Of Saving Faith, Section 11
SECT. XI.
Page 406. YOur second answer of the Objection you chose is, by alleadging from Rob. Baronius two Reasons to prove that Fiducia is not in the Will. The first is [Because D…ffidence is not in the Will.] Answ. Fiducia is an act both of the Understanding and Will, and Diffidence is seated in both. D…ffidence in the Will is mostly a Privation of the Trust and Affiance aforementioned. Your Argument from Baronius to prove it only in the Understanding is, [because men may distrust themselves, which signifieth not a hatred. &c.] Answ. 1. Though it signifies no hatred or aversation, it may signifie a Privation of the Trust and boldness, and expectation of the will and understanding both. If uti and frui be acts of the will, then so may Affiance. Do you think Hope is in the will or not? I do not think you will be so singular as to deny it. And then I would ask whether Despair be in the Will? If Despair be, so may Diffidence. And here I may put you to answer your own Argument. A man Despaireth of himself and his own affairs, without Hatred or Aversation: therefore Despair is not in the Will. If you say there is a certain Aversation of the will from the evil of his affairs, in Despair I shall say, it may be as truly said of that Diffidence which is a full contrary to Trust, If you say that Despair is in the will, as a Privation of Hope, I shall say then so is this Diffidence as a Privation of Trust.
Page 407. You confirm the in opinion of Baronius from the [the use of mediums to breed Confidence] But, 1. That proves Affiance, as its taken for strength of Assent to be in the Intellect, but not as taken for the fiducial acquiescence or expectation of the Will. 2. It proveth Affiance in the Scripturesense (as taken for faith) to be in the understanding but not to be in the understanding alone: For affiance as hope is a complicate Act of the Intellect and Will, not physically one, but morally one, and Physically so admirably complicate, that its very hard to distinguish them.
Page 408. You give us Baronius his second Argument [si formaliter esset actus voluntatis, nil aliud esset quam de siderium, seu amor objecti: & multi amant & desiderant objectum, qui non habent fiduciam: &c.]
Ans. The Consequence is without all appearance of Truth (in my eyes) for it is the material object; whose love he and you do blainly speak of: but the love of the material object as the end is presupposed to the Act of the Affiance in veracity and word of the Promiser as the means: and it is from this formal object, that Affiance is denominated I do not trust the pardon of sin Justification, Adoption, though I love and desire them: but I trust Gods Promise, because of his veracity for the pardon of sin: But if the Promise it self be the object which you mean; yet I answer, 1. My love to the Promise is because of the good promised, & therefore primarily to the benefit, and but secoundarily to the Promise: but my Trust is primarily in Gods veracity, and next in the Promise as the product of that veracity, and not at all in the benefit, but for the benefit promised: I love the Benefit or good promised formally, and I love the Promise for the benefits sake finally, and as mediatly participating of the goodness loved. But I trust in the Divine veracity formally, and in the Promise secondarily, as partaking of it as the matter in which it is exprest: But the good of the benefit is only finally pertinent to Affiance, and the good of the Promise as the means to that end.
2. I further answer to this (and at once to the confirmation of the Minor) that there is aliquid desiderii & amoris in affiance, and essential to it, as there is aliquid boni essential in the object. But being a compound act, it follows, not that it must be denominated Love or Desire, or that it is nil aliud. Even the divine veracity is the formal object of affiance, not simply, but as the Author and Informer of a Promise of good things: For it is not called the object of affiance; if it produce only an assertion that maketh to our hurt. And the Promise is the object of affiance as a relative thing that hath respect at once both to the veracity of the Promiser and the good that is promised. Hope hath somewhat of Love and somewhat of Desire in it essentially, And yet it is not to be called Love or Desire no more then a man is to be called [Reason or Intellect, or Will, or a Body, or a Soul: so faith hath somewhat of Hope and of Love in it, and yet is not to be called Love or Hope: of which more anon.
To the confirming Reason I answer; Its true that many love and desire that which they have no affiance or trust to obtain: and that proves that Love and Desire are not terms convertible with Affiance or Faith: but it proves not that affiance or faith hath no participation of Love or Desire. There is Love essential to all Desire: & yet a man may love that which he desireth not (if he have it already,) though he cannot desire that which he loveth not There is Love & desire essentially in hope, and yet essential to hope, a man love & desire that which he hopeth not for. There is expectation essential to Hope and yet I may expect that (as a hurt or injury,) which I hope not for. And yet you will tell me that which I know not, if you tell me of any thing essential to Hope besides this desire (cōprehending love) & expectation: I take it to be a compound of Desire and expectation (or at most with some acquiescence and pleasure of the mind conjunct.) Yet neither of them alone is Hope.
Page 409. You add a third Reason to prove that Affiance is not in the Will, from [the use of the words in all good Authors:] But what words? foreign and foreign; but 1. Amesius (Medul. li 1. ubi sup.) tells you that even these, words in several Texts of Scripture signifie saving faith 2. But what's this to our Question, you should have limited it to one sort of Affiance, and not have spoke thus of all Affiance in general, nor of that which Protestants plead for in special. Prove it if you can that foreign, or the english Trusting or Affiance, or the Latine fiducia or fides, are not acts of the Will. And of this, we call not for proof from prophane Authors, but sacred, as knowing that foreign and foreign is not the same thing with them and with the Scriptures: See Mr. Gatakers Cinnus, pag. 383, 384 385. And against Pfochenius de novi instrumenti stylo, pag. 88, 89. where he citeth abundance of Scripture Texts, where foreign and foreign are used for Faith and Affiance, or Trust to his Word that promiseth us some good, which is not the use of the words with prophane Writers. And of your own sense of fiducia, see Chamier de fide, li. 12. chap. 11. in Panst. And Amesii Bellarmini. Enervat. Tom. li. 5. 2, and 3. proving that faith is Affiance, and cap. 1. citing Card. Contarenus, Alexand. Ales, Bonavent, Durandus, Cajetan, affirming it to be in the Will as well as the Intellect. To conclude therefore your Plero horie is not (alwaies at lest) in the Will, but fides vel fiducia, Trust, Affiance, Faith are in the Intellect and Will.
You conclude that [He that after all this, shall still say that fiducia is in the Will, I will not say he is impudent, but sure a little thing will not make him blush.]
Answ. For my part I was naturally sufficiently bashfull, but my Brethren have notably assisted me in the cure of it: But I must confess that I see nothing yet in your Arguments, nor in the badness of my cause or company to make me blush. Much more hath been said by Bellarmine and many more, since this controversie begun among us; then you have here said; and yet almost all Protestant Divines that ever I read or heard of, (excepting very few noted for singularity) do without blushing hold to the old cause in this point, asserting Faith to be essentially fiducia, and in the Will: And the few that confirm it to the Intellect, do most of them make that Intellectual Assent to contain an Intellectuall Affiance.
And for Baronius, whose reasons, you urge, he was young and raw when he wrote those exercitations, and since that did change his mind in many particulars; as you may for instance see in your point of the Spirits Testimony, which in his Disput. against Turnbullus, he otherwise handleth then here. I ever lookt (since I had any acquaintance with them and those matters) on his exercitations, as the unripe fruits of an excellent wit: and valued then more for what they promised and attempted, (then in many points) for what they performed: but his after-labors, even the post-humours have so much more Maturity and solidity of conceptions, that I must say it is pitty they had not been more perfected, and God had not longer spared us that man, whose Judgement I value as highly as almost any mans since the primitive times of the Church. But what reason gives he why fiducia in his second sense is not an Act but effect of faith? viz. [ut accipitur pro interna acquiescentia in divina benevolentia & gratiâ, per quam toti ab illa pendemus, &c.] page 233. Or rather as it is an Acquiescence in the veracity of the Promiser. You know also that he is put to defend his singularity by answering these Objections. [Si fiducia est in intellectu non differt ab assensu, ut hoc repugnat Doctrinae omnium Orthodoxorum,] page. 241. Et nullus unquam Orthodoxus Theologus dixit fiduciam esse assensum aut judicium mentis.] page. 242. I confess I have long taken those passages of Baronius which you alledge, for some of his chifest oversights: and I yet see no cause to think otherwise.
Among others (commonly given by our Divines) these following reasons move me to think that Affiance as signified by foreign, &c. in Scripture, and by our english word Trust, is in the Will as well as in the Intellect.
Rea. 1. If Affiance or Trust be only in the Intellect, then may we be said to put our Trust or Affiance in threatning, whose Object is some mischief to us: but this is inauditum, and so the Consequent is false, therefore so is the Antecedent.
Rea. 2. The Gospel or Promise, as the Object of our faith or Trust, are essentially good as well as true: therefore faith must be essentially in the Will as well as the Intellect.
Rea. 3. Christ himself as he is the Object of our faith or Trust, is good as well as true: therefore that faith must be the act of the Will as well Intellect.
Rea. 4. Justification, Adoption, Glorification, and the other benefits, which by faith are to be received, are offered as good, therefore the receiving of them belongs to the Will.
Rea. 5. Hope and Despare are not only in the Intellect, therefore Affiance is not only in the Intellect, for they differ very narrowly. Our Divines, Chamier, Amesius, and other ordinarily make all hope to be fiducia, though not all fiducia to be hope, making this the difference, that the fiducia fidei is about the object as present, and the fiducia spei about the object as future.
Rea. 6. Frui and Ʋti are Acts of the Will: But one or both these are in Affiance, therefore Affiance is an Act of the Will. For the Minor, as God is the perfect Fountain of all Verity, and his Veracity is his Divine perfection; so the soul in Affiance doth frui, in some initial sort which Viators are capable of, enjoy God in this his perfection. For Affiance is a certain Acquiescence and Complacencie of the soul in Gods veracity. 2. And as his Promise is the means of the benefit to be received, so the Will doth by affiance use this Promise to its end.
Rea. 7. Veracity which is the formal object of Faith, is as much the Result of Gods infinite goodness, as of his Wisdom and Power: Thefore it is by faith or trust as necessarily rested on by the Will as the understanding.
Object. Then the Belief of a threatning is Affiance.
Answ. No: There goes more then meer veracity and revelation, to the Object of Affiance. It is faith in general, if there be but these, and when we believe a threatning: But all faith is not Affiance: It is not Trust or Affiance unless it be some desirable thing that is revealed, and then in relation to that our Credence or Belief in the Divine veracity is thus named; even when both these objects do concur. 2. Yet I add that a christian Belief, even of the threatniugs of God, must be voluntary and contain a Complacency of the Will in the Will and veracity of God, though not in the evil threatned, and though so it be not called Trust. And they that believe any Truth in oluntarily upon the credit of Gods veracity, taking no degree of complacency in his veracity or Will, have not true faith in genere, save analogically or secundum quid.
Rea. 8. Scripture being a Doctrine of morality, and not of meer Physicks, is morally to be understood: and therefore according to the common use of these words in morality, Trust, Faith, Affiance are not to be limited to any one physical Act, nor any one faculty of the soul, nor to be shut out of the Will. If this Town were all infected with the Plague, and only one Physician able to cure them; if he offer them to do it freely, and some slander him as a Deceiver, and he tell them again, If you will trust me I will cure you: All the world will understand here that by trusting him, he means both the trust of the understanding and the Will, arising from some satisfaction both of his ability and honesty, and so taking him for our Physitian, and putting our lives into his hand: and so in other cases.