First, His sustentation or upholding of all things is his powerful continuing of their being, natural strength, and faculties, bestowed on them at their creation : " In him we live, and move, and have our being," Acts xvii. So that he doth neither work all himself in them, without any co-operation of theirs, which would not only turn all
culum, scd angelum in cuclo pro habitutioiic coelesti, verniiculum in terra pro habita- tionc terrewtri, niinq\ii<l aiigolum fecit repere in coeuo, aut verniiculum in coelo," etc. — Aug., torn, viii., in Ps. cxlviii.
OF THE PEOVIDENCE OF GOD. 35
things into stocks, yea, and take from stocks their own proper nature, but also is contrary to that general blessing he spread over the face of the whole world in the beginning, "Be fruitful, and multiply," Gen. i. 22; — nor yet leave them to a self- subsistence, he in the meantime only not destroying them ;^ which would make him an idle spectator of most things in the world, not to "work hitherto,"as our Saviour speaks, and grant to divers things here below an absolute being, not deriva- tive from him : the first whereof is blasphemous, the latter impossible.
Secondly, For God's working in and together with all second causes for producing of their effects, what part or portion in the work punc- tually to assign unto him, what to the power of the inferior causes, seems beyond tlie reach of mortals ; neither is an exact comprehension thereof any way necessary, so that we make every thing beholding to his power for its bemg, and to his assistance for its operation.
Thirdly, His supreme dominion exerciseth itself in disposing of all things to certain and determinate ends for his own glory, and is chiefly discerned advancing itself over those things which are most contingent, and making them in some sort necessary, inasmuch as they are ceitainly disposed of to some proposed ends. Between the birth and death of a man, how many things merely contingent do occur ! how many chances ! how many diseases ! in their own nature all evitable, and, in regard of the event, not one of them but to some proves mortal; yet, certain it is that a man's " days are determined, the number of his months are with the Lord, he hath appointed his bounds that he cannot pass," Job xiv. 5. And oftentimes by things purely contingentand accidental he executeth his purposes, — bestoweth rewards, inflicteth punishments, and accomplisheth his judgments; as when he delivereth a man to be slain by the head of an axe, flying from the helve in the hand of a man cutting a tree by the way. But in nothing is this more evident than in the ancient casting of lots, a thing as casual and accidental as can be imagined, huddled in the cap at a venture. Yet God overruleth them to the declaring of his purpose, freeing truth from doubts, and manifestation of his power: Prov. xvi. 33, " The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord;" — as you may see in the examples of Achan, Josh. vii. 16-18; Saul, 1 Sam. x. 20, 21 ; Jonathan, chap. xiv. 41, 42; Jonah, chap. i. 7; Matthias, Acts i. 26. And yet this overruling act of God's providence (as no other decree or act of his) doth not rob things contingent of their proper nature ; for cannot he who effectu- ally causeth that they shall come to pass, cause also that they shall come to pass contingently ?
Fourthly, God's predetermination of second causes (which I name not last as though it were the last act of God's providence about his
' Rem. Apol., cap. vi.
S6 - A DISPLAY OF ARMINIANISM.
creatures, for indeed it is the first that concerneth their operation) is that effectual working of his, according to his eternal purpose, whereby, though some agents, as the wills of men, are causes most free and in- definite, or unlimited lords of their own actions, in respect of their in- ternal principle of operation (that is, their own nature), [they] are yet all, in respect of his decree, and by his powerful working, determined to this or that effect in particular; not that they are compelled to do this, or hindered from doing that, but are inclined and disposed to do this or that, according to their proper manner of working, that is, most freely: for truly such testimonies are eveiywhere obvious in Scrip- ture, of the stirring up of men's wills and minds, of bending and in- clining them to divers things, of the governing of the secret thoughts and motions of the heart, as cannot by any means be referred to a naked permission, with a government of external actions, or to a general influence, whereby they should have power to do this or that, or any thing else ; wherein, as some suppose, his whole providence consisteth.
Let us now jointly apply these several acts to free agents, working according to choice, or relation, such as are the wills of men, and that will open the way to take a vieAV of Arminian heterodoxies, concern- ing this article of Christian belief. And here two things must be pre- mised : — First, That they be not deprived of their own radical or original internal liberty; secondly. That they be not exempt from the moving influence and gubernation of God's providence; — the first whereof would leave no just room for rewards and punishments; the other, as I said before, is injurious to the m^ajesty and power of God. St Augustine^ judged Cicero worthy of special blame, even among the heathens, for so attempting to make men free that he made them sacrilegious, by denying them to be subject to an overruling provi- dence: which gross error was directly maintained by Damascen,^ a learned Christian, teaching, "Things whereof we have any power, not to depend on providence, but on our own free will;" an opinion fitter for a hog of the Epicurus herd than for a scholar in the school of Christ. And yet this proud, prodigious error is now, though in other terms, stiffly maintained : for what do they else who ascribe such an ab- solute independent liberty to the will of man, that it should have in its own power every circumstance, every condition whatsoever, that belongs to operation, so that all things required on the part of God, or otherwise, to the j^erformance of an action being accomplished, it remaineth solely in the power of a man's own will whether he will do it or no? which supreme and plainly divine liberty, joined Avith such an absolute uncontrollable power and dominion over all his