Chapter 29: On the governance of God in general
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE. On the governance of God in general.
Creation finished, God rested — that is, He did not go on founding new species of things, but rested in what He had founded: there follows governance, which is God's actual providence, by which He conserves, rules, and orders the whole world and cares for each creature and its actions and passions, decently and as befits them, so that nothing in this universe of things subsists, acts, or is moved without Him, nor falls out otherwise than as seems good to Him, unto the good of the creatures themselves — especially of the godly — and unto the declaration of divine perfection.
For order requires that, after we have treated the doctrine of creation as the first foundation of God's kingdom in time according to His eternal counsel — which God's sabbath followed (Genesis 2:2; Exodus 20:11; Hebrews 4:4) — we now come to governance, as is clear from chapter 24, aphorism 2. Governance, otherwise commonly called actual providence, does not signify some property of God, nor a quality or power or habit, but an act — not inward and within Himself, but outward and external, about an object other than God, and that not as united to God from eternity in His intellection, but as separate and existing apart: an act, I say, of practical intellect or of will using the intellect, not finished in a single moment but continuous through the moments of duration; which, viewed as powerful and continuous, you may not badly so name.
Latin
CAPUT VICESIMUM NONUM, De gubernatione DEI in genere. Creatione peracta Deus quievit, hoc est, novas rerum species condere haud perrexit, sed in conditis acquievit: sequitur gubernatio, quae est providentia Dei actualis, qua totum mundum conservat, regit, ordinat et singulas creaturas earumque actiones et passiones curat se decenter, illisque convenienter, ut nihil subsistats nec agat nec moveatur sine eo in hac rerum universitate, neque secus cadat quam ipsi visum, in bonum ipsarum creaturarum, praesertim piorum hominum, adque perfectionis divinae declarationem. Ordo enim postulat ut, postquam exsecuti sumus doctrinam de creatione tanquam regni Dei prima fundatione in tempore secundum aeternum ipsius consilium facta, quam sabbatum Dei excepit — Genesis 2:2; Exodus 20:11; Hebrews 4:4 — nunc accedamus ad gubernationem, ut liquet ex capitis 24 aphorismo 2, quae alias providentia actualis dici consuevit, et non significat aliquam Dei proprietatem, non qualitatem sive potentiam sive habitum, sed actum, qui non ad intra internus, sed ad extra et externus, circa obiectum aliud a Deo, idque non ut Deo ab aeterno in intellectione ipsius unitum, sed ut separatum et seorsim exsistens: actum, inquam, intellectus practici seu voluntatis intellectu utentis, non unico momento peractum, sed per momenta durationis continuum; quem intuitu potentem et continuum non male dixeris.