better arts. These be the only perspective glasses which can help the eye of reason to discover the truth or necessity of the consequence; to wit, Whether the Almighty Creator, being granted to be the cause of our mother Eve's first longing after the forbidden fruit, were not the cause or author of her sin?' Now unto any rational man that can use the help of the forementioned rules of arts, (which serve as perspective glasses unto the eye of reason,) that usual distinction between the cause or author of the act, and the cause or author of the obliquity which necessarily ensues upon the act, will appear at the first sight to be false or frivolous, yea to imply a manifest contradiction. For obliquity, or whatsoever other relation, can have no cause at all, besides that which is the cause of the habit, of the act or quality whence it necessarily results. And in particular, that conformity or similitude which the first man did bear to his Almighty Creator did' necessarily result from his substance or manhood, as it was the work of God undefaced. Nor can we search after any other true cause of the first man's conformity to God, or his integrity, besides him who was the cause of his manhood, or of his existence with such qualifications as by his creation he was endowed with. like manner, whosoever was the cause whether of his coveting or eating of the tree in the middle of the garden, was the true cause of that obliquity or crooked deviation from God's law, or of that deformity or 12 dissimilitude unto God himself, which did necessarily result from the forbidden act or desire. It was impossible there should be one cause of the act, and another cause of the obliquity or deformity, whether unto God's laws or unto God himself; for no relation or entity merely relative (such are obliquity and deformity) can have any other cause beside that which

In

is the cause of the fundamentum, or foundation whence they immediately result. It remains then that we acknowledge the old serpent to have been the first author; and man (whom God created male and female) to have been the true positive cause of that obliquity or deformity which did result by inevitable necessity from the forbidden act or desire, which could have no necessary cause at all. For the devil or old serpent could lay no absolute necessity upon our first parents' will, which the Almighty Creator had left free to eat or not to eat of the forbidden fruit. That they did de facto eat of it was not by any necessity, but merely contingently, or by abuse of that freewill which God had given them. Briefly, to say or think that our first parents were necessitated by the Divine decree to that act, or any part of that act or desire, whence the first sin did necessarily result, or to imagine that the act or desire was necessary in respect of God's decree, is to lay a deeper and fouler charge upon the Almighty, that Holy One, than we can, without slander, charge the devil withal.

5. Charity binds me to impute the harsh expressions of some good writers and well-deserving of all reformed churches, yea, the errors of the Dominicans or other schoolmen, (which were more faulty than Zwinglius or his followers in this point,) rather unto incogitancy, or want of skill in good arts, than unto malice, or such malignancy as the Lutheran long ago had furiously charged upon the Calvinist, as if they had chosen the devil, not the Father of lights, maker of heaven and earth, to be their God. And I could heartily wish wrong done that Pareus had not entered into that dispute with to worthy writers by Becanus about this controversy: but seeing I cannot apologizers obtain my wish, I must be sorry that he came off no better than he did, especially for Calvin's credit, or for

Much

unskilful

for their

harsh ex

pressions.

his own. I did not believe the relation of the conference which I read long ago in Canisius, until I read the like set forth by Pareusf himself, wherein he professeth that he likes better of cardinal Bellarmine's opinion than of Calvin's, concerning the controversies or questions about the first cause of sinning. But were it any part of my present task, I could easily make it appear, even by the testimony and authority, or, which is more, by the concludent arguments of some learned Jesuits themselves, that cardinal Bellarmine, and many others of Aquinas's followers, do make God to be the author of sin, by as clear infallible consequence as either Zwinglius or Piscator have done. And he that would diligently peruse Aquinas's writings, and in particular his resolution of that question, An detur causa prædestinationis, may find him as straitlaced as Calvin was; one and the same girdle would be an equal and competent measure for both their errors.

f Tum D. Serarius: Scimus vestros ita distinguere, quod non improbanus. Calvinus vero in scriptis suis omnem Dei permissionem in peccatis simpliciter rejicit et opera malorum, etiam quoad malitiam, efficacia Dei tribuit: atque sic Deum authorem peccati manifeste facit. Ego vero: Utrum hæc sit Calvini sententia quam vos ei tribuitis, postea videbimus. Jam accipio, quod datis, nostros, quos Calvinistas vocatis, eo modo, quo dixi, distinguere ; quodque distinctionem nostram non potestis improbare. Hinc vero evidenter conficitur, Calvinistas, quos vocatis, Deum peccati autorem nequaquam facere: ac proinde falsam esse D. Becani minorem, quod Calvinistæ faciant Deum autorem peccati: eoque et con

clusionem esse calumniosam, quod Calvinistarum Deus sit Diabolus.

Ibi D. Serarius, pro ingenio suo intelligens nodum: Ergo, inquit, deleatur illud -starum: erit tamen Diabolus Calvini, si non Calvinistarum Deus. Quo dicto D. Becanus subrubescens, cum socii ingenuitatem improbare non auderet, subjecit et ipse: Bene, deleatur -starum; manebit tamen Deus Calvini Diabolus. Tum ego, dextra eis præbita, pro tanta liberalitate gratias agens, Satis mihi nunc est, inquam, quod fatemini, -starum delendum esse, ut jam non Calvinistarum, sed Calvini Deus, secundum vos, sit Diabolus.-Pareus Act. Swalbacen. part. 1. coll. 2. de Autore Peccati.

The best apology that can be made for either must be 13 taken from the Roman satirist's charity, Opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum. Calvin and Aquinas were homines Toxypapo, that is, somewhat more than authors of long works; authors of many various works in respect of the several subjects or arguments: which is the best apology that Jansenius could make for St. Jerom's contradicting of himself in several works, as Espenseus doth the like for St. Austin.

6. But of that pardon which learned men that wrote much and handled many much different matters may justly challenge, such as stand to be their followers (though afar off) are no way capable; men, I mean, who having other ordinary works or vocations to follow, do busy their brains and abuse their auditors or readers with idle and frivolous apologies for those slips or errors of worthy writers which stand more in need of ingenuous censure, of mild interpretation or correction, than a justifiable defence. More there have not been, as I hope, nor more peccant in this kind in any of reformed churches, than in this church of England, though not of it. Some treatises I have read and heard for justifying the escapes or ill expressions of Calvin and Beza, by improving their words into a worse and more dangerous sense than they themselves meant them in, or their followers in the churches wherein they lived did interpret them. Had these unscholastic apologizers been called to a strict account or examination of their doctrine by the rules of art, this haply would have bred a new question in our schools; Whether to attribute such acts or decrees unto God as they do, and yet withal to deny that they concludently make him the Author of sin, doth not argue as great a measure of artificial foppery, or (which is more to be feared in some) of supernatural infatuation, as it

would do of impiety, to resolve dogmatically in terminis terminantibus, that God is the author of sin?'

CHAP. VI.

The usual Distinction between the Act and Obliquity of the Act can have no Place in the first oblique Act of our first

Parents.

tration of

mentioned

upon such

1. THE former question or problem might justly be The illusallowed in any academical act or commencement, albeit the forethe answerer or defendant were furnished with no distinction other grounds or occasions of his theses besides that retorted usually avouched distinction between the act and as use it. obliquity of the act, specially if the distinction were applied unto the first sin of our first parents. In that sin, whether we refer it to our father Adam or to our mother Eve, the act and the obliquity are altogether as unseparably annexed, as rotundity or roundness is with a sphere or moulded bullet. And to imagine there should be one cause of the act, and another of the obliquity or sinfulness of the act, would be as gross a solecism, as to assign or seek after any other cause of the rotundity or roundness of a sphere or bullet, besides him that frames the one or moulds the other; or as it would be to inquire any other cause of the equality between two bodies before unequal, besides him that makes the quantity to be of one and the same size or scantling; or of the similitude between the fleece of a black sheep, and of a white sheep perfectly dyed black, besides the dyer. Now the similitude betwixt that which is perfectly dyed black and that which is black by nature, doth inevitably result from the dyer, without the intervention of any other cause imaginable. Easy it were to produce a volume of like instances in the