Page 85 - Absolute Predestination With Observations On The Divine Attributes

look as if He acknowledged Himself liable to mistakes, were He to make
changeable decrees: His pleasure must necessarily be always the same, seeing
that only which is best can, at any time, please an all-perfect Being." A good
man (adds this philosopher) is under a kind of pleasing necessity to do good,

and if he did not do it he could not be a good man.

"Magnum hoc argumentum est firmæ voluntatis, ne mutare quidem posse": "It is

a striking proof of a magnanimous will to be absolutely incapable of changing."
And such is the will of God: it never fluctuates nor varies. But, on the other
hand, were He susceptible of change, could He, through the intervention of any
inferior cause or by some untoward combination of external circumstances, be

induced to recede from His purpose and alter His plan; it would be a most
incontestable mark of weakness and dependence, the force of which argument

made Seneca, though a heathen, cry out, "Non externa Deos cogunt; sed sua
illis in legem æterna voluntas est": "Outward things cannot compel the gods, but
their own eternal will is a law to themselves." It may be objected that this seems
to infer as if the Deity was still under some kind of restraint. By no means. Let

Seneca obviate this cavil, as he effectually does, in these admirable words: "Nec
Deus ab hoc minus liber aut potens est; ipse enim est necessitas sua." "God is
not hereby either less free or less powerful, for He Himself is His own

necessity."

On the whole, it is evident that when the Stoics speak even in the strongest
terms of the obligation of fate on God Himself, they may and ought to be

understood in a sense worthy of the adorable uncreated Majesty. In thus
interpreting the doctrine of fate, as taught by the genuine philosophers of the

Portico, I have the great Augustine on my side, who, after canvassing and justly
rejecting the bastard or astrological fate, thus goes on: "At qui omnium
connectionem seriemque causarum, qua fit omne quod fit, fati nomine
appellant; non multum cum eis, de verbi controversia, certandum atque

laborandum est: quando quidem ipsum causarum ordinem, et quandam
connectionem, summi Dei tribuunt voluntati": i.e., "But for those philosophers
(meaning the Stoics) who by the word fate mean that regular chain and series of

causes, to which all things that come to pass owe their immediate existence, we
will not earnestly contend with these persons about a mere term, and we the
rather acquiesce in their manner of expression, because they carefully ascribe

this fixed succession of things, and this mutual concatenation of causes and
effects, to the will of the supreme God." Augustine adds many observations of
the same import, and proves from Seneca himself, as rigid a Stoic as any, that