Page 83 - Absolute Predestination With Observations On The Divine Attributes

words truth, cause, nature, necessity, intimating that fate is the true, natural,
necessary cause of all things that are, and of the manner in which they are.

(2) This fate is said to be ex aidiou, from everlasting. Nor improperly, since the

constitution of things was settled and fixed in the Divine mind (where they had
a sort of ideal existence) previous to their actual creation, and therefore

considered as certainly future, in His decree, may be said to have been, in some
sense, co-eternal with Himself.

(3) The immutable and perpetual complication mentioned in the definition

means no more than that reciprocal involution of causes and effects from God
downwards, by which things and events (positis omnibus ponendis) are
necessarily produced, according to the plan which infinite wisdom designed

from the beginning. God, the First Cause, hath given being and activity to an
immense number of secondary subaltern causes, which are so inseparably linked
and interwoven with their respective effects (a connection truly admirable, and
not to be comprehended by man in his present state) that those things which do,

in reality, come to pass necessarily and by inevitable destiny, seem, to the
superficial observer, to come to pass in the common course of nature, or by

virtue of human reasoning and freedom. This is that inscrutable method of
Divine wisdom, "A qua (says Augustine) est omnis modus, omnis species, omnis
ordo, mensura, numerus, pondus; a qua sunt semina formarum, formæ

seminum, motus seminum atque formarum."

Necessity is the consequence of fate. So Trismegistus: "All things are brought
about by nature and by fate, neither is any place void of providence. Now

providence is the self-perfect reason of the super-celestial God, from which
reason of His issue two native powers, necessity and fate." Thus, in the
judgment of the wiser heathens, effects were to be traced up to their producing

causes; those producing causes were to be farther traced up to the still higher
causes, by which they were produced, and those higher causes to God, the cause
of them. Persons, things, circumstances, events, and consequences are the

effects of necessity; necessity is the daughter of fate; fate is the offspring of
God's infinite wisdom and sovereign will. Thus, all things are ultimately
resolved into their great primary Cause, by Whom the chain was originally let

down from heaven, and on whom every link depends.

It must be owned that all the fatalists of antiquity (particularly among the
Stoics) did not constantly express themselves with due precision. A Christian,