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Preface
The Doctrine Of Absolute Predestination Stated and Asserted: With A Preliminary Discourse On The Divine Attributes. Translated, In Great Measure, From The Latin Of Jerom Zanchius: With Some Account Of His Life. By: Augustus TopladyWhen I consider the absolute independency of God, and the necessary, total dependence of all created things on him their first cause; I cannot help standing astonished at the pride of impotent, degenerate man, who is so prone to consider himself as a being possessed of sovereign freedom, and invested with a power of self-salvation: able, he imagines, to counteract the designs even of infinite wisdom, and to defeat the agency of Omnipotence itself. Ye shall be as gods, said the tempter, to Eve, in Paradise: and you are as gods,…
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Life of Jerom Zanchius
Some Account of the Life of Jerom Zanchius It has been asserted[1] that this great divine was born at Alzano, a town of Italy, situate in the valley of Seri, or Serio. But the learned John Sturmius, who was not only Zanchy's contemporary, but one of his most intimate friends, expressly affirms, in a speech[2] delivered on a public and important occasion, that he was nobili natus jamilia Bergomi, born of an illustrious family at Bergamo, the capital of a little province, in the north-west of Italy, anciently a part of Gallia Cispadana, but A.D. 1428 made a parcel of the Venetian territory, as it still continues.[3] I look upon Sturmius's testimony as decisive, it being hardly credible that he could mistake the native place…
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Absolute Predestination
Observations on the Divine Attributes, Necessary to be Premised, in Order to Our Better Understanding the Doctrine of Predestination. Although the great and ever-blessed God is a being absolutely simple and infinitely remote from all shadow of composition, He is, nevertheless, in condescension to our weak and contracted faculties, represented in Scripture as possessed of divers Properties, or Attributes, which, though seemingly different from His Essence, are in reality essential to Him, and constitutive of His very Nature. Of these attributes, those on which we shall now particularly descant (as being more immediately concerned in the ensuing subject) are the following ones: I., His eternal wisdom and foreknowledge; II., The absolute freedom and liberty of His will; III., The perpetuity and unchangeableness both of Himself…
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Chapter 1: Wisdom and Foreknowledge
The Divine Wisdom and Foreknowledge of God. I.—With respect to the Divine Wisdom and Foreknowledge, I shall lay down the following positions:— Position 1.—God is, and always was so perfectly wise, that nothing ever did, or does, or can elude His knowledge. He knew, from all eternity, not only what He Himself intended to do, but also what He would incline and permit others to do. "Known unto God are all His works from eternity " (Acts 15:18). Position 2.—Consequently, God knows nothing now, nor will know anything hereafter, which He did not know and foresee from everlasting, His foreknowledge being co-eternal with Himself, and extending to everything that is or shall be done (Heb. 4:13). All things, which comprises past, present and future, are…
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Chapter 2: The Will of God, Part 1
II. The Will of God, with regard to which we assert as follows: Position 1.—The Deity is possessed not only of infinite knowledge, but likewise of absolute liberty of will, so that whatever He does, or permits to be done, He does and permits freely and of His own good pleasure. Consequently, it is His free pleasure to permit sin, since, without His permission, neither men nor devils can do anything. Now, to permit is, at least, the same as not to hinder, though it be in our power to hinder if we please, and this permission, or non-hinderance, is certainly an act of the Divine will. Hence Augustine[1] says, ''Those things which, seemingly, thwart the Divine will are, nevertheless, agreeable to it, for, if…
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Chapter 3: The Will of God, Part 2
Position 5.— God's hidden will is peremptory and absolute, and therefore cannot be hindered from taking effect. God's will is nothing else than God Himself willing, consequently it is omnipotent and unfrustrable. Hence we find it termed by Augustine and the schoolmen, voluntas omnipotentissima, because whatever God wills cannot fail of being effected. This made Augustine say,[1] "Evil men do many things contrary to God's revealed will, but so great is His wisdom, and so inviolable His truth, that He directs all things into those channels which He foreknew." And again,[2] "No free will of the creature can resist the will of God, for man cannot so will or nill as to obstruct the Divine determination or overcome the Divine power." Once more,[3] "It cannot…
