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

ARTICLE VII

Whether the certitude of the foreknowledge of future things stands together with our liberty, according to the principles of Scotus?

SUMMARY.

The opinion of the recent ones; that the medium of foreseeing future things in the determination of the divine will does not stand together with liberty. Num. 1.

Other objections from Suárez against the conciliation of liberty with the extrinsic premotion of the absolute decree. Num. 7.

The placitum of Anthony of Corduba conciliating liberty with foreknowledge; for the reason that our operation is prior in nature than the absolute determination of God. Num. 12.

The placitum of Corduba is refuted; yet it is defended from the note of the error of the Semi-Pelagians; further, also, the vindication of Scotus from the teasing of Corduba. Num. 16.

The text of Scotus, and its transcription. Num. 19.

The accurate observation of Scotus explaining why the judgment of God is simply infallible, even though the object is brought forth absolutely, and is simply contingent as to being about to be, and not about to be? Numer. 28.

Response to the foundations of the adversaries against the conciliation of liberty with the foreknowing of Scotus. Nu. 32.

It is shown that that argumentation presses no more, by which he argues from the absurdity of injured liberty, given the priority from God in concursive premotion, than the denied priority of nature on the part of the action of free choice contracting, as it were, the potentiality of the divine will toward either alternative. Num. 36.

For the enervation of the last objection, it is weighed against Vázquez that the will does not necessarily follow a more expressive, or more tempered, proposition of the object. Num. 42.

What is the supernatural predetermination according to Scotus? and by which co-operating grace is it bestowed, intrinsic; or extrinsic? Nu. 48.

Satisfaction to the objections of Aureolus Hurtado and of the more recent ones asserting the action of God toward ad extra to be a created thing. Num. 50.

OMnes the Jesuit writers hold that the liberty of the created will cannot be conciliated with foreknowledge, if the unique medium of foreseeing future things be the determination of the divine will. For the reason that such determination, that it may be able to be asserted as a sufficient medium on the side of the object for foreseeing future things; ought to be an absolute proposition unimpededly destined toward the futurition of the act of the created will, not involving the hypothesis of the co-operation of the created will to be purified by the nod of the created will.

Which the adversaries have so constantly asserted, that they set aside, as a useless escape, the common doctrine of the ancient theologians, which seeks the concord between the acts of the divine preordination and the motions of the created will from the efficacious energy, and the strong and gentle motion, of the divine will; which excites our will so that it act infallibly, the right of its intrinsic indifference nevertheless being saved. According to that of Wisdom, chapter 8: Attingit à fine, vsque in finem fortiter, et disponit omnia suauiter. Where Lyranus: Disponit omnis suauiter, quia das omnibus creaturis formas, et inclinationes, per quas mouentur connaturaliter ad actus, et fines suos.

2 Wherefore Gabriel Vázquez 1. part. disp. 99. cap. 3. num. 7. when he had cited Saint Thomas, Durandus, Driedo, Opusculo de Concordia liberi arbitrij, et praedestinationis, and other ancient scholastic authors drawing the conciliation of the divine preordination with our will from the unimpedible energy of the divine will reaching, not only the motions of our will, but also the mode of their indifference and liberty; afterward under num. 8. asserts; that the aforesaid axiom of the ancient Theologians does not serve that the mouths of the reviling Neoterics be closed. Which he thus shows.

Because, that the will of God, or its executing faculty, be infinite, that likewise be directed by unbounded science; it cannot serve to this, that God effect that which involves implication. But it repugns, that God freely move the created will, if the absolute proposition of the divine will anticipate the foreknowledge of our cooperation: for it would already refer an antecedent supposition, which by our will could by no means be impeded, for the reason that it predecrees the absolute futurition of our assent, not involving the condition if the created will wills.

Therefore, just as it is implicative that, with the supposition of antecedent necessity, God freely concur to the acts of the created will; so also our liberty of cooperation contradicts the foreknowledge of God, if a unique medium of such foreknowledge be assigned, the absolute proposition of the divine will, not importing the condition, or hypothesis, of our cooperation, to be purified by the arbitrament of the created will.

3 That which has been asserted concerning the antecedent supposition is confirmed from Anselm to. 3. lib. de concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis. §. Quòd sit praedestinatio, et quòd praedestinatio nihil inferat necessitatis libero arbitrio. where he says. Pariter igitur quãuis necesse sit fieri, quae praescitutur, et quae praedestinãtur; quaedã tamẽ praescita, et praedestinata, non eueniũt ea necessitate, quae praecedit rem, et facit, sed ea, quae rem sequitur, sicut supra diximus. Nõ enim eã Deus, quãuis praedestinat facit voluntatẽ cogendo, aut voluntati resistendo, sed in sua illa potestate dimittendo.

From which words of Anselm the following objection is instructed against the opinion of Scotus. With Anselm that is the antecedent supposition infringing the rights of liberty which precedes the thing, and makes it: but that is the supposition not inferring necessity; which follows the thing. But the decree of God, inasmuch as it is the medium on the side of the object for foreseeing future things, precedes the objective immutation, which is drawn from the decree, in which with Scotus is placed the whole determination of the knowability, or truth, of the future; therefore such determination is the antecedent supposition inferring force upon the will.

Whence it is gathered; wherefore the foreknowledge of the future contingent according to the doctrine of Anselm ought not to be said with an antecedent supposition; as the determination of the divine will, which is asserted to be the reason of the whole truth and of the objective determination of the future contingent. For foreknowledge follows the thing in objective being, it does not precede the thing and make it, because it premits the objective immutation sought from the decree; and accordingly it is not the practical reason of the truth and determination of the future contingent, but rather the speculative intuition of that determination, which flowed forth from the absolute proposition of God.

On the contrary, indeed; the decree precedes the thing and makes it in willed being, according to the phrase of Scotus, or immutates the thing objectively with all determination to exist for such a difference of time; so that the decree supplies to science that object, which it effects in objective being determined, as it were, as the practical reason of such a determined knowability; therefore it is the antecedent supposition.

Nor does it avail to meet with the objection; that although the created will be fastened to one part of the contradiction in the composite sense, or from the hypothesis of the decree; yet it remains indifferent in the sense of division.

Because, as Vázquez objects z at the place cited under n. 13., it would be to slip into the error of Melanchthon and of the other innovators; which is, that they indeed repudiate the absolute necessity which Wycliffe ascribed to our works, yet they assert that, from the extrinsic definition of God, the rights and functions of free choice are impeded. Wherefore, although a predetermination of this kind be asserted, what reason of spontaneity can be defended, which is even found in the motions of brutes, and which the acts of free choice receive, Calvin calling it a servile will, and blaspheming, lib. 2. suarum institutionum, capi. 5. §. 14. et 15.? Yet the liberty of contrariety and contradiction, which must necessarily be sustained by Catholics, seems altogether banished from the functions of the created will.

4 But more subtly Scotus fights for Vázquez in 2. sent. dist. 37 q. 2. §. Ex prima via arguitur dupliciter, sub num. marg. 2. where, arguing for the opinion which Aureolus afterward followed, that God does not concur immediately to free operations; he also combats concursive premotion on behalf of Vázquez. Whence also I infer that which I have not once observed in contending against adversaries; that their arguments, (especially against concursive premotion determined to the matter of sin,) also assail the immediate concourse of God: so, therefore, has Scotus in the place cited.

» No power has perfectly in its power the effect, which cannot be caused by it immediately; nor by any other cause whose causation is not in the power of that power. But the causation of God is not in the power of the created will, as is plain; just as neither is the virtue of the superior agent in the power of the inferior agent: therefore if God necessarily concur immediately as the immediate cause with respect to the created volition, the created will does not fully have that volition in its power.

» The greater proposition assumed is plain; because that which has the effect perfectly in its power, either can, from itself alone, be toward it; or the causation of any concurrent is in its power, namely, that it causes it, or does not.

» An example from the intellect; which, if it concur to causing the volition, according to the third opinion of dist. 25. of this book, nevertheless does not cause except by the voluntary causing: so that its causation is in the power of the will.

But the force of the argumentation of Scotus consists in this; that if the created free choice would exert itself in free operations by the immediate concourse of God, such operations would not be free; for the reason that the immediate and exercised concourse of the first cause would not rather be in the hand of free choice, nor subjected to its motion, in respect of this, that such an influx could, by the arbitrament of the created will, be posited, or taken away, of in-esse and of fact.

Nor do Vázquez, Suárez, and their partisans escape the force of this proof; insofar as they assert that a concourse is prepared for free choice toward either alternative, and contractible by the nod and vote of the created will. Because, as we showed broadly and pressingly in the preceding article, the created will cannot so contract and determine the divine will, that such an exercised impulse of the created will, for any sign for which it is conceived as going forth from the created will, so as to determine the power of God, is also understood to hang upon God, as from a principle, and therefore from God as determined to such a species of action; since it is implicative that, from an agent, as actually acting, and composed to the action, the action proceed, if the agent, as in an exercised act, be indeterminate. Therefore, either the exercised impulse of the created will, which contracts the composition of the divine power toward such a species of influx, does not hang upon God immediately, as Aureolus willed; or if it hangs immediately upon God, it goes forth from him as determined to such a species of influx. And then the argumentation which we transcribed from Scotus presses; that it is not in the hand of the created free choice, that God concur immediately in this way or in that; and therefore neither could the impulse of the will, hanging upon the exercised concourse of the first cause, be free.

See how that argumentation, which assails concursive premotion from the absurdity of injured liberty, also with equal force assails the immediate concourse of God to all free operations: for which reason Scotus used that proof against the immediate concourse of God to all free operations.

Then, for the commentary on the proof of Scotus, this remains to be noted; that he used a sharp and acute instance of free operation, in that hypothesis, that intellection concur to eliciting the impulse of the will, as some hold, asserting; that the volition tending toward Peter do not go forth effectively from the will alone, but also from the intellection, and the express image of Peter.

With that opinion given, therefore the volition, or prosecution, of Peter would be free, because the express image of Peter would be subject to the nod of the will in respect of the effecting of such an impulsive prosecution; whence also Scotus aptly infers, that the operation of the will would not be free, if it hung immediately upon such a determined concourse of God, and such a concourse were not subject of in-esse or of fact, so that it could be taken away or posited by the arbitrament of the created will; since it implies that the divine will be contracted by the exercised created volition.

It is argued, third, for the antecedent supposition; which seems to burst forth from the doctrine of Scotus. Because the determination and causality of God, by the force of which either the act of our will is immutated objectively from eternity, so as to exist for such a difference of time; or in time he extracts the same acts from the eminence and virtuality of causes; that is, which would befit God for the same reason on the part of the effect, or of our cooperation, if God were an agent altogether necessary, and not free, as we showed above concerning the mind of Scotus; which clearly demonstrates, that God, according to the doctrine of Scotus, is not concerned with the laws of free choice, nor composed with the second cause for acting, intending the indemnity of the liberty of the created will.

For if God should prepare a concourse for free choice, as for a principle indifferent toward either alternative, and therefore not anticipating its determination, but rather involving the condition: Volo talem actum, si liberum arbitrium velit. Although God were an agent altogether necessary, the functions of free choice would not be injured, since he would decree nothing except by the vote and arbitrament of our will. Therefore, if on the contrary Scotus has asserted; that the second cause acts thus, as moved by God, that if God were a necessary mover, and not free, our will would act necessarily, and not freely; this demonstrates evidently, that the motion of God, as asserted by Scotus, is by no means concerned with the indifference of free choice toward either alternative, but rather that free choice is fastened to one part, as it were, with an iron force, by an antecedent necessity and supposition.

Nor do you escape the force of the argument by fleeing to extrinsic determination; that therefore the supposition of the decree ought not to be estimated as that antecedent supposition which prostrates the rights of liberty; for the reason that it is not the influx of some intrinsic form impressed upon our will, but only the extrinsic premotion of our will, which does not immutate the internal condition and indifference of operating in the will.

For that indeed seems said gratuitously; for the reason that to necessitate the inferior and subject powers, the immission, or impression, of some intrinsic virtue is not necessary; but the absolute and efficacious proposition of the will alone suffices, on account of the natural sympathy of the powers in operating. For the will, without the impression of some intrinsic form in the intellect, necessitates it, or captivates it by its sole precept, so as to render assent to the credible object: similarly it necessitates the locomotive power to motion, without the impression of something physical upon such a power.

But our will no less obeys God, nor is it less subjected to him, than the inferior powers are subjected to the will; therefore just as those are necessitated by the antecedent supposition, on account of the only extrinsic efficient statute of our will, so the created will is necessitated by the extrinsic decree of God, with an antecedent supposition and necessity.

Other objections from Suárez against the conciliation of liberty with the extrinsic premotion of the absolute decree.

It is argued, fourth, from Suárez in rei resolutione quaestionis de concursu, et efficaci auxilio Dei sub num. 13., which is contained in tomo opusculorum.

Because the assertors of physical premotion seem to raise the arcane forces of the helps of grace; and to measure the necessity of the helps not from the fragility of fallen nature, as the Fathers speak, so that from some general subordination of the second cause to the first, without necessity; we use the term of predetermination.

For we do not assert the necessity, as it were, of an adequate and formal predetermination toward good from perfection and the use of supernatural things; or from the debility, or proneness, of free choice toward evil; but we pronounce from the indetermination, and potentiality, of the second cause toward such an individuum of action, on account of which it necessarily postulates the contraction and determination of the divine will.

Whence it comes about, that the contraction of such potentiality be, as it were, the formal reason, and adequate, of constituting premotion; but the reason, as it were material, and inadequate, of the necessity of the supernatural help physically premoving the will, be sought from the elevated series of supernatural things; which necessarily demands even a motion of an order exceeding the bounds of the whole of nature.

So that if the premotion be not bestowed by the influx of some intrinsic form, but by the extrinsic volition of God, so as to exercise the office of causality toward ad extra of the divine executing faculty, as Scotus wills; the divine will, inasmuch as it moves and determines our will to acts above the forces of the whole of nature, be asserted as the supernatural help, or the extrinsic supernatural premotion of God. Wherefore, although the necessity of such premotion, as supernatural, be drawn from the condition of the supernatural agent; yet the adequate and formal reason demanding the premotion of God is the indetermination of the second cause toward such an individuum of action foreseen.

But this necessity would persist, even though human nature were not prone to evil; nor the will harassed by diabolical invasions; therefore the marvelous and recondite energy of the helps of grace, and the, as it were, formal necessity of supernatural premotion, is recalled into that physical assertion concerning the indetermination of the second cause with respect to such an individuum of action in preference to another: which, since it is doubtful and is disapproved by weighty theologians, seems to elevate the necessity and the majesty of the helps of grace.

8. Lastly it is argued; because the doctrine of Scotus concerning the predetermination of God, by the extrinsic form of his volition, seems to take away liberty, while it enervates the force of sufficient help; so that our will, without the premotion of the divine will, be left necessitated toward evil, while it does not obtain sufficient help toward good.

Which is opened rather thus; because the decree of God, as it is the principle of our supernatural cooperation, is so necessary for assenting, that although man be anticipated by the indeliberate motions of holy illuminations on the part of the intellect, and inspirations on the part of the will, he cannot by any means burst forth into assent; unless the absolute determination of God accede, by way of execution, or of the external use of the divine executing faculty, which would determine our will to assenting.

Therefore that anticipating grace, which is called sufficient, is not sufficient for operating without the absolute proposition of God, or the anticipating decree; and accordingly, while God does not premove our will to right operation by the absolute determination of his will, he, as it were, necessitates the will toward a depraved work; since he does not confer an expedited and proximate principle for acting rightly.

9. Nor does it avail to say; that although our will, without the motion of the divine will, does not actually operate good; yet it avails proximately for operating holily on account of the anticipation of sufficient help.

Because, as Suárez objects in the aforementioned brief resolution of the question concerning the concourse, and efficacious help of God, under num. 21. and 22. the aforesaid response involves implication. Because since God does not command man that he may be able to operate, but that he actually operate good; he ought to enrich with that virtue of operating, which confers proximately, not only toward being able, but also toward the exercise of the act: but since the composition for operating of sufficient help with the absolute will of God premoving toward supernatural cooperation is not subjected to the nod of man; thence it comes about that neither is it in the power of man to use sufficient help, as sufficient, or as composed to the divine will, so as to exercise the office of external causality, or motion.

Because he who neither has, nor can have, that which is necessarily required for operating actually, lacks not only the exercise of the operation, but also the moral, and proximate, power for effecting, although he may obtain some remote, fundamental, and physical power, such as that which is available to the power of vision for seeing, while it lacks light; and to fire for lighting, if it be deprived of divine concourse.

10 Wherefore, neither does it evacuate the force of the argument; that the premotion of the divine will, which we assert, does not pertain to being able to operate; but to actual cooperation. Whence it comes about that, to sufficient help not composed with the divine premotion, nothing is lacking for the proximate power, morally expedited, for acting; but only for actually operating.

For the aforesaid escape is barred by that instance of fire deprived of the actual influx of God for acting. Because although the actual concourse of God pertains to the exercise of the operation; yet the second cause is asserted to avail proximately to the act by the habitude, and connotation, of the divine influx offered to itself for acting; so that if God had denied such a concourse, fire would not be the principle proximately availing, or standing in the last readiness, for lighting.

But the concursive premotion which we asserted is not in the hand of the counsel of man; or it is not in the power of our will to compose sufficient help with that premotion by way of concourse, or of actual motion; therefore neither does man obtain sufficient help, while he is not given by God that extrinsic determination of the divine will, which exercises the office of external premotion.

11 Whence the Jesuit authors, that they may save the reason and operative virtue of sufficient help; defend that sufficient help ought to expect nothing of physical premotion, so as to operate actually: because otherwise it would come about, that in the will not cooperating, while sufficient help is not composed with physical premotion, that help would not be proximately, and morally, ready for the act, and therefore would not be sufficient help.

Wherefore they also asserted; that the virtue of the help ought to be such, that it be sufficient; that, with every parity in physical being given, (in respect of every virtue pertaining to the first act of operating, and to every gift really condistinct from the assent of the obeying will,) in the will resisting, and assenting to the vocation; one in fact resist, the other assent. Although that which obeys receive a greater benefit in the genus of morality; for the reason that it is given with a congruous vocation, or with the supernatural indeliberate motions of illuminations, and inspirations, from the conditioned foreknowledge of the future assent. But the rebellious will, although it have obtained a supernatural motion of equal physical intensity, is not esteemed given with such a vocation in moral being, or in the reason of benefit; for the reason that it has not received from God a congruous vocation, or from the foreknowledge of the future assent.

The placitum of Anthony of Corduba conciliating liberty with foreknowledge; for the reason that our operation is prior in nature than the absolute and efficacious determination of God.

12 Moved by the aforesaid reasons, our Anthony of Corduba, otherwise a theologian of good note, in the Theological Questionary libr. 1. quaestion. 55. dub. 10., where he inquires: Whether with the efficacious will of God, and with his concourse standing immediately and sufficient, but at the same time our liberty of will, and contingency in things, is posited; but the difficulty. But it is to be noted, secondly. He says, namely, that no conciliation of our liberty with the concourse and causality of God can even be assigned, unless we assert a free cause determining itself beforehand by nature, as regards the species and individuation of the act; so that the determination of the created will precedes by priority of nature the determination of God. For so the aforesaid author has it.

Our will not only modifies the universal divine will as to manner, so that it freely concur with it; but also determines it as to the species of acts, and as to the singular acts of the will. So that not first in the order of nature does the divine will (even from eternity) will, or determine itself, to concur actually at such a time with our will in the third sign for producing this or that particular act. Not first, I say; but after our will in the second sign has been foreseen, or foreknown, as about to determine itself at such a time to willing, or to nilling; or to producing this or that act.

Then in the second sign, and not before, the divine will determines itself from eternity to will to concur in the third sign, at such a time, with our will to those same particular acts, as often and whenever our will shall have willed; and to cease from such concurrence, as often and whenever it has been foreseen that it will freely cease. And the reason of this is: because unless God had from eternity decreed so to do, as has been said, our liberty of will together with the divine concurrence would by no means be well saved.

13 The doctrine which the aforesaid author extends to the works of grace, he thereby subverts. I say, secondly. Where he says:

So in the matter at hand God bears Himself toward us: for in the first sign He wills to move our will, and to give it virtue, and this operation of His is prior. In the second sign He wills to be determined in time by our will; and in this determination our will is prior. In the third sign, together are the concurrence of God, and the operation of our will, and the act; as was said above.

And the same holds of the concurrence of the special divine help to the works of grace, or supernatural works, and to loving God above all things, where the aforesaid three signs are to be posited in His concurrence with our will, so that all things may be well understood.

14 But I judge that Anthony of Corduba consequently opined that our determination precedes by priority of nature the absolute purpose of the divine will; supposing that he maintained that the divine will is composed to operate with the created will, involving the condition, if the latter will. For as often as two agents so agree to operate that the one does not begin to act except at the wish and arbitrament of the other; then the other cause, the condition being discharged, must be judged to operate by priority of nature; inasmuch as it contracts the potentiality and indetermination of the other; and accordingly bears itself as the quo, and as the reason of the contraction of the other, as a co-cause. On which we speak at length and expressly in ar. 5 of this distinction, from nu. 20 to 24.

Wherefore, if it were true that the will of God does not contract the created will as regards the species and individuation of the act; but, on the contrary, that the divine will is determined by our will; then the priority of nature would also have to be sustained on the side of the determination of the created will, as is clear from those things which we seriously weighed in the preceding ar. 6, under nu. 61 and 62.

But if the divine and the created will concur equally first to the free operation, without any presupposition of a sign of nature, or of a quo; no reason appears why it should rather be asserted that the divine will is contracted, or determined, by the created will, than, on the contrary, that the created will is by the divine? Since neither can bear itself as the quo, or as the reason of the contraction of the other; for as much as it is established in all philosophy that that is prior by nature to another which bears itself as the quo, and as the reason of the other, in some grade of being, or series of causing.

15 Then again, there is also inferred from what has been said that there is retorted against the Jesuit writers, (supposing that they deny a priority of nature on the side of the determination of the created will,) that objection which they magnify, and on which they principally rely for disapproving the opinion of Scotus: namely, that our will would not be a free principle of its own determination, if the motion of God were prior by nature to the determination of our will; for the reason that such predeterminative causality would not be beneath the nod of free choice, nor in the hand of its counsel.

For the same reason fights against the adversaries, supposing that the determination of the creature is not prior by nature to the concurrence of God; because if God and the creature equally first influence the free act, then there is no stronger reason why the divine will should be asserted to be contracted to such a species and individuum of action by the created will, than, on the contrary, the created will by the divine will? And accordingly, the will of God would not be subjected to the nod of the created will, if the divine will, as contracting itself at will to such a species and individuum of action, did not follow our determination as preceding it, and as discharging the conventional application, or the condition of operating in such a way, if the created will wills. On which shortly below, in the answer to the arguments, under number 28 of this article.

The placitum of Corduba is refuted; yet he is defended from the note of the Semi-Pelagian error; further, also, the vindication of Scotus from the teasing of Corduba.

16 Moreover, the assertion of Corduba concerning our operation preceding by priority of nature the determination of God, we premise as manifestly refuted in the preceding ar. 6, under nu. 61 and 62. Because, as we there showed, if our determination could be prior by nature to the actual and exercised determination of God, it would come about that, with a merely aptitudinal and signed termination of the divine will, and one that had been present to God concerning objects which can never be understood to be loved as created, the object would be not only objectively unchanged as regards its own absolute loving, but also truly and really placed outside the act, and virtually and eminently in the manner of causes; which, as being absurd, we cut away in like measure at the place cited, and especially under num. 62.

Then again, the aforesaid opinion is specially impugned in supernatural acts. For although Corduba manifestly confesses that our will, determining itself beforehand by nature to supernatural operations, presupposes prevenient grace, through indeliberate supernatural motions of illuminations and inspirations; yet, according to his principles, he must assert that the determination of our will is prior by nature to the will of God as it is the principle of cooperating grace; and accordingly prior also to cooperating grace itself.

Inasmuch as he conciliates liberty with grace, and with the concurrence of God, to supernatural acts by no other reason than that our will first by nature contracts itself to such a species and individuum of influence, which seems in some way to derogate from cooperating grace. For since our will, in order to consent, or to cooperate, needs not only exciting but also cooperating grace, it is therefore falsely asserted that, for some sign of nature, the supernatural cooperation of our will can be conceived with a mere relation to exciting grace, without an immediate and exercised dependence upon cooperating grace.

Then we attack Corduba, (as also Vázquez, Herice, and the other Jesuit authors, who deny the predefinition of supernatural operations against Suárez and others who admit it,) from Corduba's own pronouncements. In the second sign he wills to be determined in time by our will, and in this determination our will is prior. And from the following. And the same holds of the concurrence of the special divine help to the works of grace, or supernatural works: from which I here press the Cordubans, thus affected. Because if the divine will does not absolutely predefine supernatural operations, but is only composed conditionally with free choice into a concourse contractible, at the arbitrament of our will, to good or to evil, to a natural and to a supernatural act; so that, the composition of the divine power to concurrence in the first act being premised, and the apparatus of exciting and prevenient grace, which precedes the second act of the cooperation of the created will, being at hand; the will and power of God are still understood to import a composition to a concurrence conditionally contractible at the nod and wish of the created will, and therefore to be purified by the cooperation of free choice, operating well or ill, naturally or supernaturally.

Therefore, since the cause taking away and purifying the condition is prior to the other concausa, which only conditionally composes itself to the concourse contractible at the nod of the other as comprincipiate, it would follow that free choice and its cooperation, as bursting forth from free choice, would be the ratio of contracting God's will and power — from itself indeterminate — to exercise and efficacious influx; whereas, before the science of the cooperation of the created will, as actually effluent from free choice, it is conceived only as indifferent to either, and in first act contractible at the arbitrament of the created will to a good or evil act, natural or supernatural.

Therefore, just as it is ascribed to the liberty of the will that it contracts God's will and His power — indeterminate of themselves — to concurring in works good or evil, natural or supernatural, in such wise that the operation of free choice, as effluent from its liberty, purifies the conditional composition of the divine power for bestowing supernatural concourse, or cooperating grace, if free choice wills; it will come about, then, that the human will obtains cooperating grace from its own liberty, and not conversely that grace is rather the ratio on account of which it obtains liberty of supernatural operation — against the famous saying of Augustine, from Tom. 7, book De correptione et gratia, ch. 8; which text of Augustine we shall transcribe and explain below, in the following distinction on conditional foreknowledge, art. 4, On the causality and conditional necessity of foreknowledge, marginal nums. 11 and 12.

Wherefore we have always deemed the aforesaid pronouncement of the Corduban improbable, since from it flow these less-proved assertions: Because I believe, God wills me to believe; because I yield to the supernatural excitation, God wills me to assent by concomitant or cooperating grace.

17 Yet, though these things are so, nor can we acquiesce in those who lash the Corduban more sharply than is due, fastening on him the note of Semi-Pelagian error. Since it is far from Semi-Pelagianism that the aforesaid author asserts; for although supernatural operation, by a priority of nature, precedes the determination of the divine will as the principle of cooperating grace, he has always professed Catholicly that no instant in Quo, that is, of duration, can be assigned in which supernatural cooperation exists without God's willing cooperation through grace toward supernatural assent.

Wherefore they wander entirely from the sky who ascribe to the Corduban the lapse of the Semi-Pelagians, since these expressly asserted that an act of the mere order of nature is the positive disposition on whose regard God bestows the gifts of exciting and cooperating grace. On which we treat at length in the general controversy on predestination, inquiring whether the works of free choice alone are the cause of our predestination. But on the Corduban, cleared of the note of error, read Vázquez at the place cited, 1. p. disp. 99. cap. 5, where under num. 28 he recites many authors subscribing to the Corduban.

18 But, while we vindicate the Corduban from the note of censure, we cannot but charge him with a trifling and intemperate license in carping at Scotus; for thus the Franciscan — himself a Corduban — falls upon the Subtle Doctor of the Franciscan order, the literary antesignanus, under §. Secundo ex supra dictis, where he says:

From what was said above the falsity, or insufficiency, of the opinion of Scotus is plain, who says; that the divine intellect, turned toward the divine will, and seeing it determined; thence clearly and determinately knows all future contingents, and our volitions freely future, before they are.

But that this is false, at least as regards the knowledge of our future volitions, is proved. For, as is plain from what has been said, our will in that second sign determines the divine will, and is prior to it thus determined; and yet then, and even before, that present and future determination of our will is known by the divine intellect: therefore that clear and determinate knowledge of our volitions, future contingents, does not depend upon, nor is it had from, a subsequent determination of the divine will.

From these it manifestly appears how sluggishly Corduba attacks Scotus; since without proof he assumes that which Scotus often explodes as altogether false; namely, that the divine will is contracted by our will to the species and individuation of acts; whereas we have shown more than once that the opposite is the mind of Scotus, and of his ancient followers.

Then, without any impugnation, confidently and sleepily he censures in Scotus that which is received by his whole school; namely, that future contingents of the acts of the created will do not obtain determinate knowability, or truth, before the absolute determination of the divine will. For although they can be conceived by the divine intellect before the decree as neutral with respect to truth, or falsity, (at the nod of the will of God prestituting one part of the contradiction,) or as indeterminate to being, or not being, about to be; yet not as contracted to one part of the contradiction.

From which principle we produce with the best consequence: that our cooperation cannot be prior by nature to the absolute determination of God, (as Corduba willed,) if our determination could in no way be foreknown by God before the absolute volition of God, so as to excite God to undertake such a determination; and accordingly neither could the foreknowledge of our determination be the reason why God contracted the community, or as it were the potentiality, of His will to such a species of influence.

The text of Scotus, from which we draw the reason for conciliating liberty with foreknowledge, and it is weighed, that a necessity de inesse stands together with an absolute and simpliciter contingency.

Scotus, in 1. Sententiar. distinct. 39. quaest. unica, where he treats of the knowledge of future contingents, under the fourth quaesitum, inquires: Whether God necessarily knows every condition of existence; and then under the fifth quaesitum he asks: Whether with the determination of His knowledge there can stand some contingency on the part of things in existence? But of these two doubts I do not transcribe the whole text, but only submit, as is my custom, those fragments which either contain a special doctrine, or call for discussion. Thus, then, Scotus has it, objecting against his own opinion. §. To the fourth question I argue, sub n. 5, where he says.

Moreover; whatever can be in God, can be the same as God; and consequently God. But whatever can be God, is God of necessity; because God is immutable: therefore whatever can be in God, is God of necessity. But to know A can be in God; therefore it is God of necessity, and consequently He knows A by simple necessity.

20 Moreover, every perfection simply absolute is in God of necessity; but to know A is a perfection simply; because otherwise God would be imperfect, if He did not formally know A; and He would not be imperfect except on account of the lack of a perfection simply: therefore He necessarily knows A.

21 Then, against the fifth quaesitum, Scotus objects thus. §. To the fifth question sub n. 6, where he argues against the conciliation of liberty and foreknowledge.

Moreover, everything known by God to be going to be will necessarily be: A is known by God to be going to be: therefore, etc. The major is true as it is of the necessary, since the predicate is in the subject of necessity. But the minor is of simple inesse, because true for all eternity; hence the conclusion follows of the necessary.

22 Which objections Scotus diluted. On the arguments of the fourth question, where he has:

To the second proof I say: that in the understood, or willed esse, which of itself is secundum quid, it is not necessary that every possibility which contradicts necessity ex se formally should conclude muta-bility. For that esse is not real esse, but is reduced to the esse of some real being neces-sary in itself; on account of the necessity of which other, muta-bility cannot be here.

And yet the necessity of that other does not of itself befit this one formally; therefore this is not ex se formally neces-sary; because it has not the esse of an extremity, which it refe-rences really. Nor yet is it mutable, be-cause according to that diminished esse it references an immutable extremity; and mu-tation in a thing, inasmuch as it references another, cannot be without mutation in that other.

23 To the third I say: that no perfe-ction simpliciter in God depends on a cre-ature; nor yet does simple necessary esse of itself require a creature in any esse whatever.

And therefore that God know B, as it is under-stood not only to know absolutely, but also as it passes over B itself, is not a perfection simpliciter; but a perfection sim-pliciter with an addition which necessarily accom-panies a perfection simpliciter. Then I say: that the major of that argument is true of the perfection of that science taken abso-lutely; but thus the minor is false, etc.

24 To the arguments of the fifth question I say: that that mixture avails nothing unless that minor be of simple inesse; and this not only that it be true for every time, but that it be necessarily true.

*Et quòd hoc requiratur, patet in ista instantia; omne quiescens de necessi-tate non mouetur; lapis in centro terrae est quiescens: ergo de necessitate non mouetur. Conclusio non sequitur: et ta-men minor semper est vera, non ta-*men necessariò vera.

Ita est in proposito; licet illa minor de inesse sit simpliciter vera, non tamen est necessariò vera; potest enim Deus non scire A, sicut potest non velle A, propter cotingentiam, quae primò est in voluntate ad obiecta secundaria, et ex hoc concomi-tanter in intellectu, sicut prius exposi-tum est.

25 On which letter of Scotus, and for conciliating the infallibility of the divine foreknowledge with the liberty of our coop-eration, it is to be observed from the text which we propose under num. 23, that the science of vision (and the same holds of the free act of the divine will), as it is re-garded as importing a predicate uvable, and intrinsic, of the form apprehend-ing and pursuing the object, and as such, is a necessary form in God — not only speaking of de inesse necessity, or ex suppositione, but even of necessity sim-pliciter; for the reason that free vision and appetition considered intrinsically are the very substance of the Deity, and accordingly pre-carry in their esse the same necessity which the quiddity of God, necessary by es-sence, imbibes.

If, however, vision and free vo-lition be considered as they connote that termination of them to the object, which as it flowed into God li-berally, so it also could not be; while as such it imports only the connotation of the extrinsic extremity, that is, of the object of such science, or of free vo-lition, so it expresses that same necessity which the object imports, which is the only necessity de inesse or ex hypothesi, yet not absolute and simpliciter.

Wherefore, just as that enunciation: Peter will answer the vocation, passes from neutral, or indeterminate, to being about to be, or not about to be, to determinately being about to be, on account of the objective mutation which accrues to it from the decree; and that mutation is only necessary de inesse, yet not simpliciter and absolutely, inasmuch as it could have not been about to be, if God had prestituted the opposite part of the contradiction; for example: Peter as not about to answer the vocation: hence it comes about that the knowledge and volition of God, as it puts on termination to the future object, is not more necessary than is the futurity of that very same object. Wherefore, just as the futurity of that thing, or the objective mutation to being about to be, is only necessary ex hypothesi, and not simpliciter; so the knowledge of God, as it expresses termination to the object, is necessary only ex hypothesi, yet not absolutely and simpliciter. For the reason that just as Peter, objectively changed to assent, could absolutely and simpliciter have dissented, so also God so foreknows Peter as about to assent, that He could have foreknown him as not about to assent, if God had preordinated the opposite concerning the assent of Peter. Hence it comes about that neither the knowledge, nor the free volition, which affords the medium of foreknowing future things, imports necessity into things; since it claims for itself only that necessity de inesse, and ex hypothesi, which the things themselves, destined as congruent to futurity, carry together with an absolute, and simpliciter, indifference to the opposite.

26 From what has been said is drawn the legitimate interpretation of the text proposed under num. 22, where Scotus had asserted that the thing, inasmuch as it has esse cognitum and volitum (which, according to Scotus's phrase, sounds nothing other than what, according to the common mode of speaking, is called objective esse with a habitude to a determinate existence for such a difference of time) imports necessity, and immutability — not simpliciter, and primary, but secondary, or accessary — for the reason that there accrues to the created being, by the decree, objectively, the immutable thing, mutating in its own right, an immutability and necessity not simpliciter, but ex hypothesi.

Which those words of Scotus sufficiently untangle: Nor yet is it mutable; be-cause according to that diminished esse it references an immutable extremity; mutation in a thing, inasmuch as it references another, cannot be without mutation in that other.

Where he demonstrates that objective esse (which he calls diminished, for the reason that it is not being simpliciter and really existent, but only objectively mutated so as to exist for some difference of time) acquires an immutability de inesse and secundum quid — because if that diminished esse, or the objective esse destined to be, were mutated into not being about to be, then also the absolute proposal of the divine will would be subjected to mutation, which kindles the thing under that objective mutation, which is asked of the decree.

27 It is to be noted further, in the text under num. 21, that in order to dilute that opposition which Scotus had formed against the conciliation of liberty and foreknowledge — which was such: Everything known by God to be going to be will necessarily be: A is known by God to be going to be (for instance, that Petrus will consent to the vocation); therefore Petrus will neces-sarily respond to the vocation — in order to escape and lay flat that aforesaid attack, he constituted the best constituting rule: that no mixture of premises, one of simple necessity simpliciter and the other necessary only ex hypothesi or de inesse, concludes a necessity simpliciter in the conclusion; but he demands necessity simpliciter in both premises, that the conclusion come out simpliciter necessary.

Which Scotus elucidates by the aforesaid instance: Omne quiescens de necessitate non mouetur; lapis in centro terrae est quiescens; ergo de necessitate non mouetur. Conclusio non sequitur, et tamē minor semper est vera, non tamen necessaria vera.

Where his point is, that the conclusion inferring that the stone is not moved of necessity simpliciter does not obtain, because that minor — the stone in the center of the earth is at rest — imports necessity not simpliciter but de inesse, that is, ex hypothesi. That is: while the stone is in the center, it is not moved; because nev-ertheless absolutely and simpliciter it can be drawn out from the center, and so absolu-tely and simpliciter it can fail to be at rest.

So in the case at hand (says Scotus): although that minor of inesse (for instance, Petrus will respond to the vocation) be simpliciter true, yet it is not necessarily true; for God can fail to know A (for instance, that Petrus will consent to the vocation) as He can fail to will A (namely, the assent of Petrus), on account of the contingency which is first in the will and concomitantly in the intellect.

Because, since with Scotus there is no other ratio of determinate scibility in a future cōtingent than the objective mutation which flows from the decree; just as God, objectively mutating Petrus to assent by a determination de inesse, availed to mutate the same Petrus to dissent, so that enunciation about the future, Petrus will consent, which is true de inesse, could absolu-tely and simpliciter have failed to acquire a determinate truth and scibility, and consequently have been not fore-known by God; although it is necessarily fore-known in the sense of composition, or ex hypothesi of the decree, just as the enunciation is determinate ex hypothesi and de inesse.

A careful observation of Scotus, explaining why the judgment of God is simpliciter infallible, even though the object is granted absolutely and simply contingent to being about to be, and about not to be?

28 BUT you oppose against Scotus: that the proposition about a future contingent will be so de inesse that absolutely and simpliciter it could have failed to be; therefore also the foreknowledge of God, although in the sense of composition it be true, could nev-ertheless have been falsified, on account of the mutation of the object.

It is answered: that then a judgment is falsified when, the same termination of the judgment to the object remaining, the object is otherwise than the complexion expresses it. Yet, given that supposition — that Petrus, objectively mutated de inesse to assent, should dissent (as absolutely and simpliciter is possible, although in the sense of composition it be implicatory) — just as then the termination of the decree and of the science of God would be other, to a distinct object, namely to dissent; so neither could deception or falsification creep into that very termination of the divine will on account of the mutation of the object. For other indeed would be the termination of the divine will.

For in that supposition, just as the free ordination of the divine will, which supplies to the foreknowledge the medium of perceiving the future contingent, would not have decreed the assent of Petrus but his dissent; so also the science of vision would not have terminated in assent but in dissent; and consequently it could not be deceived either, because it would not be the same termination of the science to an object otherwise disposed, but a distinct termination to a diverse object.

29 Scotus resolved the matter with wondrous erudition in the aforesaid dist. 39, sole question, sub num. 27, §. similis est ratio in mixtione de contingenti, et de inesse, where he says:

For it does not follow: God cannot be deceived; and A can fail to be about to be; therefore God does not know A to be about to be. But it follows: that He does not necessarily know A to be about to be.

Which is apparent, because if my intellect always followed the mutation in the thing, so that with you sitting I were of the opinion you sit, and with you rising, that you rise, it could not be deceived. And yet from these: you sit for A, and I cannot be deceived, it does not follow; therefore I necessarily know you to sit for A.

So in the case at hand: although the divine intellect does not follow things as the effect does the cause, yet there is there the concomitant, that just as the thing can fail to be, so the divine intellect can fail to know; and therefore it never follows that the divine intellect knows the thing otherwise than it is; and therefore those requisites for deception can never stand together.

But just as the known thing can be, so God can know it; and just as the known thing can fail to be, so God can fail to know it, and if it will not be, He does not know it.

30 From what has been established of the mind of Scotus, we produce the best rationale for conciliating liberty with the free acts of the will, and the divine science, in this way.

The science and will of God, as they undergo a free termination to contingent objects, do not bear necessity simpliciter, but only ex hypothesi and de inesse; therefore neither do they import necessity simpliciter, but only in the composite sense of the motion of concourses, which does not take away the functions of free choice. The antecedent is patent from the words of Scotus trans-cribed under n. 24.

Although that minor of inesse be simpliciter true, yet it is not necessarily true; for God can fail to know A, as He can fail to will A, on account of the conti-ngency which is first in the will toward secondary objects, and on this account concomitantly in the intellect, as was exhibited before. Ex which pronouncement of Scotus, elucidated by us under n. 27, I form the following proof.

For although the science and will of God, inasmuch as they express the intrinsic predicates of apprehensive and appetitive vitality, imbibe in their esse the same necessity which the very substance of the Deity imports; yet as they involve an extrinsic termination to contingent objects, they connote only that necessity of not-being, and ex hypothesi, which the things themselves pre-carry to their immutable futurity. But such a determination is only de inesse of the actual concourse, and in the sense of composition, premising the preparation of the motion of God to either in first act; and not a contraction pertaining to the order of power, or by the mode of a first act, as we have laid open in the foregoing; therefore free choice is necessitated only in the composite sense, or ex hypothesi of its cooperation and the pre-notification of the con-course, which does not come before that very prior assent by a priority of separation, yet not from the presupposition of some form, or quasi-form of acting, which would contract in the sense of division, or of separation from the act, by which free choice exercises itself and unfolds into the second act.

Which rationale of conciliating liberty with predetermination Peter of Lorca hands on, 1. 2. tom. 2. sect. 6. de Gratia. disp. 21. under §. Explicatur concordia libertatis cum auxilio efficaci, where he has:

It is not to be deemed that this aid is some quality by way of a first act determining the will, as certain men philosophizing perversely say. For this would take away liberty. Because, under whatever rationale the will be understood as determined before the operation itself, liberty is taken away, no less than if it operated in sleep; but this aid is an actual motion to operation, which constitutes nothing in the will but the very action; which, however, is from God previously, not by a priority of the instant in which, but of the agent from which. Since, therefore, this aid does not determine the will through anything other than through the operation itself, it induces no other necessity than that which actual operation is wont to import, which is that whereby that which is, when it is, is of necessity. But this is necessity secundum quid, which by no rationale is opposed to contingency; otherwise no act would be free; for whenever the will operates, this necessity is induced by the operation itself, and by it is determined to one. So far Peter of Lorca.

Where, about those words Necessitas operatione ipsa inducitur, and likewise about their antecedents, cùm igitur hoc auxilium non per aliud determinet voluntatem quã per operationem ipsam, it is to be observed that, if the aforesaid author should wish that under the name of aid, or of divine motion, there be understood the very operation of our will as from God — by which rationale the action of God would not differ, before understanding, from the operation of the creature — such a mode of predetermining does not smile on us physically. For we judge it implicatory that the second act of created free choice should physically and really premote its own principle, so as to effect really and physically the same second act, as proceeding from free choice. On which we treated in this distinction, on the science of absolutes of contingents, art. 2, under marginal num. 7 and 26.

If, however, by the predetermination of God concurring is understood that concursive premotion which is pre-carried by the divine volition inasmuch as it performs the office of action and concourse to the outside; such pretermination is sustained of the mind of Scotus, who asserted that the action of God is His volition as terminated to the outside. In which we also have Saint Thomas concurring, as is patent from that testimonial transcribed by us in this dist. art. 1, under marginal num. 12, where we also showed that the real presence of the created term from eternity, which certain latter-day Thomists produce, is not gathered, for the reason that with Saint Thomas the action of God is the very eternal substance of the Deity.

31 But you object: that in the aforesaid proof we take as certain the very point over which the chiefest dissertation with the adversaries intercedes; since we call it necessity secundum quid, which with them is seriously asserted to be necessity simpliciter, and the antecedent, not the consequent, supposition; for the reason that with us the volition of God, which does not involve the hypothesis of the cooperation of the created cause — to be purified by free choice — but absolutely pre-establishes the futurity of the acts of our will, affords the medium of foreknowing futures. But this is the supposition of the cause, and which is not subjected to the nod of free choice; therefore it is the antecedent supposition; or, with Anselm, that is the antecedent supposition which is the supposition of the cause.

It is answered that, as is patent from what we have drafted at length in the preceding article, since the divine determination, contracting our will to one part of contradiction, presupposes the concourse of God in first act expedited to contraries and contradictories — therefore it is far from taking away the power simpliciter to either, so much the rather it contracts free choice, arrayed close at hand to either, by way of actual cooperation. But that the determination of God, by way of concourse, is not subjected to the secondary cause as purifying the condition of cooperating if the created will wills, so that it can be posited or removed de inesse and de facto at the arbitrament of the created will: that pertains to the majesty and independence of the first cause, and further to the condition essential of participated being; otherwise the first cause would not be first, but rather a created cause taking away or purifying the condition. Moreover, the exercised operation of free choice, which would purify the condition of the divine power only conditionally applied, would not be understood to issue from God at least in that first sign of the purification, and contraction of the divine power conditionally applied; as we demonstrated from Aureolus in the preceding article.

Answer to the foundations of the adversaries against the conciliation of liberty with the determination of the first cause, according to the sense of Scotus.

32 WHEREFORE to the first argument of Vázquez we say: that the supposition of the divine volition pre-establishing one part of contradiction, at the same time in that very instant in Quo, that is, of duration, with the created will, and the concourse offered and expedited to either, is not the antecedent supposition which would hurt liberty; otherwise the will also about bestowing the concourse to such a determined act would impede the functions of free choice; that this is false is abundantly enough established from what was said against Vázquez in the preceding article from number 101 up to 103, and will stand also from what is to be said below; although the will to concur in the exercised act imports a determined concourse.

33 To the second argument, from Anselm: that there, under the name of the antecedent supposition which he condemns, he understands the supposition of a form, which would precede the thing by way of a first act, fastening our will to one part of contradiction; he did not, however, reject the form of the divine volition, determining the created will extrinsically by way of concourse; otherwise Anselm would also expel as contrary to liberty the volition of God, not premoving, but bestowing the exercised and contracted concourse — since this volition does not follow the thing (as Anselm speaks) but rather makes the thing; and the volition of bestowing the exercised concourse cannot be the decreed composing a concourse, indetermi-nate, to various species, as we showed under n. 38.

Whence, to the objectional instance, we discriminate the difference which intercedes between the decree, which is the ratio of the practical truth and determination of the future contingent, and the science of vision, which is the merely spec-ulative intuition of the same truth.

We say that we confess the disparity, as to the point that the free determination of God does not premise the truth of the future contingent, as the science of vision presupposes it; but we deny that the supposition of the decree, by way of concourse, suffices for importing a force absolutely and simpliciter upon the will, if there is premised the proximate expedition of free choice in the ratio of first act to either.

To the other instance, which Vázquez brings from the lapse of the heretics insinuating that we are driven to evil by the extrinsic good-pleasure of God. We say that the heretics reject the proximate power to either of our will, and also the expedited apparatus of the divine concourse in first act to contraries and contradictories before the exercised influx, and in the sense of division or of separation from the second act. Wherefore they most shamelessly call free choice servum arbitrium, and driven or fastened to such operation, for the reason that before the exercised operation God would not be at hand to the created will for the opposite; but they asserted free choice to be necessitated in first act from an extrinsic principle. We, however, Catholicly sustain the proximate array of free choice to either, as also the expedition of the divine concourse in first act to either before the entrance of the exercise upon one part of contradiction, as is patent from what was said in the preceding article under num. 105.

Moreover, because the Adversaries cavil that the predetermination of the concourse by the absolute proposal of God favors Calvin; let them know that they may thus be re-challenged, inasmuch as from the pronouncement they deny — that liberty stands with the will of God antecedently efficacious to the act — the following assertions burst forth. Liberty does not stand with the will of God antecedently efficaciously moving; but in man there is true liberty: therefore in God is not admitted a will proueniens efficax. The conclusion is that of Pelagius; but the minor is of faith — namely, that free choice is given; whence it appears to be inferred that the major proposition is not to be admitted.

Similarly from that major proposi-tion, Liberty does not stand with the Divine will antecedently and efficaciously moving: thus it can be argued for Calvin. Liberty of created choice does not stand with the divine will premoving antecedently and efficaciously; but God excites the created will by eficacious preventing grace: therefore free choice is not given.

The conclusion is that of Calvin; the minor is of faith; therefore the major proposition cannot absolutely be admitted.

More sharply John of Saint Thomas descends upon the Adversaries, transferring a fragment of the disputation held before the Supreme Pontiff, and by him assigned to the judges of this controversy; as is to be seen with the aforesaid author, 1. par. quaest. 14. disp. 20. ar. 7. — but in this matter we must speak temperately and cautiously.

34 To the third argument it is patent from what was premised in art. 5 of this distinct. from num. 32 up to 34 inclu-sively, where at length we showed that if God did not absolutely pre-establish the motion of our will, but offered a concourse contractible at the wish and arbitrament of the created will — even though God were a necessary agent, the created will could yet operate freely. There also we treated that our will, in that hypothesis in which it would be necessitated by God, would be otherwise disposed on the side of the actual influx — both as to the physical and intrinsic mutation of the act, and as it behaves now, when it freely flows — although otherwise disposed on the side of the first act; and also as to the second act, on account of the moral and extrinsic dissimilitude which the necessary act, or the freely elicited one, expresses. But how with these the liberty of our cooperation stands, we referred there: see those pages, lest we be compelled to inculcate the same things.

To the confirmation. It is answered: that God, by His extrinsic will, without the intrinsic mutation of the created will, could necessitate it, or affix it in the first act to one part of the contradiction; (if He should immediately supply by His own power the effective causality of that quality of the species of a power, which in the first act would drive, or affix, the created will to one part of the contradiction;) but in that hypothesis God would not expedite the concourse in the first act, bestowed upon contraries and contradictories, as in fact He furnishes it. And accordingly God premoving our will by way of the second act greatly differs from the motion of the created will while it captivates the intellect to assenting to the credible object, or necessitates the locomotive power to motion. For the will so conquers and binds the powers subject to it, that it does not offer, through a free proposal, the motion to either in the first act and in the sense of division, as the divine will, by force of a free decree, prepares and expedites the concourse in the first act, indifferent to contraries and contradictories before the exercised influx; because although free choice is determined by God, yet it is contracted by that very concursive motion, and therefore the power is not contracted to the opposite before the cooperation exercised upon one part of the contradiction.

But if you obtrude that hypothesis in which the created will, by its own free proposal, would expedite the motion to the subjacent powers to either; and afterward through another decree would affix the powers, and quasi-captivate them to one of the opposites.

161 Respondetur, omnino commentitiam esse apparationem huiusmodi motionis voluntatis respectu subiectarum potentiarum, quae cum non sint agentia libera,sed necessaria, non vẽdicãt compositionẽ imperij volũtatis ad vtrumlibet, sed ad determinatum actum sibi ab imperio voluntatis praescriptum.Deinde quòd cùm voluntas contrahat subditas potentias prout sunt in actu primo,vel in sensu diuisionis,vel separationis talium potentiarum ab exercitio suarum operationum;si voluntas appararet motionem ad vtrumlibet,et etiam per imperium contraheret determinatè ad vnum,darentur duo proposita ex aequo pugnãtia circa potentias subditas,vt existunt in actu primo, et in statu diuisionisetseparationis ab operatione exercita;quod est implicatorium, et chymaericum. Quod aliter sit in compositione potentiae diuinae cum libero arbitrio creato ad vtrũlibet in actu primo(quae compositio attinet ad actum primum,dum liberum arbitrium existit diuisum ab exercitio cooperationis) et in praemotione concursiua, quae non contrahit nisi in sensu compositionis ad operationem exercitam, et ideò non contradicit apparationi cõcursus ad vtrumlibet in actu primo,et in sensu diuisionis.

162 35 To the fourth argument, from n. 7, we say: if it had any weight, it would strike even the adversaries, since they seek the congruity of the vocation from the preparation of the concourse of God with a conditional foreknowledge of consent. Which manner of reasoning, taken over in that whole universality of influx that abstracts from natural and supernatural causality, agrees even to our will, even though it had lapsed into evil; nay, it is in fact found in the influx of God to acts of the natural order's honesty from the foreknowledge of consent; and, further, it could be extended to the concourse toward the matter of wicked acts from the conditional foreknowledge of our cooperation as well.

163 Wherefore, just as Suárez does not trace out the congruity of the vocation of the preventive supernatural aid back to the sole preparation of the concourse of God with the foreknown cooperation of the created will, but to such a rationality of operating supernaturally from the foreknowledge of our cooperation; so also we, although we do not seek the concursive premotion as such, insofar as it prescinds from the natural and supernatural premotion of the order, from the fragility of fallen nature or from the condition of the supernatural principle, but from the rationality of the participated agent, that is, the second cause; yet the supernatural premotion we measure from the indigence and lability of nature for overcoming the assaults of the demon and for the elevation of the series of supernatural operation.For the dilution of the last objection it is shown, that no less does it press as a violation of liberty, with the priority (à Quò) between the concourse of God and the creature presupposed, than when the priority of nature is denied on the side of the action of free choice contracting, as it were, the potentiality of the divine will toward either alternative; or in the will of bestowing an exercised concourse.

164 36 TO the last argument, from n. 5, I marvel that the adversaries thrust it upon us with such contention, since it presses them equally in the congruous vocation, without which the sufficient aid will not in fact operate, although the force and excellence of such aid for the supernatural act are sustained by the adversaries in a Catholic manner; because it can contribute proximately to it, even though without a congruous vocation it is never reduced to act. Concerning which I spoke in the aforesaid art. 5. sub n. 31.; but I like to touch this matter again, which Vázquez handles. 1. p. disp. 98. cap. 8.

165 For it can be objected: a disparate rationality lies beneath the sufficient aid lacking the physical premotion of God, and the sufficient aid deprived of a congruous vocation. Because it is not within our power to compose the indeliberate motions of holy illuminations and inspirations with a physical premotion to operate; whereas it is within our discretion that our vocation be congruous or incongruous. For since the congruity of the vocation is drawn from the conditional foreknowledge of consent; but the certainty of foreknowledge from the determination of the futurition of the thing; and yet the futurition of the assent is subjected to the nod of free choice — from there it follows that it is within our power to operate congruously or incongruously, just as it belongs to the pleasure of the created will that the thing be to be, or not to be.

166 Answered: even if conditional futuritions had in them a determinate truth that did not flow from a free conditional decree, antecedent to the truth and determination of such objects — which proposition we reject as false in the following dist. concerning the knowledge of conditionators — still it can by no means be defended that the congruous or incongruous vocation is subjected to the nod of man. For since the sufficient aid with which we are gifted by God consists in indeliberate acts of illustration on the side of the intellect, and of inspiration on the side of the will, which therefore are said to be done in us without us, because they are done indeliberately by the vital powers with the supernatural concourse of God: just as the first-first motions are not subject to free choice, so neither can those indeliberate motions of preventive grace with a congruous vocation be subject to it. Which is so certain that it cannot be refuted by the adversaries.

167 Wherefore Vázquez, loco citato, sub numero. 50., candidly professes the point, saying: Esse vocationem congruam, aut non congruam, ex libero pendet arbitrio, sicut rem fore, aut non fore; tametsi ex eo non pendeat, eam vocationem nobis concedi, quae in nobis congrua futura est.

168 37 If, therefore, it is not within the nod of free choice to be gifted by God with a congruous vocation; and without a congruous vocation one will never respond, or hear the voice of him that calls, however loudly he may intone, and however he may strive to overcome the sinner's affected deafness; then, just as it is not within the power of free choice to compose the sufficient aid with the congruity of the vocation, so neither will it be in the hand of its own counsel that the sufficient [aid] be able to strive proximately toward the supernatural operation. Behold how the adversaries see themselves entangled in the same wiles with which they would entangle us.

169 Wherefore, just as they are forced in a Catholic manner to protect the proximate excellence of the sufficient aid for operating, although without a congruous vocation it never operates in act; so also we defend the force of the sufficient aid, although it is not within our power to be premoved thus or thus by God, and, premotion set aside, no sufficiency of the aid contributes to the actual influx, although it could contribute proximately to it.

170 33 But come now; since the premotion which we assert is not by the mode of a first act, but an actual concourse, if, on account of the priority from-Which, or of nature, it could be asserted that it is not thus tempered to free choice, or does not preserve liberty; because it is not, with full right, subject to the pleasure and arbitrament of our will as concerns its affirmation and negation, so that it could be removed from being in essence, or in the exercised act and the compositional sense: although otherwise it were asserted that the premotion is afforded by God according to the demand of free choice thus circumstanced, with contingency of the possible, and in the sense of division — it would follow either that our determination would be prior in nature to the influx of God, as Córduba wished; or that the actual concourse of God is not subject to the arbitrament of the created will; which I thus judge.

171 For, upon this count alone could the cooperation of the divine will be conceived as subject in a manner to free choice, that it could be removed from essential and also factual being according to our nod: if the determination of our will preceded the divine will; for then, from the hypothesis of the pact of concurring, there would follow — by the motion of our will antecedent with priority from-Which — the undoing of that antecedent absolute proposal of the divine will to bestow such, and not another, concourse. So that the pact entered into by God with the free cause of concurring would be thus expressed: I will such an act, if you will it; therefore this composition, for operating, of the created and uncreated cause (as one which involves a condition that must be purified by the free cause) demands an operation of the creature preceding the influx of God by a priority of nature; according to what we did against Suárez and Herice in art. 5. of this dist., from n. 20. up to 22. inclusively.

172 But if God and the creature were composed, or agreed, to operate thus, equally first and without any presupposition of an order of reasoning (from-Which, or of nature): by what reasoning will the divine will be able to be conceived as contracted by our operation to such a determinate and absolute intention and execution of this causality ad extra, if the created will cannot so determine itself without such a concourse of God, and God concurs thus of his own arbitrament, not excited by the cooperation of free choice, nor subjecting his concourse to the antecedent excitation or contraction of free choice? For our determinate operation cannot be understood to stand as the from-Which, and as the rationality of such a contraction, since it is not conceived as prior to such a contraction of the divine will; just as it is also contradictory that our determination be apprehended as existing without an immediate dependence upon the actual and exercised termination of the divine will cooperating to the effecting of that same thing. And since the sole assigned and aptitudinal tendency of the divine will in first act — which tendency could inhere in God concerning things that will never exist at any difference of time, as we said in the present art. sub num. 16., where the texts I cited from art. 6. sub num. 61. et 62. must be utterly handled: wherefore many Jesuit authors, assailed by the force of this reasoning, deny that God is contracted by a deficient free choice to the concourse toward the matter of sin, as is evident from the preceding article at marg. n. 78..

173 Wherefore Luis Dolanus, Capuchin, sharply assailing physical predetermination and the immediate concourse of God to free acts, rightly infers against those assertors of middle knowledge who, with Lessius, hold that God is neither excited nor contracted by the science of the cooperation of free choice to such a species of concourse: that the liberty of free choice is harmed no less by an assigned premotion than by an immediate composition given equally to operate between God and the created free choice. So it stands in his Quadripartite disputation, p. 2. capit. 3. near the end.

174 Si Deus decerneret absolutè se cōcursurum identificato influxu in negationē Petri; vel id faceret expectata determinatione, et cōsulta volūtate Petri, idest nō priùs determinādo cuius modi cōcursū daturus esset, quā per scientiam conditionatam praeuidisset aliquid in eiusmodi volūtate, vnde rationabiliter excitaretur ad deserendum exhibendumque concursum vnum potiùs quā oppositum. Vel id faceret eadem Petri volūtate non expectatâ nec consulta, sed omnino antecedentter ad illam, quia nō potest dari alius modus concurrendi identificato concursu; siquidem cōcurrere cōsultā, et concurrere non consulta voluntate contradictoriè opponuntur. And a little after, having set aside the excitation of God, and his being contracted to such a determinate rationality of concurring by the foreseen absolute cooperation of free choice — since it is not established by the common opinion asserted, that such a way of thinking — the exercised determination and cooperation of the created free choice without actual dependence upon the divine will, not as indifferent to either alternative, but contracted to one side of the contradiction — is contradictory; for it implies that from an indeterminate principle (indeterminate in the second act, and in the compositional sense toward the action) there should go forth the determinate exercised dependence of the cooperation of free choice upon God, as we clearly showed more than once out of Aureolus: afterward Dolanus subjoins against the opinion admitting the immediate concourse of God to free acts with simultaneity of nature, not explored by God through the absolute foreknowledge of the cooperation of free choice. Si verò decerneret cõcurrere nõ expectata, nec consulta voluntate Petri, non esset illi libera, nec cõsequenter imputaretur illi ad culpam, sed soli Deo.

175 For which reason we are in that sense (as we have often observed) that if the endeavors of the adversaries obtained anything for the right of liberty against the concourse of God, antecedent with priority from-Which, or of nature, to the cooperation of free choice, they would thereby wrench away even the immediate concourse of God, not only toward the matter of wicked acts, but toward all free operations: therefore either the adversaries adhere to Aureolus, or let them abstain from the criminations of violated liberty against the assertors of concursive premotion alone. See on this what we did out of Scotus in this art. at marg. n. 4., turning the reasoning back against Vázquez and his followers.

176 Moreover I persist against that manner of composing equally the power of God for concourse with created free choice: because God, so composing himself for concourse, offers only a causality determined to such a species; and it would follow that he would predetermine free choice by an immediate concourse just as by a concursive premotion, as Suárez expressly admits, transcribed by us below, at n. 57. of this art., and as we also showed out of Scotus in marg. n. 4.

177 Or he offers a concourse appearing indeterminate toward the several species; and it would follow that such a concourse would be potential, and signed, yet not contracted and exercised, since free choice cannot exercise itself actually at once and simultaneously toward contraries and contradictories; and accordingly there would be inferred the very thing which we inferred against Suárez: that free choice could explicate itself to the exercise of influx with a merely aptitudinal and signed dependence upon the power of God, and which could subsist concerning other species of operations that are not in fact elicited.

178 There would follow, moreover, that which we pressed against Suárez at sub number 57. of this article: that God would not concur immediately to the substrate of sin; because the action of God ad extra is identified really with the operation of the creature according to Suárez and his followers, and the concourse determined to such a species (however the concourse of free choice issued) and the indeterminate concourse cannot be identified.

179 Wherefore that reasoning which fights against concursive premotion also grazes the concourse of God with a free cause; because either it must be pronounced of necessity (that the action of God be subjected to the power of the created will, in the sense intended by the adversaries) that our will determine itself first, with a priority of order, or of nature, and contract God to such a rationality of acting, as Córduba wished, refuted above; or, if the concursive causality should flow out from God and the creature equally and simultaneously, without any presuppositional order, the reason does not appear why the contraction to such a species of act should be left to the arbitrament of the creature rather than to the nod of God — unless the creature antecede the action of God with a priority from-Which, as the rationality of such a determination.

180 As for Scotus, however, it is manifest that he openly judged that the contraction of the first cause, removing contingency to non-being in the second act and in the compositional sense, is not against the reason of liberty; although a contraction from an inferior cause, removing contingency to non-being, is against the reason of liberty. As is evident from the text transcribed in this dist. art. 2, at marg. num. 15, at the end of the same number.. At the instance made from n. 10., concerning fire deprived of an actual aid, or concourse, for enkindling fire: that which is simply and proximately efficacious for acting ought not to be renounced, but only remotely, although the actual concourse does not contribute to the power of operating, but to actually acting. Because the proximately operative virtue of any second cause carries with it the connation and habitude to the premotion of the first cause, so that without that, that which is proximately suited for acting ought not to be had, but only remotely. Therefore, even if actual premotion were thought not to pertain to the power of acting in a free cause, still the free agent must be judged to be without a moral and proximate power of acting, in that it is not within its power to be premoved thus or thus.

181 Answered: there obtains an altogether disparate rationality between the two principles, the natural and the free, in that hypothesis in which God would deprive fire of an actual concourse. For if God, by his sole nod, and not with the inclination of the second cause demanding it, nay, against its inclination, were to decree that he not concur with fire in the second act for acting; nor would even the power of God, or the faculty executing it, be composed with fire in the first act for operating. For vain would be that will of preparing a concourse to fire in the first act of itself, if it had preordained the negation of the concourse in the second act — of itself, I say, and not with the condition of the second cause demanding it, nay, against its inclination, affixed and determined in the first act to one. But since the proximate power of every necessary created cause, as demanding toward acting, connotes the composition of the executive power, determined to one by the mode of a first act; if such a junction of the proximate divine virtue for operating with a necessary agent were removed, then the proximate power also must of necessity be removed in the created cause.

182 But when God does not actually premove a free cause toward such a species of act, for instance toward the moral good, but predetermines toward the substrate of the sinful action, on account of the demand of the lability of the free principle: such a will, actually denying the premotion to the good on account of the defectibility of the free principle, would not oppose that same divine will composing its power, or its executive faculty, in the first act with a free cause toward either alternative. For it is well established that God, so far as in him of himself, is ready for the created will toward either alternative in the first act, and that the created will in the second act contracts him to one side of the contradiction: thus demanded by the bent of free choice, whose depths and compass God knows with his comprehensive science. Just as it is established with the will of concurring determinately to one, that God is ready toward either alternative in first act; which must be received in the sentiment of Scotus, who, before the exercised premotion of the created free choice, openly professes that a concourse toward either alternative in the first act is afforded to free choice, so that free choice not be necessitated in the first act by an extrinsic principle.

183 Foundations for paralysing the last instance of the Adversaries, where it is treated against Vázquez, that the will does not necessarily follow a more expressive, or better-tempered, proposal of the object.

184 SINCE, for the confirmation of the last reason ad oppositum which we premised at n. 11: that — so that the assertors of the opposite opinion might defend that the force and excellence of the sufficient aid for operating should persist without any physical premotion — they consequently attempted that the virtue of the sufficient aid ought to be such (that it be absolutely and simply sufficient and able to contribute proximately toward obtaining supernatural cooperation) that in him who obeys the vocation nothing of physical supernatural premotion accrues.

From this they also infer that sufficient aid is such that, given an omnimodal physical equality genuinely distinct from the second act of actual cooperation by free choice, one will could in fact refuse while the other obeys. The force of the proposition of the objection presses, so that we touch these things briefly, without the din of dissertations, or all but hail them from afar: with only that composition of the divine motion with free choice in view, which could subsist even within the series of the free operation of the natural order; the examination of the special energy of the aids of grace being suppressed. Wherefore we do not fall upon the adversaries with Sacred Scripture, nor with the testimonies of the Fathers, nor do we assail them with other excursions, which would be drawn from revealed principles; but only with that rationality of concursive premotion, by the mode of a mere action, which could be expert in the operations of the natural order: every predetermination through an impressed created form being set aside; which we grant for the consequence of the doctrine, as far as it is lawful to call these things into discussion. For there is no lack of difficulty in what, according to the principles of Scotus, ought to be held with firmness, especially concerning the predetermination of the will by a supernatural motion (insofar as it can be gathered from the natural subordination of the second cause): by which cooperating grace is it bestowed; intrinsic, or extrinsic?

190 40 WHEREIN first of all must be established as certain that which we touched above: namely, that the dispute about the physical equality of the form, which is to be distinguished really from the created cooperation of free choice, proceeds in the volition consenting, and dissenting. For if that equality could include the supernatural impulse of the cooperating will, the supposition of the equality of the aid in the renouncing, and obeying, will would utterly fall; since the obedient will is gifted with an accompanying aid, or cooperating grace; and the dissenting will is not so gifted, as is evident. Wherefore that hypothesis about the equality of the aid in the will renouncing the vocation, and bestowing consent, can proceed only in that infusion of the gifts of grace, or composition, intrinsic or extrinsic, of the aids, which would be distinct really from the supernatural impulse of the assenting will: these things being presupposed.

191 41 All those authors who asserted that our will is predetermined by God through the infusion of some virtue, or quality, of the species of a power, constituting the created will in the proximate readiness for acting, or completing it in the being of the proximate principle of the supernatural cooperation; consequently reject that supposition of the physical equality in the obeying, and renouncing, will; because they deem it contradictory, from the hypothesis, or in the compositional sense, that the will, physically premoved by God in the first act proximate to assent, should struggle. Whereupon they consequently proceed to their own opinion, whose foundations we proposed in ar. 2. of this dist. n. 6. and 7., and stitched together there from number 19. up to 22. inclusively; wherefore I let these go, and hasten to other things.

193 42 Gabriel Vázquez, 1. part. quaestion. 23. disp. 98. per totam, although he denies physical predetermination, by which our will, with the sufficient aid, is either proximately completed for operating, or applied; nevertheless asserts that he who in fact converted receives from God not only a greater gift in the line of a benefit; because that excitation is conferred upon man by a God willing and foreknowing, to which the will will infallibly consent (for he gives nothing freely, who has not the science of the value of the benefit presented); but because he who obeys receives a more expressive thought of the good than he who resists.

195 Explanatio n of the said judgment of Vázquez

196 Which greater expression is not placed in this, that the indeliberate supernatural illustration, which is directed to the preventive, or excitative, grace, be more intense in the assenting man than in the renouncing one (for it can happen that a more intense representation be less congruous); but in a special mode of the expression of the object, which better befits enticing a will thus affected to the prosecution of the good, or flight from evil.

Thus Vázquez holds, 7. sub num. 46, who relies on that pronouncement which is so familiar to the aforesaid author as to be a pious axiom: namely, that every sinner necessarily suffers some defect of consideration in the intellect. Whence it comes about that, an equal expression, and illumination, being given on the part of the intellect suggesting the good, and an equal proposition also given of the foul object inciting to evil, it cannot come about that the one will obey, the other resist.

200 S. August. Objection. 43 Which Vázquez confirms with the authority of Augustine. Tomo 7. lib. 2. de peccatorum meritis, et remissione. cap. 17, where, after he had asked: Cum voluntate humana, gratis adiuuante diuina, sine peccato in hac vita possit homo esse, cur non sit?

201 Solution Augustine subjoins: Possem facillimè ac veratissimè respondere; quia homines nolunt. Sed si ex me quaeritur, quare nolint? Imus in longum. Veruntamen etiã hoc sine praeiudicio diligentioris inquisitionis breuiter dicam.

202 See for the opinion of Vazq. Nolunt homines facere quod iustum est; siue quia latet, an iustum sit? Siue quia non delectat. Tantò enim quidque vehementiùs volumus, quantò certius quàm bonum sit, nouimus, eoque delectamur ardentiùs.

203 Arg. of Vázquez out of Augustine From which Vázquez argues thus with the testimony of Augustine: if, with Augustine, a defect of consideration in the intellect were not required beforehand for the lapse of the will, he would have rendered no other reason of the prevarication of men than the free will tending to fail. But Augustine teaches that he must go further, while he assigns such a cause; whereas on the contrary he would, as it were, have settled the matter briefly, if he had intimated the defect on the side of consideration: here, therefore, that [defect] necessarily intervenes for the prevarication of the will; and accordingly it cannot come about that, an equal expression of the good presupposed, and an equal suggestion of the evil also given, one will obey, and the other resist.

204 No physical distinction is required on the side of the proposition of the object presented to the intellect, that the will assent or dissent 44 Moreover, that we may quickly dispatch ourselves of these, in whose refutation Suárez is at length in tom. Opusc. libr. 3. de Auxilijs diuinae gratiae. capit. 21.: the thesis of Vázquez can thus briefly be refuted:

205 Because, an omnimodal equality being given in the consenting, and renouncing, will, as much on the side of the supernatural illustration alluring to the good, as on the side of the proposition leading to the most foul object, yea even with a more expressive apprehension of the foul object in the will obeying the vocation, than in the one resisting; the composition of either will with any apprehension, whether the more expressive, or the more intense, which entices toward the good, or the evil, is not such as would infer a necessity simply, and in the first act, or fix our will to assent by an antecedent supposition, or contract it in the first act before the operation is entered upon, and in the sense of division, and separation, from the actual, and exercised, assent; but rather leaves it indifferent toward contraries, and contradictories: therefore our will, with the lesser supernatural illumination, and with the more vehement aggravation of the demon, will in fact assent, when the other will, excited by a greater vocation, shall dissent.

206 Because, since no proposition of the foul object, nor any composition whatever of the circumstances inviting to the lapse, or resisting the vocation, is such that by its own intrinsic force and power it should overwhelm, or annihilate, the excellence of the sufficient aid, and impede it in the first act, or in the sense of division, before the exercised lapse (otherwise the sufficient aid would not be left sufficient, or proximately conducive to salvation): thus, whatever coalition of impediments be given, it will remain intact for our will, to assent to God calling; and accordingly, with an inferior excitation, the will will be able to consent in essential being, and in the compositional sense toward such thought, although the other resists.

207 These were argued against Vázquez. 45 And I press the reasoning against Vázquez, from what he delivers loco citato, cap. 7. §. at obijciat aliquis sub num. 46. vbi inquit.

208 The will can avert the intellect from the more efficacious apprehension. *Respondeo; proposita cogitatione efficaciori, et minus efficaci, esse in potestate voluntatis absque nouo dictamine, ab efficaciori mentem auertere, et applicare intellectum vt efficacius oppositum consideret; et ideo si efficaciori cogitationi consentit, liberè consentire. Tamen repugnat vt in id consentiat, quod minus cogita

Hence I argue thus in the case of Vázquez: because our will does not so cohere with the more efficacious proposition of the intellect that, without a new dictate, it cannot avert the mind from the more efficacious judgment of some object, and apply the intellect that it intend the contrary object more efficaciously; therefore the will is not borne necessarily into the object preferred to it by the intellect, since, the preference of the more efficaciously proposed object standing, the will is able to avert itself from such an object, while, knowing and willing, it turns the intellect so that it bear itself remissly about that which it had before proposed efficaciously.

211 And accordingly, just as it is intact for the will, without a new judgment of the intellect, to prefer the object inefficaciously expressed to the object more efficaciously proposed, while it commands the intellect to make the change; so also it will be free for the will, to pursue the object insinuated sluggishly and tepidly, and to repudiate the one vehemently proposed.

212 46 Nor is the objection, from number 43., which Vázquez forms out of the authority of Augustine, of any strength; which is clear from that very testimony of Augustine, which Vázquez opposes to us. Nolunt homines facere quod iustum est, siue quia latet an iustum sit, siue quia non delectat. Therefore not only on account of the defect of consideration, which Augustine comprehends under that word (latet), but also on account of the tepidity of the will, as is established from those words: siue quia non delectat.

213 Which we can also show from the same letter of the context, which, when it had proposed, Quòd tantò quidque vehementiùs volumus, quantò certiùs quàm bonum sit nouimus, eoque delectamur ardentiùs., afterward subjoins: Ignorantia igitur et infirmitas vitia sunt, quae impediunt voluntatem, ne moueatur ad faciendum opus bonum, vel ab opere malo abstinendum. Vt auté innotescat quod latebat, et suaue fiat, quod non delectabat, gratia Dei est, quae hominū adiuuat voluntates.

214 From which it is established that it was in the mind of Augustine to assert: that sloth, and negligence in knowing those things which one is bound to know for instituting one's life piously, are impediments to salvation; likewise that the infirmity of the human condition is in play, why the will pursue the good not fervently. Yet Augustine never pronounced that the will cannot embrace that which is proposed to the will less efficaciously by the intellect.

215 Which is evident even from this, that not only did Augustine assert that we pursue more vehemently that which we know more certainly, but also that by which we delight more ardently; wherefore he prays God even, that that good be made sweet to us which, on account of the infirmity of our condition, is flat, and unsavory. And since delight pertains not to the insinuation of the intellect, but to the impulse of the appetitive faculty, as is perspicuous; it may be, as Augustine teaches, that therefore we do not embrace the good, because we do not delight in it: not hinting a defect of the intellect, as if the principal cause of not adhering to God, but the tepor of the effect, whereby the things spiritual grow cheap to us.

216 47 Third, at length, in this matter is that way of holding it which Suárez takes loco citato ex libr. 3. de Auxilijs. capit. 20. et 21., and, with Suárez, the whole School of the Jesuits establishing: that, an omnimodal equality of the aid being given in physical being, which is really distinguished from the act of the cooperation of free choice, in the renouncing, and obeying, will; it conduces to the sufficiency of the aid, that, without any physical premotion, as much by the mode of a first act, as by the mode of a second act, it in fact obtain the assent in the obeying will, and be left inefficacious in the resisting will. Although in him who assents to the vocation, an aid equal in physical being, is the greater in moral being, or in the line of a benefit; because the free supernatural motions from thence, which are directed to the preventive, or excitative grace, and are produced by us without us, are equalled by God to the obeying will out of the conditional foreknowledge of a future consent.

Wherefore, Valentine de Herice. 1. par. tract. 3. disp. 23 cap. 8. num. 88. maintains; that efficacious aid is not severed in physical species from sufficient aid; and that this was more than once evidently demonstrated by his own; inasmuch as efficacious aid adds nothing physical, really co-distinct from sufficient aid, by which the sufficient aid is contracted to the actual operation.

219 He thinks congruity to be an accident separable from the physical substance of the Vocation

220 Which he also delivers in the same tract. 3. disput. 39. capit. 2. numer. margin. 32.; and consequently he judges, at the place cited of disp. 23. cap. 8. sub numer. 92., that the congruity by which the sufficient aid is contracted to efficacious operation is a mere accident, which can be, and be absent, without the destruction of the aid as reviewed, as regards every physical rationality of it.

221 He assails Vázquez

222 Whence, at sub num. 95., he refutes Vázquez; because, although Vázquez rejects the physical predetermination, he nevertheless admits a physical discrimination between the sufficient, and the efficacious, aid; insofar as the efficacious aid imports a more expressive representation of the object; as is evident from the said things, at sub num. 42.

223 The same is carried by Pet. Arrub.

224 The same opinion — that sufficient, or preventive, grace is not distinguished in physical species from the efficacious aid, or grace — is delivered broadly by Petrus Arrubal. 1. parte. disput. 85. capit. 3. numer. 6. et capit. 4. à numer. 10. vsque ad 15. inclusiuè., where, an omnimodal equality in the physical being of the sufficient, and efficacious, aid being premised; he grants that the will assents, on account of the greater aid in moral being, or of a benefit, on account of the foreknowledge of the future consent: these things at his number 15. So far even that he asserts that, if the sufficient, and efficacious, aid should diverge in physical species, the sufficient aid would not be truly sufficient in him who resists, on account of the denial of some physical virtue really co-distinct from the cooperation, or motion, of the created will.

225 Which opinion of Suárez, Arrubal, Herice, and the Jesuits, is underpropped by those proofs which we touched in the foregoing, composing the foreknowledge with our liberty as regards the acts of the natural order; so that nothing new occurs to be dispatched; as far as it be permitted to draw out, line by line, the disputation about the aids of divine grace.

226 Brief observation concerning the consequence of the doctrine: what is the supernatural premotion with Scotus; and by which cooperating grace is it bestowed; intrinsic, or extrinsic?

227 The true opinion of Scotus: efficacious vocation adds nothing extrinsic to the first act.

228 48 THESE things premised: the last opinion, which we judge true, asserts that, the equality of the exciting, or preventive, grace being presupposed, as regards every that rationality of operating, which could be conceived by the mode of a principle, or in the line of a first act (only the actual cooperation being set aside), either will can in fact consent, and the other struggle. Although that will which obeys the vocation is contracted physically by the cooperating grace, antecedent with a priority of nature to the determination of the created will.

229 Two points of this assertion

230 Which assertion contains two pronouncements, which, although sufficiently perspicuous from those things which we unfolded above, may be weighed briefly for the sake of clarity, and as the complement of the doctrine.

232 Therefore the first part of our assertion establishes: that, as regards every that manner of operating which does not conduce to the exercise of the actual, and exercised, cooperation, and which is in the sense of division, or separation, from the concourse, and exercised cooperation — an omnimodal equality of the preventive grace can be assigned in the assenting, and renouncing, will; this pronouncement is clear from the said things.

233 The rationality of the assertion, from the confutation of the premotion through a form which would co-integral the first act.

Because, since the indeliberate supernatural motions, as much on the part of the intellect as on the part of the will, which are directed to the preventive, or excitative, grace, do not excite the will to supernatural cooperation, insofar as they are composed with some form physically premoving the will by the mode of a first act; hence it comes about that, the actual cooperation of our will being set aside, and that premotion which pertains to the actual concourse, an omnimodal physical equality can be assigned, as regards every principle of supernatural cooperation, or gift by the mode of a first act, and in the sense of division of the signed, and first, act from the second, and exercised, act, in the will resisting the excitative grace, and in the will consenting to the vocation.

235 49 But the other pronouncement, constituting a disparity between the will obeying, and the one resisting, on the side of the predetermination through the cooperating grace; is also clear from the said things.

236 Because, as is established from the premises; although God does not predetermine second causes through some form, whether intrinsic, or extrinsic, which would pertain to the first act of operating; yet he premoves them through his will, insofar as he performs the function of the external causality, that is, of the actual cooperation ad extra, of the divine executing faculty.

237 From which doctrine, as it is carried to that rationality of operating which God observes, insofar as he is a supernatural author; it is gathered: that, although God does not predetermine our will by the mode of a first act toward the influx of the supernatural operations; yet he premoves it by his uncreated volition, insofar as he exercises the office of the supernatural motion, that is, of the extrinsic cooperating grace.

238 Because through that same intrinsic supernatural cooperation of the will, insofar as it flows out from God, and as such is called by many authors the motion, and external causality of God: our will cannot be predetermined physically, and really; according to those things which we did above in art. 6. preceding, sub num. 67., and it is evident also from the said things in article 2. of this distinct., at sub number 7. and number 26.. All which look toward this: that it is contradictory that the cooperation of our will, as from God, could determine really our will to the eliciting of that same act, as from the created will; since it implies that that same act determines really, and physically, by number its own efficient principle to the eliciting of that same act; whether in such wise that the same act be drawn forth in the genus of efficient cause out of the eminence of its cause, and the potentiality of it.

239 Whence it comes about that the physical predetermination, which we constantly assert to be bestowed by the cooperating grace, is not drawn from the intrinsic cooperating grace, which is that vital supernatural cooperation of our will itself; but from the uncreated volition of God, insofar as he concurs by the mode of an external execution, above the forces of the whole of nature, toward the effectuation of forms intrinsically supernatural; because, in the sentiment of Scotus, the action of God is not something created, but uncreated, as one that is inexistently intrinsic in the agent: just as action, as such, throughout its whole universality coheres with the agent, and is not passion.

240 But when we assert that the created will is predetermined by God by the mode of a concourse, or of an actual cooperation, yet not by the mode of a first act: we do not mean that the premotion of God should regard only the contraction, or the determination, of the assent, and not the principle for assenting; since we judge that the created will is contracted by God as regards the species, and individuation, of the acts, which also we have often taught: whence it comes about that the action of God bestows not only the determination upon the assent, but also upon the will itself, that it actually assent.

Yet because this concurring contraction, or contraction by way of concourse, does not extend to the first act, or the proximate power of acting (that it may constitute or complete the first act of acting, or the proximate power of that faculty itself), but to the exercise of the operation; therefore in one who rejects the calling, nothing conducive to the first act of operating is lacking, even though the actual concourse of God be absent — not only as determining the operation, but as the very principle composing the operation itself to the operation. On this see what we handled above in this controversy: dist. 2. ar. 2. nume. 19. et 20.

Or, in one word, we say: that free choice is determined by the divine volition, inasmuch as it discharges the office of action, and of concourse; but not by the volition of God, inasmuch as it produces some form constituting the first act of acting. For it is one thing that God contract the created will, that it compose itself to the operation; another, that He determine the created will, so as to constitute it in the character of a first act, by immitting into it some form of the species of power; or by supplying it through a special composition of His power, or of the executing faculty, which may exhibit the office of such an operative, and determining, quality in the first act, and in the sense of division and separation from the concursive premotion of the second act. On which see art. 2. cited of this distinct., from num. 49. up to 55.

Satisfaction to the objections of Aureolus, Hurtado, and more recent authors, who assert that the action of God ad extra is something created; wherein Suárez is likewise refuted in person concerning the immediate concourse to the matter of sin.

50 BUT against the aforesaid doctrine an objection can be urged, not without force, from the opinion of several authors, who contend that God does not act ad extra through an uncreated action, or through the form of His volition as through an external causality, but only as through the principle of acting, or an executing faculty. On this, sharply, Cardinal. Aureolus in 1. sententiar. dist. 42. artic. 2. under §. Quid dicendum sit secundum veritatem, et primò, quod operatio exequens id, quod voluntas diuina imperat, non potest esse idem cum diuina substantia. In this matter the whole school of the Jesuits agreed with Aureolus, as Hurtado reports in his Physics, disput. 10. de causis prima, section. 3. §. 50. and 54.; on which we shall treat at length below, in the controversy on the Omnipotence of God, where we shall weigh whether the action of the executing faculty of God is something created or uncreated. Therefore, from the doctrine of the aforesaid authors, who deny that the action of God ad extra is that very uncreated volition, an objection may be raised against our assertion of God's predetermination through cooperating extrinsic grace.

Because the will of God is asserted to be an extrinsic cooperating grace premoving our will by way of concourse on no other account, than inasmuch as it is the execution ad extra, or the use of the divine faculty executing, inasmuch as the principle of effects above the order of all nature. But the divine will cannot undergo the immediate function of external motion, that is, of the causality of God, so that the concurring action of God should not in any way be distinguished before the intellect from the very action of the creature, which is something formally created.

51 But that that causality of God, which is the concourse with a created agent, must by no means be severed before the intellect from the influx of the creature, Hurtado shows thus at the place cited, §. 55. et 56.:

51 Because the action of God is the dependence of the created effect upon God, just as action as such is the dependence of the effect upon the agent, or the reason on account of which the effect actually hangs upon the agent; but through the influx of the created cause the effect so hangs upon the created agent that it also hangs upon God, as is perspicuous. Since the action of the creature, according to its specific and individual ratio of influx, hangs upon God as Quo; just as it also hangs upon the created agent as Quo, or as the ratio of effecting and of attaining the terminus: therefore such an immediate ratio of influx is ineptly ascribed to the increated volition of God, seeing that the created action is not only the causality of the created agent, but is also an external motion and the causality of God.

Nor do you remove the force of the objection, if you answer that the action of the second cause is attained by God as the effect of God, and by the action of the created agent; but not as the immediate action of God Himself.

Because the action of the creature is attained by God according to the contracted, and specific, character of such an influx; but action under this concept is essentially the effecting, or production, of the term; therefore the action of the creature, as it is the production of the term, hangs from God. And accordingly God effects, through the action of the creature, the term of the action of the same creature; and thus another action, or the external causality of God, is superfluous.

Because, as Hurtado argues: that one action is attained through another does not stand in the way of God's being said, by His uncreated volition attaining the action of the creature, to operate through the influx of the created agent; for if I were by my action to attain the heating of fire, so that the action of the fire depended on me, thus I should heat by the heating of the fire. But God by His uncreated volition attains the created action, inasmuch as it is a production of the term; therefore God acts through the action of the creature.

52 But these points do not compel, and we refute them without difficulty, provided the following be premised. First: what we have more than once intimated about the true sense of that pronouncement, action is the dependence of the effect on the agent; which we have declared must be taken not in the formal, but in the causal sense. Or — which comes to the same — that action is not the intrinsic form of the patient, or of the effect received in the patient, on account of which the effect hangs intrinsically and formally from the agent; but that it is the ultimate actuality of the agent, contracting intrinsically the potentiality of the latter to the exercise of influx, from which, as from a causal reason, is drawn the actual and exercised dependence of the effect on the agent. On this see what we set down by way of preface in controversy 9. on the Vision of God, distinct. 3. on the act of vision, subdist. 1. art. 1. on the vitality of vision, numer. margin. 25. et 32.

Next it must be observed that as from the created agent hangs only the action immediately and through its essence, while the term of the action hangs only mediately, or through the mediation of the action; so it is certain that the action cannot be preserved, nor by the absolute power of God without the agent from which it flows out and hangs immediately; but the term of the action can be preserved without actual dependence on the agent, at least divinely — which I have said on account of the terms of vital actions, which we have often shown can be produced and preserved by God without the elicitive influx of the faculties.

53 From which we draw, by an excellent inference, I believe: that the action of God around the creature must necessarily be really other than the action of the created agent. For if God were only to influence ad extra through the action of the created agent, then by the same reason, or mediated comparison of influx, He would comport Himself toward the term (as it is attained by God, the action of the created agent intervening) as the created agent comports Himself toward the term by the force of the same action.

Wherefore, as the created agent immediately only elicits the action, but attains the term mediately — whence, although the dependence of the action on the created agent, from which it flowed, is unsuppliable, yet the dependence of the term of the action on the agent can be supplied — so, by the same reason, if God were only to influence through the action of the created agent, the action would hang immediately from God, but the term of the action only mediately: and accordingly existence without immediate dependence on God would not be repugnant to a created being, which is absurd.

Because as God, by His free volition, immediately changes objectively unto futuration for such a difference of time not only the actions of the created agent but also its term; so the divine volition, as it performs the function of causality ad extra, or the use of the external divine executing faculty, attains immediately not only the action of the created agent but also its term: since the objective mutation of a participated being, which is from eternity, and to which pertains the real mutation of creatures in time, belongs to the same character of acting in God.

Or thus I draw the reason together from the said things: if God did not attain the effects of created causes immediately through His substance, or through His uncreated volition, inasmuch as it discharges the office of action, but mediately, or with a created action intervening; it would come about that the action would hang from God immediately, or through His essence, and accordingly with an unsuppliable dependence; but the term of the action, (as it would flow forth from God mediately, and not through His essence,) would likewise hang mediately, with a suppliable dependence. So that the existence of the term of the action without the influx of God conserving it would not be repugnant, just as the existence of the term of the action without the influx of the second cause does not contradict; on the contrary, however, the existence of the action of a second cause, without a created agent, is an obstacle, because it flows forth from that agent immediately, and through its own essence.

It is confirmed from the probable opinion of those who hold that living operations do not flow forth from the faculties of living things through media of actions, or influxes really distinct from the substance of vital operations; but that vital operations burst forth immediately from living principles, because they proceed with an unsuppliable connection and dependence, even divinely. Therefore, either the dependence of a created effect on God is suppliable; or every created being is elicited immediately from the substance of God, or His uncreated volition, inasmuch as it bears the function of influx ad extra.

Objection.

54 But you will urge: that in our opinion, which we handed down in contro. 9. de visione Dei. dist. 3. subdist. 1. ar. 1., although a vital action hangs immediately from the living principle, yet the vital quality does not.

It is examined.

It is answered: that we have judged, and therefore consequent upon the more probable and received opinion, that there can be given, and supernaturally preserved, a grammatical operation, as Scotus speaks, or a living quality, without any influx of the vital faculty. For although many and weighty theologians are of the opinion that if a vital quality were produced by God without the elicitive concourse of the living faculty, the faculty would not by that form, sent into it from an extrinsic principle, namely God, attempt to act vitally upon the object by understanding, willing, etc.; yet they do not judge the existence of such a quality to involve the being without influx of the vital principle; because such a quality would not flow forth immediately, and accordingly would not, through its essence, hang from the living principle. Therefore, if the effect of a second cause were not elicited immediately by the uncreated action, nor hung from it through its essence, some created being could be given without the preservation of the first cause: which Aureolus did not dare to sustain even in the conservation of depraved acts, denying that God concurs immediately for the first effecting.

Another objection.

55 But if you should object that the uncreated and immanent volition cannot undergo the offices of temporal influx ad extra:

It is unfolded.

We say that, as in the School of Saint Thomas creation is that very immanent act of the divine will inasmuch as it is terminated at a being out of nothing; and as, in the more probable opinion of the theologians, God can supply through His power and will (so composed in the character of a particular principle) the elicitive concourse of supernatural habits; so we too pronounce every action of God, whether concurring or non-concurring, to be seated in the uncreated volition of God; since, with Scotus, action inexists in the agent.

A caution for our opinion.

When, however, we hold that the creature hangs from God through its essence, we do not speak of the mode of formal dependence, which could be separated from the substance of the creature if it flowed forth from God through a different action, as we handled above in controuersia 9. de Visione Dei, distinct. 3. subdist. 1. art. 1. num. margin. 34.; but we proceed concerning fundamental dependence, as concerning the substance of that participated being itself, which we assert to proceed immediately from the power of God, with no influx really distinct from the substance of the creator intervening; otherwise than the term is attained by a created cause, as becoming the term, or by an influx really distinct, intervening between agent and effect.

Corollary from what has been set forth.

Hence it comes about that the influx hangs immediately from the created principle, but the term only mediately; so that it is not repugnant to the term to exist without the existence, and conservation, of the agent: just as it is an obstacle to the influx (which essentially and immediately hangs from the agent) that its dependence upon such an agent be supplied. Wherefore in the premises we chiefly will this, that it be said in one word: that not only the becoming of the created being, but even the term itself, flows forth immediately from the substance of God: wherefore we judge that not only the executing faculty is not severed from the substance of God; but we assert that not even the execution itself, or the use of the executing faculty, is severed from the substance of God.

A reason in person, that the objects of conditioned science come out after the manner of a tautology. 56 Next, with a theological reason as well, I assault the adversaries in person. For if God were to act ad extra only immediately through the same action of the creature as it is from God, it would follow that conditioned science would regard the same object in the hypothesis or condition and in the event of the consent of free choice which follows the condition; and accordingly He would foreknow nothing of the free event, given such a hypothesis of calling and concourse of God, which He had not penetrated within that very hypothesis: thus the complex coalescing from hypothesis and event would be a mere tautology. Which is evident in this conditioned complex: Si vocauero Petrum tali vocatione, et apparauero illi concursum exercitum ad amorem, amabit infallibiliter. But that that provision, or composition of the divine power with free choice toward influx, ought to be toward an exercised influx, and not toward concourse alone in the first and signed act, I show either thus or from the principles of the adversaries.

The reason in person against the action of God being identified with the action of the creature, is premised. Because the principal adversaries of the adversaries maintain that the composition of the power of God with free choice toward such a species of act, especially toward the matter of sin, is contracted from the absolute foreknowledge of the cooperation of free choice; but the absolute cooperation of free choice is unintelligible with only a dependence on the power of God as indifferent to either, and under that only composition toward concourse in the first and signed act toward contraries and contradictories; or under that aptitudinal comparison under which it is joined to the other species of actions of created free choice, which will never exist in reality. For neither does that composition of the divine power toward concurring with free choice avail, that the exercised operation of free choice be conceived, which is over and above, the exercise of such a species of operation not existing; just as such a composition of the power of God concerning the other species of cooperations subsists, which do not exist, because the created will does not will to so operate.

That repugnance of the doctrine of the adversaries. Then, indeed above all: because if the operation of free choice, as it is from God, is an action of God, it cannot proceed from God as determined to either; since it implies that the action proceed — nay, that it is not even intelligible that it proceed — from an indeterminate principle inasmuch as indeterminate, in the sense of composition toward action, as we have shown more than once from Aureolus. But we shall supply a deeper tracing of this proof below in the following distinction on the science of the conditioned. art. 2. num. marg. 19.

The confronting inference against the adversaries. Therefore, if the composition of the divine power with free choice toward concourse, which the conditioned complex expresses, is a composition toward exercised concourse; and the exercised concourse of God operating ad extra, with the adversaries, is that very operation of the creature as it is from God — it would follow that the conditioned complex coalescing from the hypothesis of such an exercised concourse, and from the following event of the operation of free choice, would be a wholly tautological complex. For instance: if I call Peter, and offer him concourse toward assenting, he will assent — that granted, such science would be useless for conciliating liberty, see the cited num. 19. For such a complex, cointegrated from the exercised concourse of God identified with the consent of created free choice, as it would be identical, so would it be undidactic and altogether useless for theological discussions, whether to resolve or to still.

Suárez's own proper reason concerning the immediate concourse to the matter of sin Suárez against the mediate concourse of God to the matter of sin Moreover I show against Suárez and his followers that, if the action and concourse of God were not really distinct from the cooperation of free choice, it would follow that God would not concur immediately to the matter of sin, Suárez's principles being supposed: namely, that God does not predetermine to the matter of sin, nor offer a determined concourse, nor does He expedite it to the matter of sin alone. But I transcribe Suárez word for word, lest anything seem to be imposed upon him.

Thus therefore he has it in Tomo Opusculorum. Opusculo 1 de Diuina motione. lib. 2. de concursu Dei ad actus ordinis naturalis. cap. 2. §. Assertio ex Tridentino confirmatur sub numer. margin. 22, where, explaining those words of the Canon of Trent, evil works, as well as good, God to work, not permissively only, but also properly and of Himself: so he interprets the ly 'operari, properly and of itself', as condemned by the Council; that neither does God premove to the material of sin; nor offer a determined concourse: take the words of Suárez.

Finally, he signifies, therefore, that God cannot be said to be the proper and of-itself cause of the evil work; because He does not predetermine to it, as the heretics say, nor does He offer a determined concourse to it alone.

57 In which pronouncement of Suárez, this pleases us: that it fights equally against concurring premotion and against the immediate exercised concourse to the matter of sin — which we noted more than once in the preceding article, and in the present one we show from Scotus arguing against his own opinion, while he objects against the immediate concourse of God to our free operations; whose text we transcribed in numer. marg. 4. of this articulate.

But as to the other part of the assertion of the same Suárez, who holds that God does not offer a determined concourse to the matter of sin: besides the arguments with which we overcame Suárez in the preceding article under num. margin. 62, we shall refute him from his own pronouncements; for we now manifestly show in person, from that pronouncement of his transcribed at present, that it follows that God does not concur immediately to the matter of sin. Because the action and concourse of God ad extra with free choice is not distinguished, with Suárez and his followers, from the operation of free choice as it is from God; and the exercised operation of free choice is not indeterminate toward several species of influx, as is evident; therefore also it is evident that God does not concur through an immediate indeterminate influx identified with the determined influx of the deficient creature. Therefore, either the action of God ad extra is really distinguished from the action of the creature, or God does not concur immediately to the substrate of sin: or He concurs to the substrate of sin through a determined concourse, and accordingly also predetermines by concurring premotion — since a determined concourse and concurring premotion are the same and fall back into the same, as we have made plain from Scotus, and for that reason Suárez expressly admits it.

But if you urge for Suárez that, granted the concourse of God be indeterminate, it can be identified with the determined concourse of free choice; just as the degree of animality, which is generic and indeterminate, is really identified with the specific and numerical degree:

That escape we seized upon and blocked beforehand, arguing against Molina in the preceding article on the foreknowledge of depraved acts under num. 58. For otherwise it would come about that the act of hatred of God, inasmuch as it expresses the specific predicate of flight from God, would not hang immediately from God; and accordingly neither could the superior predicates of the same operation hang immediately from God, since the physical influx does not cut off its tending toward the term, but attains all the identified predicates, as is evident and received in every opinion. Therefore, if the act of flight, as flight, hangs from God immediately, and accordingly is an action of God — since the action of God with Suárez is that very operation of the creature, as hanging from God — it follows that, if the concourse in the first act, that is, indeterminate toward the other species which do not exist in fact, cannot be identified with so exercised an operation as the act of flight, God does not concur in the exercised act to the matter of sin, but only in the first and signed act.

58 From what has been set forth — which we shall more fully expound further on in the controversy on omnipotence — the objections of Hurtado are overthrown. For we say that God acts through the action of a second cause; nevertheless by the force of that action the term is attained by God not immediately but mediately: and accordingly the causality ad extra which befits God by the force of His uncreated volition is not superfluous; which, as it objectively changes every created being immediately, so it changes it really immediately through true existence.

But you will stand firm and press further: that the action of the created agent hangs immediately from God; but under that comparison of dependence on God it also attains the term immediately (because the action under the specific and explicit concept of action, under which it is referred to the term, also transcends and imbibes its dependence on God); therefore as the action of the creature depends immediately on God, so the action of the creature, as it is from God, is the immediate action of God.