Scotus Academicus, Tomus secundus: De Deo Intelligente et Volente

Note 1. From Lactantius, 1. De ira Dei, cap. 9. Although the opinions of the Philosophers of an earlier age about Providence had agreed, and there was no doubt that the world had been furnished by God with reason and was governed by reason: first of all Protagoras arose in the times of Socrates, who would say that it was not clear to him whether there was any Divinity or not. This Disputation of his was judged so impious and contrary to truth and religion, that the Athenians both expelled him from their borders and burned his books, in which these things were contained, in an assembly. With a few things interposed: But afterwards in those times in which Philosophy had already withered, there arose at Athens a certain Diagoras, who said that there was no God at all, and for that opinion he was named ἄθεος: likewise Theodorus of Cyrene; both, because they could discover nothing new, all things having already been said and invented, preferred to deny against the truth that in which all their predecessors had consented without ambiguity. These are they who for so many ages, with so many talents, calumniated the providence that had been asserted and defended. To these impugners of divine Providence assented, as Nemesius relates, lib. De Facultatibus animae, cap. 44., Democritus, Heraclitus, Epicurus: who will that neither universals nor particulars are provided for by God: for Epicurus said that what is blessed and immortal neither has business itself, nor provides any to another: whence it is held neither by wrath nor by favor, or as Lactantius relates from the same Epicurus in c. 8. of the cited book:

For every divine nature must of itself Enjoy an immortal age with highest peace, Removed from our affairs, and set far apart. For free from every pain, free from perils; Itself strong in its own resources, needing naught of ours, Nor is it won by merits; nor touched by wrath.

Note 2. Moreover, there have been various, and indeed erroneous, opinions about divine Providence, not only of the pagan Philosophers, but also of certain Christians: for first of all, Aristotle wills that individual things be administered by nature alone, as he signifies not obscurely in 6. of the Ethics to Nicomachus, says the above-cited Nemesius; and although in the 8th chapter of the Ethics the same Aristotle seems to affirm some care of divine Providence for created things, nonetheless he confines it to sublunary things; as not only St. Ambrose affirms, lib. 1. Officiorum, cap. 13., but also Clemens Alexandrinus, lib. 5. Stromatum, relating in what manner certain Philosophers drew various errors from the sacred letters badly understood: The notion of chance came over Epicurus, he says, when he had not understood this saying, Vanity of vanities and all is vanity: it came into the mind of Aristotle to bring Providence down as far as the moon from this Psalm 35., Lord, in heaven is thy mercy and thy truth even to the clouds. Into the same error fell the celebrated interpreters of Aristotle, Averroes, Avicenna, and Algazel, denying to God a distinct and particular knowledge and care of creatures in the singular: Rabbi Moses himself also fell, who withdrew every corruptible individual from divine Providence, excepting only men, whom on account of the splendor of the intellect he judged worthy to be God's companions and of his Providence. Origen, Jerome, and some of the holy Fathers to be related and explained below appear likewise to have gone into this insipid opinion.

Note 3. From Aristotle, 6. of the Ethics, cap. 8., a threefold Providence can be distinguished, namely monastic, by which one duly and wisely disposes the things that can be made which suit oneself; another economic, by which one prudently administers domestic things and those fitting the family. Thirdly finally political, by which the commonwealth is provided for. It is certain however that in God there is no monastic Providence, for this is only about contingent things; but the things which are God's are necessary and altogether immutable, and so can in no way be subject to Providence. Only the present difficulty is therefore moved about economic and political Providence, which God bestows upon created things, both in common and in particular. Two things therefore are chiefly to be resolved in this Question. First, whether God has some Providence toward created things. Second, whether he bestows this his divine Providence upon singular, even baser things.

First conclusion. — Providence toward created things is truly to be admitted in God.

This is of faith and is proved by almost innumerable texts of Sacred Scripture, by which divine Providence is celebrated, thus especially Wisdom 14. But thou, Father, governest all things by thy providence from the beginning. And in cap. 17. he says of the Egyptians, the fugitives lay perpetually under providence. And Ecclesiastes 5. Give not thy mouth to make thy flesh sin, neither say before the Angel: there is no providence, lest God, angry at thy words, destroy all the works of thy hands. Christ the Lord affirms the same truth by several oracles, Matth. 6. and 10. Behold, he says, the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you of much more value than they? And after a few things, consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labor not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Salomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these. But if the grass of the field, which is today and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God so clothes: how much more you of little faith? And Matth. 10. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and one of them will not fall upon the ground without your Father?

This same truth is strengthened by the holy Fathers with several reasons and weightier arguments. First indeed, divine Providence is persuaded by exactly the same arguments by which the existence of God is demonstrated. For what is so worthy, so proper to God, as providence? (says Lactantius, lib. De Ira Dei, cap. 4.) But if he cares for nothing, provides for nothing, he has lost all divinity. Whoever therefore takes away from God all power, all substance, what else does he say but that God is altogether not? Whence the same author rightly laughs at Epicurus in c. 9., because he said that God exists, yet denied his providence:

What more contradictory than this (he says) could be said or done? For if God exists, certainly God is provident, nor can divinity be attributed to him otherwise, unless he both holds the past and knows the present and foresees the future. When therefore he took away providence, he also denied that God exists; but when he professed that God exists, he also conceded at the same time that Providence exists, for the one without the other can neither exist at all nor be understood.

Whence the holy Damascene subtly notes, lib. De Fide, cap. 11., that the name Θεός is derived from the verb Θεάομαι, which sounds the same as I consider, or I provide for. To this those ancient Philosophers consent, who called God nothing other than Providence: the holy Dionysius himself likewise agrees, lib. De Divinis Nominibus, cap. 12., where he defines the Divinity through Providence, the Divinity, he says, is a Providence contemplating all things, and that with perfect goodness.

Secondly. divine Providence itself is evinced from the natural inclination of all; for in sudden disturbances, says the above-cited Nemesius, without election and deliberation we invoke the name of God, as nature leading to God's help not without teaching; but this invocation and the cry for divine aid would be futile, if there were in God no care and providence of human affairs. Tertullian elegantly weighs and ponders this reason in the Apology of the Christian Religion against the Gentiles, cap. 17.

Do you wish, he says, that we prove it from the testimony of the soul itself? Which, although pressed by the prison of the body, although hemmed in by corrupt institutions, although enervated by lusts and concupiscences, although enslaved to false Gods, when nevertheless it comes to its senses, as from a surfeit, as from sleep, as from some sickness, and recovers its health, it names God, for this alone because this one God is properly the true, the Good and the Great. And that God has given, is the voice of all. It even calls God to witness: God sees that, and I commend to God, and God will repay me. O testimony of the soul naturally Christian!

Thirdly, Lactantius proves the same truth, cap. 8. of the cited book, from the religion and cult of the Gods implanted by nature in all the Gentiles, even the Barbarians;

For if God, he says, never conferred any good, if he returns no favor to the service of the worshipper, what is so vain, so foolish, as to build temples, to make sacrifices, to confer gifts, to diminish one's family fortune, so that we obtain nothing? But you will say, an excellent nature ought to be honored. But what honor can be owed to one who cares for nothing and is ungrateful? Or can we in any way be bound to him who has nothing in common with us?

Cicero urges the same argument, libr. 1. De Natura Deorum: but if the Gods, he says, can neither help us, nor will, nor care at all, nor notice what we do, nor is there anything that could pass from them to human life, why should we offer any cults, honors, prayers to the immortal Gods? Whence Lactantius concludes, that if Religion cannot be taken away, so that we may retain both the Wisdom by which we differ from beasts and the justice by which common life is safer, how can Religion itself be held or guarded without fear, etc.

The fourth proof is deduced from the very title of Creator, for as St. Ambrose wisely and elegantly notes, lib. 1. Officiorum, cap. 13. What worker, he says, would neglect the care of his own work? Who would desert and abandon what he himself thought should be made? If it is an injury to govern, is it not more an injury to have made? Since not to have made something is no injustice, but not to care for what you have made is the height of unkindness? Theodoretus urges the same argument, ser. 1. De Providentia, where, when he had said that love is innate in individual things, and an inborn care of their effects, he concludes: But the whole world and the whole human race is the pledge of its Creator, and therefore from this very affection, by which he made us love our pledges, he wished us to understand how much he himself loved his pledges. The same St. John Damascene urges, lib. 2. De Fide, cap. 29. It is necessary, he says, that the same be both the maker and the provider of the things that are; for it is neither fitting nor consequent that one be the maker of the things that are and another their provider: for thus each would be subject to weakness and debility.

Fifthly finally, the demonstration of divine Providence is deduced both from the perfection and excellence of all created things, and from their stable order and concordant discord. The first St. Augustine excellently weighs, lib. 5. De Trinitate, cap. 11.

God, he says, the one omnipotent Creator and maker of every soul, and of every body.... From whom is every mode, every species, every order. From whom is measure, number, weight. From whom is whatever exists naturally, of whatever kind it is, of whatever value it is. From whom are the seeds of forms, the forms of seeds, the motions of seeds and of forms. Who gave even to the flesh origin, beauty, health, fecundity of propagation, disposition of members, well-being, concord. Who gave also to the irrational soul memory, sense, appetite, and to the rational moreover mind, intelligence, will: who not only Heaven and Earth, nor only Angel and man, but neither the viscera of a tiny and contemptible animal, nor the little feather of a bird, nor the little flower of a herb, nor the leaf of a tree, left without the fittingness of their parts and a certain peace as it were, in no way is it to be believed that he wished the kingdoms of men, and their dominations and servitudes, to be alien from the laws of his providence.

The second, however, Boethius sets forth, lib. 3. De Consolatione, Prosa 12.:

The world, he says, would by no means have come together from parts so diverse and contrary into one form, unless there were one who would join together things so diverse. But the very diversity of natures once joined, discordant with each other, would dissociate and tear apart, unless there were one who would hold together what he had bound. Nor would the order of nature proceed so certain, nor unfold motions so disposed in places, times, efficacy, spaces, qualities, unless there were one who, himself remaining, disposed these varieties of changes.

The same St. Chrysostom urges most elegantly, Homil. 10. ad populum:

If this short and little body, he says, using so many medicines.... perishes nonetheless and is corrupted, disturbance having often occurred in it, how could so great a world, composed of the same elements, have remained undisturbed for so long a time, unless it had received much of providence? If we, ill-disposed toward one another not by nature but by will, do not spontaneously agree while we remain enemies, but need another who joins us and holds us in peace: how could the elements, having neither reason nor sense and by nature enemies to themselves, have come together and been able to remain together, unless there were some ineffable power which gathered them and, once gathered, always held them by this bond? Do you not see how this body, when the soul flies away, flows down and wastes away and is lost and returns to the limit of each of its elements? This very thing would surely happen also in the world itself, if, deprived of its own providence, it were left behind. If a ship without a helmsman would easily be sunk, how would the world subsist for so long a time with no one governing.... and why do I say a ship? Someone fitted together a little hut among the vineyards and, the fruit having been taken away, left it deserted, and it does not remain even two days, but is dissolved and falls shortly. Therefore a hut indeed would not stand without one providing for it. But a creature so great, so beautiful, so marvelous, and the laws of night and day and the dance of alternating hours and the course of nature, varied and all-manifold in earth and sea and air and heaven and plants and animals flying, swimming, walking, creeping, and in the human race stronger than all of them, how would it have remained stable for so long a time without any providence?

You will say 1. If there were in God any care and providence of human affairs, there would be no freedom of men, and no contingency of created things: but reason persuades and experience demonstrates that the consequent is absurd: therefore also the antecedent. The consequence of the major is proved. If all the actions of man were foreseen by God, they will come about either avoidably or unavoidably. If the first: therefore divine Providence will not be infallible. If the second: therefore the operations of man will not be contingent, nor will they be able to be done or not done, and so neither will they be free, but necessary and natural.

I deny the consequence of the major and to its proof I say that the operations of man happen necessarily, not indeed by an antecedent necessity, which would take away freedom and impose an unavoidable necessity; but by a consequent one, which supposes the free determination of the will as foreseen. For the divine will, by its eternal decree, does not predetermine the created will, but codetermines it, nor is its determination prior or posterior in nature or in reason to the determination of the created will in the order of causality, but simultaneous with it (as we have already said when treating of the conciliation of human freedom with the invariable decree of the divine will.)

Add. that divine Providence itself accommodates itself to created things and so bestows its care, that it supplies to necessary things necessarily and to free things freely the fitting means for attaining the end due to them, as the holy Dionysius plainly teaches, lib. De Divinis Nominibus, cap. 4., saying: Just as the providence of each nature is salvific, it provides for things movable per se as movable per se, and all particulars according to the property of the whole and of each one, insofar as the nature of the things provided for receives the provided goods attributed proportionally to each one by the whole providence.

You will insist. So certain and so invariable is the divine ordering of things, that with it standing, there can be no free determination and election of man; but all are snatched and agitated by a certain inevitable necessity and immutable fate: therefore, either there is no freedom of man, and no prayers of his to God and vows, or there is no providence in God. Seneca proves the antecedent, libro 2. q. natural., cap. 35. and 36., where, opening up the immobility and invariability of divine providence and ordering (which he calls by another name, fate, after the manner of the ancient Philosophers), he says:

the fates otherwise perform their right, nor are they moved by any prayer, they are not bent by mercy, not by favor, they keep their irrevocable course, they flow from what is destined. Just as the water of rapid torrents does not run back into itself, nor even delays, because the water coming upon it drives the earlier one headlong. So the eternal series of fate rolls the order of things, whose first law is to stand by the decree. For what do you understand Fate? I think it is the necessity of all things and actions, which no force may break. If you judge that this can be won over by sacrifices and the head of a snow-white ewe, you do not know the Divine. You deny that the judgment of a wise man can be changed, how much more that of God, since the Wise man knows in the present what is best, and to his Divinity everything is present?

With these words he excellently demonstrates the immutability of divine providence, and so, with it posited, excludes every fortuitous and free event.

The same Philosopher answers, cap. 37. that by this certain and immutable decree of divine providence, the free choice of human liberty is in no way harmed, nor will the prayers of men be vain and void.

For some things, he says, have been left so suspended by the immortal Gods, that they turn out for good, if prayers have been offered to the Gods, if vows have been undertaken. Then objecting to himself, either it will be, he says, or it will not; if it will be, even if you have not undertaken the vows, it will happen; if it will not be, even if you have undertaken the vows, it will not happen. He answers: that interrogation is false, because you pass over that middle exception between these: it will be, I say, this — but if the vows have been undertaken. Again objecting: This too must be comprehended by fate, whether you undertake the vows or not. He answers: suppose that I give you my hand and confess that this too is comprehended by fate, that the vows are indeed made; it is fated that this one be eloquent, but if he has learned letters, it is contained by the same fate that he learn letters... so although health seems to be of fate, health is nevertheless owed to the physician, because the benefit of fate comes to us through this man's hands.

With these things he excellently teaches that the immutability of fate, or of divine providence, does not harm man's freedom, but supposes the free determination of his will; for it does not predetermine it, but codetermines it.

You will say 2. If there were in God any care of mortals, there would likewise be a secure happiness of the pious as the reward of their virtue, but upon the impious calamity and misery as the vengeance and punishment of their wickedness: but far otherwise it happens, for the perverse lead their days in goods and abound in honors, pleasures, and riches. Whence the semi-atheists gather that all things are overlooked by God, says Salvian, lib. 1. De Providentia, because he neither restrains the evil nor protects the good, and therefore in this age the state of the better is quite worse: the good being in poverty, the evil in abundance; the good in weakness, the evil in strength; the good always in mourning, the evil always in joy; the good in misery and abjection, the evil in prosperity and dignity. Nor is this the complaint only of them, but also of the Saints, for Ieremias 12., as if reproaching God, says: Why does the way of the impious prosper? It is well with all who transgress and act iniquitously. And Habacuc 1. Why do you look upon those acting iniquitously and hold your peace, while the impious devours one more just than himself? David likewise marvelously weighs and exaggerates the same complaint, Psal. 72. I was envious, he says, of the iniquitous, seeing the peace of sinners, because there is no regard for their death, etc.

Answer 1. St. Augustine — this argument indeed seemed so valid to the Royal Prophet himself, that he hoped for its solution and elucidation not in this mortal life, but in the blessed and eternal life. Whence he subjoins in the same place; I thought to know this, it is labor before me, until I enter into the sanctuary of God. St. Augustine weighs these words thus:

Before my face I see a certain labor as it were inextricable, to know how God is both just and cares for human affairs and is not iniquitous; because sinners and those committing crimes have happiness in this land, but the pious, serving God, are mostly wearied in temptations and labors. It is a great difficulty to know this: but until I enter into the sanctuary of God. For then it will appear how the just will receive the legitimate reward of their good works, and also eternal life for their tribulations. But the impious will be thrust into eternal fire.

Answer 2. The above-cited Salvian holds that these things are unjustly objected by the calumniators of providence.

For first, he says, from those who either grieve or accuse that it is so, I ask this: whether they grieve about the Saints, that is, about the true and faithful Christians, or about the false and impostors. If about the false, the grief is superfluous, which grieves that the evil are not blessed. Since certainly whoever are evil become worse by the success of things, rejoicing that the pursuit of wickedness turns out well for them. And therefore for this very reason they ought to be most miserable, so that they may cease to be evil, claiming the name of religion with the most shameless questions and preferring the title of holiness to the most sordid dealings, whose wickednesses, namely, if miseries are compared to them, are less miserable than they deserve, because, placed in whatever miseries, they are nevertheless not so miserable as they are evil. In no way therefore must one grieve for these, that they are not rich and blessed. Much less, however, for the Saints, because however much they may seem to the ignorant to be miserable, they cannot nevertheless be other than Blessed.... For no one is miserable by another's sense, but by his own. And therefore they cannot by anyone's false judgment be miserable, who are blessed by the true witness of their own conscience; for none, I think, are more blessed than those who act according to their own judgment and desire.

The Religious are humble, this they will; they are poor, they delight in poverty; they are without ambition, they spurn ambition; they are without honor, they despise honor; they mourn, they are eager to mourn; they are weak, they rejoice in weakness. In no way therefore must we grieve over this affliction of weaknesses, which we understand to be the mother of virtues. And so, whatever it may be, whoever are truly Religious are to be called blessed, because among any hardships, none are more blessed than those who are what they will.

I answer 3. Divine providence exercises all just persons with tribulations for many reasons, and those the most just. First indeed, because Seneca says in the book De Providentia:

Virtue withers without an adversary; then it appears how great it is, how much it is worth and can do, when patience shows what it can do.... Unscathed happiness bears no blow; but where it has had a constant struggle with its own disadvantages, it grows callous through injuries and yields to no evil; but even if it has fallen, it fights on its knees.

Then, when he had said that brave men are tested in wrestling bouts and that men delight in the spectacle of a steadfast youth receiving and tearing apart a wild beast rushing upon him, he adds:

Behold a spectacle worthy for God, intent upon his own work, to look upon. Behold a match worthy of God, a brave man pitted against evil fortune, especially if he has also provoked it. I do not see, I say, what Jupiter has on earth more beautiful, if he should wish to turn his mind to it, than to watch Cato standing after his party had been broken more than once, and nonetheless upright amid the public ruins.

With him Tertullian agrees, in lib. De Patientia, where, celebrating the stupendous patience of the Patriarch Job, he says:

What a trophy did God erect in that man out of the Devil! What a banner did he raise from the enemy of his glory! What was he laughing at? God: what? The evil one was being cut to pieces, when Job with great equanimity was wiping away the foul overflow of his ulcer, when he was playfully calling back the little creatures bursting forth from there into the same caves and feeding places of his perforated flesh?

Second. Virtue is perfected in infirmity, as Christ himself says, addressing Paul, 2. Corinth. 12. Tribulation, says Augustine, compels the unwilling, teaches the ignorant, protects the failing, rouses the sluggish, humbles the proud, purges the penitent, crowns the innocent. Whence St. Hilary, lib. 4. De Trinitate¹: Just as of old the ark was borne higher as the flood's waves rose, and at last, victorious over the storms, rested upon the mountains of Armenia, not otherwise does the Church flourish while it is exercised; grow while it is oppressed; advance while it is despised; conquer while it is struck.

Third. No one is so given over to impiety as not sometimes to perform some morally good work, which, since it has no charity and grace attached to it — the seeds of eternal recompense — therefore demands only a temporal reward. But, on the contrary, no follower of justice is so faithful and tenacious as not sometimes to deviate a little from the straight path of virtue, and not to offend God by lighter faults; therefore there is also no one among the just who does not deserve an avenging punishment, at least a temporal one. Hence it is so far from being the case that the prosperity of the wicked and the adversity of the pious is a defect of divine governance, that it is rather an evident argument of divine providence. For divine justice suffers nothing to go unpunished and nothing unrewarded, rewarding the wicked indeed in this life with temporal goods for their temporal work, according to that saying of Luke 16, Remember, son, that you received good things in your lifetime, says Abraham to the rich glutton. And punishing the just in this mortal life, lest after death it find in them something to be avenged by strict sentence, as David earnestly prayed: Lord, do not rebuke me in your fury (that is, in Hell) nor in your wrath, that is, in the avenging flames of Purgatory; but have mercy on me, that is, in your mercy, burn here, cut here, provided that you spare me for eternity, says St. Augustine.

Add. that tribulation and affliction is the royal road to eternal happiness; for just as it was fitting that Christ suffer and so enter into his glory, so it is fitting that we enter into the kingdom of God through many tribulations; for, says Gregory, we who departed from the joys of Paradise through delights are called back to them through lamentations.

You will say 3. Providence imports solicitude toward the things provided for; but in God there can be no solicitude, since he enjoys supreme peace and eternal quiet. For unmoved he moves all things, and, remaining stable, he gives all things to be moved, says Boethius: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the major. That providence imports a solicitude having attached to it an agitation and restlessness of mind arising from deliberation, inquiry, and uncertainty of the outcome — I deny. That it imports one which merely entails an exact care for the things provided for, supplying them the fitting means by which they may attain their due end — I concede; and likewise, with the minor distinguished, the consequence must be denied. For God, without any disturbance or restlessness, always watches with his whole being over the governance of all things.

You will say 4. What is not foreknown is not provided for: but chance things, since they are beyond the intention of the agent, are not foreknown: therefore neither is there providence concerning them; and hence, since almost all things happen by chance, providence is either none or rare.

I distinguish the minor. That chance things are not foreknown by God — I deny; by creatures, in respect of which they are called chance things — I concede. Nothing therefore is chance with respect to God, who connects and orders absolutely all secondary causes to an end. Whence Boethius says, lib. 5. De Consolatione: Although chance is an unforeseen event arising from concurrent causes in those things which are done for the sake of something else, nevertheless that order proceeding from an inevitable connection, which, descending from the fountain of providence, disposes all things in their places and times, makes the causes concur and flow together.

Second conclusion. — God provides not only for the most excellent things, but also for the vilest, not only in common, but also in particular.

Proof, first. from all those texts of Sacred Scripture in which God is celebrated as looking upon and caring for created things, even the vilest. Thus Ps. 137. The Lord is high and looks upon the lowly. Ecclesiasticus, in the first chapter, when it had said: All wisdom is from the Lord God, and it was always with him and is before the age, asks: Who can number the sand of the sea and the drops of rain and the days of the age? After similar questions it answers: There is one most high Creator. Whence Wisdom, in chapter 8, when it had celebrated the illustrious praises of divine Wisdom, concludes: Therefore she reaches from end to end mightily and disposes all things sweetly; that is, says St. Bernard in the book De libero arbitrio: from the highest Heaven to the lower parts of the earth, and from the greatest Angel to the vilest little worm. For he himself, says David, Psal. 146, gives fodder to the cattle and to the young of the ravens, brings forth hay on the mountains, etc. He himself, as Christ asserts, Matth. 6, feeds the birds of Heaven and clothes the lilies of the field.

This same truth did not escape the pagan Philosophers; for as St. Augustine, lib. 10. De Civit. Dei, cap. 14.² relates, Plotinus the Platonist proves that God's providence reaches even to these earthly and lowest things by the beauty of little flowers and leaves, whereby he confirms that all things, though as it were cast off and perishing, cannot have the most fitting proportions of their forms unless they are formed from that place where the intelligible and at the same time unchangeable form, holding all things, abides. Which the Lord Jesus shows there where he says: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they do not labor, neither do they spin. But I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these.

The Fathers confirm the same in many places. First indeed St. Augustine in many places, but especially lib. 5. De Genesi ad litteram, cap. 21: They are not to be heard, he says, who thought that the sublunary parts of the world are agitated by chance, but that the sublime ones are governed by divine Providence. The Psalm also speaks against these, which, when it had set forth the praises of the heavenly things, turns itself also to the lower things: Praise the Lord from the earth, you dragons, abysses, fire, hail, snow, ice, which do his word. And when Christ says that not one sparrow falls to the earth without God's will. And that God clothes the grass which is cast into the oven. Does he not confirm that the vilest and most abject little parts of the world are ruled by his divine Providence?

The same truth is proved by reason. If God had no care of the smallest and vilest things, this would chiefly be either because he could not, or because he would not, or because it would not befit his supreme majesty. The first detracts from his infinite power, which, since it produced all things from nothing, can also preserve and administer all things. The second offends his divine goodness. For what workman would neglect the care of his work? says St. Ambrose. The third, finally, is so far from unbefitting his supreme majesty — the production and care of the smallest things — that it rather celebrates it and commends it in a wonderful manner. For God, says St. Augustine, lib. 11. De Civit. Dei, cap. 22, is so great an artist in great things that he is not less in small ones, which small things are to be measured not by their own greatness, which is none, but by the wisdom of the artist. Whence Pliny says elegantly, lib. 11. cap. 2: Nature, he says, is nowhere more wholly present than in the smallest things. Hence St. Augustine, lib. 3. De Genesi ad litteram, cap. 6: He created animals smallest in body and acute in sense, so that with greater attention we may marvel at the agility of the flying fly rather than at the size of the walking beast of burden, and wonder more at the works of the ant than at the loads of Camels. And deservedly indeed: for who would not marvel at God's supreme and infinite Wisdom, Power, and Majesty in those vilest and most abject little creatures, which have such tiny heads, with so many workshops of the senses mingled without any confusion, as many as are required for seeing, hearing, and perceiving odor and taste, etc.

Let your Charity attend, says St. Augustine on Psalm 8, who disposed the limbs of the flea and the gnat, so that they have their order, have their life, have their motion? Consider one little creature, however brief and tiny, if you consider the order of its limbs and the animation of life by which it is moved, so that it flees death on its own behalf, loves life, seeks pleasures, avoids annoyances, puts forth its various senses, thrives in the motion suited to it. Who gave the gnat the sting with which it sucks blood? How thin is the tube through which it drinks! Who disposed these things? Who made these things? You tremble at the smallest things, praise the Great One; he who made the Angel in Heaven, he himself made the little worm on earth.

You will say 1. God is held and delighted by the contemplation of heavenly things; therefore he does not care for these sublunary things, nor does he provide for the smallest things. The antecedent is proved from Job 22. Clouds, he says, are his hiding place, and he does not consider our concerns, and he walks about the hinges of heaven.

I answer. These words are indeed uttered not by the Patriarch Job from his own mind, but from the opinion of the impious. For when he had said: Do you not think that God is higher than heaven, and is exalted above the top of the stars? he adds: And you say: what indeed does God know? and he judges as through darkness. Clouds are his hiding place, etc. From which it clearly appears that these words are uttered by Job from the absurd opinion of the impious, and are condemned at the same time.

You will say 2. God does not have care of brute animals: therefore his divine Providence does not watch over all things. The antecedent is proved from 1. Corinth. 9. Is it for the oxen that God has care? says the Apostle, as if he would say that God takes no care of irrational things.

Our Alexander of Hales answers, in the first part, q. 26. member 4. art. 1. that the care of divine Providence is twofold:

One, he says, is the care of divine Providence, which is general, by which things are preserved in their being by divine Providence through the times due and determined to them; and in this way it is true that he has care of all things. The other is the special care of Providence, which has to do specially with the rational creature, according to which he instructs it by giving it precepts and law; and according to this he does not have care of all things.

It is of this latter care that the Apostle speaks, not indeed of the former. Or it must be said that God does not have so peculiar a care of brute animals as of creatures endowed with reason; for those are ordered to us as means to an end and serve us. Whence the Apostle adds: Did he not indeed say this for our sakes? For they were written for our sakes.

You will object 3. The difficult opinion of St. Jerome, who, weighing that saying of Habacuc 1. Your eyes are pure, that they may not see evil, says:

It is absurd to draw down the majesty of God to this, that he should know at each single moment how many gnats are born, how many die, what multitude of bugs and fleas and flies there is on earth, how many fish swim in the water, and which of the smaller ones must yield as prey to the greater. Let us not be such foolish flatterers of God that, while we draw down his power even to the lowest things, we are injurious to ourselves, saying that the same one is provident over rational beings. Whence that apocryphal book is to be condemned for folly, in which it is written that a certain Angel named Tyri presides over reptiles.

By which he seems clearly to signify that God's knowledge does not descend to contemplating the vilest things individually, and that he takes no care at all of the viler things.

Various people answer in various ways, to free the holy Doctor from every error against God's general providence. First indeed, some say that he speaks only comparatively, as if he means that the providence over irrational creatures is not the same as that over creatures endowed with reason, so that God does not bestow the same care on things deprived of reason as he bestows on rational ones. Second, some judge that he means that God's knowledge is not increased or diminished, nor changed by the vicissitude of things, as if he acquired moment by moment a fresh knowledge, item by item, of things coming to be; but that from eternity he sees all things at once in a single most simple intuition. Third, there are those who think that he wrote these things popularly and for the grasp of the common people, and that it is one of those passages which Jerome himself, in the book against Rufinus, says he wrote in his commentaries on the Prophets not from his own opinion but from that of others. Fourth, finally, some affirm that St. Jerome distinguishes a twofold divine knowledge and care: one indeed Particular, by which it is restricted only to those things which are loved and intended for their own sakes by the Provider; and this care St. Jerome denies that God bestows on irrational things, which are not loved nor intended for their own sake by the Provider, but only insofar as they can serve man. The other indeed General, by which God administers what is necessary to each single thing. Jerome himself indicates this twofold acceptance of divine Knowledge and Providence in c. 38. of Jeremiah:

There are, he says, those who confess the Providence of the Creator as far as rational beings, but assert that brutes either perish or live by chance events. And the prophetic discourse declares that there is nothing which escapes divine Providence and the Knowledge of God, because some things were created for their own sake, others for the use of men. A few words interposed: whose care it is mine to rule all things, to dispose all things, and to render to each one according to his ways.

But that St. Jerome judged that divine Providence extends even to each of the vilest creatures is evident in the commentaries on c. 10. of Matthew, where, weighing these words, Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?, he says: If small animals do not fall without God as their author, and providence is always in all things, and what is to arise in them does not perish without God's will, you who are eternal ought not to fear that providence is exercised without God's nod. Likewise he has it in cap. 5. of the Epistle to the Ephesians and in cap. 1. of Zachariah.

You will ask. Is God's care and providence equal concerning all things?

I answer. that it is not; and this is established by a threefold reason. First, because not all things are ordered to an equal end; but some to a purely natural end, as all creatures devoid of reason, some indeed to a supernatural end, as creatures possessed of reason, such as Angels and men; and therefore they have more excellent means, and God watches over and provides for them in a nobler manner. Second, because God provides for some things immediately and per se, for instance the superior Angels; but for the rest he provides only with the help of secondary causes and of other creatures, superior and inferior. Third, finally, because God seems to provide for man before other creatures, both on account of his dignity — for all things were founded for his sake: For all things of which the world consists, and whatever it generates from itself, are accommodated to the use of man, says Lactantius, lib. De Ira Dei c. 13, where he treats this argument at length and elegantly. Whence, although God also provides for the others, he nevertheless seems to do that only accidentally and for the sake of man, as Origen declares with this elegant simile, lib. 4. against Celsus:

Just as, he says, in Cities he who has the care of the grain supply and the market labors for the sake of no one other than men, yet the fruit of his providence is seen to reach even to the dogs and other brutes; so divine Providence looks out chiefly for beings endowed with reason, but consequently even the brute animals enjoy it, which were brought forth for the sake of men.

Then also on account of man's infirmity and weakness, which is far greater than that of the other animals, whence he needs innumerable aids for his own preservation. For no animal is more fastidious, none to be handled with greater art, none to be more spared, than man, says Seneca, lib. 1. De Clementia cap. 17. Whence St. Ambrose judges that God bestows a special care on him, as it were from the office of justice, on Psalm 118: Because he is just, he says, so as to protect and preserve the work of his hands, so that those whom he cast naked, by a certain unendowed lot of nature, into this infirmity of body, he may deign to clothe, poor as they are, with the vigor of the soul and the dowry of his mercy. Then finally, because creatures devoid of reason and freedom are driven and directed to their ends by necessary causes always acting in the same manner, nor do they labor under great variety and inconstancy; and therefore they are easier to lead and to handle. But human affairs, which proceed freely from the choice of the will as from a changeable and inconstant cause, are therefore uncertain and mutable, and so have need of ampler care and greater solicitude, so that so great and so inextricable a variety may be directed to the fitting order and end. Whence Hierocles handed down in lib. De Providentia: A general Providence, spent upon the whole species, suffices for brutes; but we, unless we are governed by Providence individually and in all things, so that nothing which pertains to us is outside the scope of Providence, by no means obtain a care suited to us. Nor does it matter that we read in Wisdom 6: His care is equally for all; for by these words the Sage does not affirm that God bestows the same care on all created things, but that in truth there is none over whose preservation and protection he does not watch. For there the Sage treats of God's vengeance and punishment upon the Powerful and the Great, who oppress the little and their subjects; whence, when he had said: To the little one mercy is granted, but the Powerful shall suffer torments powerfully, he adds: for God will not accept the person of anyone, nor will he fear the greatness of anyone; since he himself made the small and the great, and his care is equally for all. From which it is clear that this very equality of care designates and commends only the protection of all, and especially of little men.