The Reduction of a Digresser, Section 6 – Section 7
§. 6.
R▪ B. HOld a little. 1. The first part of your task, you have competently performed, viz. to acquaint us of the lower O…bs of your ancient Dignity: Our distance is so great from the Superiour Planets, that we might never have heard of your Deans Chair, had you not happily here informed us: But I hope you had a more noble Imploiment in your Deans Chair, then this poor, common, Inferiour work, to tell men of Univocum aequivocum & Analogum, and to distinguish Analogum Proportionis & Attributionis: But though I had not the happiness to be educated at your feet, yet in this your Learned, Elaborate, Polemical writing, I may, no doubt, expect the best of your Judgement; and may conjecture what you were wont to reade to your Pupils by that which you here so gravely read to Mr. Goodwin. First, you will not, it seems [jumble the terms so promiscuously as the Logickmongers do:] But, when these words had raised my expectations of some more exquisite distribution then ordinary, or at least of more apt terms, I am put off with the old distinction, not only common in the Schoolmen, but in the multitudes of Logick and Metaphysick Writers, which I had thought you had disdained: Not the smallest Senguerdius but hath it; (onelyonly he, with many others term it, but Barbarous; whereas Keckerman terms it Insipid, and Burgersdicius inept:) And Rutgersius saith, that Analogorum nomine solum ea dicuntur quae secundum proportionem apud Aristotelem vocantur, prout notant interpretes ex cap. 16. post c. 15. maxime verò ex c. 6. 1. Ethic. &c. Usus tamen Latinae Scholae & Philosophorum obtinuit, ut etiam ea quae secundum attributionem vocantur analogorum nomine censeantur.
But though your Distinction be very ordinary, I confesse there is more then ordinary in your Explication of the members: But it is of such a nature, as makes me begin to abate the apprehensions of my infelicity, in that I had never the happiness to be your Auditor, and to have Learned Logick at your feet. Your Analogum in genere, is that [which is attributed according to the same name, and as signifying the same Nature, but not in the like manner.] Your Analogum proportionis, is [when the same name is given to things of the like, but not the same nature.] Analogum in Genere, is of the same nature, as well as Name. Analogum Proportionis, is not the same Nature, but the Like. And so the nature of the Genus is not in the Species: Nay they are contrary one to the other: and onelyonly the later member (Analogum Attributionis) remains an Analogum, and each Species receives not the definition of the Genus. If this be the Doctrine which you so [Gravely deliver from your Deans Chair, I will say as you do [I cannot perswade my self to leave my old Doctors to follow You.] I will even turn to poor Keckerman, Burgersdicius, Suarez again; yea to a Rutgersius, Jacchaeus, Gorlaeus, Serguerdius, Alstedius, or any body that's near me of this generation, before I will swallow what I cannot digest.
§. 7.
Mr. K. NOw if Substance and Accident be Analoga, because of the dependance of Accidents on the Subject, then what ever is predicated of God and the Creature, must be predicated Analogically, because the creature hath it not but by dependance on God, but God independently from the Creature: And as the Being of the Creature, is derived from God in fieri, and depends on him in facto esse; so questionless the Knowledge of the Creature, is but a beam from the fountain of light, which is in God, and cannot longer subsist, then he vouchsafeth to preserve it by a continued irradiation, &c.