Hence, 4. our Author most aptly asserts that God knows Most Perfectly, that is, α. Intimately, by penetrating to the Essence of all things, and by completely exhausting all Attributes of the same. β. Infallibly, because, of course, God knows all things through Himself and His own Essence, neither does divine Cognition depend upon things themselves uncertain, nor is it able to be confirmed by any new light of more certain means; hence there is no doubt in it, nor is fear of the opposite able to have place in it: while fallibility would certain posit manifest Imperfection in the Knowledge of the Infinitely Perfect God. γ. Adequately, and Comprehensively, while by a certain comprehension of mind, as it were, He comprehends the thing in its entirety, and most absolutely knows whatever is knowable, to the full extent that it is knowable. Of course, that certain things sometimes are not fully and clearly perceived, only arises from the dependence of cognition on the object, which, as often as it in its entirety does not affect the perceptive faculty with sufficient vividness, begets an imperfect and obscure of itself. And so, what by its Independence is by no means subject to objects, also suffers no occasions of this sort of imperfect cognition. δ. That God knows Immutably, because Intellect and Knowledge in the perfectly Simple God do not really differ from His Immutable Essence, has already been observed in § 26: whence it is certain that God does not ever learn anything in time, of which He was previously ignorant; and that He does not ever experience forgetfulness of any thing that He had previously held in mind. ε. Finally, Most Immediately and intuitively, with a clear and distinct intuition, as it were, taking in the entirety of what is able to be known in a thing, not otherwise than if all things, past, present, and future, were immediately present before Him: hence it is disputed whether in propriety of speech Foreknowledge/Prescience is able to be attributed to God; see HOORNBEECK, Socinianismo confutato, book II, chapter III, section I, page 325 at the end.
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