B. I will make your Cause better than you have made it; But not by making other mens worse, but by opening the reconciling truth. 1. I shall tell you in what sense Gods Will and Decrees may and must be said 1to have an extrinsic cause, without change in God. 1. Know therefore that Gods Essence is his Will, but not as Essence. To say that God is God, and that God willeth this or that, are not terms of the same signification. 2. Gods Will is his Essence denominated from some amiable good as the Object; and so there is ever quid respectivum in the notion of Will. 3. As God willeth himself, the Act being perfectly immanent, his Will is called himself much more properly, than his Will of things extrinsic (which is ever either effectively, or at least objectively transient;) Because it is God that willeth, and that is willed or loved, (which made many Ancients say, That this was the third Person in the Trinity.) 4. But as God willeth things ad extra, though it is his Essence that so willeth them; yet it is unfit to say simply, that this Will is God; e. g. that to will Peter's Salvation is God, because the name Will here includeth the thing willed. 5. And therefore when we speak of Gods Will in the universal notion, as abstracted from all particular Objects and Acts, it is less inconvenient to say simply, that this Will is God, than when we speak of his Will in act ad extra. By this time you may see, that though Gods Will, as his Essence, hath no cause; yet his Will as denominated extrinsically from the Object, may have some kind of Cause that is *Objective, which is quasi materia actus, and the terminus sine quo non; that is, Gods Will is not denominated a complacency in Christ existent, or in Peter regenerate, *or his understanding, a seeing that the World was good, before any of these things did exist. So that by extrinsic denomination, without any change in God, he may and should be said de novo to know things to be existent, to be past, to will things as existent with complacency, or will them with displicency: But not to will the futurity of mens damnation de novo; but yet his Will of the futurity of mens damnation hath several degrees of the Objective Cause, from whence it is denominated: As in esse cognito, the person who is the Object is in order of nature first a man, a subject, and then a Sinner, and a Despiser of Mercy, and then a damnable Sinner.
B. I will make your Cause better than you have made it; But not by making other mens worse, but by opening the reconciling truth. 1. I shall tell you in what sense Gods Will and Decrees may and must be said 1to have an extrinsick cause, without change in God. 1. Know therefore that Gods Essence is his Will, but not as Essence. To say that God is God, and that God willeth this or that, are not terms of the same signification. 2. Gods Will is his Essence denominated from some amiable good as the Object; and so there is ever quid respectivum in the notion of Will. 3. As God willeth himself, the Act being perfectly immanent, his Will is called himself much more properly, than his Will of things extrinsick (which is ever either effectively, or at least objectively transient;) Because it is God that willeth, and that is willed or loved, (which made many Ancients say, That this was the third Person in the Trinity.) 4. But as God willeth things ad extra, though it is his Essence that so willeth them; yet it is unfit to say simply, that this Will is God; e. g. that to will Peter's Salvation is God, because the name Will here includeth the thing willed. 5. And therefore when we speak of Gods Will in the universal notion, as abstracted from all particular Objects and Acts, it is less inconvenient to say simply, that this Will is God, than when we speak of his Will in act ad extra. By this time you may see, that though Gods Will, as his Essence, hath no cause; yet his Will as denominated extrinsecally from the Object, may have some kind of Cause that is *Objective, which is quasi materia actus, and the terminus sine quo non; that is, Gods Will is not denominated a complacency in Christ existent, or in Peter regenerate, *or his understanding, a seeing that the World was good, before any of these things did exist. So that by extrinsick denomination, without any change in God, he may and should be said de novo to know things to be existent, to be past, to will things as existent with complacency, or will them with displicency: But not to will the futurity of mens damnation de novo; but yet his Will of the futurity of mens damnation hath several degrees of the Objective Cause, from whence it is denominated: As in esse cognito, the person who is the Object is in order of nature first a man, a subject, and then a Sinner, and a Despiser of Mercy, and then a damnable Sinner.
- 1Predestinatio nihil ponit in praedestinato inquit Aquin. 1. q. 23. a. 2.
- *Alvarez himself saith, that by a Cause he meaneth also any objective condition or reason of the Act.
- *This is all that Ruiz his Reasons prove De Vol. Dei disp. 115. Sect. 4. p. 102 Who saith, that there is more than extrinsic denomination; Et relatio rationis •um realis formalitas. But he doth but show by his quodammodo, that he knoweth not what to say.This is all that Ruiz his Reasons prove De Vol. Dei disp. 115. Sect. 4. p. 102 Who saith, that there is more than extrinsick denomination; Et relatio rationis •um realis formalitas. But he doth but shew by his quodammodo, that he knoweth not what to say.
