THIRD TOPIC

THE ONE AND TRIUNE GOD

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FIRST QUESTION - Can the existence of God be irrefutably demonstrated against atheists? We affirm.

1. God has condescended to reveal himself to us both in nature and in the Scriptures.
2. The subject admits of a threefold division:
1. we may know that he is (with respect to existence)
2. we may know that we may know who he is (with respect to his nature and attributes)
3. we may know who he is (with respect to the persons)
3. Although that there is a God is an indubitable first principle of religion, yet the number of atheists in the world render this question necessary.
4. The question is whether such a knowledge of the deity is implanted in men by nature, that no one can be wholly ignorant of him; or whether the existence of God can be demonstrated by unanswerable arguments. We affirm this.
5. The demonstration of deity rests upon four foundations principally:
1. the voice of universal nature
2. the contemplation of man himself
3. the testimony of conscience
4. the consent of all mankind
6. (1) Nature proves the being of God since she proclaims that she not only is, but is from another and could not be without another.
7. (2) The newness of the world with the commencement of motion and of time proves the necessary existence of God.
8. If men were from eternity, there would be granted infinite generations succeeding each other, and the number of men who have lived thus far would be infinite.
9. If in posterior eternity there can be granted a duration which had a beginning and will not have an end, then in anterior eternity there can be granted a duration which may have an end and yet never had a beginning.
10. (3) The wonderful beauty and order of the universe is another proof.
11. Things which come by chance are uncertain and ill-arranged and have nothing constant and similar; but nothing can be conceived more regular and composed than this universal frame.
12. (4) The tendency of all things toward an end confirms this.
13. (5) Man has in the make up of his own body and mind a familiar teacher of this very truth.
14. (6) This is especially taught by this power and stimulus of conscience whose sense can neither be blunted, nor accusation escaped, nor testimony corrupted.
15. I do not mean to deny that by a habit of sinning their conscience may be made so callous that occasionally and for a time they may seem to have lost all sense of sin and may not feel or care for the goads of conscience; but it cannot be said that they have lost all sense entirely.
16. (7) Another argument is the constant and perpetual sense and consent of all men: there is some deity who ought to be religiously worshiped.
17. This universal agreement  of all men concerning this primary truth
1. cannot come from simple desire (which in many would have been to deny any god)
2. cannot come for ancestral tradition (which could never produce a general consent in all minds)
3. can only arise from the evidence of the thing itself
18. There is implanted in each one from birth a sense of deity which does not allow itself to be concealed and which spontaneously exerts itself in all adults of sound mind.
19. Many other arguments might be adduced to confirm this truth:
1. from the prophecies of contingent future events
2. from the heroic actions of illustrious men
3. from the public judgments and punishment of crimes
4. from miracles surpassing the power of all nature
20. These and the like arguments are sufficient to cover with confusion the impious fighter against God, and are more clearly confirmed by the testimony of the word which has inscribed this persuasion on the minds of believers.
21. To these arguments ad hominem might also be added those of sufficient force to move even the atheist to believe in deity, if not for the sake of vindicating God himself, at least for his own sake:
1. if there was no God, no society in the world would be safe
1. without virtue nothing can be safe
2. without God there would be no virtue
3. there would be no right nor wrong
2. if there was no God, no mortals would be safe from violence, fraud, perjury, and murder
22. Although God is not manifest to the senses as he is in himself, yet he can perceived in his works.
1. it is a false assumption that there is nothing in the intellect which was not before in some sense - universals are in the intellect and never were in any sense
2. God may be certainly known in the mind from his works and a posteriori, although we cannot perceive him with our eyes or any of the other senses
23. What to us may appear disordered, with God may be perfectly arranged.
24. Although various things in the world seem to be useless, hurtful, and dangerous, tending to the misery of the human race, it does not follow that the world was not created and is not now directed by some perfectly good and wise being.
25. The prosperity of the wicked and the adversity of the pious exhibit a most wise dispensation which converts all these to its own glory and the salvation of the pious.
26. Infinite goodness does not immediately take away all evils; it judges that the permission of evil for the purpose of extracting good from it.
27. When God is said to be from himself, this must be understood to mean that he is from one, he is self-existent, and not to mean that he is the cause of himself, because he would then be before and after himself.
28. Rulers have been able to misuse religion for coercion because of the universal persuasion of deity in the minds of all people.

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SECOND QUESTION - Are there any atheists so called? We deny.

1. After laying down certain distinctions, it will be apparent in what sense it may be true that there can be many atheists, and yet there are none.
2. First, an atheist may be either speculative or practical:
   1. the former as to faith, not acknowledging a God
   2. the latter as to manners and life, recognizing but not worshiping him
   3. we admit there are many practical atheists, we deny there are any speculative

3. Second, a speculative atheist is either direct and express or indirect and interpretive:
1. the direct is one who shakes off all knowledge, sense and belief of deity
2. the indirect is one who attributes to or denies to God such things that by necessary consequence God is denied
3. here we treat of the former and not the latter
4. Third, the direct atheist is either one externally disputing, or internally doubting:
1. concerning the former we do not treat, but concerning the latter
2. the question is whether there are atheists who expressly believe it in their hearts and profess it with their mouth; this we deny
5. The reasons are:
• there is implanted in man a knowledge of God and sense of divinity
6. • the atheist has the work of the law written in him (Rom. 2:14), and although men of impiety often endeavor to shake it off, they cannot
7. • God has so clearly manifested himself in his works that men even by feeling may find him (Acts 17:26-27), and cannot open their eyes without being struck with the majesty and splendor of so great a deity
8. The acquired knowledge of God is usually obtained in the threefold way of causality, eminence, and negation:
1. by way of causality - when from the effects we infer the cause and from second causes ascend to the first
2. by way of eminence - we ascribe to God whatever of perfection there is in creatures
3. by way of negation - we remove from him whatever is imperfect in creatures
9. When it is said, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psa. 14:1), the certain persuasion of an atheist denying God is not so much described, as the doubt, and endeavor of the impious man striving to extinguish this knowledge; therefore he doe not say he believes and maintains, but he "says".
10. An external negation of God differs from a fixed and constant denial in the heart.
11. Whatever authors say of stifling of the light of nature for a time in a state of fury, ought not to be referred to the total extinction of that natural knowledge.
12. The Gentiles are called atheists (Eph. 2:12) not because they recognize no deity, but because they lack the knowledge of the true deity.
13. Those who were called atheists among the ancients were not so much enemies of every deity, as despisers of idols and false gods.
14. It is one thing for the actual thought of God to be absent for a time from the mind of an atheist, it is another for the knowledge of God to be absent.
15. To the examples of atheist who seem to have denied all sense of deity, we cannot tell what their real persuasion was.
16. We maintain that no one can utterly cast out of his heart all sense of deity anymore than he divest himself of conscience.

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THIRD QUESTION - Is God one? We affirm against the heathen and Tritheists.

1. According to Gregory Nazianzus, the opinions concerning God can be reduced to three principle ones:
1. anarchy, which atheist maintain
2. polyarchy, which the heathen hold
3. monarchy, which Christians teach
2. One numerically is used in two senses: either affirmatively only or also exclusively.
1. in the former sense - that is one which is undivided in itself
2. in the latter sense - that is one which is the only one, besides which there is nothing like it
3. the question here concerns not the former sense but in the latter
3. The question does not concern the personal numerical unity (as will be proved later), rather the question concerns whether God is one numerically as to essence.

4. The question is not whether there are many Gods so called, rather the question is whether there are more than one in reality and as to essence. This we deny.

5. That there is but one God both the Scriptures frequently assert and reason proves.
6. Reason confirms this - it is a contradiction to suppose more infinite, eternal, omnipotent and most perfect beings and also more rulers of the world:
   1. for if there are more, they would either be equal (and so neither would be the first and most perfect); 
   2. or unequal (and so the inferior would not be God) 
   3. or one would be the cause of all the rest (and so he would be the true God) 
   4. or not (and so no one of them would be God because he would not be the cause of all)

7. Nor was this altogether unknown by the heathen themselves when they assigned to one supreme God the government of the universe.
8. The variety of divine names and attributes does not argue a plurality of gods; they are used to connote the perfection of the one God by many inadequate conceptions.
9. Although there are more persons that one in God, yet there are not more natures - of the three divine persons, there is only one undivided and singular essence which, being infinite, is communicable to more than one.

10. Polytheism and atheism are properly reckoned as springing from the same foolish origin.

11. Since reason and nature lead us to but one God, whence could the polytheism of the Gentiles takes its rise? First, the principle is the forgetfulness of the true God, and the necessity of man.
12. Second, the veneration and worship of those who bestowed remarkable blessings upon the human race introduced a multitude of gods.
13. Third, an occasion of polytheism was not only the multitude of divine names, but principally the variety and abundance of the attributes and works of God.

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FOURTH QUESTION - Is his name so peculiar to God alone as to be incommunicable to creatures? We affirm against the Socinians.

1. God is both a being singular in the highest sense, and in his own nature distinct from every thing whatsoever, hence he does not need a discretive name; nor does a name properly belong to him.
1. yet because all our knowledge begins from a name, he assumes various names in Scripture to accommodate himself to us
2. some are taken from might (El, Elohim), some from omnipotence and all-sufficiency (Shaddai), some from loftiness (Elion), others from dominion (Adonai)
3. but the first and principal name is Jehovah, which is derived from his essence or existence
2. There are two principal questions concerning this name.
1. one is grammatical, concerning it pronunciation
2. the other is theological, concerning its use
3. we treat here only of the latter
3. The Socinians maintain that this name can be communicated to various creatures, but we say that this name is so peculiar to God as to be altogether incommunicable to creatures.
4. The reasons are:
• God claims this name as his own and peculiar to himself (Isa. 42:8, 48:11; Amos 5:8, 9:6)
5. • the etymology and signification of the word is such as agrees with God alone; it is evident that it implies most especially three things which are seen to be connected (Isa. 44:24-26)
   1. the eternity and independence of God (Exo. 3:14)
   2. it implies causality and efficiency (Isa. 44:24)
   3. it implies immutability and constancy in promises
   4. but since eternal existence, omnipotent power and immutable truth belong to God alone the name Jehovah (which embraces these three) ought to be peculiar to him alone
6. • it is always used in the singular and never in the plural
   • it nowhere occurs with and affix or in the constructive state
7. If this name is anywhere applied to an angel (Gen. 16:13, 18:17, 48:15-16; Exo. 3:2), the "uncreated angel" is meant - the Son of God.
   1. he is designated an uncreated angel (Gen. 16:10)
   1. by the name because only one of the three angels who appeared is called Jehovah
   2. from the divine attributes, since he claims for himself omnipotence and omniscience
   3. from honor because Abraham adores him
   2. the angel is said to have redeemed Jacob from all evil (the prerogative of God alone) and he sought a blessing from him which no one by God can give (Gen. 48:16)
   3. the angel who appeared to Moses (Exo. 3) is immediately afterwards called Elohim and Adonai; it said to have sent Moses (Exo. 4:5) and to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
8. The angel of Jehovah is not always distinguished essentially from Jehovah (the one sent from the sender), but only personally; thus he who is the angel of Jehovah is also the angel Jehovah.

9. To do something by the authority of God (which applies to a created angel) differs from having the authority of God and to claim his name (which belongs to no one but the true and eternal God).

10. When the apostle commends hospitality to angels (Heb. 13:2), he is not referring to the uncreated angel who remained with Abraham (Gen. 18:1-15), but to the two created angels who appeared to Lot (Gen. 19:1-11).

11. It is not contradictory to be "the angel of Jehovah" and to be "Jehovah". As to the former, Jehovah is taken hypostatically, but as to the later, essentially.

12. The angel spoken of by Moses (Exo. 23:20) cannot be a creature because he would not then be able to pardon the transgressions of men.

13. It is one thing to be and be called Jehovah; another for Jehovah to be and to dwell somewhere; the latter is said of the church (Ezek. 48:35).

14. It is one thing to inscribe a symbol on an altar, but another to ascribe some name to an altar. The former is said in Exodus 17:15.

15. The customary expression when the ark was taken up or rested, "Rise up. Jehovah, and let thine enemies be scattered" (Psa. 68:1), was not directed to the ark itself, but to God adumbrated in the ark.

16. It is not said in Jeremiah 33:16 that Jerusalem shall be called "Jehovah, our righteousness."

17. The word Kyriou ("Lord") when taken absolutely can be ascribed to no one but God alone.

18. As there is a difference between what the prince does by himself and immediately and what he performs by his servants, so the gospel is said to be more excellent in this sense - Christ incarnate promulgated it immediately and by himself speaks to us, while he willed to give us the law by Moses and angels.

19. It cannot be said that the name Jehovah is given either to the golden calf (Exo. 32:5) or to Micah's image (Jdg. 17:3) because in both places that name is given to the true God.

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FIFTH QUESTION - Can the divine attributes be really distinguished from the divine essence? We deny against the Socinians.

1. To understand the question certain things must be premised concerning the divine attributes.
1. the essential properties by which he makes himself known to us and by which he is distinguished from creatures
2. those which are attributed to him according to the measure of our conception in order to explain his nature
2. Attributes are not something superadded to his essence, making it perfect, rather they indicate perfections essential to the divine nature conceived by us as properties
3. Although the several attributes represent the most fertile and simple nature of God, yet they can represent it only inadequately.
4. These inadequate conceptions of the essence of God are presented to us not by an exclusive or privative precision.
5. The question concerning the divine attributes as distinct from the divine essence is agitated by the Socinians who maintain that the attributes of God are really distinct from his essence.
6. Those things are said to differ really which are distinguished s things diverse according to essence.
7. The attributes of God cannot really differ from his essence or from one another because God is most simple and perfect.
8. Since in the most simple divine essence there is ground for forming diverse formal conceptions concerning the divine perfections, it is bet to say that these attributes are virtually to be distinguished both from the essence and from each other.
9. Although the attributes are essentially and intrinsically one in God, yet they may properly be said to be distinguished both intellectually as to the diverse formal conception and objectively and effectively as to the various external object and effect.
10. Although our formal conceptions of the essence and properties of God may be diverse, yet they cannot be called false.
1. they are actually indivisible in God on account of his perfect simplicity, but yet virtually distinct
2. in the formal sense they are distinguished in our conceptions
11. He who conceives what is actually and really one and simple in God as actually and really diverse, conceives what is false.
1. he who conceives that which is actually one in itself as more than one virtually and extrinsically or objectively, does not conceive what is false
2. he conceives the thing imperfectly and inadequately on account of the weakness of the human intellect
12. The divine attributes may be regarded either absolutely in themselves, or relatively as to their effects towards creatures.
13. The properties are many on the part of the operations and effects, but not on the part of the subject or principle, which is one and perfectly simple.
14. Where there is priority and posteriority as to absolute and real being, there is a real difference; but not where there is only priority and posteriority as to known and intellible being.
15. The definition of a thing in itself differs from our conceptions of that thing. Now the definitions of the divine properties are rather of our conceptions than of the thing itself.

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SIXTH QUESTION - Is the distinction of attributes into communicable and incommunicable a good one? We affirm.

1. Among the various distinctions of the divine attributes, none occurs more frequently than that by which they are distributed into communicable and incommunicable.
2. Communication is twofold:
   1. one essential and formal - we say all the properties of God are equally incommunicable, nor more capable of being communicated than the divine essence
   2. the other by resemblance and analogy - we confess this can be granted since God produces in creature effects analogous to his own properties, such as goodness, justice, wisdom, etc.
3. Those attributes can properly be called incommunicable strictly and in every way, which are so proper to God that nothing similar or analogous, or any image and trace can be found in creatures, such as infinity, immensity, eternity, etc.
4. The communicable attributes are not predicated of God and creatures univocally because there is not the same relation.
1. they are predicated analogically, by analogy both of similitude and of attribution
2. in this sense, God alone is said to be good (Matt. 19:17), i.e., originally, independently, essentially; but concerning creatures only secondarily, accidentally and participatively
5. Believers are said to be partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) not univocally (by a formal participation of the divine essence), but only analogically.
6. The distinction of attributes into communicable and incommunicable argues no inequality of the divine properties because all are equally essential to him.
7. This distinction cannot favor the error of those who maintain that the divine properties were communicated to the human nature of Christ.
1. communication in the concrete, as to person differs from communication in the abstract, as to nature
2. communication may be formal and intransitive by a transfusion of the same properties which are in God into the human nature of Christ (which we reject); or it may be transitive and effective by analogy (which we hold)

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SEVENTH QUESTION - Is God most simple and free from composition? We affirm against Socinus and Vorstius.

1. The Socinians deny that simplicity can be attributed to God according to the Scriptures.
1. the Remonstrants also agree
2. the orthodox have constantly taught that the essence of God is perfectly simple and free from all composition
2. Simple is used in two senses:
1. absolutely and simply - as in every kind of being excludes composition
2. relatively and comparatively - excludes it only in respect to some
3. The simplicity of God is his incommunicable attribute by which the divine nature is conceived by us not only as free from all composition and division, but also as incapable of composition and divisibility.
4. This is proved to be a property of God:
1. from his independence
2. from his unity
3. from his perfection
4. from his activity
5. For in God essence cannot be conceived without existence. For this reason, God calls himself Jehovah to signify that being belongs to him in a far different manner than to all created things, not participatively and contingently, but necessarily, properly, and independently.
6. All composition infers mutation by which a thing becomes part of whole, which it was not before
7. We are called the race and offspring of God (Acts 17:28), not by a participation of the same essence, but by similarity of likeness; efficiently not essentially.
8. In divine things there are one essence and three hypostases,which are modes distinguishing the persons from each other, but not composing because they are not real entities concurring to the composition of some fourth thing, since they have one common essence; but they are only modifications according to which the essence is conceived to subsist in three persons.
9. In this sense, nothing hinders God (who is one in essence) from being three persons.
10. The decrees of God can be regarded in two ways:
1. subjectively - they do not differ from God himself and are no other than God himself decreeing
2. objectively - they do differ because they may be conceived as many and various
11. The decrees of God are free, not absolutely and as to the principle, but relatively as to the end.
12. The decrees of God are immanent acts of the divine will, but not properly its effect.
13. Although the essence of God is absolute and implies no relation to creatures, yet this does not hinder it from having a certain reference and relation to creatures.
14. Whatever in God is essential and absolute is God himself. Thus the absolute attributes may be identified really with the divine essence and are in it essentially, not accidently.
15. The relative attributes do not argue composition, but distinction.
16. The personal property of the Son does not make his essence different from that of the Father, for nothing real is added to the essence, rather it only makes the Son distinct from the Father. Distinction is not composition.
17. The fathers often insist on this simplicity of God.

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EIGHTH QUESTION - Is God infinite in essence? We affirm against Socinus and Vorstius.

1. The infinity of God follows his simplicity and is equally defused through the other attributes of God, and by it the divine nature is conceived as free from all limit in imperfection as to essence.
2. We treat of infinity proper and in itself, not as something simply beyond our ability to measure.
3. We treat of absolute and not of potential infinity.
4. The Socinians and Vorstius do not acknowledge the immensity of God as to essence, so they deny that God is actually infinite simply.
5. The orthodox attribute infinity to God with respect to essence.
• first, Scripture clearly teaches it (Psa. 145:3; Job 11:7-9; Isa. 40:12, 15, 17)
• second, from the pure perfections of God
1. he must be infinite, because an infinite good is better than a finite
2. the perfections in created things are included within certain limits beyond which they are not extended, and all their activity has a certain sphere beyond which they cannot go, this is not so with God
7. This is further confirmed by the consideration of his infinite power.
8. God is said to be infinite in essence in three ways:
1. originally, because he is absolutely independent
2. formally, because he has an absolute infinite essence
3. virtually, because his activity has no finite sphere, nor does he need the concourse of any cause in acting
9. Although God cannot produce an infinite effect, yet he does not cease to be of infinite virtue because he acts in an infinite mode.
10. None can be said to have attained a perfectly absolute knowledge of God - neither men nor angels - because the finite is not capable of the infinite.
11. Although God perfectly and adequately knows himself, it does not follow that his essence is finite because both the knowledge and apprehension which God has of himself are infinite.
12. It implies a contradiction for something to be indefinite and to be actually infinite without any limits of essence.
13. The measure of the creatures' perfection is taken from the greater or lesser degrees which each thing partakes from God.
14. All perfections belong to God, either formally or eminently.
15. That which is so that it is not anything else is finite with respect to substance. Of God however this cannot be said, who is so something that nevertheless he is all things eminently, containing in himself eminently the perfections of all things.
16. Infinity of essence does not require the thing to be formally all substance, but only to contain the perfections of every substance, if not formally, at least eminently.

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NINTH QUESTION - Is God immense and omnipresent as to essence? We affirm against Socinus and Vorstius.

1. The infinity of God is to be considered with respect to place and time by which he is conceived as uncircumscribed by any limits of place (immensity) or time (eternity). We speak first of immensity.
2. The question does not concern the presence or power and operation, rather the question concerns the presence of nature.
3. The question does not concern the various mode of the special divine presence, but relates to the general presence of God by essence, abstracted from all singular modes.
4. God may be said to be present with all things in three modes:
1. by power and operation - he is said to be everywhere by his power because he produces and governs all things and works all things in him (Acts 17:28)
2. by knowledge - he sees and beholds all things (Heb. 4:13)
3. by essence - his essence penetrates all things and is wholly by itself intimately present with each and everything. This one we properly treat here
5. Three modes of being in a place are commonly held:
1. circumscriptively - attributed to bodies because they are in place and space
2. definitively - applicable to created spirits and incorporeal sustances
3. repletively - which is ascribed to God because his immense essence is present with all and, as it were, completely fills all places
6. Therefore God is said to be repletively everywhere and this should be understood in a most different manner from the mode of being in place of bodies.
1. wherever he is,
1. he is wholly in all things
2. yet wholly beyond all
3. included in no place and excluded from none
2. the rabbis call him place (mqvm) to intimate that he is not contained in a place, but contains all things in himself
7. The Socinians with Vorstius argue with us concerning this immensity and omnipresence of God
1. they maintain that God is contained in heaven
2. they place substantial ominipresence among absurdities and impossibilities
3. they teach that God (according to his essence) is in heaven, but according to his virtue and efficacy is on the earth and present with all creatures
8. The orthodox believe the immensity and omnipresence of God, not only as to virtue and operation, but principally as to essence is so intimately present with all things that it is both everywhere in the world and yet is not included in the world.
9. The reasons are:
• Scripture ascribes this omnipresence to God (Psa. 139:7-10; Isa. 66:1; Jer. 23:24; 1 Kgs 8:27)
• to no purpose is it objected by Crellius that these passages treat of omnipresence of power and efficacy, not of essence:
  1. the words themselves teach the contrary (which refer not to operation, but to the very essence itself
  2. the presence of God is equally asserted of all places mentioned; either he is everywhere as to essence or he is nowhere as to essence
  3. the design of the psalmist is to show that no one can be concealed from God
  4. the presence of power does not exclude, but necessarily supposes the presence of essence, for where God is not, there he cannot operate because he operates immediately by his essence
• the same is proved by those passages which teach that God works all thing in all and sustains them by the word of his power (Heb. 1:3) and when he uses second causes, he is most intimately present with them in order to work by them
• if God is not immense in essence, but finite, it will favor the contradiction that the creature is greater than God
  1. if the essence of God is not elsewhere than in heaven, the universe will be greater than God
  2. if he is finite in essence, he must also be finite in power
  3. if God is not immediately present with creatures by his essence, but only by operation, the belief of the incarnation of the Son of God could not rest upon a sure foundation, for what kind of hypostatical union could have taken place with the human nature, if the divine essence remained concluded in heaven and was not present on earth?
13. God is said "to be in heaven," not exclusively of the earth, but because in heaven as a royal palace, he displays his glory in an eminent manner.
14. It is not unworthy of the divine majesty to be everywhere on earth, even the most filthy places, because he is not there by physical contact or by any mingling or composition.
15. God is far off from the wicked (as to the special presence of his favor and grace), but is always present with them by his general presence of essence.
16. Although he is differently in heaven and in hell (here by grace, there by justice; here as blessing; there as punishing), yet he can in both places as to the immensity of his essence.
17. Although the essence of God is abstracted from all created entities, it does not follow that he cannot be omnipresent as to essence.
18. The universal spaces of the world do not exhaust the immensity of God so as to be contained in and circumscribed by them.
19. He who conceives God as everywhere present by his essence does not therefore conceive him as extended like bodies through the whold world.
20. The denial of the doctrine of the essential omnipresence of God encourages atheism because it takes away the reverence and fear of him, feigning that he is absent and therefore either does not see or cannot punish the sins of men.
21. The operation of God supposes his presence, and he must first be conceived to be and to exist before he can be conceived of as acting.
22. Out of immensity arises omnipresence, which supposes immensity as its foundation: God is therefore omnipresent because he is immense.
23. When God is said to ascend or descend, to go away or to come, this does not take away his omnipresence because it is not said with respect to his essence, but only to the absence or presence of his divine operation.
24. The heathen themselves were not ignorant of this attribute of God.

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TENTH QUESTION - Does the eternity of God exclude succession according to priority and posteriority? We affirm against the Socinians.

1. The infinity of God in reference to duration is called eternity to which these three things are ascribed:
1. that is it without beginning
2. without end
3. without sucession - the question concerns this one - whether his eternity is without succession or whether it is subject to the differences of time
4. we maintain that God is free from every difference of time, and no less from succession than from beginning and end
2. The question does not concern eternity improperly and relatively, but eternity absolutely and properly so called, both anterior as well as posterior.
3. Scripture teaches that such eternity belongs to God (Gen. 21:33; Isa. 57:15; 1 Tim. 1:17; Psa. 102:25-27).
4. He is said to be "the first and the last (Isa. 41:4; Rev. 1:8).
1. he is the beginning without beginning because while he is the beginning fo all things, he himself has no beginning
2. he is the end without end because he is the end to which all things are referred
3. that which is without beginning is also without succession because succession depends upon a beginning and implies order according to former and latter
5. The eternity of God cannot have succession because his essence admits none.
1. because it is perfectly simple and immutable
2. because it is unmeasurable - that which continues by succession can in some way be measured
6. The eternal duration of God embraces all time - the past, present, and future; but nothing in him can be past or future because his life remains always the same and immutable.
7. The three differences of time are applied to God when he is called "the one who is, and was and is to come" (Rev. 1:4). This is not done formally, but eminently and after the manner of men.
8. Although eternity may coexist with all the differences of time, it does not follow that they equally coexist among themselves.
9. The whole eternity does not coexist with all the differences of time taken at once, but dividedly as they mutually succeed each other.
10. Although time coexists with the whole of eternity, it is not therefore eternal.
11. The immense God embraces in his immensity all the extended and divisible parts of the world.
12. It is not absurd that the world and time should be contained in a point of eternity.
13. When a thousand years are said to be in the sight of God as one day (Psa. 90:4) it intimates that God is not to be measured by our rule, for God is not subject to any differences of time.
14. God is called "the ancient of days," not as stricken with old age, but as before and more ancient than days themselves and the birth of time.
15. When the actions of God are considered either as past or present or future, this is said not with respect to the efficient reason, but in reference to the effects and objects.
16. Time and eternity are not related to each other as part and whole, but as species of duration mutually opposed.

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ELEVENTH QUESTION - Is God immutable both in essence and will? We affirm.

1. Immutability is an incommunicable attribute of God by which is denied of him not only all change, but also all possibility of change, as much with respect to existence as to will.
2. The orthodox maintain that every kind of immutability is to be ascribed to him both as to nature and as to will.
3. Scripture expressly attributes it to him (Mal. 3:6; Psa. 102:26; Jam. 1:17; Num. 23:19; Isa. 46:10).
4. Reason confirms it of he is Jehovah, and so a necessary and independent being that can be changed by no one.
5. Creation did not produce a change in God.
6. God was not changed by the incarnation; the Word was made flesh, not by a conversion of the Word into flesh, but by and assumption of the flesh to the Word.
7. God can will the change of various things without prejudice to the immutability of his will because even from eternity he had decreed such a change.
8. It is one thing to be indifferent to various object; another to be mutable.
9. The power of varying his own acts is not the principle of mutability in itself, but only in its objects.
10. It is one thing to inquire whether God might have determined himself to other objects than those he has decreed before he had resolved anything concerning them; another whether the decree having been formed he could rescind it. The latter we deny, bu the former we assert.
11. Repentance is attributed to God after the manner of men but must be understood after the manner of God; not with respect to his counsel, but to the event.
12. Unfulfilled promises and threatenings do not argue a change of will because they were conditional, not absolute.
13. When the death Hezekiah was predicted, there was not a declaration of what would happen according to the will of God, but of what would happen unless God interposed.
14. The necessity of the immutability we ascribe to God does not infer Stoic fate.

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TWELFTH QUESTION - Do all things fall under the knowledge of God, both singulars and future contingencies? We affirm against Socinus.

1. Among the communicable and positive attributes there are three principal ones by which his immortal and perfectly happy life is active: intellect, will, and power.
2. Concerning the intellect of God and the disquisition of his knowledge, two things above all others must be attended to: the mode and the object.
• the mode consists in his knowing all things perfectly, undividedly, distinctly and immutably
  1. perfectly because he knows all things by himself
  2. undividedly because he knows all things intuitively and noetically, not discursively and dianoetically (by inferring one thing from another)
  3. distinctly because he sees through all things at one glance so that nothing can escape him
  4. immutably because he see the various turns and changes of things by an immutable cognition
• the object of the knowledge of God is both himself and all things extrinsic to him, whether possible or future
4. The principal question here is that about singulars and future contingent things which some wish to withdraw from the knowledge of God
5. Scripture is so clear on this subject as to leave no room for doubt (Matt. 10:29-30; Heb. 4:13; Psa. 147:4).
6. The divine understanding is no more debased by the knowledge of a mean thing; if the power of God was not lowered when he created them, why should his knowledge be debased by the contemplation of them?
7. Another question of greater importance refers to future contingent things, the knowledge of which the Socinians endeavor to wrest from God in order to establish more easily the indifference of free will. The orthodox maintain that future contingent things fall under the infallible knowledge of God.
8. On the state of the question observe:
• that a thing may be contingent in two ways,
  1. with respect to the first cause
  2. with respect to second causes
  3. we speak of future contingents in the latter case
• a thing can be considered either as to the certainty of event or as to the mode of production - a future contingent thing implies both
10. Thus the question is whether things fall under the infallible knowledge of God, not as knowing them only indeterminately and probably, but determinately and most certainly - this we affirm.
11. The reasons are:
• because Scripture frequently claims such a knowledge (John 21:17; 1 John 3:20)
• Acts 15:18 - the reference here is to every work of God or of men, for the universal mark admits of no restriction, but shows that James proceeded from the genus to the species
• although they are not as to real being, yet they are as to known being
• Heb. 4:13; Psa. 139:1-4; Jer. 1:5; Isa. 48:8; Ezek. 11:5
• because God predicts future contingent things, therefore he knows them (Isa. 46:10)
• because the most perfect nature of God demands it
• because he is the searcher of hearts
• because he is omnipresent
• the decree of providence draws this necessarily after it, because as whatever takes place in time, God immutably decree either to effect or to permit, so he ought infallibly to foreknow it all (Psa. 115:3; Rom. 11:36; Eph. 1:11)
17. Although it is difficult to comprehend the mode in which God certainly knows future contingent things, yet the thing itself is not therefore denied.
18. The principal foundation of the divine knowledge about future contingent thing is not either the nature of second causes or simply the divine essence, but the decree alone by which things pass from a state of possibility to a state of futurition, and because the decree of God is not occupied  about the thing, but also about the mode of the thing.
19. If the truth of future contingent things is indeterminate with respect to us, it is not so with respect to God, to whom all future things appear as present.
20. It was possible for Christ not to be crucified, if God had so willed, and impossible on account of the decree.
21. It is one thing for a thing to be able to be done or not to be done, another for a thing to be able to be at the same time future and not future.
22. We acknowledge a contradiction in these two propositions - the man is about to walk and he is not about to walk; but not in these - the man is about to walk, and he is able not to walk.
23. The infallibility and certainty of the event does not take away the nature of the contingency of things because things can happen necessarily as to the event and yet contingently as to the mode of production.
24. Although men's actions may be free (because done spontaneously and by a previous judgment of reason), they do not cease to be the necessary with respect to the divine decree and foreknowledge.
25. The infallible foreknowledge of God does not imply that God is the cause of sins because God foreknows sins as certainly about to be; not as if they were to be effected by him as sins, but to be permitted and yet regulated by him. This mode makes him no more guilty in his foreknowledge and decree than in the execution because neither the decree nor the foreknowledge subject the man to an intrinsic necessity, but only to an extrinsic as to the event.
26. God does not make trial of men from ignorance, but from the most wise providence in order to declare to others what was before unknown to them.
27. Although God testifies that he willed to go down and see whether the cry of Sodom which came to him was true (Gen. 18:21), it does not follow that he was ignorant of the nature and degree of the impiety of that city before.
28. God is said to expect grapes from the vineyard (Isa. 5:4) not because he was ignorant of what would happen, but this is spoken after the manner of men because he seriously charged the people to be studious of good works.
29. When God conceives future contingent things as certainly future, he does not conceive of them otherwise than they are; but he knows them relatively to the decree as necessarily about to take place and determinate which, relative to their cause, he knows as indeterminate and contingently future.

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THIRTEENTH QUESTION - Is there a middle knowledge in God between the natural and the free? We deny against the Jesuits, Socinians and Remonstrants.

1. Although the knowledge of God is one and simple intrinsically no less than his essence, yet it can be considered in different ways extrinsically as to the objects. It is commonly distinguished by theologians into the knowledge of simple intelligence (or natural and indefinite) and the knowledge of vision (or free and definite).
1. the former is the knowledge of things merely possible and is called indefinite because nothing on either hand is determined by God concerning them 
2. the latter is the knowledge of future things and is called definite because future things are determined by the sure will of God
3. hence they mutually differ:
   1. in object because the natural knowledge is occupied with possible things, but free from future things
   2. in foundation because the natural is founded on the omnipotence of God, but the free depends upon his will and decree by which things pass from a state of possibility to a state of futurition
   3. in order because the natural precedes the decree, but the free follows it because it beholds things future; now they are not future except by the decree
2. Besides these two species of divine knowledge, a third was devised by the Jesuits.
   1. they called it "middle" because it is between the natural and the free and differs from both
   2. it differs from the indefinite and natural because it is occupied about future, but not about possible things
   3. if differs from the free because it relates not to things certainly future, but only hypothetically so
   4. the authors explain this middle knowledge to mean the foreknowledge of God about future condition events whose truth depends not upon the free decree of God, but upon the liberty of the creature
3. The design of the Jesuits was to defend the semi-Pelagian heresy of foreseen faith and good works in election, and to support the figment of free will.
4. This invention was afterwards adopted by the Socinians and Remonstrants who defend it so as to preserve free will.
5. The question is not whether God knows future contingencies, rather whether they belong to a kind of middle knowledge distinct from the natural and free.
6. The question relates to contingent conditional future things, which can be and not be. The inquiry relates to whether they can be certainly and determinately known antecedently to the decree of God; this we deny.
7. The question is whether a special decree concerning the certain futurition of this or that thing precedes so that God may see that thing antecedently; this we deny.
8. The question is whether besides the natural knowledge (which is only of things possible) and the knowledge of vision (which is only of things future), there may be granted in God a certain third or middle knowledge concerning conditional future things by which God knows what men or angels will freely do without a special decree preceding; this the orthodox deny.
9. The reasons are:
• natural and free knowledge embrace all knowable things
• things not true cannot be foreknown as true; condition future things are not true apart from the determination of the divine will
• if all the acts of the created will fall under the divine providence so that none are independent and indeterminate, no middle knowledge can be granted
• no uncertain knowledge should be ascribed to God; how can an uncertain thing afford foundation to certain knowledge
• this middle knowledge takes away the dominion of God over free acts because according to it the acts of the will are supposed to antecedent to the decree and therefore have their futurition not from God, but from itself
• on the supposition of such a knowledge, a reason for predestination can be assigned out of God besides his purpose and good pleasure
15. 1 Samuel 23:11-12 cannot favor this middle knowledge because it is not so much a prediction of future things which were still in futurition. The words "to descend" and "to deliver up" do not refer to the act itself as hypothetically future, but they are put for the purpose and intention, i.e., to have in the mind to do this (as Acts 12:6 and 16:27.)
16. The words of Christ (Matt. 11:21) are a hyperbolical kind of speech where Christ wishes to exaggerate the contumacy and rebellion of the hearers. So Christ does not speak of the foreknowledge of any future conditional things, but wishes by using hyperbole to upbraid the Jews for ingratitude and impenitence greater than Tyre and Sidon.
17. Examples from 2 Samuel 12:8; Psalm 81:14-15, and 2 Kings 13:19.
18. It is one thing for God to foresee or know the connection of one thing with another; another to know connection as future in is such a subject placed in this or that state.
19. It is one thing for God to know all the connections of all things as necessary and the causes of things about to happen through them antecedently to the decree (this we deny); another to know the contingent connections of events and of all possible future things (this we affirm).
20. It is denied that the coexistence of a free act on hypothesis can be conceived to be determinately antecedently to the decree; it is granted that it may be possibly.
21. Necessity and contingency have a different relationship in simple terms from what they have in complex.
22. Although God antecedently to his decree can know of the various means which can be used to move the will, yet he cannot know that they will actually persuade antecedently to the will of giving those means and of moving the will efficaciously to produce the effect.
23. The futurition of things depends upon nothing but the decree of God, and therefore can be foreknown only from the decree.

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FOURTEENTH QUESTION - Does God will some things necessarily and others freely? We affirm.

1. The will of God necessarily follows his understanding. But because good is either uncreated and infinite or finite and created, twofold object can be assigned to the will.
2. On the state of the question observe:
• that necessity is twofold
1. absolute, which simply and by itself and its own nature cannot be otherwise
2. hypothetical, which is not so of itself but could be otherwise
• free is said either with reference to spontaneity (done without compulsion) or indifference (it can be done and not done)
• there are two kinds of things willed
1. principal, which hold relation of the ultimate end
2. secondary, which has the relation of the means
5. God wills himself necessarily, not only by a hypothetical necessity but also by an absolute necessity. But other things he wills freely because, since no created thing is necessary with respect to God but contingent, so he wills all things as that he could not will them.
6. This liberty of the divine will about created things must be understood absolutely and a priori and with respect to the things considered in themselves.
1. God will created things necessarily from hypothesis because (supposing he has once willed) he can no more will them on account of the immutability of his will
2. speaking absolutely he wills them freely because he is influenced to will them at first by no necessity, but by merer liberty and could abstain from their production
7. This indifference of the divine will is the greatest proof of his perfection who, as an independent being needs nothing out of himself.
8. God wills all created things not to make himself perfect, but to communicate himself and to manifest his goodness and glory in them.
9. He wills these things not to increase, but to diffuse his goodness.
10. There is not the same reason of the understanding in knowing and of the will in willing because the understanding has the things in itself; whereas the will makes them.
11. Although every volition of God is eternal, yet they ought not immediately to be called absolutely necessary.
12. The question concerning sin will come in another section.

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FIFTEENTH QUESTION - May the will be properly distinguished into the will of decree and of precept, good purpose (eudokias) and good pleasure (euarestias), signified, secret and revealed? We affirm.

1. Although the will in God is only one and most simple, yet because it is occupied differently about various objects it may be apprehended as manifold (not in itself, but on the part the things willed).
2. Hence have arisen various distinctions of the will of God
1. the first and principal distinction is that of the decretive and preceptive will
   1. decretive - that which God will to do or permit himself
      1. relates to the futurition and the event of things and is the rule of God's external acts
      2. cannot be resisted and is always fulfilled (Rom. 9:19)
   2. preceptive - what he wills that we should do
      1. concerned with precepts and promises and is the rule of our action
      2. often violated by men (Matt. 23:37)
3. There are various passages of Scripture in which both wills of God are signified at the same time.
4. God can without contradiction will as to precept what he does not will as to decree inasmuch as he wills to prescribe something to man, but does not will to effect it (as he willed Pharaoh to release the people, but yet nilled their actual release).
5. Although these wills may be conceived by us as diverse (owing to the diversity of the objects), yet they are not contrary; for they are not occupied about the same thing.
6. The objects of God's will
   1. the preceptive will may have
      1. affirmative objects - when effecting the thing prescribed
      2. negative objects - consisting in the prohibition of a thing
   2. the decretive will may also have
      1. affirmative objects - in respect to the end
      2. negative objects - in respect to the will ceasing, and it may be called permissive by which he determines not to hinder the creature from sinning
7. Which will can stand with another:
1. the affirmative decretive will cannot stand together with the negative preceptive will, because God cannot effect what the law forbids
2. the affirmative decretive will best agrees with the affirmative preceptive will, for the same who prescribes faith decrees to give it to the elect
3. the affirmative preceptive will can stand together with the negative decretive will, so that God may prescribe to the creature what nevertheless he does not will to effect in the creature
8. Besides this distinction of will, there is another by which it is distributed into the will of eudokias (good purpose), and euarestias (good pleasure).
1. the will eudokias relates to the decretive - by which God testifies his approval about the things which he has determined to perform (Matt. 11:26; Eph. 1:5, 9) 
2. the will euaresias relates to the preceptive - by which God declares what is pleasing to himself and what he wills to be done by men (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 5:10; Col. 3:20) 
9. It is not to be understood that that which depends on the eudokia of God may not also be acceptable (euareston) to him.
10. We may sometimes interchange the eudokia for the euarestia, when it is spoken of those things with which God is pleased because there is in them some quality or condition which agrees with the nature of God and therefore gains his favor.
11. Euarestia in contradistinction from eudokian
1. means nothing else than the mere complacency by which God approves anything as just and holy and delights in it
2. hence it does not properly include any decree or volition in God, but only implies the agreement of the thing with the nature of God
3. the approval of anything is not forthwith his volition
12. Although to the will euarestias belong also the promises of giving salvation to believers, it doe not follow that it ought to connote any condition. The promises added to the precepts signify only what God will grant to believers and penitents, not what he wills to grant to all those to whom the precept is proposed.
13. The third distinction is into the will as signi and beneplaciti.
14. The Scholastics's use:
1. they say the beneplacit will is that which remains concealed previously in God and is left to his most free power and becomes at length known by some oracle or by the event
2. they say the will of sign is that which by some sign is made known to us and which indicates some effect out of God as the sign of his will
   1. they reckoned five signs by which the will of God is manifested: precept, prohibition, counsel, permission, operation
   2. but this is false because
      1. there are more such signs, for instance promises and threatenings, prophecies and narrations
      2. operation is not a sign of will, but it effect belonging to the beneplacit will
      3. permission does not fall under the signified, but under the beneplacit will
      4. counsel may be either referred to the beneplacit or included in the precept
15. With more propriety the beneplacit will is made by us to answer to the decretive and the will of sign is made by us to answer to the preceptive and approving.
16. It is called the signified will because it signifies what God wills to enjoin upon man as pleasing to himself and his bounden duty.
17. The will of sign can also be called the will of beneplacit when it is occupied about things approved by God and things which he decrees to enjoin upon the creature, but in this case it is used to denote the placitum or decree of God concerning the effecting or permitting of a certain thing.
18. There cannot be contrariety between these two wills because they do not will and nill the same thing in the same manner and respect.
1. the will of purpose is the will of event and execution
2. the signified will is the will of duty and of obligation to it
3. God can both, without contradiction, command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and at the same time will that the sacrifice not take place
19. Although God may be said to will the salvation of all by the will of sign and to nill it by the beneplacit will, yet there is no contradiction here. To will to call to faith and salvation, and yet to nill to give that faith and salvation are not at variance.
20. The will of sign which is set forth as extrinsic ought to correspond with some internal will in God that it may not be false and deceptive; but that internal will is not the decree concerning the gift of salvation to this or that one, but the decree concerning the command of faith and promise of salvation if the man does believe.
21. The promised salvation set forth by the will of sign does not properly and directly fall under the precept because in their formal nature promise and precept differ.
1. the former indicates a blessing, the latter a duty
2. although it is necessary that the promise should have some foundation as to the certainty of the event, that must not be sought from the decree of God about particular persons, but from his decree about the things themselves
3. thus it happens that salvation is most surely in the gospel promised to all believers because so close is the connection between faith and salvation from the good pleasure of God that no one can have the former without the latter
22. It cannot be the conditional will to save each and every individual under that condition because would testify that he will what in reality he does not will towards those passed by (from whom he withholds the condition).
23. Since that will of sign has never been universal with respect to each and every one, the mercy signified by it cannot be universal.
24. If God by this will signified that he willed the salvation of all without exception, he would have signified that he willed what he least willed, but when it signifies that the wills the salvation of all believers and penitents, it signifies that he wills that which he really wills.
25. The fourth distinction of the will is into secret and revealed.
1. secret will
   1. commonly applied to the decretive will which is for the most part concealed in God
   2. a profound and unfathomable abyss (Psa. 36:6; Rom. 11:33-34)
   3. has for its object all those things which God will either to effect or permit
   4. always takes place
2. revealed will
   1. commonly applied to the preceptive will manifested in the law and gospel
   2. discoverable to all, nor is it far from us (Deut. 30:14; Rom. 10:8)
   3. relates to those things which belong to our duty and are proposed conditionally
   4. often violated
26. It is called secret will not because it is concealed from us and never revealed, but that it remains concealed from us until it is revealed.
27. Although the secret will concerning our election remains concealed in God, it does not follow that we can have no certainty of salvation because although we cannot gain it a priori, yet we can a posteriori.
28. Whatever Christ willed to be done in time by men, that he has also revealed in time; but it does not forthwith whatever he has decreed to be done by himself from good pleasure.
29. It is not necessary that God should exercise a good will to all for salvation by an antecedent will, nor is it necessary that if he wills to pour out his goodness on the creature by the blessing of creation and providence, that he ought to exercise good will to it unto salvation.

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SIXTEENTH QUESTION - May the will be properly distinguished into antecedent and consequent, efficacious and inefficacious, conditional and absolute? We deny.

1. Besides the previous distinctions of the divine will received by the orthodox, there are also others proposed by our adversaries.
2. Such is the distinction of the will into antecedent and consequent frequently met with among the Scholastics.
3. Some theologians among us wish to retain this distinction.
   1. as to the commands, they wish the antecedent will to have place in precepts, but the consequent in promises and threats added to the precepts by way of sanction
   2. as to the decrees, they wish the antecedent will to have place with regard to order and our manner of conception, so that it is termed that which is conceived to go before; but the consequent is that which is conceived to follow another act of the will
4. But our theologians reject the sense which understands by antecedent will the purpose of God concerning the saving of all men universally (preceding the act of the human will), but by consequent will the decree concerning the salvation of believers and the damnation of unbelievers (posterior to the human will and depends upon its good or bad acts).
5. The Arminians wish that to be the antecedent will by which God wills something to the rational creature before every or any act of that creature, but by consequent that by which he wills something to the rational creature after some act.
6. This distinction is in many ways injurious to God:
   • because it attributes to him contrary wills, that wills the salvation of all and wills the salvation only of some
7. • this distinction cannot have place in God without ascribing to him no only folly and impotence; but also mutability because there can be no place for the consequent will until the antecedent is first rescinded
8. • the antecedent will is not so much a will as an empty and void desire incapable of accomplishment which cannot apply to God (the most wise and powerful)
9. • God in this way would be subjected to man since the consequent will is said to depend upon the determination of the human will so that no one is elected by God who does not first choose God by his faith and repentance
10. • it is repugnant to the gospel which constantly teaches that God will to save not all simply, but only the elect and believers in Christ and that the means of salvation are not offered or conferred upon all, but only upon some.
    • it overthrows the eternal election of God because it leaves it uncertain, founded not upon the good pleasure of God, but upon the human will.
11. In 1 Samuel 13:13, the antecedent will is not set forth by which he willed to establish the kingdom of Saul forever.
12. This twofold will cannot be proved from Matthew 23:37
1. because it is not said that God willed to scatter those whom he willed to gather together, but only that Christ willed to gather together those whom Jerusalem nilled to be gathered, but notwithstanding their opposition Christ did not fail in gathering together those whom he willed
   1. Augustine: "She indeed was unwilling that her sons should be gathered together by him, but notwithstanding her unwillingness he gathered together his sons whom he will" (Enchiridion 24 [97])
   2. Jerusalem is here to be distinguished from her sons as the words themselves prove
2. the will here alluded to is not the decretive but the preceptive
13. The preceptive will only is indicated which prescribed to it the duty of repentance so as to render it inexcusable.
14. The will of saving all men does not overthrow the decree of reprobation of passing by many because it is neither the decretive will, but only the preceptive and approving will; nor the universal, which respects all and individuals, but only general, which is indiscriminately extended to any. So they can be called to the marriage by the preceptive will who nevertheless were excluded from it from eternity by the will of good pleasure.
15. The second distinction usually brought forward is that of effectual and ineffectual will, which is understood to mean that the effectual will corresponds with the decretive; but that the ineffectual will coincides with the preceptive.
1. Scripture testifies that the counsel of God is immutable and that his will cannot be resisted (Isa. 46:10; Rom. 9:19); if it cannot be resisted, it must accomplish what he intended
2. the ineffectual will cannot be attributed  to God without convicting him of either of ignorance or of impotence
3. nor ought ineffectual will be attributed not to his good pleasure, because that would only prove that God had not seriously willed it, for he who seriously intends anything uses all the means in his power to accomplish it
4. the same reasons which teach that there is no antecedent will prove there is no ineffectual will
16. Although every will of God is effectual because the event intended is always brought about, it ought not immediately to be efficient for efficiency is only in good things, but efficacy also in evil.
17. The passages which attribute a desire or wish to God do not immediately prove any ineffectual will in him.
1. if referred to the past, these passages mean nothing else than a serious disapproval of committed sins with a strong rebuke to the ingratitude of men and a declaration of the benefits lost and the evils incurred by their sins (Psa. 81:13; Isa. 48:18)
2. but if they relate to the future, they imply only a serious command supported by promises and threatenings (Deut. 32:29)
18. Ezekiel 18:23 does not favor the inefficacious will or the feeble desire of God because the word chpts (which occurs here) does not denote desire so much as delight and complacency. Thus God may be said not to delight in the punishment of the wicked, although he wills it as an exercise of his justice.
19. The third distinction is in the absolute (that which depends upon nothing out of himself) and conditional (that which is suspended upon a condition out of God) will. The latter is rejected because it is repugnant to his independence, wisdom, and power.
20. The condition upon which God is conceived to will anything, will either be certainly future from the decree of God or certainly not future, nor even possible.
1. if certainly future, if will no longer be conditional, but absolute
2. if certainly not future, God would be made to seriously intend something under a  condition never to take place, which God himself does not will to grant
21. The conditional will ought to be regarded in two ways:
1. a priori and antecedently suspended upon a condition
2. a posteriori and consequently, whose execution depends upon the intervention of some condition in the creature
3. in the latter sense, the will less accurately can be called conditional because the decrees of God ordain with the end the means also for carrying it into execution (i.e., he who decrees us to salvation, decrees also faith and repentance as the mean of obtaining it)
22. It is one thing for the condition to be such on the part of the internal act or of the volition itself; another to be such on the part of the external object or of the thing willed. In the latter sense, we grant the things willed to be conditional, but not in the former.
23. Thus this proposition that God wills the salvation of men, provided they believe, may have a twofold sense.
1. it may signify that God wills or determines salvation to come to us under the condition of faith - here salvation only is conditional and not the will of God, for the will of God has determined the condition as much as the salvation
2. or it may signify that from the condition of faith posited, there arises in God the will of conferring salvation upon men; in this sense the proposition is false
   1. nothing temporal can be the cause of that which is eternal
   2. the will in God is not to be conceived of as suspended upon a condition antecedently
   3. God does not will to save men if they believe, but he wills them to believe in order to salvation

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SEVENTEENTH QUESTION - Can any cause be assigned for the will of God? We deny.

1. This question is rendered necessary by the Pelagians who, in the matter of predestination, seek in the foresight of faith or of the good use of free will the causes of the divine will out of God.
2. It is one thing to seek for the reason of the will of God; another for the cause. The question concerns a cause properly so called, moving the will of God to will this or that (which we deny).
3. As the will of God is the cause of all things, so it can have no cause of itself. 
4. It is one thing to grant a cause on the part of the act of willing, another on the part of the thing willed.
1. in the former sense, no cause of the will of God can be granted
2. in the latter sense, there can because among the things willed by him, some may be the cause of others
3. there is an order and causality among the things willed by God (so that one may be for another), but not in the divine volition which recognizes no cause out of itself
5. If some cause or motive must be sought, it is not to be sought out of God, but only in his justice and mercy by which the will is incited to action.
6. Although among the effects of the divine will some have the relation of causes with respect to others, yet their power is not such that they can move the divine will to elicit its own act, since they are the effects of it as the first cause.

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EIGHTEENTH QUESTION - Is the will of God the primary rule of justice? We distinguish.

1. Some hold that all moral good and evil depend upon the free will of God and nothing is good and just unless God wills it. Others contend that some essential goodness and justice in moral acts exists antecedently to the will of God, so that the things are not good and just because God wills them, but God wills them because they are good and just.
2. We follow the latter opinion with these distinctions:
1. the will can be called the primary rule of justice either intrinsically (his will is regulated by his justice) or extrinsically (the justice in us is regulated by nothing else than his will)
2. the law of God is either natural and indispensable (founded on his nature and holiness) or free and positive (depending only upon his will)
3. This being posited, I say that the will is the first rule of justice extrinsically and in reference to us, but not intrinsically and in reference to God.
1. this is true in respect to us because the fount of justice ought to be sought nowhere else than in the will of God
2. but with respect to God, the will cannot always be called the first rule of justice
   1. it is a rule in those things which have only a free and positive goodness, but not in those which have essential goodness (i.e., in ceremonial, not in moral)
   2. in the latter, God's will is regulated, not extrinsically, but intrinsically (viz., by his most holy nature)
   3. hence it has been said that certain things are good because God will them, but that God wills others because they are just and good per se and in their own nature (such as the love of God and our neighbor)
4. The reasons are:
• as there is granted in God natural justice and holiness antecedently to his free will, so the moral goodness and justice founded upon the justice and holiness of God and bearing his image, must be natural
• there is in God an eternal and indispensable right (antecedent to every free act of will) by which as Creator he has dominion over the creature; and since there is such a right in God antecedently to his will, there must be some rule of justice independent of his will
• if the will of God was the first rule of justice even intrinsically so that nothing would be good and just unless God wills it, it would follow that there would no crimes which he cannot command and by it render them morally good as commands
7. God is not under any moral duty outwardly because he is a debtor to no one, and there is no cause out of him which can place him under obligation. Yet he can be under obligation inwardly because he is a debtor to himself and cannot deny himself.
8. With respect to God and his right of obliging or commanding, the rule of good and bad exists antecedently to the will of God because it is founded on his very holiness and justice.
9. It is absurd to say that God depends on something out of himself, but not that he depends upon himself (i.e., that he wills nothing unless according to his own holiness and justice).
10. God is not bound to the law which he imposes on man, but he is not free and absolved from all the matter of the law, so that he can either command or himself do the opposite of it.
11. Although the divine will is simply free outwardly, yet from the supposition of one free act it can be necessitated to another (e.g., if he will to promise absolutely, he must fulfill the promise).
12. Man sins immediately against the revealed law of God, but also mediately and consequently against God, the author of the law, and the supreme Lord who imposed it.

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NINETEENTH QUESTION - Is vindictive justice natural to God? We affirm against the Socinians.

1. To the will of God are attributed two principal virtues:
1. justice - by which God is in himself holy and just and has the constant will of giving to each his due
2. goodness - by which he is conceived as the supreme good and the giver of all good
2. The word "justice" is generally used in two senses:
1. the universal comprehension of all virtues and is called universal justice -as God is in himself perfectly holy and just, so in all his works he preserves and incorruptible justice
2. or justice is take for particular justice, which gives each his due, is occupied with with the distribution of rewards and punishments and is called distributive
3. Divine justice can be considered either absolutely or relatively.
1. absolutely - the rectitude and perfection of the divine nature
2. relatively - with respect its exercise through the divine will according to the rule of his supreme right and eternal wisdom; and it may be regarded as twofold
   1. in the rule and government of creatures
   2. or in judgments (in granting rewards or in chastisements and punishments (vindictive))
      1. premiative - in granting rewards
      2. vindictive - in chastising or punishing
      3. the proposed question treats this item
      4. to understand this, certain things must be premised
4. The rational creature and his moral dependence upon God being supposed:
1. the first egress of this justice is in the constitution of the penal law
2. the second egress is in the infliction of punishment
   1. the right of God with regard to punishment is either supreme and rigorous or it is a right tempered by a certain moderation
      1. as to the former - punishment is imposed not only on sin but also on the very person of the sinner
      2. as to the latter - there is granted a manifold moderation in the exercise of justice either in time (delay) or in persons (by transfer) or in degree (by mitigation)
   2. hence arises a twofold right with regard to the infliction of punishment
      1. one necessary and indispensable with respect to sin itself
      2. the other free and positive with respect to the sinner
   3. justice demands necessarily that all sin should be punished, but does not equally demand that it should be punished in the very person sinning or at such a time and in such a degree
   4. the Scholastics were correct when they said that impersonally punishment is necessarily inflicted upon every sin, but not personally upon every sinner
5. Although we hold the egress of justice to be necessary, yet we do not deny that God exercises it freely.
6. Hence it is evident in what sense this justice may be called natural, because it is founded in the very nature of God and even identified with it.
7. This justice can be regarded in three ways:
1. as a potentially  - in which sense it is the will of God turning away from and willing to punish sinners
2. as an actuality itself and the act of judgment and punishment by which it carries out its judgments towards sinners
3. for its effect or the punishment inflicted by justice
4. here we treat not the third but the first two which are joined together in Psalm 119:137
8. A question is raised here by the Socinians concerning vindictive justice.
1. in order to destroy the satisfaction of Christ, they deny that vindictive justice is natural to God, but is only the effect of his most free will
2. Socinus denies that there is any attribute in God necessarily demanding a satisfaction for sin
   1. if God punishes sin, this is the perfectly free effect of his will from which he might abstain
   2. "Nor is there any justice in God obliging him to punish sin altogether, from which he cannot abstain. There is indeed in God perpetual justice, but this is nothing else than equity and rectitude" (Praelectionis theologicae 16 [1627], p. 87)
   3. "That which is commonly called justice as opposed to mercy is not a quality of God, but only the effect of his will" (ibid., p. 88)
9. The orthodox maintain that this justice is an essential property of God and not merely the effect of his free will.
10. Therefore the question comes to this - whether the vindictive justice of God is so natural to him that he cannot but exercise it and to leave sin unpunished would be repugnant to it; or whether it is so free in god that its exercise depends upon his will and good pleasure alone. We defend the former.
11. That vindictive justice is essential to God these four argument especially prove: (1) the voice of Scripture, (2) the dictates of conscience and the consent of nations, (3) the sanction of the law with the whole Levitical, (4) our redemption through the death of Christ
• Scripture frequently ascribes this justice to God
  1. in those places in which the praise of perfect holiness and justice is given to God by which he is said to utterly detest and turn away from sin (Exo. 34:7; Hab. 1:13; Psa. 5:4)
     1. we conclude, if the hatred of sin is necessary in God, justice is equally necessary
     2. if he hates sin necessarily, he must necessarily punish it
     3. the sins of the elect he has punished in Christ
12. 2. in those places which speak of God as a just judge (Gen. 18:25; Rom. 3:5-6, 1:18, 32; 2 Thess. 1:6)
13. • the dictates of conscience and the consent of nations confirm the testimony of Scripture
    1. the former when it places man before the tribunal of God and either accuses him or excuses him in good and evil deeds (Rom. 2:14-15)
    2. the latter by which among all people this persuasion has prevailed that God is the just Judge of crimes, and if he did not exercise this justice, he would not be God
14. • the moral and ceremonial law itself establishes the same thing - the necessity of sacrifices depended not on the mere will, but on the very essential justice of God
15. • the death of Christ no less plainly demonstrates this
    1. if it was free and indifferent to God to punish or not to punish sin without compromising his justice, what reason can be devised to account for subjecting his Son to an accursed and cruel death?
    2. his offering of himself for us was not a work of bare will, but of justice, which demanded this sacrifice for its own satisfaction (Rom. 3:25; Col. 1:20)
16. A magistrate would err, if by a too great indulgence he would dispense with the right of punishment as this would give impunity to crimes.
17. By not punishing sin, God would:
1. do injury to no one out of himself
2. do injury to his own justice
3. do injury to the laws enacted by him
4. do injury to the public good
5. deny himself and divest himself of the natural dominion which he exercises over creatures
18. Although the effects of justice depend upon the free will of God, it does not follow that justice itself is equally a free act of will.
19. It is one thing to punish sins from a physical necessity (such as exists in fire to burn); another to do so from moral and rational necessity.
20. Although the effects of justice and mercy may be contrary on account of the diversity of their objects, it does not follow that these attributes are contrary in themselves.
21. The justice and mercy of God differ in their exercise.
1. mercy is perfectly free, able to exert or not exert itself without injury to anyone because it consists in a merely gratuitous act which is not bound to exercise towards anyone - he owes mercy to no one
2. the act of justice, although most free, is nevertheless necessary because it is due - it consists in rendering to each one its own
22. If there were no sinful creature, there would be no justice or mercy as to relative being, but there would always be justice as to absolute being.
23. Although God can exercise forebearance as to the degree of punishment, it does not follow that he can equally take away all degrees of punishment.
24. The question here is not simply whether God can through his potency not punish sin; but whether he can through his justice.
25. Although from his absolute right God is able to annihilate creatures, he cannot equally inflict upon an innocent person infernal and everlasting torment.

* * * * * * * * * *

NINETEENTH QUESTION - Is vindictive justice natural to God? We affirm against the Socinians.

1. To the will of God are attributed two principal virtues:
1. justice - by which God is in himself holy and just and has the constant will of giving to each his due
2. goodness - by which he is conceived as the supreme good and the giver of all good
2. The word "justice" is generally used in two senses:
1. the universal comprehension of all virtues and is called universal justice -as God is in himself perfectly holy and just, so in all his works he preserves and incorruptible justice
2. or justice is take for particular justice, which gives each his due, is occupied with with the distribution of rewards and punishments and is called distributive
3. Divine justice can be considered either absolutely or relatively.
1. absolutely - the rectitude and perfection of the divine nature
2. relatively - with respect its exercise through the divine will according to the rule of his supreme right and eternal wisdom; and it may be regarded as twofold
   1. in the rule and government of creatures
   2. or in judgments (in granting rewards or in chastisements and punishments (vindictive))
      1. premiative - in granting rewards
      2. vindictive - in chastising or punishing
      3. the proposed question treats this item
      4. to understand this, certain things must be premised
4. The rational creature and his moral dependence upon God being supposed:
1. the first egress of this justice is in the constitution of the penal law
2. the second egress is in the infliction of punishment
   1. the right of God with regard to punishment is either supreme and rigorous or it is a right tempered by a certain moderation
      1. as to the former - punishment is imposed not only on sin but also on the very person of the sinner
      2. as to the latter - there is granted a manifold moderation in the exercise of justice either in time (delay) or in persons (by transfer) or in degree (by mitigation)
   2. hence arises a twofold right with regard to the infliction of punishment
      1. one necessary and indispensable with respect to sin itself
      2. the other free and positive with respect to the sinner
   3. justice demands necessarily that all sin should be punished, but does not equally demand that it should be punished in the very person sinning or at such a time and in such a degree
   4. the Scholastics were correct when they said that impersonally punishment is necessarily inflicted upon every sin, but not personally upon every sinner
5. Although we hold the egress of justice to be necessary, yet we do not deny that God exercises it freely.
6. Hence it is evident in what sense this justice may be called natural, because it is founded in the very nature of God and even identified with it.
7. This justice can be regarded in three ways:
1. as a potentially  - in which sense it is the will of God turning away from and willing to punish sinners
2. as an actuality itself and the act of judgment and punishment by which it carries out its judgments towards sinners
3. for its effect or the punishment inflicted by justice
4. here we treat not the third but the first two which are joined together in Psalm 119:137
8. A question is raised here by the Socinians concerning vindictive justice.
1. in order to destroy the satisfaction of Christ, they deny that vindictive justice is natural to God, but is only the effect of his most free will
2. Socinus denies that there is any attribute in God necessarily demanding a satisfaction for sin
   1. if God punishes sin, this is the perfectly free effect of his will from which he might abstain
   2. "Nor is there any justice in God obliging him to punish sin altogether, from which he cannot abstain. There is indeed in God perpetual justice, but this is nothing else than equity and rectitude" (Praelectionis theologicae 16 [1627], p. 87)
   3. "That which is commonly called justice as opposed to mercy is not a quality of God, but only the effect of his will" (ibid., p. 88)
9. The orthodox maintain that this justice is an essential property of God and not merely the effect of his free will.
10. Therefore the question comes to this - whether the vindictive justice of God is so natural to him that he cannot but exercise it and to leave sin unpunished would be repugnant to it; or whether it is so free in god that its exercise depends upon his will and good pleasure alone. We defend the former.
11. That vindictive justice is essential to God these four argument especially prove: (1) the voice of Scripture, (2) the dictates of conscience and the consent of nations, (3) the sanction of the law with the whole Levitical, (4) our redemption through the death of Christ
• Scripture frequently ascribes this justice to God
  1. in those places in which the praise of perfect holiness and justice is given to God by which he is said to utterly detest and turn away from sin (Exo. 34:7; Hab. 1:13; Psa. 5:4)
     1. we conclude, if the hatred of sin is necessary in God, justice is equally necessary
     2. if he hates sin necessarily, he must necessarily punish it
     3. the sins of the elect he has punished in Christ
12. 2. in those places which speak of God as a just judge (Gen. 18:25; Rom. 3:5-6, 1:18, 32; 2 Thess. 1:6)
13. • the dictates of conscience and the consent of nations confirm the testimony of Scripture
    1. the former when it places man before the tribunal of God and either accuses him or excuses him in good and evil deeds (Rom. 2:14-15)
    2. the latter by which among all people this persuasion has prevailed that God is the just Judge of crimes, and if he did not exercise this justice, he would not be God
14. • the moral and ceremonial law itself establishes the same thing - the necessity of sacrifices depended not on the mere will, but on the very essential justice of God
15. • the death of Christ no less plainly demonstrates this
    1. if it was free and indifferent to God to punish or not to punish sin without compromising his justice, what reason can be devised to account for subjecting his Son to an accursed and cruel death?
    2. his offering of himself for us was not a work of bare will, but of justice, which demanded this sacrifice for its own satisfaction (Rom. 3:25; Col. 1:20)
16. A magistrate would err, if by a too great indulgence he would dispense with the right of punishment as this would give impunity to crimes.
17. By not punishing sin, God would:
1. do injury to no one out of himself
2. do injury to his own justice
3. do injury to the laws enacted by him
4. do injury to the public good
5. deny himself and divest himself of the natural dominion which he exercises over creatures
18. Although the effects of justice depend upon the free will of God, it does not follow that justice itself is equally a free act of will.
19. It is one thing to punish sins from a physical necessity (such as exists in fire to burn); another to do so from moral and rational necessity.
20. Although the effects of justice and mercy may be contrary on account of the diversity of their objects, it does not follow that these attributes are contrary in themselves.
21. The justice and mercy of God differ in their exercise.
1. mercy is perfectly free, able to exert or not exert itself without injury to anyone because it consists in a merely gratuitous act which is not bound to exercise towards anyone - he owes mercy to no one
2. the act of justice, although most free, is nevertheless necessary because it is due - it consists in rendering to each one its own
22. If there were no sinful creature, there would be no justice or mercy as to relative being, but there would always be justice as to absolute being.
23. Although God can exercise forebearance as to the degree of punishment, it does not follow that he can equally take away all degrees of punishment.
24. The question here is not simply whether God can through his potency not punish sin; but whether he can through his justice.
25. Although from his absolute right God is able to annihilate creatures, he cannot equally inflict upon an innocent person infernal and everlasting torment.

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TWENTIETH QUESTION - How do they differ from each other?

1. As vindictive justice is concerned with the infliction of physical punishment, so goodness and the qualities contained under it are occupied with the communication of good, but diversely.
2. The goodness of God is that by which he is conceived not only absolutely and in himself, but also relatively and extrinsically as beneficent towards creatures.
3. Although the goodness of God extends itself to all creatures, yet not equally.
1. it exhibits the greatest diversity in the communication of good
   1. one is general (Psa. 36:6-7)
   2. another special (Acts 14:17)
   3. yet another most special (Psa. 73:1)
2. if you seek the causes of this diversity, various ones can be assigned besides his will
   1. it was in accordance with his supreme dominion
   2. the wisdom of God demanded that a certain order should exist in things
   3. it conduced to the beauty of the universe
   4. it afforded a better demonstration of the inexhaustible fountain of divine goodness
4. From goodness flows love by which he communicates himself to the creature; there is usually a threefold distinction made in the divine love.
1. "love of creature" (philoktisia)
2. "love of man" (philoanthrōpia)
3. "love of the elect" (eklektophilia)
4. although love considered affectively and on the part of the internal act is equal in God, yet regarded effectively it is unequal because some effects of love are greater than others
5. There are three degrees of one and the same love of God.
1. the love of benevolence
   1. he love us before we were
   2. John 3:16
   3. by this he elects us
2. the love of beneficence
   1. he loves us as we are
   2. Ephesians 5:25; Revelation 1:5
   3. by this he redeems and sanctifies us
3. the love of complacency
   1. he loves us when we are renewed after his image
   2. Isaiah 62:3; Hebrews 11:6
   3. by this he gratuitously rewards us as holy and just
6. These four things in the highest manner commend the love of God towards us:
1. the majesty of the lover, who is not bound to love us; indeed who can most justly hate and destroy us if he so willed
2. the poverty and unworthiness of the loved, being empty and weak creatures, sinners and guilty, rebellious servants
3. the worth of Christ in whom we are loved
4. the multitude and excellence of the gifts which flow out from that love to us
7. Grace succeeds love by which God is conceived as willing to communicate himself to the creature from gratuitous love without any merit in the creature and notwithstanding its demerit. It is usual to understand it principally in two ways:
1. affectively - with respect to the internal act of God towards us
2. effectively - with regard to the effects which it produces in us
8. Grace, taken effectively, indicates all the gifts of the Holy Spirit gratuitously given to us by God.
9. Grace is distributed into decretive and executive.
1. decretive denotes the eternal purpose of God concerning the electing of us before the foundations of the world were laid
2. executive embraces the universal dispensation of that wonderful mystery which exercised itself towards the elect in redemption and in calling, justification and sanctification
10. Mercy attends upon the grace of God.
1. grace exercises itself about man as a sinner
2. mercy is exercised about man as miserable
11. It does not spring from any external cause which usually excited mercy in men, rather it springs from God's goodness alone. So freely is it occupied, that it can exert or not exert itself without injury to anyone (Rom. 9:18).
12. Mercy is commonly considered as twofold:
1. general and temporal by which God succors all creatures subjected to any misery (Psa. 104:27)
2. special and saving by which he has compassion on his own, electing out of the mass of fallen men certain ones to be saved through Christ
13. The magnitude of his mercy may be collected from various sources:
1. with regard to the principle of pitying
2. to the objects
3. to the mode and effects
4. to duration because it is eternal
5. to the severity of the divine justice
6. to the number and heinousness of sins
7. to the multitude of miseries and temptations
8. to the terror of death and the divine judgment
14. Although the mercy of God is more ample and manifold with regard to the effects which are innumerable, yet it has its own objects and vessels into which it is poured out.

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TWENTY-FIRST QUESTION - What is the omnipotence of God, and does it extend to those things which imply a contradiction? We deny.

1. The power of God can be distinguished as his right and authority to do anything and the force and faculty of his acting. We speak here of the latter.
2. We treat of the active power of God, the principle of acting on another.
3. The question does not concern the actual power according to which God irresistibly does whatsoever he wills to do, yet in the time and manner which seems best to him (Psa. 115:3).
4. Although power and will do not really differ, it does not follow that the power is not more extended than the actual volition itself.
5. Scholastics deduced from the idea of absolute power the suggestion that God can do whatever can be imagined by us whether good or evil, contradictory or not. Calvin rightly denies this absolute power because it would not belong to power and virtue, but to impotency and imperfection.
6. The object of God's power is nothing other than the possible, i.e., whatever is not repugnant to be done. But the impossible falls not under the omnipotence of God, not from a defect in his power, but from a defect in the possibility of the thing because it involves in its conception contradictory predicates.
7. Impossible and possible are used in three ways:
1. supernaturally
   1. impossible - that which cannot be made even by divine power (a sensible stone)
   2. possible - that which can take place at least divinely (resurrection of the dead)
2. naturally
   1. impossible - that which cannot be done by the powers of nature and second causes, but can be done by supernatural power (creation of the world)
   2. possible - that which does not exceed the power of finite nature
3. morally
   1. impossible - that which cannot be done according to the laws of holiness
   2. possible - that which is agreeable to the laws of virtue
4. God can indeed do the naturally impossible, but not what is said to be such either morally or supernaturally
8. The impossible to nature with respect to second causes (i.e., which surpasses the usual and customary course of nature) differs from the impossible by nature (i.e., which is repugnant to the nature of a thing with respect to all causes).
9. The impossible is so either on the part of the thing (repugnant to its nature) or on the part of God.
   1. Something may be possible to others but not to God (e.g., to lie, sin, and die)
   2. Augustine: "God is omnipotent and since he is omnipotent he cannot die, nor be deceived, nor deny himself. He cannot do many things, and yet he is omnipotent; and he is therefore omnipotent because he cannot do these things, for if he could die he would not be omnipotent" (The Creed [De symbolo: sermo ad catechumenos] 1)
10. Hence it is evident what must be determined concerning the object of God's power.
11. We gather what must be judged concerning contradictories; for that is said to be contradictory which is logically impossible, i.e., which has a repugnancy and includes contradictory predicates.
1. a repugnance may be immediate and explicit when the terms are explicitly contradictory
2. it may be mediate and implicit when the repugnant terms only virtually and implicitly include a contradiction
12. That such things do not fall under God's power is evident:
1. because impossibilities cannot be done by him and contradictories are impossible because a contradiction is of eternal disjunction and to affirm and deny, to be and not to be are eternally opposed
2. the power of God is concerned with being; but a contradiction is a non-entity
3. if he could perform contradictories, he could make the same thing to be and not be at the same time so that two contradictory propositions might be true [and false] at the same time
4. then evidently nothing would be impossible any more because there would be nothing greater than that which contradicts
13. When he is said to be omnipotent or able to do all things, the word "all things" distributes only entities, under which impossible and contradictory things are not contained.
14. God can indeed do thing which are above man's reason because he is able to do above all that we ask or thing (Eph. 3:20), but not things contrary to reason.
15. It is one thing to say that God can do more than we can understand and our mind conceive, it is another to say that he can do things which imply a contradiction.
16. With God no word or thing is impossible (Luke 1:37), but that which is contradictory is not such; rather it is a nothing and a non-entity.
17. To do contraries is one thing; to do contradictories another.
18. God could have made the past not to be the past in the divided sense and before it was the past; but in the compound sense, he cannot make what is past to be not past because it is no less impossible for a thing to have been and not to have been at the same time then for it to be and not to be.
19. The power of God cannot be convicted of impotence for not being able to do things impossible anymore than the vision because it cannot see sounds or the hearing because it cannot hear colors.
20. Matthew 3:9 does not prove that God can do contradictories. It only rebukes the vainglory of the Jews, that if they were destroyed God could miraculously father another people.
21. Although all the works of God are finite, the omnipotence of God is not therefore limited because it does not cease to be infinite.
22. God exercises this infinite power either mediately or immediately.
1. in the former sense, he exerts power in a finite degree because he cannot communicate his virtue to a creature unless in a finite degree of which the creature is capable
2. in the latter sense, he exerts it in an infinite manner because he alone operates
23. Although the impossibility of a thing arises more on the part of the thing than on the part of God, yet nothing is impossible on the part of the thing which is not also so on the part of God.
24. To suppose any creature to be infinite in act or extension or number is as great a contradiction as for a creature to be eternal and not made.
25. The proposition that God can deceive if he will is repugnant to the truth delivered in Scripture (Tit. 1:2; Heb. 6:18).
1. if God can deceive, he can sin; if he can sin, he can become not God because he who sins (or can sin) is not God
2. God through his own goodness, holiness, and justice cannot be said  to be able to do what is evil, unjust, and impure, even if he willed
3. God cannot do that which he cannot will; for he cannot do anything without his will
4. if God can deceive if he will, he could oblige us, if he willed to believe a lie
5. God cannot perform contradictions
6. if he can deceive, our faith in the Scriptures would always be wavering
26. God cannot do more than he can will since both his power and will form the law to himself from his nature.
27. It is one thing for God to decree the commission of an error by a creature and to permit a creature to be deceived, but another for him to be able immediately by himself to deceive anyone.
28. Although we may say that God can do anything if he wills, this cannot be said with the same truth in relation to those things which he cannot will through his goodness and justice (though his nature).

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TWENTY-SECOND QUESTION - What is the dominion of God, and of how many kinds? May an absolute and ordinate right be granted?

1. The power of God is connected with his sovereignty which arises from his dominion.
2. That God is the Lord of heaven and earth is shown by his very nature. Its foundation is twofold:
1. preeminence and eminence of nature - in accordance with the nature of things the superior and more excellent should have dominion over the inferior
2. amplitude and excellence of beneficence - by which the benefactor acquires right over the recipient
3. Dominion is called natural and essential to distinguish it from the economical which belongs to Christ (Phil. 2:9) and differs from it in many respects with regard to:
1. principle and origin - given by no one :: given by another (Matt. 28:18)
2. the foundation  - decree of providence :: decree of predestination
3. the objects - kingdom of nature :: kingdom of grace
4. their effects - general (diffused) :: specific (particular)
5. administration - creator :: mediator 
6. duration - temporal :: eternal
4. The principal property of God's dominion is that it is not only universal, but also absolute and unlimited.
5. Hence arose the distinction of God's right into absolute and ordinate; that is, the dominion and sovereignty which God holds over all his creatures of determining concerning them at pleasure without injustice. Its foundation is double:
1. the excellence of his nature above all creatures
2. the dependence of all creatures upon him, both in being and operation (Acts 17:24; Rom. 11:36)
6. The ordinate right is the order or reason of justice which God has declared to us by the word of the law and gospel, as to the duty of man and the accompanying promises and threats.
7. The proof occurs in predestination.
1. in election it belongs to the absolute right that God, according to his most free good pleasure, destines sinful and guilty men to salvation
2. in reprobation the absolute right is held in this - that although all men are equal, yet he passes by this one instead of another, acting from his good pleasure alone
3. the ordinate is found in this - that he reprobates and condemns no one except on account of sin (Rom. 1:32)
8. Although the absolute right is not revealed by the law, it must not therefore be held as contrary to the law; for it is above and beyond the law, not against it.
1. a prince in pardoning crimes, acts not from justice as judge, but from clemency as lord and prince (who can dispense with the law instituted by himself
2. God in the exercise of his absolute right, although he can do nothing opposed to his justice, yet does not act from it, but from the most free good pleasure belonging to him as supreme Lord
9. Two things are important for us to remember here:
1. the right of God is supreme and absolute, and above what we can either think or speak, and that he can do with his own what he pleases
2. it is always holy and agreeable to the most perfect nature of God, so that in its use he does nothing in opposition to his wisdom, goodness, and holiness
10. When the Scriptures speak of the absolute right (Rom. 9; Job 33), they do not so much mean what God actually does as what he can do.
11. Here belongs the distinction of the right of God into natural and free.
1. the former is founded on the very nature of God, but this depends on his pleasure and will
2. to the latter belongs the permission of sin, the bestowal of distinguishing grace, the institution of symbolical and ceremonial law; for these are of such a nature that God could have willed or nilled them without detriment to his justice

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TWENTY-THIRD QUESTION - What are the meanings of the words "essence," "substance," "subsistence," "person," "Trinity,"  homoousion in this mystery; and may the  church properly use them?

1. The absolute consideration of God (as to his nature and attributes) begets the relative (as to the persons). Neither reason can comprehend nor example prove this adorable mystery of the Trinity; it can only be established by divine revelation and received by faith and love.
2. As it can be prudently explained as to the fact from Scripture, the genuine sense and use of the words must be explained.
3. Explanation of words:
   • ousias  or "essence" and "nature" which denote the whatness (quidditatem) of a thing and is often met with in Scripture
     1. not only in the concrete when God is called  o` w;n (Exo. 3:14; Rev. 1:4)
     2. but also in the abstract when deity (qeo,thj, Col 2:9), nature (fu,sij, Gal. 4:8), divine nature (qei,a fu,sij, 2 Pet. 1:4) is attributed to God
     3. the Hebrew word hyvwt applies here; it designates the real essence
4. • substance is attributed to God by the fathers not as it is called from standing under the accidents (which do not fall on God), but from subsisting (because he subsists through and from himself)
5. • hence the word "subsistence" (called by the Greek u`pa,rcij) marks a mode of subsisting (tro,poj u`pa,rcewj) or personality.
     1. to subsist differs from to exist
        1. to exist means that a thing actually is without its causes in the nature of things, which applies to accidents no less than to substances
        2. but to subsist means a mode of existing proper to substances
     2. subsistence is commonly held to be twofold:
        1. the one by which it is constituted a substance in the being of a substance
           1. usually explained by independence from the subject
           2. is the very existence of the substance
        2. the other which is constituted in the being of a suppositum
           1. usually explained by incommunication, inasmuch as the singular substance is neither a part nor an adjunct of another; if it is intellectual, it is called a person
           2. is said to superadd some mode to the existence of the singular substance
           3. here the word "subsistence" is used in the latter, not in former sense
6. • to designate this subsistence the Greeks employed the word u`posta,sewj, which formerly gave great disturbances in the church on account of the equivocal sense of the word. But Scripture appears to precede us here, for in comparing the person of the Son with the person of the Father (whose image he bears), it calls him "the express image" of the subsistence (u`posta,sewj) of the Father (Heb. 1:3)
7. • it is evident what must be understood by the word "person"
     1. what is called u`po,stasij among the Greeks is called persona  among the Latins
     2. persona does not come from the stage denoting the mask of players, no from some office and function
     3. properly and strictly it denotes an intellectual suppositum, as it is used in 2 Corinthians 1:11 (and constantly among lawyers, when an action is divided into the thing or person)
8. 4. the word "person" is properly concrete and not abstract
9. • the word "Trinity" follows
     1. although not existing in Scripture in the abstract, it is nevertheless found in the concrete (1 John 5:7 [KJV])
     2. God is said to be triune, not triple, because there are three persons, but only one numerical essence
10. • we must explain to homoousion, the subject of so many controversies in the ancient church
      1. the origin of the word can be traced to the Arian heresy which denied that Christ was God
      2. the Council of Nicea declared that the Son was homoousion  (i.e., of the same nature and essence with the Father)
      3. the Arians attempted to destroy the force of homoousion  by the addition of one letter thus making it homoiousion  (of similar substance with the Father and not of the same substance)
      4. Athanasius detected the subterfuge and taught that there was not a similar, but the same essence in the Father and Son
11. 5. Curcellaeus maintained that homoousion  refers to a "specific" and not "numerical unity" so that the essence in the Father and Son may be said to be one in species but not one and the same in number - this would result in Tritheism.
12. 6. homoousion  is used rather than monoousion  or tautoousion
       1. monoousion  rather denotes him who has one singular essence, than him who is of the same essence with another or designates him whose nature and essence is so the only one -  God can be called monoousios, but not the Trinity
       2. tautoousios  is not free form ambiguity for it can designate him who has his essence from himself, not by communication from another (in which sense the Father alone would tautoousios  with respect to person)
13. • here belongs the word evmpericwrh,sewj which the fathers frequently used
      1. used to describe the intimate mutual union of the persons which can be inferred from Scripture (John 10:38; 14:11)
      2. they though this mystery could not be better expressed than by the phrase evnallh,lon evmpericwrh,sin (i.e., a mutual intertwining), so as to designate thus that union by which the divine persons embrace each other and permeate each other
      3. although always remaining distinct, yet they are never separated from each other, but always coexist
      4. there is the widest difference between the mystical union of believers with God (1 John 3:24; John 14:23) and the divine union of the persons of the Trinity
14. • the words "property," "relation," and "notion" can have their use when understood in a sound sense
      1. "property" denotes the peculiar mode of subsisting and diacritical character by which this or that person is constituted in his personal being and is distinguished from the others
      2. "relation" intimates the same property inasmuch as it indicates the relation of one person to another
      3. "notion" designates the same character inasmuch as it signifies that one person is distinct from another
      4. however some difference can be observed between them because notion has a wider extension than relation, and relation has a wider extension than property
         1. there are three properties - paternity, filiation, and procession
         2. there are four relations - paternity, filiation, active spiration, and passive spiration
         3. there are five notions - unbegottenness, paternity, filiation, active spiration, and passive spiration
15. 5. from a notion arise notional acts properly to be distinguished from essential acts which flow from essential properties and are terminated on something eternal; hence they are common to the three persons; but the notional proceed form the personal properties, which belong to the persons singularly and are terminated upon an internal work such as generation and spiration
16. We must now discuss whether it is lawful to use the foregoing words in explaining this mystery.
17. It is sufficiently evident that those corruptors of religion condemn the words adopted by the ancients for no other reason than that they are unwilling to receive the things designed by them.
18. The question is whether it is lawful to enunciate "inwritten" (engrapha) doctrines by unwritten (agraphois) words for the plainer explication of the truth and the more complete refutation of errors.
19. The question is whether we are bound to stick so tenaciously to the words of Scripture that in the explication of doctrines no others but them can be devised and used. This the adversaries maintain; we deny.
20. The reasons are drawn:
• from their utility which is manifold
• from the necessity, because unless it were lawful to use words not to be found exactly in Scripture, we could not interpret it and apply it to uses both theoretical and practical
• from parity, because in other articles, ecclesiastical terms are fitly employed (e.g., original sin)
• this was the mind of the ancients in using these words
22. "The form of sound words" spoken by Paul (2 Tim. 1:13) is not an external form of locution, so bound down to the words of Scripture that it would be unlawful to use even a syllable or word not found in Scripture, rather it denotes that method of teaching which does not depart from the intention of Scripture and the analogy of faith.
23. It is one thing to speak of the mode of enunciating things; another to speak of the things themselves (1 Tim. 6:3).
24. Paul does not condemn the newness of words but the newness of doctrines (1 Tim. 6:20).
25. It is on thing under the penalty of anathema to obtrude words upon the church for her reception, but another to obtrude the things signified by the words.
26. Not to be in Scripture expressly and according to the letter differs from not being there equivalently ans as to the thing signified.
27. Those words ought to be avoided which afford matter for strife per se in the church, but not those which only accidentally do so on account of heretics.
28. Although the Council of Alexandria decreed that such terms should not be used in addresses to people, yet they could be used in controversies with heretics.
29. The foundations of faith differ from its defenses: the former are built upon Scripture alone and are derived from it; the latter are drawn even from beyond Scripture to ward off attacks.
30. Concerning God, noting must be asserted except what he himself has asserted in his word as to the things themselves, but not therefore as the words.

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TWENTY-FOURTH QUESTION - Is the mystery of the Trinity a fundamental article of faith? We affirm against the Socinians and Remonstrants.

1. Before discussing the truth of the mystery of the Trinity, we must premise some things concerning its necessity.
2. On the state of the question observe: that the discussion concerns not only the negation, but the simple ignorance of this article.
3. The question is not whether there ought to be an equal degree of this knowledge in all, but whether some knowledge of it at least is necessary to to all in regard to state, persons, adn time in which they live.
4. The question does not concern the full and perfect comprehension of this mystery, but only whether the knowledge and confession of the three divine persons is required for the catholic faith and necessary to all who would be saved.
5. The question is not whether the knowledge of the Trinity is necessary absolutely as to the constructive and destructive reasoning bearing upon it, but concerns the positive and simple knowledge and confession of the doctrine.
6. Thus the question comes to this: whether the mystery of the Trinity is a fundamental article, necessary to the faith of all believers, so that not only the denial, but even the ignorance of it cannot consist with salvation. This we affirm through the following arguments:
7. • first, eternal life is placed in the knowledge of it (John 17:3, 14:1; 1 John 5:20). Christ could not be a Mediator without being truly God
8. • second, it contains the primary object of faith and worship, the confession of which our baptism necessarily includes (Matt. 28:19). God has revealed himself as one in essence, three in persons; thus he who does not acknowledge and believe the Trinity has not the true God
9. • third, various fundamental doctrines depend upon this article: such as the doctrines concerning the sending of the Son, his advent in the flesh, his satisfaction, the mission of the Holy Spirit
10. • fourth, it is the stay of the whole Christian religion and of our salvation
    • fifth, it was the uniform faith of the ancients
11. Although the mystery of the Trinity was more obscure under the Old than under the New Testament, it does not follow that it was then altogether unknown.
12. The Trinity is contained in the Symbol (Apostles' Creed) if not in the signified act, at least in the exercised inasmuch as we seal our faith in the three persons.
13. It is one thing to believe the fact of the Trinity; another to know the wherefore and the how. It is a fundamental article in the former and not the latter.
14. A belief in the Trinity cannot but be required of the baptized when they are sprinkled in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
15. For any article to be fundamental, it is not necessary that it should always exist literally in Scripture, as to all the words by which it is usually set forth. It suffices if it is contained there as to the thing and may be thence deduced by evident and necessary consequence.
16. The dissent of scholars ought not to detract in the least from the truth of the thing.
17. The fundamental topics are called catholic because they are retained by all true Christians who profess the faith.
18. The article of the Trinity is not only theoretical, but also practical because it contributes to the gratitude and worship of God.
19. It can be easily shown from Justin, Athenagoras, Ignatius, and other that this doctrine was constantly both believed and confessed.
20. The truth of the matter can be clearly gathered from the surviving monuments of the first centuries.
21. Evidence is provided from the church fathers.

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TWENTY-FIFTH QUESTION - In the one divine essence are there three distinct persons: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit? We affirm against the Socinians.

1. The orthodox faith is this: in the one only and most simple essence of God there are three distinct persons so distinguished from each other by incommunicable properties or modes of subsisting that one cannot be the other, although they always remain and exist in each other mutually. Hence it is evident:
1. that the divine essence is principally distinguished from the persons in having communicability, while the persons are distinguished by and incommunicable property
2. that it differs from other singular natures in that while they can be communicated to only one self-existent being and are terminated on only one subsistence, the former can admit or more than one
2. Hence it is that three divine persons are not three gods because the divine persons partake of the same numerical essence, and that infinite.
3. The question is not whether God is one numerically; or whether these three names may be spoken of God, but whether these three names designate three distinct persons subsisting in but one, undivided essence. This the orthodox affirms.
4. But as this mystery far transcends the reach of the human reason, so it can be solidly demonstrated from the revealed word alone. Similitudes of this drawn from nature can only serve to fortify the believers and not convince the adversaries.
5. The things pertaining to this mystery occurring in the monuments of the heathen are either adulterated or suppositions.
6. Whatever it is permitted to know concerning this mystery must be learned from the word of God alone. Hence we start with our proofs:
7. The first is drawn from the baptism of Christ (Matt. 3:16-17) in which three persons manifested themselves in distinct personality: the Father who spoke from heaven; the Son who ascended from the Jordan; and the Spirit who descended from heaven in the form of a dove and rested upon the Son.
8. Second, the same thing is proved by out baptism instituted by Christ (Matt. 28:19), here also three distinct persons are mentioned of the same nature, authority and power to whom we equally give our names and promise obedience.
9. Third, it may be proved from 1 John 5:7 where three are expressly mentioned who are said to be one.
10. They are said not only to agree in one thing, but they are one.
11. Fourth, the apostolic benediction evinces the same thing (2 Cor. 13:14). In this manner the three blessings flowing from the three persons in the work of redemption are designated according to the mode of operation proper to each one; the love of God in the destination; the grace of Christ in the acquisition; and the communion of the Spirit in the application.
12. Fifth, here belong the passages in which express mention is made of three, mutually distinct from each other, to whom divine works are equally ascribed:
• John 14:16, 15:26
13. • 1 Corinthians 12:4-6
14. In the Trinity they who are distinguished personally can be the same essentially. Therefore, although the Son is of the same essence with the Father, he is rightly said not be the Father.
15. Although the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three numerical persons, still they are not three numerical God because the partake of the same divine essence. The Son is another numerical person, but not another numerical God.
16. The principles which are true concerning finite natures must not be transferred to the infinite.
1. thus this inference is faulty - three human persons are three men, therefore three divine persons are three gods
2. the reason is these three human persons partake only of the same specific and not numerical essence and a similar rather than the same essence
3. the divine persons partake of the same infinite, numerical essence
17. Although there are three divine persons, it does not follow that there are three infinites.
18. Where there are one and three really distinct, there are four. But here, the three persons are not really distinguished from the essence, but only the mode of subsisting.
19. Although the true God is the Trinity, yet not whatever is true God is the Trinity, rather it is either the Trinity or some one of the persons.
20. He who conceives God as one has a complete conception as to the complement of essence, but not immediately as to the complement of personality.
21. One in number substantively as to essential unity cannot be three in the same respect; but it can be three adjectively and personally as to the personal Trinity.
22. Because the persons agree in essence, they are also the same among themselves as to essence.
23. The sophism of the heretics says: "The divine essence is the Father; the divine essence is the Son; therefore the Son is the Father."
1. in the major, either is it taken universally and completely in this sense - the divine essence is the Father (i.e., whatever is the divine essence) and thus it is false
2. or is it taken particularly and incompletely - the someone who is the divine essence is the Father; and so it is true, but concludes nothing because they are mere particulars
24. Each person partakes indeed of th whole divinity, but not totally and adequately because it is so in the Father as it is also in the Son.
25. John 17:3 does not prove the case that the Father is the only one in the divine essence because the exclusive particle monon ("only") doe not limit the subject "thee," but the predicate "true God."
26. The person begets, or is begotten, or proceeds. Essence is communicated by generation or spiration.
27. On the ground of the unity and consubstantiality (homoousia) of the persons, the Son and the Holy Spirit are invoked by the same act of invocation which is addressed to the Father.

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TWENTY-SIXTH QUESTION - Can the mystery of the Trinity be proved from the Old Testament, and was it known under it? We affirm against the Socinians.

1. The Socinians are wont to urge that this is a new doctrine invented after the time of Christ and his apostles.
2. We confess that it was not revealed under the Old Testament with the same clearness as it is now taught in the New.
3. For the proof we must make a choice of passages of Scripture that we may contend not so much by numbers as by weight.
4. There is a double kind of proof: first, we may adduce those passages from which a plurality of persons may be gathered, and second, those in which the Trinity is expressly mentioned.
1. among the former are a large number which introduce God speaking of himself in the plural number: Genesis 1:26, 3:22, 11:7
   1. no reason can be assigned why God should use the plural verb, unless to intimate a certain plurality of persons in the unity of essence
   2. nor ought it to be objected here that God for the sake of honor speaks of himself in the plural by enallage (like kings and princes - [the royal "we"])
      1. because the idiom of the language forbids it
      2. if God spoke thus of himself for the sake of honor, he ought always to have spoken so
      3. this enallage would be not only unless but also dangerous because the believer would thus be easily induced to believe a plurality of persons
5. 3. of no force either is the objection that angels are here addressed because in no on of the three passages can they be understood
6. 2. a plurality may be proved from those passages where the discourse concerns God as about different persons: Genesis 1:2; Psalm 33:6, 104:30; Isaiah 40:13-14
7. 3. the same thing may be proved from those passages in which God is distinguished from himself, not essentially but personally: Hosea 1:7; Genesis 19:24; Psalm 110:1, 45:7
8. As the passages which connote a plurality of persons are various, so those in which that plurality is restricted to a Trinity are not few.
1. it is collected with some clearness from the history of the creation where Moses distinctly mentions Elohim creating, the Spirit of God moving upon the waters, and the Word producing all things, this is repeated in Psalm 33:6
9. 2. the same may be proved from the deliverance of the people out of Egyptian bondage, the guidance of them through the wilderness, and introduction into Canaan
      1. reference to the "angel of Jehovah" (Exo. 3:2, 23:20, 32:34) - that this angel is not a created angel, but the uncreated Son of God is evident form the description of him and the various attributes given to him
         1. he says he is the God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob (Exo. 3:6); calls the Israelites his people (Exo. 3:7); sends Moses to Pharaoh (Exo. 3:10); promises himself divine worship after their deliverance from Egypt (Exo. 3:12)
         2. he is said to have gone before the Israelites in a pillar of cloud and fire (Exo. 14:19) which is expressly attributed to Jehovah (Exo. 13:21; Num. 11:25, 14:14)
         3. it is said that "the name of God" will be in him so that they will not escape unpunished who rebel against him (Exo. 23:20-21)
         4. he is called "the very presence of God" (Exo. 33:14)
      2. the Holy Spirit is also here concurred as a person with others is evident from the noted passage found in Isaiah 63:7-14
3. the same thing is evidenced by the descriptions of the Messiah, to whom divine names, attributes, and works are ascribed
4. from the threefold repetition of the name Jehovah, as in the blessing of the priest (Num. 6:24-26); the threefold mention of God's blessing by Jacob (Gen. 48:15-16); the seraphic trisagion (Isa. 6:3)
5. to these must be added those passages from which divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is proved (which will be taken up later when we deal with their divinity)
13. 6. there is not one Old Testament and another New Testament God, but one and the same revealed in both as the sole object of faith and worship
       1. under the New Testament he has revealed himself as one in essence and three in persons
       2. therefore he must necessarily have been revealed to the Jews as such
       3. otherwise they would not have worshiped the true God who is no other than the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
14. 7. if the Trinity was not revealed in the Old Testament, the orthodox have labored falsely to prove it from the Old Testament
15. Although the Jews of our day refuse to acknowledge this mystery, it does not follow that it was unknown under the Old Testament.

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TWENTY-SEVENTH QUESTION - Can the divine persons be distinguished from the essence, and from each other, and how?

1. A Trinity of divine persons having been established, we must now treat of their distinction both from the essence itself and from each other. The persons are manifestly distinct form the essence because the essence is one only, while the persons are three.
1. the former is 
   1. absolute
   2. communicable
   3. common principle of external operation, which are undivided and common to the three persons
2. the latter are 
   1. relative
   2. incommunicable
   3. the principle of internal operations, which belong to the single persons mutually related to each other
2. We think these various notions ought not to be troubled and cut to the quick since, being drawn from human and finite things, they can but very imperfectly describe this mystery. it is better to be satisfied with this general notion that there is a distinction, although what and how great it is cannot be comprehended and expressed by us.
3. The person may be said to differ from the essence not really, i.e., essentially as thing and thing, but modally, as a mode from the thing.
4. Hence it follows that there is no composition in God because composition arises only from diverse things. Here we do not have a thing and a thing, but a thing and the modes of the thing by which it is not compounded but distinguished.
5. Whatever is in God essential and absolute is God himself, but whatever is in God personal, relative and modal may not immediately in every way be identified with the divine essence.
6. While infinity is and essential property belonging to the divine, it is not necessary that it should be properly ascribed to the personalities. It suffices that they be called modes of the infinite essence.
7. The wisdom and power of God taken precisely and essentially are attributes which are identified with the divinity, yet they are affected by the personalities of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
8. The distinction of the persons from each other seems to be greater than from the essence. For the essence can be predicated of the person, but the person cannot be mutually predicated of each other.
9. In explaining this distinction two extremes must be avoided - the sources of the most grevious heresies.
1. Sabellianism - maintained a distinction only of reason between the persons, so as to make only one person
2. Tritheism - who from three persons makes three eternal, unequal spirit, essentially distinct from each other
10. The orthodox hold a middle ground.
1. against Sabellius they deny that the distinction of reason alone has place here because the Father is another than the Son and the Son than the Father
2. against the Tritheists they reject the real or essential distinction because although there are more persons than one mutually distinct, yet there is only one essence
3. they hold to a modal distinction because as the persons are constituted by personal properties as incommunicable modes of subsisting, so they may properly be said to be distinguished by them
11. Although in God there is not one and another thing (i.e., different essences), still there is one and another subject (a difference of persons).
12. To authorize this distinction in the deity, it is not necessary that there should be any adequate or equal example among creatures.
13. Things incommunicable to each other can be said to differ really; but it does not immediately follow that hey differ essentially and specifically.
14. These modes of subsisting by which the persons are distinguished from each other may well be called real, but they cannot be called either substantial or accidental since this division applies only to a finite being and indeed to things, not to modes.
15. The use of the word incommunicability indicates the bare negation of the conjunction of the divine essence with any other thing in order to constitute one self-existing thing and implies positively the ultimate complement by which the thing is so complete in itself, and that it cannot be further united with or communicated to any other.
16. The distinction of the persons may be principally observed in two things: within the persons themselves and without in their operations.
1. within the persons themselves
   1. as to the persons, with respect to order
      1. the Father is proposed in Scripture as the first person, who is from no one; the Son as the second, who is from the Father; and the Holy Spirit as the third who is from the Father and the Son
      2. with respect to that oder a certain preeminence is attributed by theologians to the Father, not indeed as to essence and deity, but as to mode
17. 2. as to personal properties which are not common to the single persons, but singular to each person
       1. the Father is said to be self-begotten
       2. the Son is said to be from the Father by generation; not respect to essence and absolutely as God, but with respect to person as Son
       3. the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son by spiration
       4. generation and spiration are communicative of the essence to the term of personality
18. 3. because these personal and characteristic properties are usually expressed by the relative names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it happens that they may well be said also to be distinguished from each other by relations
19. 4. what is common to the Father and the Son cannot be a distinguishing property of the Father, only the opposed relations here make th distinction
2. without in their operations
   1. although the external works are undivided and equally common to the single persons, yet they are distinguished by order and by terms
   2. the order of operating follows the order of subsisting
      1. the Father is from himself so he works from himself
      2. the Son is from the Father so he works from the Father (John 5:19)
      3. the Holy Spirit is from both so he works from both
   3. they also differ in terms as often as any divine operation is terminated on any person
      1. the voice heard from heaven is terminated on the Father
      2. incarnation on the Son
      3. and the appearance in the form of a dove on the Holy Spirit

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TWENTY-EIGHTH QUESTION - Is the Son true and eternal God, coessential and coeternal with the Father? We affirm against Socinus.

1. That the divine majesty and glory of the Son of God, our Redeemer, may be established the state of the question must be properly laid down.
2. The question is not whether the Son is a divine person and whether he may be called God, for many heretics will admit this.
3. The question ought not to be conceived - whether the Son is God; but - whether he is true and eternal God, coessential with the Father. The question is whether he is the proper Son who received from the Father by ineffable generation the same numerical essence with the Father, not in time, but from eternity. This we affirm and the Socinians deny.
4. Episcopius and the Remonstrants lean towards the Socinians by holding that the Son is not coordinate and consubstantial with the Father, but only subordinate ("Institutiones theologica," 4.32 and 4.35 in Opera Theologica [1678], pp. 332-34, 340-44).
5. That the Son is true God, both consubstantial (homoousion) and eternal with the Father these four thing things prove: the names of God, the attributes of God, the works of God, and the worship due to God
1. the names of God
   1. Psalm 45:7 is proved to apply to Christ from Hebrews 1:8-9
   2. Isaiah 9:6 calls the Son "the mighty God"
   3. Jeremiah 23:5-6 refers to the Branch of David as "Jehovah our Righteousness"
   4. Isaiah 7:14 identifies Christ as Immanuel
   5. Malachi 3:1 tells us that he is the Lord who shall come to his temple
   6. Malachi 4:5 says that the day of him coming is the great and dreadful day of Jehovah
7. this is further confirmed by a comparison of the various passages of the Old and New Testament in which what is said in the Old of Jehovah is applied in the New to Christ (Num. 14:22, 21:5-6 and Psa. 95:9 with 1 Cor. 10:9; Psa. 102:26 with Heb. 1:10-11; Isa. 6:9-10 with John 12:40-41; Isa. 45:23 with Rom. 14:11; Joel 2:32 with Rom. 10:13; and Psa. 68:18 with Eph. 4:8-9)
8. in the New Testament he is still more clearly called God (John 1:1)
   
9. he is called "the true God, and eternal life" (1 John 5:20, cf. John 1:4, 11:25; 1 John 1:2, 5:11-12)
   
10. he is called "God blessed for ever" (Rom. 9:5), "the great God" (Tit. 2:13)
    
11. the exclamation of Thomas (John 20:28), he is said to be "God manifested in the flesh" (1 Tim. 3:16), and "God who purchased the church with his own blood" (Acts 20:28)
    
12. "the form of God" is ascribed to Christ (Phil. 2:6)
    
13. although the name of God can improperly, restrictedly and in the plural be attributed to creatures, yet never is it properly, absolutely, and in the singular given to anyone but the true God; hence the Son of God, to whom it is thus given, must be true and eternal God
    
2. the divine attributes - being proper to God alone to the exclusion of creatures, he cannot but be God of whom they are predicated
   1. eternity (Prov. 8:22-23; Mic. 5:2; Rev. 1:4, 11; Isa. 9:6; Heb. 7:3)
1. the Word is said to have been "in the beginning" (John 1:1)
2. "before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58)
3. Christ is said to have had glory with the Father before the world was (John 17:5)
2. immensity and omnipresence (Matt. 18:20, 28;20; John 3:13)
3. omnipotence (Rev. 1:8, 11:17; John 5:17; Heb. 1:3; Matt. 28:18)
4. omniscience (John 2:24-25, 16:30, 21:17; Rev. 2:23; Luke 6:8)
5. immutability (Heb. 1:11-12, 13:8)
6. "fullness of the Godhead" (Col. 2:9; cf. John 5:26)
3. the divine works ascribed to him
   1. creation (John 1:3; Heb. 1:2, 10; Col 1;16-17)
   2. conservation and government of the universe (Heb. 1:3; Col. 1:17; John 5:17)
   3. miracles (all through the gospels) and especially the resurrection of the dead (John 5:21, 6:40)
4. the second creation cannot be meant in John 1:3
5. the working of miracles was not ministerial (like that of the apostles) but proper and innate because it is said to have flowed from him (Luke 6:19, 8:46; cf. Acts 4:7, 10, 9:34)
6. the works of grace which belong to God alone
   1. election (John 13:18
   2. redemption (Acts 20:28)
   3. calling (John 10:16; Matt. 9:13)
   4. sanctification (Eph. 5:26)
   5. the mission of the Holy Spirit (John 16:7, 14, 15:26)
   6. defense against all attacks of enemies and the bestowal of eternal life (John 10:10, 28)
   7. the resurrection of the dead (John 5:21)
   8. the raising of himself (John 2:19, 10:18; Rom. 1:4)
   9. the universal judgment (John 5:22; Acts 17:31)
4. the religious worship due to God alone
   1. faith (John 14:1)
   2. hope (Psa. 2:12; Jer. 17:5)
   3. adoration (Heb. 1:6; Psa 2:12; John 5:22-23; Phil. 2:9-11)
   4. invocation (Acts 7:59, 9:14; 1 Cor. 1:2)
   5. glory and honor (Rev. 5:13)
6. faith and adoration demand an object infinite, omniscient, omnipotent and possessed of eternal glory
7. the object of adoration is the person of Christ, the foundation is his divine nature, and the adjunct is his human nature
28. To these four classes of arguments we can add others also.
1. from the equality of the Son with the Father (John 5:17-18, 23, 26)
2. from his unity with the Father (John 10:28-33)
3. from the mediatorial office of Christ
31. Christ was made Lord after the resurrection (Acts 2:36) not in essential dominion, but in personal and economical dominion.
32. Christ is called heir not by a gift of grace, but because he is the Son.
33. The name of God is by appropriation given to the Father, not to the exclusion of the Son and the Holy Spirit,, but economically.
34. He who is set forth as mere man cannot be God; but not he who is set forth as a true man because he can be both man and God.
35. The Son can be said to have received all things from the Father either as the Word (by a communication of the same essence from eternity) or as God-man and Mediator in time by the imposition of office.
36. A principle may be either of communication or of inchoation; the Son as a principle of communication, but not of inchoation, because the essence was communicated to him from eternity.
37. Christ is called "the firstborn of every creature" (Col. 1:15) by reason of dominion (because all things were made by him, so he had authority over all); but not by reason of creation (as if he was the first produced among creatures).
38. The Father is said to be "one God" (1 Cor. 8:5-6), not in relation to the Son and the Holy Spirit, but to idols. The one God (the Father) and one Lord Jesus Christ are indeed distinguished from each other, but personally and not essentially.
39. When Christ denies that he is good contrasted with God, who alone is good (Matt. 19:17), this must not be understood absolutely, but relatively to the mind of the young man who looked upon him as a bare man.
40. Although the Son is from the Father, nevertheless he may be called God-of-himself (autotheos), not with respect to his person, but essence; not relatively as Son, but absolutely as God inasmuch as he has the divine essence from itself and not divided or produced from another essence.
41. That Christ is said to have been born of a virgin, suffered and died, not to be everywhere present and to be less than the Father, show indeed that he was a true man like to us in all things, but does not deny him to be God.

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TWENTY-NINTH QUESTION - Was the Son of God begotten of the Father from eternity? We affirm.

1. This question will demonstrate his personal distinction from him, his ineffable and eternal generation.
2. The question is whether he was begotten of God from eternity, and whether he may be called Son on account of the secret and ineffable generation from the Father. This we affirm.
3. Something must be premised concerning its nature, not that it can be conceived or explained by us; but only that it may be distinguished from human generation and be explained negatively rather than positively.
4. This wonderful generation is rightly expressed as a communication of essence from the Father (by which the Son possesses indivisibly the same essence with him and is made perfectly like him).
1. whatever may be the analogy between natural and human generations, and the supernatural and divine, still the latter is not be measured by the former
2. in physical generation, the principle is not only active, but also passive and material; but in the divine it is only active
   1. in the former, a communication is made not of the whole essence, but only of a part which falls and is alienated from the begetter - the produced is not only distinct but also separate from the begetter
   2. in the latter, the same numerical essence is communicated without decision and alienation - the begetter generates in himself and not out of himself
5. This generation was made
1. without time; not in time, but from eternity - therefore not priority or posteriority of duration can be observed here, although there may be priority of order
2. without place because the Father did not beget out of himself
3. without any passion or change
4. hence what has place in transient and and physical and material generation ought not to be transferred to the hyperphysical, immanent and divine
6. A person is properly said to generate a person because actions belong to self-existence; but not an essence to generate an essence because what begets and is begotten is necessarily multiplied.
7. The Father begets the Son, and the Son is begotten, can be said in a sound sense: with respect to generation considered in itself because the works of the Trinity inwards are eternal and unceasing.
8. This generation may be proved:
1. from the remarkable oracle (Psa. 2:7)
   1. to this Son is ascribed a generation, not temporal and physical, but hyperphysical and eternal - such as can belong to him who is the eternal Son of an eternal Father and so true God with him
9. 2. unless Christ has been the true and eternal Son of God, begotten by him from eternity, he never could have been appointed Mediator and obtain a universal kingdom
10. 2. the same thing is gathered from the passage in which Wisdom is introduced speaking thus (Prov. 8:22-30)
       1. here Wisdom is put in the abstract, not qualitatively, but personally
11. 2. that this is none other than the Son of God, is collected not only from the name itself (Luke 7:35; 1 Cor. 1:24), but also from the attributes ascribed to this Wisdom
12. 3. the word chvllthy ought not to be translated "I was created" but "I was begotten"
13. 3. it may be proved from Micah 5:2
       1. although the going forth has a broader extension than generation, still it cannot be denied that generation is a going forth
       2. the going forth is said to be from the beginning, i.e., from eternity
14. 4. it may be proved from the filiation of Christ, which ought necessarily to imply a communication of essence from the Father in the most perfect manner
       1. if he were called Son only on account of a gracious communication of existence and glory he could not be styled either the one or the only begotten Son of God
       2. therefore there must be some other mode of filiation proper and singular to him
3. if Christ has many brethren (Rom. 8:29), he does not cease to be the only begotten by way of eminence because the generation is evidently dissimilar and totally different in kind by a communication of the essence itself
4. Christ is said to be "the own Son of the Father" as it is opposed to an adopted and metaphorical son
5. he is the "image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15) and "the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person" (Heb. 1:3)
   1. Christ is said to be not only like to, but also equal with the Father
18. 2. Christ cannot be called the Son of the living God with respect to unction and office, nor is Christ said to be the Son of God because he was the Messiah; on the contrary, he is recognized as the Messiah because he is the Son of God
19. 3. he could not have exhibited to us by incarnation the glory of God and the mark of his person unless he had been such before by an eternal generation
20. Christ is called the "first-born" in diverse ways:
    1. by reason of his temporal nativity when he is called "the first-born" of Mary
    2. by reason of his resurrection as "the first-born from the dead" (Col. 1:18) because
       1. he first arose, not so much by priority of time as of causality (because he arose by his own power (John 2:19)
       2. he arose to immortal life, never again to die
    3. by reason of authority and dominion - because all the prerogatives of primogenitureship a kingdom properly belongs to him
    4. by reason of his eternal generation when he is called the "first begotten of God" (Heb. 1:6)
       1. Christ is called the firstborn of every creature, not because he is the first of creatures, but because he was begotten before creatures
       2. we must not understand here a ranking with creatures, but a going before and a preexistence, for if he is before every creature, he ought not to be reckoned among creatures and so must be eternal
21. The Father begat the Son as neither now existing because he would be supposed to have been already before, nor as yet not existing, but coexisting.
    1. hence the Son was not properly before generation, not did he being to be through generation, but always emanated from the Father by an eternal and internal act
    2. by generation the divine essence is communicated to the begotten, not that it may exist, but subsist
22. The Father is said to have begotten the Son necessarily and voluntarily;
    1. necessarily because he begat by nature, as he is God by nature
    2. voluntarily because he begat not by coaction, but freely
23. Although the Son may be said to be begotten by the Father, it does not follow that the Son is the Son of himself because the essence does not generate an essence, but a person.
24. That which is most perfect does not generate a thing differing from itself essentially, but a person differing from itself personally.
25. When the Son is said to be one God with the Father and yet to be a distinct person from him, there is no contradiction.
26. Although believers may be said "to be begotten" or "to be born of God" on account of a similarity of virtues (and not by a communication of essence), it does not follow that it can be understood in the same sense of Christ.
27. The miraculous conception of Christ can be an argument a posteriori by which his eternal filiation is known, but is not immediately its cause a priori.
28. The Son of God is not called Christ because he was sanctified by the Father (John 10:36) - he was sanctified because he was the Son.
29. This hyperphysical generation is altogether different from physical and finite generation.
30. To no purpose do the Scholastics weary themselves in investigating and explaining the mode of this generation, since it is not only ineffable, but also incomprehensible to the angels themselves.
31. The similitudes usually employed to explain this mystery can in some measure serve to illustrate this mystery. But they cannot set forth a full and accurate determination fo the mode of this generation. Hence we should not anxiously busy our thoughts with defining or even searching into the mode, but leave it to God who alone most perfectly knows himself.

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THIRTIETH QUESTION - Is the Holy Spirit a divine person, distinct from the Father and the Son? We affirm.

1. As we have just proved the eternity of the Son, the personality of the Spirit must now be demonstrated.
2. The question concerns the Spirit regarding hypostatically and designating one of them singularly.
3. The question is whether he is a divine person, not divided, but distinct from the Father and the Son. This we affirm.
4. The reasons are:
   1. various personal actions are attributed to the Holy Spirit
      1. to teach (John 14:26)
      2. to testify (John 15:26; Rom. 8:16)
      3. to reveal future things (1 Tim. 4:1)
      4. to search the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10)
      5. to separate some and send them to minister by an express command (Isa. 61:1; Acts 13:2, 20:28)
      6. to create (Gen. 1:2)
      7. to make pregnant a barren virgin (Luke 1:35)
      8. to exercise operations of every kind and confer upon men ordinary as well as extraordinary gifts (1 Cor. 12:11)
9. no better do they succeed, who refer this to personification
   1. the subject of a prosopopoeia is ordinarily some corporeal thing lacking life and sense
   2. although some figures of speech occur in Scripture with respect to other things, it does not follow that whatever we read concerning the Holy Spirit should be understood figuratively and by a prosopopoeia
2. because he is set forth not only as distinct from the Father and the Son, but also as another one and sent from both (John 15:26, 16:7)
3. because he concurs with the Father and the Son (Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14; 1 John 5:7)
4. because he appeared in a visible form (Matt. 3:16; Acts 2:3)
   1. it belongs to persons (not to attributes or accidents) to assume visible forms and to appear in or with or under such forms
   2. the text draws a plain distinction between the Spirit and his gifts
5. because there is a sin against the Holy Spirit (Isa. 63:10; Matt. 12:31-32; Acts 5:3)
   1. for as God alone is the object of worship and adoration, so he alone is properly and ultimately the object of sin
   2. blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is reckoned a far more grievous crime
10. 3. no one can lie to anyone but to an intelligent and living person (Acts 5:4)
6. the distinction between the Holy Spirit and his gifts (1 Cor. 12:4, 8, 11)
12. That the Holy Spirit i snot only a person but a divine person can be evinced from the names, the attributes, works, and worship of God ascribed to him.
    1. the names
       1. what is said of Jehovah of Hosts is applied to the Holy Spirit (Isa. 6:9; Acts 28:25-26)
       2. he who is called the Spirit of God is immediately said to be God and the Rock of Israel (2 Sam. 23:2-3)
       3. believers are said be temples of the living God because they are the temples of the Holy Spirit who dwells in them (1 Cor. 3:16, 6:19)
2. divine attributes
   1. eternity (Gen. 1:2)
   2. omnipresence and immensity (Psa. 139:7-8; 1 Cor. 3:16)
   3. omniscience (1 Cor. 3:16; John 16:3; 2 Pet. 1:21)
   4. omnipotence (Luke 1:35; 1 Cor. 15:45; Rom. 8:11)
14. 3. the works
       1. of nature and creation (Gen. 1:2; Psa. 33:6)
       2. of conservation and government (Psa. 104:30)
       3. of miracles and grace (Matt. 12:28; 1 Cor. 12:4)
       4. of the conception of Christ (Luke 1:35)
       5. of unction and mission (Isa. 61:1)
       6. or remission of sins and regeneration (1 Cor. 6:11; John 3:5)
       7. of government of the church (Acts 13:2, 15:28, 20:28)
       8. of prediction of future events (John 16:3; Acts 11:28)
       9. of bestowal of gifts (1 Cor. 12:7)
       10. of illumination (Eph. 1:17-18)
       11. of sanctification (2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:2)
       12. of resurrection of the dead (Rom. 8:11)
4. divine worship
   1. is given to him because we are baptized in his name as well as in that of the Father and the Son
   2. the Spirit who speaks by the prophets is invoked by the church
3. if Scripture less frequently makes mention of the adoration and worship of the Holy Spirit, it is not because he is not to be adored equally with the Father and the Son, but because in the economy of salvation
4. he is more often set forth as the author and principle of prayers than as the object towards which they may be directed
17. A gift of God considered essentially cannot be God; but this does not hinder the gift of God taken personally from being a divine person: thus the Holy Spirit can be called the gift of God.
18. If some things are at times attributed to the Holy Spirit which seem to be less proper to a person, these must be understood of his gifts in us.
19. The gifts of the Holy Spirit (Heb. 2:4) do not so much mean partitions of the Spirit, as distributions of the gifts mentioned.
20. As the Holy Spirit is often by metonymy put for his gifts, so he is said to be increased or diminished not with regard to the principle but with regard to the gifts which he scatters among men.
21. The true God cannot be sent by command because he acknowledges no superior; but he can be sent by consent.
22. The Holy Spirit was not before the glorification of Christ (John 7:39) - not simply and absolutely, but relatively, by reason of the more copious outpouring about to take place afterwards, upon the apostles and others.

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THIRTY_FIRST QUESTION - Did the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son? We affirm.

1. As generation is ascribed to the Son, so procession is ascribed to the Holy Spirit.
2. The question concerns the eternal and internal procession which is terminated inwardly and is nothing else than the mode of communication of the divine essence.
3. That this procession differs from the generation of the Son cannot be denied because they are different persons who stand related to each other in origin.
4. As to the principle of procession, there is a controversy between the Greeks and Latins.
1. the question is whether he proceeds from the Father only or from the Father and the Son
2. the Greeks held the former; the Latins the latter
3. the Greeks accuse the Latins of adding to the Nicene Creed the word filioque
4. the Latins charge the Greeks with inserting the word monou in Article 7 of the Athanasian Creed
5. Although the Greeks ought not to have been charged with heresy on account of their opinion, still the opinion of the Latins may be properly retained as more agreeable to the words of Scripture.
1. the Holy Spirit is sent from the Son as well as from the Father (John 16:7)
2. he is called the Spirit of the Son as well as the Father (Gal. 4:6)
3. whatever the Spirit has, he has from the Son no less than from the Father (John 16:13-15)
4. the Son breathed the Holy Spirit on his disciples in time (John 20:22)
6. The Father and the Son breathe the Holy Spirit not as two diverse principles, but as two self-existent concur in that procession by the same power.
7. Although the Spirit may be said to proceed from the Father (John 15:26), it is not denied of the Son.
8. Since breathing virtue is numerically one in the Father and the Son, it is not good to say that in this respect the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.
9. If in certain primitive creeds the expression filioque was omitted, this was because at that time there had been no controversy agitated concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit.