“Thou Knowest Not The Works Of God”: Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676) And John Locke On Learned Ignorance

By Paul Schuurman

[Paul Schuurman is Assistant Professor in the History of Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This article is based on a paper presented at the conference “Early Modern Philosophy in Britain and the Netherlands, 1500—1800: Philosophers and Philosophies, Universities and Learned Societies, Books and Journals, “Rotterdam, 26—2 8 March 2007; Annual Conference of the British Society for the History of Philosophy, organized by Martin Bell, Bart Leeuwenburgh, and Paul Schuurman. The author would like to thank the conference participants and his colleague Aza Goudriaan for their stimulating remarks.]

I. Introduction

On Monday 7 March 1678, during his visit to France, John Locke wrote an extensive French entry in his Journal on the best method of studying the philosophy of Rene Descartes. Locke gives a long list of works by Descartes, his followers, and his detractors. In the last category Locke mentions a work by Gisbertus Voetius that contains everything that can be “said against Descartes.”[1] This is the only mention of Voetius that I have been able to discover in Locke’s writings. Indeed, the father of philosophical empiricism seems to have precious little in common with Voetius, who as a professor of theology at the University of Utrecht worked hard to produce a Reformed version of the very scholasticism that would be attacked so vigorously by Locke, and whose orthodox Calvinism inspired him to wage a war against gambling, dancing, the theatre, and deviating hair styles. Yet the Dutch Aristotelian and the English proponent of the new philosophy shared to a remarkably high degree the same concept of docta ignorantia or learned ignorance.

II. Voetius

In 1655 Voetius produced two scholarly disputations called “De Docta Ignorantia,” but he had expressed the wish to discuss the subject on at least two earlier occasions, in 1639[2] and in 1643.[3] Voetius’s point of departure is his desire to combat vain curiosity. Ignorance as such is not good and we all naturally desire knowledge, but there are many things that should remain shrouded from mortal beings in their present life. Voetius repeats the warning of Thomas Aquinas that our thirst for knowledge should not degenerate into a hopeless quest that goes beyond the capacity of our faculties.[4] Unbounded curiosity easily leads to the presumption that we can know everything ourselves, without the help of other men or even without the help of God and the Scriptures, which provide us with the sole criterion of truth. And after this feverish desire will have met its inevitable frustration, we will sit down in despair and doubt whether anything can be known with any certainty at all. So the pretensions of a curiosity that wants to know everything and admires nothing, ends with the double shipwreck of atheism and skepticism.[5]

The answer to these twin evils is learned ignorance. This ignorance is not really ignorance at all but rather a kind of science. It is a knowledge of our own ignorance and of unknown things per se.[6] This science teaches us that some things cannot be known and hence should not be investigated. This perception will allow us to put our mind at rest, and this quietness will prevent us from slipping into atheism or skepticism.

Voetius’s definition of learned ignorance has both a subjective and an objective side; it pertains to our own cognitive condition and to the things outside us.[7] The subjective side of learned ignorance amounts to a form of self-knowledge. Knowing ourselves means knowing our cognitive limitations, and this knowledge will encourage us to a humility that is in accordance with Holy Scripture and will keep us from “making our own understanding the rule and measure of truth.”[8] The objective side of learned ignorance applies to things particulariter. communiter, or universaliter. The first case applies to things that some of us do not know presently, but will know as soon as we give them our undivided attention. This ignorance is learned when it is accompanied by the realization that we cannot know all things at once. The second case applies to things that will never be understood by most people, although they may be grasped by a limited group of professional scientists and metaphysicians. The third and last case applies to things that are absolutely unknown to any mortal being in this present life.[9] The imperfection and narrowness of the human mind and the vastness and the perfections of its possible objects are complementary causes of our ignorance, and it is precisely our realization of this state of affairs that makes our ignorance learned.

The objects of learned ignorance include both God and his creation, and Voetius illustrates this point with a quotation from Eccl 11:5: “As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.”[10] Where knowledge of God and of his creation ends, there learned ignorance should start. In theology, learned ignorance is fitting concerning the attributes of God, the Trinity, miracles, and in general about all things that are called a mystery in the Scriptures. In physics, learned ignorance is the highest we can hope for about many aspects of the heavens, the seas, the generation of animals, and the origin, essence, and faculties of the human soul.[11] Often we do not know why things are as they are, but only that they exist.[12] For instance, revelation has taught us that God bestows grace and glory on some though not on all human beings, but we have to acquiesce in learned ignorance when it comes to explaining the causes behind this process.[13] It is especially in such cases that learned ignorance applies to things completely or universaliter.

Voetius’s use of the concept of learned ignorance has been firmly connected with his longstanding polemic against the philosophy of Rene Descartes and his followers.[14] Indeed, when Voetius announced his intention in 1639 to treat the subject more thoroughly in the future, he may already have had Descartes in mind. This was certainly the case when he repeated his plan in 1643, and the eventual publication of the two disputations in 1655 coincided with the start of a new crisis about Gartesianism in Utrecht in that same year. In “De Docta Ignorantia” Voetius complains about soli-ipsi who want to know everything by themselves and who run the risk of ending with atheism and skepticism when they fail to limit themselves to learned ignorance.[15] There are other places where Voetius seems to use learned ignorance specifically against Descartes. Already in the disputation “De creatione” of 1638, he attacks mechanicist philosophers who have “recently” pretended to know that primary qualities such as quantity place, figure, and motion are the universal principles of nature, instead of confessing their learned ignorance.[16] Finally, in an essay on philosophical doubt appended to a disputation of 1656, Voetius goes to great lengths to distinguish learned ignorance from Descartes’ method of doubt, which according to him is a principium fanatico-scepticum.[17] There is nothing wrong with limited doubt in a didactic context, for instance, in the form of the questions of the catechism; but philosophical doubt in general, and Descartes’ experiment of radical doubt in particular, is to be rejected, because it tends to subvert the scriptural truths that Voetius tries to protect with his concept of learned ignorance.[18]

Given these anti-Cartesian credentials, however, it is remarkable that in neither of Voetius’s two disputations on learned ignorance is Descartes’ name mentioned a single time. Actually, apart from the implicit reference to soli-ipsi there is little in these disputations that points directly to Descartes at all. And Utrecht University had not prohibited any discussion about Descartes, as the curators of Leiden University had done earlier in the previous decade. Moreover, Voetius had no qualms about open attacks against Descartes in other writings if this suited his purposes.

A better understanding of Voetius’s position can be gained by a closer scrutiny of the origin of his concept of learned ignorance. As he explains in “De docta ignorantia,” he has no use for the well-known treatise by Nicolaus of Cusa on the theme. Gusanus tried to strip away the properties that an object does not have in order to obtain an approximate knowledge about the properties that it does have. According to Voetius, this is an improper use of learned ignorance. Gusanus uses the concept for a theologia negativa that aims to obtain probable knowledge about God, the world, and Christ, whereas according to Voetius learned ignorance should be an unambiguous expression of our ignorance about all these objects.[19] Voetius’s deepest inspiration is not Gusanus but Calvin.[20] In his Institutes Calvin had stressed that we are all covered by a darkness of ignorance.[21] We should realize that since we are not able to measure to the sun, even though we can see it daily with our eyes, we are certainly not able to grasp the infinite being of God, whom we cannot see at all.[22] We do well to refrain from inquiring into subjects such as predestination. Calvin gives the following admonition in relation to the latter topic: “And let us not be ashamed to be ignorant of something in this matter wherein there is a certain learned ignorance.”[23] At another place he stresses that “of those things which it is neither given nor lawful to know, ignorance is learned; the craving to know, a kind of madness.”[24] So, Voetius’s concept of learned ignorance very well fits Calvinist teachings that were already firmly in place for the better part of a century before the appearance of Descartes. Hence, it is not surprising that in De docta ignorantia Voetius is able to mention almost every possible adversary except Descartes. Voetian learned ignorance served a wide purpose in defending an increasingly beleaguered orthodox position against a multitude of perceived or real skeptic and atheist inroads on the authority of Holy Scripture.

III. Locke

I have not found a single instance of the Latin words “docta ignorantia” in Locke’s work and only four cases where he uses the English words “learned ignorance,” and in none of these cases does he use the term very positively. In one case it is contrasted with “profitable Knowledge,”[25] and from the other instances it transpires that Locke associates the term with a senseless scholastic terminology. “Learned ignorance” is mentioned in a context of “artificial Ignorance” and “learned Gibberish”[26] that “enables to talk much, and know but little.”[27] In spite of Locke’s apparent association of the term “learned ignorance” with empty scholastic phraseology, I will nevertheless argue that the concepts of vital importance for the entire project of Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding, and also that this concept shares many of the characteristics that we have already found in Voetius.

Locke’s concept of learned ignorance clearly has a subjective and an objective side. The subjective side concerns our understanding Locke hopes that by his enquiry into the faculties of the understanding, he “can discover the Powers thereof” and “how far they reach” so that we may learn “to sit down in a quiet Ignorance of those things, which, upon Examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our Capacities.”[28] The objects of learned ignorance are substances. All substances fall under the speculative science of natural philosophy, which includes “God himself, Angels, Spirits, Bodies, or any of their Affections.”[29] Locke repeats again and again that we are completely incapable of obtaining knowledge of the essence of substances. Hence we should guard ourselves against the presumption of letting our thoughts “wander into those depths, where they can find no sure Footing,” and the skepticism that follows in the wake of the failure of such endeavors. Rather we should learn to “acquiesce in the avow’d Ignorance” of such matters, so that we can employ our “Thoughts and Discours, with more Advantage and Satisfaction” to matters that are commensurate with our faculties.[30] So, Locke could fully subscribe to Voetius’s quotation from Ecclesiastes. Actually, this quotation is the first of the two mottos on the title page of the Essay. (The scriptural quotation was added in the fourth edition, while the quotation from Cicero can already be found on the title page of the first edition.) This first motto stresses our ignorance, whereas the second motto, taken from Cicero, emphasizes the need to admit this ignorance. And according to Voetius, realizing and admitting our own ignorance is exactly what makes it learned.

We have seen that for Voetius learned ignorance is a concept that can be used against the pretensions of almost any adversary who fails to meet his orthodox standards. Locke’s concept of learned ignorance is related to that of Voetius, and its polemic potential is just as wide. A closer look, however, at a relatively little-studied polemic in which Locke was involved at the start of the 1690s teaches us that he used learned ignorance specifically against the epistemological pretensions of rationalist philosophers. The controversy was with John Norris (1657— 1711), the best-known British follower of the French Cartesian philosopher Nicolas Malebranche. Locke was especially troubled by Malebranche’s hypothesis that we see the ideas of all things in God, which Malebranche had defended in Recherche de la Verite (1674— 1675).[31] I shall try to give a more detailed explanation of Locke’s use of learned ignorance using this particular case.

According to Malebranche, God has the ideas of all the creatures that he created in himself, since otherwise he could not have created them. Moreover, we know “that through His presence God is in close union with our minds, such that he might be said to be the place of minds as space is, in a sense, the place of bodies.”[32] Since the ideas of things are in God, and since God himself is in contact with our minds, it follows that our minds “can see what in God represents created beings.”[33] Although these are necessary conditions for seeing objects in God, they are not sufficient. The additional criterion is that it should indeed be God’s desire that we actually see the ideas in this way. According to Malebranche, there are three reasons for assuming that this is indeed God’s wish. The most important reason is that when we want to think about something in particular we first cast a glance over all beings in general and only then “apply ourselves to the consideration of the object we wish to think about.”[34] This confirms Malebranche’s thesis that all our particular ideas of created beings “are but limitations of the general idea of the Creator.”[35] Moreover, there is an economy in nature. God does great things by small and simple means. He could have chosen to produce “as many infinities of infinite numbers of ideas as there are created minds,”[36] but he has chosen the more simple option of having the idea of each material object only once, in himself, and allowing each of us to see the object in question through its idea in himself. Finally, the “vision in God” admirably expresses the fact that we can know nothing without God,[37] or, as is attested in 2 Cor 3:5: “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God.”

Locke’s polemic against Norris, and through Norris against Malebranche, occasioned four texts of very unequal length.[38] The main text is known as “An Examination of P. Malebranche’s Opinion of Seeing All Things In God.” In this text Locke balks at the additional criterion of God needing to give active and constant authorization to our vision of ideas in himself. According to Locke this reduces Malebranche’s account to complete vacuity.[39] He systematically attacks all three reasons given by Malebranche for the assumption that God wishes us to perceive bodies through his ideas, and in each of these three cases he makes skillful use of an agnostic line of argument that flows from his concept of learned ignorance.

Firstly, Malebranche’s contention that the “vision in God” conforms with the order in which our mind grasps things (beings in general first, particular things later), typically and unsurprisingly meets with the full brunt of Locke’s empiricist epistemology. According to him, we receive particular ideas first and general ideas only at a later stage. This well-known point also influences a slightly more complicated matter, and that is Locke’s views about Malebranche’s defense of God’s simplicity. According to Malebranche, “particular ideas are in fact but participations in the general idea of the infinite”[40] in God, and “In order for us to conceive of a finite being, something must necessarily be eliminated from this general notion of being.”[41] In this way, Malebranche tries to bring about the difficult feat of maintaining both the priority of general notions over particular notions and the possibility of perception of particular objects through the vision in a God who by his own nature is simple. Locke is hardly impressed by this argument. He remarks that once Malebranche grants the existence of distinct ideas of objects, he must, according to his own thesis of the “vision in God,” admit that these distinct ideas are in God; and their very distinctness means that they cannot be conflated into one general notion of being. So, Malebranche’s apparent fusion of his ontological claim about God (his simplicity) and epistemological claims about us (our ability to partake in a multitude of particular and distinct ideas that are in God) leads him to contradictions about which Locke remarks: “This seemes to me to expresse a Simplicity made up of variety, a thing I cannot understand.”[42] Locke’s own answer is a rigorous separation of Malebranche’s claims. Locke feels that as long as our ability to have a multitude of distinct ideas is joined with a learned ignorance about the nature of God and the way he produces these ideas, it can safely be argued that we have particular ideas before general ideas, without touching the problem of God’s simplicity.[43]

Secondly Malebranche had argued that God does great things by small means. Using this principle of divine economy, God has chosen the simple option of having the idea of each material object only once, in himself, allowing each of us to see the object through this single idea in himself. Locke replies that God indeed never does anything in vain, but he uses the argument from economy in a completely different way, not for the “vision in God,” but for ideas caused by sensory perception. God has given us wonderfully contrived senses and we may assume that these contribute in some way to producing ideas in our minds by the presence of objects. If not, then God’s creation of senses would have been “lost labour.”[44] Moreover, if we would not need our senses to form the ideas of material objects, then a blind man could have these ideas as well as a man endowed with sight, and this is obviously not the case. Here again, Locke admits his ignorance about how ideas are produced in our minds, but human ignorance should not be used as a criterion for putting strictures on God’s omnipotence, “As if it were impossible for the Almighty to produce any thing but by ways we must conceive, and are able to comprehend.”[45]

Thirdly, there was Malebranche’s argument that the “vision in God” is in accordance with God’s will, because it makes us completely dependent on this will. According to Locke, this means that Malebranche gives a very laborious explanation for something that he had been prepared to accept all along: “that the Ideas we have are in our mindes by the will and power of God, though in a way that we conceive not, nor are able to comprehend.”[46] Locke admits that vision by sensory impressions leaves us as ignorant about God’s will as Malebranche’s “vision in God”: “Here is the will of God giveing union and perception in both cases, but how that perception is made in both ways seemes to me equally incomprehensible.”[47] The difference is that the “vision of God” is a pretentious “learned circuit,” which, according to Locke, “in good earnest seemes to me to be nothing but goeing a great way about to come to the same place.”[48] Vision by sensory impressions, on the other hand, is more plausible because it is more simple, and it is more simple because it does not try to make explanative use of God, whose ways we cannot know.

IV. Evaluation: Differences Between Learned Ignorance In Voetius And Locke

Now that the many similarities between Voetius and Locke on learned ignorance have been outlined, it may be useful to conclude with an attempt to discuss their differences. Both men are convinced that learned ignorance is the right response to something that is described as “our present state,” or as Locke puts it: “Our knowledge being so narrow ... it will, perhaps, give us some Light into the present State of our minds, if we look a little into the dark side, and take a view of our own Ignorance.”[49] But Voetius and Locke give a different interpretation of this “present state.” This difference can best be appreciated in the context of their different theological convictions.

For Voetius, the cognitive limitations of our present state are in large part, though not exclusively, a consequence of the Fall.[50] Since Adam’s original sin, and because of this sin, the entire human race has been in a state of universal blindness and corruption that has diminished its natural cognitive faculties.[51] The ignorance caused by the original sin is in itself culpable,[52] but attempts to nullify this ignorance would amount to arrogance and are therefore equally blameworthy. Paradoxically enough, the only sensible way out of this predicament is its acceptance, and learned ignorance is a way of expressing this acceptance.

In Locke’s Essay, on the other hand, hardly anything can be found about the cognitive consequences of the original sin.[53] His discussion of our present state is not so much in terms of human sin as in terms of God’s own designs. Locke’s God is first of all concerned with proportion and economy. Locke remarks, “Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our Conduct,”[54] and he also notes that God has given us faculties that are admirably suitable to the “State of Mediocrity and Probationership, he has been pleased to place us inhere.”[55] We should actually be grateful to God that he has not, for instance, endowed us with microscopic eyes, but merely with eyes that sustain us in our practical everyday pursuits: “And if by the help of . . . Microscopical Eyes ... a Man could penetrate farther than ordinary into the secret Composition, and radical Texture of Bodies, he would not make any great advantage by the change, if such an acute Sight would not serve to conduct him to the Market and Exchange.”[56]

There is another difference between Voetius and Locke. Locke’s learned ignorance is rigidly and exclusively bound to substances, and applies in equal measure to all substances. Trying to know the essence of substances in spite of our limitations is not so much morally reprehensible as futile and wasteful. This futility holds true as much for material as for spiritual substances. For Voetius on the other hand, the connection between learned ignorance and substances is less stringent. We have seen that learned ignorance about objects particulanter and communiter is relative and flexible. Within these categories there are no fixed barriers between ignorance and knowledge. Only Voetius’s third category learned ignorance about things universaliter, is very strict. Attempts to understand the mysteries of the Christian faith are not only futile but even sinful.

So, Voetius and Locke shared a concept of learned ignorance that was motivated theologically, and for both men these theological reasons were summarized by the verse in Ecclesiastes that Locke would eventually use as the first motto of the Essay. But Voetius knew that we cannot know some things because of Adam’s unfortunate lapse, while Locke knew that we cannot know any substance whatsoever because of God’s own designs.

Notes

1. John Locke, “tout ce qu’on peut dire contre Descartes,” in An Early Draft of Locke’s Essay Together with Excerpts from his Journal (ed. R. I. Aaron and Jocelyn Gibb; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 110. Locke mentions the “Meletemata Philosophica,” but I have not found any work by Voetius with this title. Locke is probably referring to Voetius, Selectae disputationes theologicae (= SDT) (5 vols.; Utrecht/Amsterdam: J. van Waesberge, 1648—1669). A book with the title Meletemata philosophica was written by Adrianus Heereboord (Leiden: F. Moyard, 1654).
2. Voetius, “De Atheismo,” in SDT, 1:114.
3. Voetius, “Des natures et des formes substantielles des choses,” attached to the Naratio historica, in Rene Descartes and Martin Schoock, La Querelle d’Utrecht (ed. T Verbeek; Paris: Les impressions nouvelles, 1988), 111.
4. Voetius, “De ignorantia” (= DI) II, in SDT, 3:683: “. . . inordinatus appetitus circa cognitionem . . .”
5. Ibid.
6. Voetius, “De docta ignorantia” (= DDI) I, in SDT, 3:670: “. . . cognitio ignorantiae nostrae, & rerum ignoratarum aut ignorabilium, qua talium . . .”
7. Voetius, DDI I, in SDT, 3:669: “Accipitur autem docta ignorantia vel proprie, vel improprie. Proprie rursum dupliciter: vel ut directe, immediate, formaliter & primo dicit quarundam rerum ignorantiam; secundo & consequenter reflexivam cognitionem istius ignorantiae nostrae cum ea conjunctam: vel ut directe, primo immediate & formaliter dicit cognitionem ignorantiae alicujus in nobis: & mediate cognitionem rei ignotae seu ignoratae. Impropriety, catachrestice, accipitur pro scientia rerum divinarum & naturalium, quae & quatenus in hac vita a nobis habetur aut haberi potest.”
8. Voetius, DI II, in SDT, 3:681: “Ne quis mensuret seipsum seipso, 2 . 12- aut ingenium suum canonem & mensuram veritatis faciat.”
9. Voetius, DDI I, in SDT, 3:671.
10. Voetius, DDI I, in SDT, 3:679: “De occultis naturae miraculis, deque qualitatibus occultis, antipathiis & sympathiis ne hie disquiram, ex testimoniis Scripturae evinco ignotam generationem nominis Eccl. ii. vers. 5. collat. cum Psal. 139. vers. 14. 15. 16 viam & motum venti, Ioh. 3. vers. 8.”
11. Voetius, DDI II, in SDT, 3:690: “Quam multa de coelo, mari & aquis, igni, meteoris, de generatione inanimatorum & animatorum praecipue hominis, & animae humanae origine, essentia, facul-tatibus, &c.”
12. Voetius, DDI I, in SDT, 3:676: “... in cognitione τί ὅτι acquiescere, & caetera quae ad τί διότι pertinent, docte ignorare . . .”
13. Voetius, DDI I, in SDT, 3:671: “Haec sunt, quae aut absolute, aut ex hypothesi imperfectionis nostrae in hac vita, non sunt scibilia.” See also DDI II, in SDT, 3:683; DDI I, in SDT, 3:671; and “De athismo,” in SDT, 1:126-27.
14. T. Verbeek, “From ‘Learned Ignorance’ to Scepticism: Descartes and Galvinist Orthodoxy,” in Scepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (ed. Richard H. Popkin; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 31-45.
15. Voetius, DDIII, in SDT, 3:683: “Contra si qui inter dictos literatos, parvi aut saltern mediocris ingenii, aut exiguae eruditionis & nullius fere, aut admodum modicae lectionis velint esse utres & soli-ipsi; necessario aut in desperationem quidquam in scientiis praestandi, aut in morosophias, vertigines, Phaetonticos conatus prolabuntur.” See also ibid., 687: “Soli-ipsis accense etiam Lullistas, Paracelsistas, qui se dicunt Hermeticos, & alios novos, sed obscuros atque in herba emortuos philosophantes, quales e. gr. Fratres roseae crucis,” and Voetius, “Paralipomena” to “Methodus” in SD7; 1:1161.
16. Voetius, “De creatione VI,” in SDT, 1:673: “Hie ergo sistitur cursus eorum: qui quantitate, quiete, situ, figura, motu locali tanquam principiis naturae universalibus omnia effecta se facillime & ad oculum demonstraturos nuper jactabant; quique hinc depulsi ad alia atque alia nova asyla confugiunt; ne soil, doctam ignorantiam alicubi cogantur fateri.”
17. Voetius, “Appendix de dubitatione philosophica” to “De fide, conscientia, theologia dubitante,” in SDT, 3:868: “Ut argumento a necessaria scrutatione & questione veritatis non evincitur necessitas dubitationis de eadem per se tanquam medii aut principii: sic multo minus evincitur necessitas negandae a studiosis certissimae veritatis, provisionaliter sc. in ingressu Academiae & studii Philosophici, aut in perpetuum amplectendi principium illud fanatico-scepticum, Quod nihil scitur: ex lumine scil. & ratione naturali. . .”
18. Ibid., 867-68; see also the “Paralipomena quaedam” to the “Methodus respondendi,” in SDT, 1:1159.
19. Voetius, DDI I, in SDT, 3:670 and 671; see also Richard H. Popkin, “Theories of knowledge,” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (ed. Charles B. Schmitt; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 674; and Charles H. Lohr, “Metaphysics,” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, 585.
20. Voetius, DDI I, in SDT, 3:679: “Et ostendit hoc ipse Deus per longam inductionem cap. 38. 39. 40. 41. Cahinus I. I. Instil, cap. 13. §. 21- ut doctam ignorantiam rerum divinarum commendet
21. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (2 vols; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 4.1.12.
22. Ibid., 1.13.21.
23. Ibid., 3.21.2.
24. Ibid., 3.23.8.
25. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (ed. Peter H. Nidditch; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), IVxii.12 (647).
26. Ibid., III.x.9-10(495).
27. John Locke, Mr. Locke’s Reply to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Second Letter, in The Works of John Locke (10 vols.; Aalen: Scientia, 1963), 4:371.
28. Locke, Essay, I.i.4 (44-45).
29. Ibid., IV.xxi.2 (720).
30. Ibid., I.i.7 (47).
31. Nicolas Malebranche, Recherche de la verite oil Von traite de la nature de Vesprit de Vhomme et de Vusage qu’ilen doitfairepour eviter Verreur dans les sciences (ed. Genevieve Rodis-Lewis; 3 vols.; Paris: Vrin, 1962-1964).
32. Recherche, 3.2-6 (1:437): “que Dieu est tres-etroitement uni a nos ames par sa presence, de sorte qu’on peut dire qu’il est le lieu des esprits, de meme que les espaces sont en un sens le lieu des corps”; ET: The Search after Truth (ed. and trans. Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp; Gam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 230 (hereafter LO).
33. Recherche, 3.2-6 (1:437): “Ces deux choses etant supposees, il est certain que l’esprit peut voir ce qu’il y a dans Dieu qui represente les etres creez, puisque cela est tres-spirituel, tres-intelligible, & tres-present a l’esprit” (LO, 231).
34. Recherche, 3.2-6 (1:440): “que lors que nous voulons penser a quelque chose en particulier, nous jettons d’abord la vue sur tous les etres, & nous nous appliquons ensuit a la consideration de l’objet auquel nous souhaitons de penser” (LO, 232).
35. Recherche, 3.2-6 (1:443): “Ainsi comme nous n’aimons aucune chose que par l’amour neces-saire que nous avons pour Dieu, nous ne voyons aucune chose que par la connoissance naturelle que nous avons de Dieu: & toutes les idees particulieres que nous avons des creatures, ne sont que des limitations de l’idee du Greateur” (LO, 233).
36. Recherche, 3.2-6 (1:438): “autant d’infinitez de nombres infmis d’idees, qu’ily a d’esprits creez” (LO, 231).
37. Recherche, 3.2.6 (1:439) (LO, 231).
38. (1) MS Locke c. 28,fols. 107-112, “JL to M’Norris’V’JL Answer to Mr Norris Reflections 92,” published by Richard Acworth in The Locke Newsletter2 (197’1): 8-11; (2) MS Locke d. 3, 1-86, “JL Of seeing all thing[s] in God 1693,” manuscript in the hand of an amanuensis, published by Peter King as “An Examination of P. Malebranche’s Opinion of Seeing All Things In God,” in the Posthumous Works, 137-213 (= “Examination”); (3) MS Locke d. 3, 89-109, “Some other loose thoughts which I set down as they came in my way in a hasty perusal of some of Mr Norris’s writeings,” probably written in 1693 and published in 1720 by Pierre Desmaizeaux as “Remarks upon Some of Mr. Norris’s Books” (= “Remarks”); (4) finally, there is an unpublished fourth text, “Recherche”; MS Locke c. 28, fol. 159r-159, probably written in 1693 or somewhat earlier, devoted not to Norris but exclusively to the “vision in God” and to related problems discussed in Malebranche’s Recherche de la verite (I.iii.l, 2, and 5).
39. Locke, “Examination”: “But when, after this, I am told that their presence [of ideas to our minds] is not enough to make them be seen, but God must do some thing farther to discover them to me I am as much in the darke as I was at first.”
40. Malebranche, Recherche, 3.2-6 (1:441): “toutes ces idees particulieres ne sont que des participations de l’idee generale de l’infini” (LO, 232).
41. Ibid.: “Mais enfm que nous concevions un etre fmi, il faut necessairement retrancher quelque chose de cette notion generale de l’etre” (LO, 232); see also Recherche, 2:446 note *.
42. Locke, “Examination,” par. 36; see also “Remarks,” par. 11.
43. Locke, “Examination,” par. 36: “God I believe to be a simple being that by his wisdome knows all thing[s], and by his power can do all things, but how he does it I thinke my self lesse able to comprehend than to contain the Ocean in my hand or grasp the Universe with my span.” See also ibid.: “though it cannot be denyd that God sees and knows all things yet when we say we see all things in him it is but a metaphorical expression to cover our ignorance in a way that pretends to explain our knowledge, seeing things in God signifieing no more than that we perceive them we know not how.”
44. Locke, “Remarks,” par. 3.
45. Ibid.
46. Locke, “Examination,” par. 35.
47. Ibid., par. 47
48. Ibid., par. 45.
49. Locke, Essay, IViii.22 (553); cf. Voetius, DDI I, in SDT, 3:679.
50. Voetius, “DI I,” in SDT, 3:636-41; see also “Appendix de dubitatione philosophica” in “De fide” in SDT, 3:847; “De propagatione peccati originalis” in SDT, 1:1105.
51. Voetius, “De fide,” in SDT, 3:847: “. . . homines de facto in Philosophic theoretica & practice, & consequenter in Theologia naturali, multo magis in supernaturali, idque per interventum lapsus & inde ortae universalis coecitas ac corruptionis, ignorantia laborare . . .”
52. Voetius, “DI III,” in SDT, 3:653: “An ignorantia seu excoecatio invincibilis, quae provenit ex peccato originis, etiam ipsa ignorantia originalis, quae pars est peccati originalis, excuset a peccatis ex ea commissis. Resp. Meg. Quia est vincibilis & voluntaria, & consequenter culpabilis, non quidem in se, & ex hypothesi praesentis status; sed in causa, in peccato scil. primo Adami; propter quod nobis imputatum in mentis coecitatem originalem & impotentiam voluntatis nostrae ad bonum incidimus.”
53. Cf. Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature (ed. W. von Leyden; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 139 n. 2; see also “Analytical Summary” by von Leyden in ibid., 97-98.
54. Locke, Essay, I.i.6 (46).
55. Ibid., IVxiv.2 (652); see also ibid., II.xv.ll (203).
56. Ibid., II.xxiii. 12 (303). See also Catherine Wilson, The Invisible World: Early Modern Philosophy and the Invention of the Microscope (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 238: “Locke’s theory of the acquisition of knowledge was formulated in the climate created by Comenius and other educationalists, with their emphasis on direct experience and the collection and ordering of ideas from childhood onward. While this climate at first encouraged and supplied a justificatory rhetoric to protoscience, microscopy had outstripped it.”