two things, namely, that it will take place and that it is able not to take place. But these two things are not antagonistic to each other, because, as many things are able to occur which do not occur, so many things occur which are able not to occur; therefore, many things occur contingently. But that which is to occur contingently is truly to occur, and therefore can be foreknown. For everything which is true is capable of being known. Therefore knowledge does not exclude contingency." (Locus II. § 255.) By the contingency of an event Gerhard evidently meant its real contingency, or complete freedom from the category of necessity, and not that species of contingency which some Calvinistic writers affirmed when they described an event as contingent in relation to man, but necessary in relation to God. Cudworth, Clarke, and other eminent Anglican writers, were equally pronounced for the verdict that the divine prescience grasps the contingent in a way which in no wise interferes with its proper contingency. (Intellect. System, Chap. V.; Discourse on the Being and Attributes of God.)

In connection with the topic of foreknowledge, considerable discussion was expended upon the question whether a scientia media is to be predicated of God. As the phrase suggests, the question was whether a mean is to be affirmed between the two forms of divine knowledge which the scholastics had specified, namely, the scientia simplicis intelligentiæ, or God's knowledge of Himself and of what is possible to His omnipotence, and the scientia visionis, or the knowledge of that which is actually to occur by His efficiency or permission. The advocates of the scientia media maintained that, besides these two kinds of knowledge, there is in God a knowledge of what free agents would do under certain supposable conditions; that is, a knowledge neither of the simply possible, nor of that which is actually to be, but of that which would be under such and such circumstances. This theory was favored by Mo

lina, Suarez, and other distinguished Jesuits, as helping to reconcile the divine election with human freedom. The Arminian theologians, Curcellæus and Limborch, also accepted it; at least, they imputed such a knowledge to God as the theory affirmed, though not disposed to quarrel with those who thought that this knowledge might properly be included under the old classification. A number of Lutheran theologians favored the theory. Calvinistic writers were commonly opposed to it, though as sturdy an advocate of predestination as Gomar gave it his sanction. (See list of advocates and opponents as given by Quenstedt, Systema, De Attributis Divinis, quæst. 7.)

It was commonly maintained that God wills necessarily whatever pertains properly to Himself, while He wills freely that which relates to creatures. Some who were inclined to extreme views of divine sovereignty asserted the Scotist maxim that the will of God is the absolute rule of right. Luther's words are quite as explicit as those of Scotus. He says: "There is no cause or reason which can be prescribed to the will of God as its rule or measure, since nothing is equal or superior to it, but it itself is the rule of all things. . . . Not indeed because He ought to will or to have willed so, is that which He wills right; but, on the contrary, because He so wills, it is bound to be right." (De Servo Arbitrio.) "The will of God," says Calvin, "is the highest rule of justice; so that what He wills must be just, for this very reason, because He wills it. When it is inquired, therefore, why the Lord did so, the answer must be, Because He would. But if you go further, and ask why He so determined, you are in search of something greater and higher than the will of God, which can never be found." (Inst., III. 23.) Calvin, however, notwithstanding this strong statement, suggests after all that he meant not so much that God's will is absolutely the highest rule of right, as that it is one which we cannot transcend, and must regard as binding our own judgment;

for he adds, "We represent not God as lawless, who is a law to Himself." Beza says, "The will of God is the highest rule of justice." (Ad Castel. Calum. Responsio.) Equivalent language is used by Zanchi. (De Natura Dei, III. 4.) But not all of the Calvinistic writers were satisfied with this representation. Turretin, after propounding the question whether the will of God is the rule of right, says: "Some stand for the affirmative, maintaining that all moral good and evil depend upon the free will of God, and that nothing is good or just except as God wills. Others, on the contrary, stand for the negative, and acknowledge a certain essential goodness and justice in moral actions antecedent to the will of God, so that those things are not good and just because God wills, but God wills them because they are good and just." Turretin declares for the latter opinion, certain explanations being understood. His view is summed up in this sentence: "The will of God can be called and truly is the rule of righteousness extrinsically and in respect to us, but not indeed intrinsically and in respect of God." (Inst., Locus III. quæst. 18.) This naturally was the position taken by the Arminians. "God can do," says Arminius, "whatever He wills with His own, but He cannot will to do with His own that which He cannot do of right. For His will is restricted by the limits of justice." (Discussion with Francis Junius.) The same view was emphatically asserted by the Cambridge Platonists. Moral distinctions, according to Cudworth, cannot depend upon mere will, any more than mathematical. "Truth is not factitious; it is a thing which cannot be arbitrarily made, but is. The divine will and omnipotence itself hath no imperium upon the divine understanding; for if God understood only by will, He would not understand at all." (Immutable Morality; Intellectual System.) "The reasons of things," said Whichcote, “are eternal; they are not subject to any power." (Sermons.) The same position is implied by the statement of Baxter,

that there are certain duties which are founded in the relation of our rational nature to the nature of God, and of which we must say that God wills them because they are good, and not that they are good because He wills them. (Unreasonableness of Infidelity, Pref.) Samuel Clarke defines the basis of moral obligation as follows: "The true ground and foundation of all eternal moral obligation is this, that the same reasons which always and necessarily do determine the will of God, ought also constantly to determine the will of all subordinate intelligent beings." (Discourse on the Being and Attributes of God.) Clarke and some others of the English theologians just quoted had the theories of Hobbes in mind as they wrote. In harmony with his political maxims, Hobbes enthroned arbitrary power at the centre of the universe. "God in His natural kingdom," he says, "hath a right to rule, and to punish those who break His laws, from His sole irresistible power. ... Now if God have the right of sovereignty from His power, it is manifest that the obligation of yielding Him obedience lies on men by reason of their weakness." (Philosophical Rudiments.)

The period, on the whole, was distinguished by a strong emphasis upon the justice of God, and to none of the divine attributes was a more prominent place assigned than to this. A large proportion of Protestant theologians, as they held respecting the atonement the strict satisfaction theory, held also that a justitia vindicatrix must be predicated of God, or a justice requiring satisfaction as a condition of remission. Such a view was vehemently opposed by the Socinians. It was also rejected by the Arminians. Among Calvinistic divines it was challenged by Twisse and Rutherford, but Turretin, who approved it, speaks of it as a wellnigh universal opinion in his day. (Inst., Locus III. quæst. 19.)

SECTION II. THE TRINITY.

IN the Lutheran and the Reformed Church generally, as well as in the Roman Catholic, the Augustinian theory of the Trinity, or that expressed in the so-called Athanasian creed, was emphatically asserted. Augustine's leading illustration, however, was not acceptable to all. "That speculation of Augustine," says Calvin, "is far from being solid, that the soul is a mirror of the Trinity, because it contains understanding, will, and memory." (Inst., I. 15.) Bossuet, on the other hand, reproduced essentially the Augustinian illustration. (Sermon sur le Mystère de la Trinité.) The principal creeds, as well as the writings of prominent theologians among the Lutherans and the Reformed, disallowed any inequality between the Divine Persons, and declared them to be, in the full sense, of one substance, power, and eternity. Calvin maintained even that the Son is to be called self-existent, implying thereby that generation applies to the Second Person as Son, but not as God, or that the personal relation, not the essence, is to be viewed as derived. He says: "Whoever asserts that the Son owes His essence to the Father, denies Him to be self-existent. But this is contradicted by the Holy Spirit, who gives Him the name of Jehovah." (Inst., I. 13.) Zanchi, on the other hand, did not hesitate to speak of the Father as the fountain of the entire deity in the Son (De Uno Vero Deo, Lib. VIII. cap. 1), and the Irish Articles state that the Father begets the person of the Son by the communication of His whole essence. Petavius strongly reprobated Calvin's position on this point. (Theol. Dogmat., Lib. II. cap. 3.) Evidently, however, the subject, as considered by these writers, involved little else than a question of words. So long as it is allowed that the essence in the Son is eternal, unoriginated, and the same as in the Father, the meaning of the Son's generation must