The divine life in three treatises

4. Abhor all doctrines which deny the Truth and Faithfulness of God: For they destroy the ground of Christian Faith, of all Divine Faith, and all Religion. The Veracity of God is the formal Object of all Divine Faith: We believe God, because he cannot Lye: If he can Lye, and do Lye, he is not credible. But you will say, Is there any that hold such odious doctrines? Answ. I like not the charging of Persons with the consequences of their opinions which they discern not, but disclaim: God will not charge them with such consequences, who do their best to know the truth, and why should we? All men have some errors, whose consequences contradict some Articles of Faith. It is not the persons that I persuade you to dislike, but the Doctrine. And the Doctrine is never the less to be abhorred, because a wise or good man may hold that which doth infer it.

4. Abhor all doctrines which deny the Truth and Faithfulness of God: For they destroy the ground of Christian Faith, of all Divine Faith, and all Religion. The Veracity of God is the formal Object of all Divine Faith: We believe God, because he cannot Lye: If he can Lye, and do Lye, he is not credible. But you will say, Is there any that hold such odious doctrines? Answ. I like not the charging of Persons with the consequences of their opinions which they discern not, but disclaim: God will not charge them with such consequences, who do their best to know the truth, and why should we? All men have some errours, whose consequences contradict some Articles of Faith. It is not the persons that I perswade you to dislike, but the Doctrine. And the Doctrine is never the less to be abhorred, because a wise or good man may hold that which doth infer it.

I shall now instance only in the Dominicans predetermination. They that hold that it is necessary to the being of every circumstantiated act natural and free, that God be the principal immediate Physical efficient predetermining cause of it, do hold that he so causeth all the false speeches and writings (as well as other sins) that ever were spoken or written in the world: not only as they are acts in genere, but as these words in particular; as that he so predetermined the tongues of Ananias and Sapphira to say those very words which they said, rather than others: Now seeing it is apparent 1. That God hath not a voice but speaketh to us by a Created Voice, even by Prophets and Apostles, and that the Scripture was written by men. 2. And that Gods Veracity, which is the formal object of our Faith, consisteth in his not using lying instruments, nor sending a lying messenger to us; (it is Veracitas revelantis per alium.) 3. And that no way of Inspiration can make God to be any more the cause of the words or writings of an Apostle, than his Immediate Physical efficient specifying predetermination doth (for it can do no more than irresistibly as the first cause, Physically to premove the agent to this Thought, Will, Word, or Deed, considered with all its circumstances,) It followeth that we have no certainty when God premoveth an Apostle or Prophet to speak true,