no Catholic.

Wherefore by the name of command joined with foreknowledge, which sounds in Damascene as that predefinition which he disapproves, is to be understood coercion, which takes away the liberty of our choice, inferring an antecedent necessity which in the manner of act first fastens our will to one part of the contradiction; in which sense Chrysostom also explodes predefinition.

Moreover; that among the Fathers Anselm does not shrink from the word predefinition, not only of good acts, but also of wicked operations as regards the material; is evident from what is said in art. 6, On the predetermination of God to the material of sin, under num. 72. Where he admits the predestination of God to the substrate, and the material of sin; as is evident from those words: Predestination is not only of good things, but can be called of evils.

To the foundation of Suarez we say; that it makes no difference for necessitating free choice, that the absolute purpose of God, fastening our will to one part of the contradiction, be in the manner of execution, or of the use of the divine executing faculty, or in the manner of intention, or of a mere internal purpose; on account of the foundations which we formed above against Suarez, from num. 23.

Wherefore we also add; that the conditional knowledge of means is not necessary, in order that the absolute appetite of the end in God be not precipitate and rash; since for prudently and rationally intending the end it suffices to foreknow, as Scotus teaches, that the will of God is of unimpedible energy, and one that is in no way in fact rejected by the striving of the created will, however rebellious. But of these things more at large in the following distinction, where we shall show that the foreknowledge of conditionals is not necessary for reconciling the efficacy of grace with free choice.