passage 198 of 360 · book with much acrimony. But the accused won his case in a Synod. > PART TWO (52/80)
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to the ideal state of the rational creature before God decrees to create it; and it is for that very reason we maintain that virtues are good by their nature.
- M. Bayle has inserted a special chapter in his Continuation of Divers
Thoughts on the Comet (it is chapter 152) where he shows 'that the
Christian Doctors teach that there are things which are just antecedently to God's decrees'. Some theologians of the Augsburg Confession censured some of the Reformed who appeared to be of a different opinion; and this error was regarded as if it were a consequence of the absolute decree, which doctrine seems to exempt the will of God from any kind of reason,
ubi stat pro ratione voluntas. But, as I have observed already on various occasions, Calvin himself acknowledged that the decrees of God are in conformity with justice and wisdom, although the reasons that might prove this conformity in detail are unknown to us. Thus, according to him, the rules of goodness and of justice are anterior to the decrees of God. M.
Bayle, in the same place, quotes a passage from the celebrated M. Turretin which draws a distinction between natural divine laws and positive [241]
divine laws. Moral laws are of the first kind and ceremonial of the second.
Samuel Desmarests, a celebrated theologian formerly at Groningen, and Herr
Strinesius, who is still at Frankfort on the Oder, advocated this same distinction; and I think that it is the opinion most widely accepted even among the Reformed. Thomas Aquinas and all the Thomists were of the same opinion, with the bulk of the Schoolmen and the theologians of the Roman
Church. The Casuists also held to that idea: I count Grotius among the most eminent of them, and he was followed in this point by his commentators.
Herr Pufendorf appeared to be of a different opinion, which he insisted on maintaining in the face of censure from some theologians; but he need not be taken into account, not having advanced far enough in subjects of this kind. He makes a vigorous protest against the absolute decree, in his
Fecialis divinus, and yet he approves what is worst in the opinions of the champions of this decree, and without which this decree (as others of the Reformed explain) becomes endurable. Aristotle was very orthodox on this matter of justice, and the Schoolmen followed him: they distinguish, just as Cicero and the Jurists do, between perpetual right, which is binding on all and everywhere, and positive right, which is only for certain times and certain peoples. I once read with enjoyment the
Euthyphro of Plato, who makes Socrates uphold the truth on that point, and M. Bayle has called attention to the same passage.