De causa Dei: Book I, Chapter 27
Thomas Bradwardine, De causa Dei contra Pelagium (1344). English translation: Wroot Press, CC BY-NC 4.0; machine-learning use permitted with attribution (https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/rights/).
Source: Henry Savile's edition, London 1618, 261C–264D; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/1/27/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[261C–261E]
Chapter 27. That all things come about from divine providence.

The next step, after what has been said, seems to be to inquire into providence. For Lactantius, in the first book of his Divine Institutes against the Gentiles, reports that Democritus is the author of the opinion which holds that all things happen by chance, and Epicurus its confirmer; whence also the Philosopher, Physics 2, 44, says: There are some, he says, who give chance as the cause of this heaven and of all the worlds: for from chance, they say, came the whirling [n1] and the motion that sorted everything into this order. These men, as appears from the first book On Generation and Corruption and from Metaphysics 1, seem to have been Democritus and his colleague Leucippus, who posited that all things come about from indivisible bodies, but bodies concurring in different ways, according to risutos, diatigi and tropi [n2], that is, according to shape, order and position; and this concurrence, they said, comes about by fortune or chance. Epicurus, imitating them, judged likewise. Hence Isidore too, Ethics 8, 19 [n3], says that Epicurus said: The world is not furnished with any divine providence, nor is it ruled; but he assigned the origin of things to atoms, that is, to uncuttable and solid bodies, by whose chance concurrences all things are born. He asserted also that God does nothing. Josephus also, Jewish Antiquities 10, last chapter, says that the Epicureans deny the providence of life, and do not think that God cares for human affairs, nor judge that the universe is governed by a blessed and incorruptible substance for the stability of all things, but affirm that this world is borne along of its own accord, without ruler and without any care. Others, not speaking so universally but making a division, said that the heavenly things are governed by providence, but that everything lower is tossed about by chance motions. Still others, thinking more irrationally, brought forward the contrary opinion.

But against all these (or rather, for the sake of all of them) it must be shown that everything that happens happens from divine providence, and is ordered by the laws of that providence. For what is providence but far-seeing, or fore-seeing, of the intellect, together with far-willing, or fore-willing, of the will [n4]? Now God has knowledge of all things, as the sixth chapter teaches, and that knowledge is a certain cause of any thing made, as 17 attests; God also has willing toward all things, as 8, 9 and 22 show, and neither of these is new, by the twenty-third; and the willing of God is effective and cannot be frustrated, by 10. It is evident, therefore, that everything that happens happens from divine providence. Again, by the preceding chapter all things are good, and so, according to what was set down earlier, they descend from the first good, and not wrongly and heedlessly, but with foresight and discernment. Again, a good head of the household takes care of everything that concerns him and provides as much as

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he knows and can, and leaves nothing disordered in the house, but arranges all things carefully in their proper places and times; hence also Aristotle, in his Economics 1, 3 [n5], says: Whatever things it is fitting should be done by oneself, the care of them too must be taken by oneself; and he goes on: The masters must rise before the servants and go to sleep last, and the house must never be without a guard, just as the city must not; and whatever must be done must be omitted neither by night nor by day. And below, in the same place: The house also is to be built for the safekeeping of goods, for provisions, clothing and other things, living ones too, servants, free persons, women, men, strangers and citizens; for safety and for health, cool in summer, warm in winter; and each thing must be set in its own place. How much more will that great Father of the household, whose greatness has no end, and of whose wisdom there is no number, whose goodness also is immeasurable, govern with foresight, at all times, his whole great house with everything it contains? Hence Matthew 20: The kingdom of heaven is like a man, a father of a household; where Chrysostom [n6] says: The man, the father of the household, is Christ,

to whom heaven and earth are as one house; and the household is the creatures heavenly, earthly and lower. Again, if God did not provide for all things, this would seem to point to inexperience, impotence, malice or negligence, all of which are very far from God; indeed it befits God, as it does other things, that all things be governed with foresight through him. Hence Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 4, prose 6: Things are managed best if the simplicity abiding in the divine mind puts forth the unswerving order of causes; and this order restrains mutable things, which would otherwise drift at random; so that, although to us, who are quite unable to consider this order, all things seem confused and disturbed, nonetheless its own measure, directing toward the good, disposes everything. Augustine agrees, On Free Choice 1, 13, saying: The eternal law is that by which it is just that all things be most perfectly ordered; and in 3¹, 7 [n7]: Whatever occurs to you by true reason as better, know that God has made it, as the maker of all goods; and On Genesis according to the Letter 4, 14: If God could make good things and did not, great would be his envy;

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and in On the Greatness of the Soul 18: By God's justice this universe is sustained and ruled, by which it is brought about that not only do all things exist, but that they exist in such a way that they could not possibly be better. Algazel also, Metaphysics 3, seventh sentence, says: Everything that is, namely the number of the stars and their measure, the arrangement of the earth and of animals, and whatever has being, has it according to the manner in which it is, was, because of all the modes of being this one was more fitting for it; and whatever else is possible besides this is imperfect in comparison with what now is. Thus the care is complete along with the completeness of goodness. [n8] It seems likewise to be so in all beings of one species, and in general in all beings of all species, because according to the Philosopher, Economics 1, first chapter: In the smallest things the nature of each is found; but so it is with human beings, that unless they had a common ruler directing them to the public good, and each aimed instead at his own private good, their commonwealth would be very badly ordered, or would perish; and even if in different provinces they had different princes and rulers, unless these in turn

had one superior common prince and ruler, error would occur, of the same kind as before. How could one in need of foresight be fittingly helped by one who abounds in it, except by the authority of a prince common to both? Therefore of all provinces and of all men there is naturally one prince; for this is better for them all. For all things naturally desire the good, as is clear from the preceding chapter, and the greater good more. Hence the Philosopher too, Politics 1, 1, says that among men there is one who rules, and according to nature, for the sake of safety. And below, in the same place, he proves that the city is a natural community, because it is the end of two natural communities, namely the household [n9] and the neighborhood, and the end of any thing is natural to it. Secondly he proves the same by this: that what is best and most sufficient for anything is natural to it, because it is its end; and he says that what is best and most sufficient is in the civil community. Whence he concludes, saying: From these things, then, it is clear that the city is among those things which exist by nature, and that man is by nature a civil animal; and by the same reasons it can be shown that of all men there ought to be naturally one community, governed by one

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prince; and so, universally, of all beings, by a like reason; and this seems to be Aristotle's determination in Metaphysics 12, last chapter, where he argues against the Pythagoreans, who posit that the mathematical number is the first principle of things, on the ground that in that case the substance of the universe would be unconnected, nor would beings contribute to one another, and there would be many principles, not ordered to one another nor under any other; but this is against the natural disposition of beings and of the universe. It is not so, therefore; and this is what he says in these words: Beings do not wish to be badly disposed, nor is a plurality of rulerships good; therefore one prince; and this prince, in the whole course of his argument there, is God; and this seems to be the reasoning of Damascene, Sentences 1, 3, and of Lombard, Sentences 1, distinction 3, and of many Philosophers and Doctors in many other places. Again, the parts of animals

and plants, and of the whole universe, are most excellently and most usefully ordered; but the cause of this cannot be any element, nor any particular cause; therefore, according to the Philosopher, it is universal nature, which is God. And this was the argument of the ancient Philosophers, cited from the ninth and tenth chapters of Metaphysics 1 in the preceding chapter. Hence Avicenna, Metaphysics 10, 1: When you wish to know that the useful things you understand lead to conveniences in nature, consider the arrangement of the usefulness of the members in animals and plants, and how each of them is caused; and there is no natural cause there in any way, but its principle is from divine care, just as those things too depend on care. Know also that the common people come nearer, and hold, and say, "It is true"; and none shun this except those who wish to seem philosophers, because they are ignorant of the causes, or other aspects, of these things. Aristotle also, in On Animals, assigning the cause of the arrangement of the members of animals, says that nature has so ordained it for the better and for the safety of the animal, which his authority from On Animals 11, reviewed above, plainly attests, and in this all the Philosophers

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and Physicians agree. Aristotle also frequently supposes that nature always does what is better. Hence On Generation 2, next to last: In all things, we say, nature always desires [n10] the better; and On the Heavens 2, 34: Nature always makes the best of what can be; and 50: Nature makes nothing as it chances, and it is irrational that it should have cared for animals and slighted precious things, namely the heavenly ones; but what it does is seen to be done with care; and 59: Nature does nothing irrationally, nor in vain; and above, 56: None of them, namely of the heavenly bodies, will be carried by animate or violent motion, as though nature were providing for what is to come, since if motion were not so disposed, nothing at all would exist [n11]. Around this passage, and in many other places, he says many such things. And that this nature is God for Aristotle is evident from his words, which cannot fit an irrational nature, nor any rational one except the first; which his saying, cited above from the little book On the Death of Aristotle, also plainly teaches. Hence Economics 1, 1, he says: Nature fills up, by the cycle of the begetting of offspring, the being always, since it cannot do so through the individual,

yet through the species, just as the nature of each, male and female, was preordained by the divine for community. Averroes also, on On the Soul 2, comment 34, says that the divine solicitude, since it could not make the generable and corruptible persist according to the individual, took pity by giving it a power that can persist in the species. Moreover, what is more rightly to be judged universal nature than the common soul of the world? Now this is God, as the premises of chapter 2 of this book show, which many things touched on there likewise seem to prove. Further, the principal thesis is also confirmed by many testimonies of the Philosophers. For Aristotle, besides what has been cited above, says in the Secret of Secrets, part 1, 23 [n12], that God by supreme providence has unavoidably established all impressions, the colds and the heats in winter and summer. The same in On the World 13: With God governing, the whole beauty of heaven and earth, divided according to all natures, is always ruled unmoved and carefully. Avicenna, Metaphysics 8, 9 and 10, and Algazel, Physics 5 and Metaphysics 5, also hold this plainly. Averroes too, on Metaphysics 12, comment 37, says that

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God has care and solicitude about all beings, both about individuals and about species; and in comment 52 he says that the principle of the voluntary and the natural must have the intention of its action ordered to the first cause; and it is to be known that this is Aristotle's view on solicitude, and that, after reciting two contrary opinions, of which one held that God has solicitude about everything, and the other that there is no solicitude at all, Averroes says: And the truth is in this, that there is solicitude; and if some things are without solicitude, they proceed from the necessity of matter, not from a deficiency of the agent; but nothing proceeds from the necessity of matter, except perhaps as he himself says, on Physics 2, comment 88, when he says: Those things which are found in natural things from necessity and not for the sake of something, as the death of an animal, are due to matter; and those which are found in them for the sake of something are due to form; and though such privations are in some way intended by God, they are not so in the principal way, as the habit and the form are: for these are intended on account of those, as ends, not the other way round. Hence Wisdom 1: God did not make death; and Ecclesiasticus 39: [n13]

Famine and death were created for vengeance. Moreover, Calcidius, on the second part of Plato's Timaeus, says: The race of the men of old thought that all things that flow from divine counsel and providence for the use of men and the means of carrying on life, with powers as well as reasons assisting and working, were themselves the gods who assist; because in their untutored minds the true inquiry into God had not yet settled. For they were shepherds and woodcutters and others of the sort, without any cultivation of humane learning; where, to affirm providence, he brings in Plato, Pythagoras, Orpheus, Lippo and Musaeus; and the whole Stoic school unanimously professes divine providence, as Lactantius testifies in the place cited before. To this also bear many philosophical and theological authorities, in the first book of this work, chapters 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9, and in the preceding chapter cited, which make mention of solicitude, providence, governance and the like. Moreover Augustine, On Genesis according to the Letter 8, from chapter 11 right to the end, shows, and at great length, that the work of divine providence is twofold, namely of creation and of administration,

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to which the whole creature is subject; and in 9, 24, the same, and in On Free Choice 1, 11: There is nothing among things that divine providence does not administer; and the same in 2, 28 and 34, and 3, 2, and in other books and in no few places, of which I now touch one, passing over the others: City of God 5, 11, he says thus: God, who made man a rational animal of soul and body, who did not let him go unpunished when he sinned, nor abandoned him without mercy, who gave to good and bad alike being with the stones, seminal life with the trees, sensual life with the beasts, and intellectual life with the angels alone, from whom is every measure, every form, every order, measure, number and weight; and whatever is by nature, of whatever kind, from whom are the seeds of forms, the forms of seeds, the motion of seeds and of forms, who gave to flesh its origin, beauty, health, the fecundity of propagation, the arrangement of the members, safety, concord, who also gave to the irrational soul memory, sense and appetite, but to the rational soul mind, understanding and will, who has not left unprovided for, without the fitting arrangement of its parts and a kind of peace, only heaven and earth, only angel and man, but not even the entrails of a small and contemptible living thing, nor a bird's feather, nor the little flower of a plant, nor the leaf of a tree; in no way is he to be believed to have willed the kingdoms of men, and their dominations and servitudes, to be strangers to the laws of his providence.

Lactantius, moreover, in the place cited before, shows in many ways and at length the general divine providence. Of this Lactantius, and of his aforesaid book, which contains seven books, blessed Jerome, On Illustrious Men 80, and blessed Augustine, City of God 18, 24, make laudatory mention; let his authority therefore seem contemptible to no one. Isidore also, in the place cited before, reports that Epicurus said that the world is neither furnished with any divine providence nor ruled, as a heresy or error, as his argument evidently shows. Josephus also, Jewish Antiquities 2, last chapter, reports that Moses spoke thus: To despair of God's providence is immense madness. Likewise Psalm 118 [119]: By your ordinance the day endures, for all things serve you. And Psalm 146 [147]: Who gives to the beasts their food, and to the young ravens that call upon him. And Psalm 148: He established them forever and for ever and ever; he set a decree, and it will not pass away. And Wisdom 12: There is no other God but you, who care for all things.

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And the whole canonical Scripture of the Old Testament and of the New says very often that God provides for things, takes care of them, orders, establishes, disposes, prepares, makes and governs them, and many similar things, which are referred to divine providence both according to the face of the letter and according to the exposition of the saints. For all these let it suffice to bring forward one irrefragable testimony of the Truth, who says: Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they do not toil, nor do they spin, and not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these; and the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, God clothes thus, Matthew 6. And below, in chapter 10: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and one of them will not fall to the ground without your Father? All the Catholic expositors refer this to divine providence, and I shall now recall one of them on behalf of all.

Augustine, in the Sentences of Prosper, proposition 286, says: When the Savior says that a single sparrow does not fall to the ground without the will of God, and that the grass of the field, which in a little while is to be thrown into the oven, he himself nonetheless forms and clothes, does he not confirm that not only this whole part of the world, assigned to mortal and corruptible things, but even its most worthless and abject little parts are ruled by divine providence, lest we suppose that those things whose causes we cannot grasp are disturbed by chance motions?

NOTES

1. volutio here is "whirling" (Aristotle's δίνη, the vortex of Physics 2.4), not Bradwardine's own technical volutio, "willing". The latter sense is the one at work a few lines below (habet quoque Deus volutionem ad omnia), and the English "whirling" / "willing" keeps the two apart.
2. The three terms are the atomists' differences of the atoms in Aristotle, Metaph. 1.4 (985b): ῥυσμός (shape), διαθιγή (order), τροπή (position), here in transliterated, partly corrupt Latin form. Bradwardine's own gloss ("shape, order and position") gives the sense, so the transliterations are kept. Savile's text reads risutos; the margin offers rismos as a variant, closer to ῥυσμός. The main reading is translated.
3. Savile prints "Ethic." where Isidore's Etymologies is meant; the passage on Epicurus is in book 8 (on the philosophers of the Gentiles). It is translated as printed.
4. Bradwardine plays on pro-videntia as "far-seeing": procul videntia / praevidentia for the intellect, matched by procul volentia / praevolentia for the will. Savile's print has violentia where the parallel requires volentia, a misprint in the 1618 text. The evident sense is translated.
5. The Oeconomica is the pseudo-Aristotelian work, cited by Savile's book and chapter numbers. These are translated as printed, without modernizing them to Bekker numbering.
6. The commentary on Matthew 20 attributed to Chrysostom in the Latin tradition (probably the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum), not the genuine homilies.
7. Savile's reference is printed "3ⁱ. 7°", with a raised i. I cannot resolve it with confidence and give it as printed. The sentence itself is Augustine's.
8. At 262C·1 and 262C·2 Savile's margin merges a variant reading with a citation: vnitas ("unity" for "universe") + Algazel, and eiusdem ("of the same" for "of one") + Aristoteles. The main readings are translated; they are construable, so the variants are not adopted.
9. Savile prints the abbreviation dom°, i.e. domus ("household"). The keyed text drops the raised mark.
10. desiderate is printed (and keyed) as is. It is evidently a corrupt or elliptical desiderare ("nature always desires the better"), and so translated.
11. The quotation from On the Heavens 2 (with the commentary numbers 34, 50, 56, 59) is heavily compressed. The sentence beginning "None of them … will be carried" is construed as best it can be; the sense of the argument is that the heavenly bodies move neither by an animate nor by a violent motion, and that their motion therefore reflects nature's providence.
12. The Secret of Secrets (Secretum secretorum), On the World (De mundo) and the Liber de morte Aristotelis are pseudo-Aristotelian; Bradwardine treats them as Aristotle's.
13. In the print, Calcidius's name stands in the margin at 263E beside "Adhuc autem Calcidius…"; the keyed text has merged it into 263D·1 with the two citations belonging to Wisdom 1 and Ecclesiasticus 39. The marker is kept as given, with the margin contents listed as keyed.