Theological Theses · §2092 · Louis Le Blanc de Beaulieu

They hold the decrees easy to reconcile with freedom: providence moves the will only by proposing objects and reasons; certainty rests on middle knowledge

These doctors also think that, once their hypothesis is admitted, it is not hard to reconcile the decrees of providence with the freedom of our choice. On their view God's providence lets our wills act according to each one's own inclination.

God has not decreed to lead men's minds and turn them in various directions by any means other than setting objects before them, within and without, and other inducements that do not take from the will its power to act this way or otherwise. These leave to the will, as the schools put it, the specification of its action.

So the whole certainty of God's decrees rests on the infallibility of that middle knowledge, by which, they claim, God foreknows before any decree of his will which way the created will would lean and tend if these or those occasions for acting were put before it. It does not rest on any force or efficacy by which the will is necessarily moved to act so.

Latin

XXXII. Porro Doctores isti putant non esse difficile providentiae decreta cum arbitrii nostri libertate conciliare, si admittatur ipsorum hypothesis. Nam secundum ipsos Dei Providentia sinit voluntates nostras, secundum propriam cujusque inclinationem agere: nec aliter Deus decrevit hominum animos ducere, & varie inflectere, quam per objectorum intus & extra propositionem; aliasque rationes quae voluntati non tollunt potestatem sic, vel secus agendi; eique permittunt, ut loquuntur Scholae, actionis suae specificationem. Ac proinde tota certitudo decretorum Dei nititur infallibilitate scientiae illius Mediae, per quam Deum praescire asserunt, ante omne voluntatis suae decretum, in quam partem voluntas creata inclinatura & propensura sit, si hae vel istae agendi occasiones ipsi proponantur: non vero aliqua vi atque efficacia, qua voluntas necessario moveatur ut sic agat.

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