[Meditationes Jacobi Triglandii in opiniones variorum de voluntate Dei et gratia universali, ubi etiam aliquid de scientia media; (Hieronymus de Vogel, 1642)]
Jacobus Triglandius, born the 22nd of July, 1583, at Vianen to Romanist parents, did by providential guidance forsake the traditions of his forebears, having been brought by gracious illumination to embrace the doctrines of the Reformed churches. Nurtured first at Gouda, and later sent to priestly instruction at Amsterdam and Leuven, he was, by inward doubts and the testimony of holy Scripture, compelled to renounce the errors of Rome. Deprived of familial support, he endured privation but was sustained by divine hand, finding employment and, in due course, spiritual enlightenment through study of the Reformed confession. In the year 1602, Triglandius was appointed rector of the school at Vianen and, soon after, entered communion with the Reformed Church. Diligently preparing for sacred ministry, he was ordained at Stolwijk (1607), laboring faithfully thence and at Amsterdam, where he became, in 1610, a bulwark for truth amidst ecclesiastical tumult. As deputy to the Synod of Dort (1618–19), Triglandius did valiantly withstand the Remonstrant innovations, serving on the committee that composed the Canons of Dort—thereby defending the doctrines of election and sovereign grace. Elevated to the professorship at Leiden (1633), he distinguished himself as exegete and casuist, and as pastor in that city, contending mightily against Remonstrant doctrines and civil encroachments upon Christ’s Church. His Kerckelycke Geschiedenissen and other writings remain monuments of godly erudition. Called to his rest in 1654, Triglandius left a legacy of steadfast fidelity, zealously maintaining the purity of the Reformed faith for the edification of generations to come.
Table of Contents:
<aside>
</aside>
The Scholastics distinguish the will of God into the Will of Good Pleasure and the Will of Sign.
I. They call the Will of Good Pleasure the internal act of the will by which God wills something.
II. But the Will of Sign they call not the internal act, but the external sign by which God signifies that He wills something.
This is not, therefore, a distinction of the divine will which is considered in two ways according to our mode of conception, but a distinction of the sign, by which God manifests His will, from the will itself which is manifested by that sign.
If rightly weighed, these terms are inept, these modes of naming are improper. They would distinguish better if they wished to speak accurately, between the good pleasure and the sign of the divine will. But let us attribute this to the rudeness of that age, and remit it to the rest of the ineptitudes of those men.
They number five signs of the divine will, which they refer to that will of sign, namely: Precept, Prohibition, Permission, Counsel, Operation. Hence this verse:
“He commands, and forbids, permits, counsels, fulfills.”
We say that four are sufficient. For we judge that counsel should be joined with precept, and comprehended under it. For we make nothing of the distinction which they have devised between precept and counsel. The reasons for this our opinion are everywhere obvious among Reformed Theologians. Therefore, there remain precept with prohibition, operation with permission. But that these are signs of a different kind is manifest in itself; therefore, they should be referred to the will considered in different ways. For precept and prohibition pertain to the commanding will; but operation and permission pertain to the decreeing will.
If you ask, “Cannot precept and prohibition also be referred to the decreeing will?”
Response: I answer, not as signs expressing the decreeing will itself, but insofar as the action itself of commanding, or the exhibition and proposition of the mandate, both commanding and forbidding, is, with the rest of the divine operations, an effect of the decreeing will. For precept and prohibition do not say what God has decreed to effect, or not to effect, but only what He wills to be done or omitted by men; nevertheless, with His decreeing will He has decreed, and consequently has willed and wills, just as to create man, so also to place that law upon him.
Just as a Parent indicates to his son, a magistrate to his subject, by his precept what he wills him to do or omit, and thus that precept expresses the exacting will of each; but with the decreeing will each has appointed and decreed, the former to make known his exacting will to his son, the latter to his subject, by that precept. These things are thus to be rightly considered and distinguished. For from the confusion of these, both grave errors arise, and inept argumentations or exceptions and responses employed to establish and defend those errors are produced.
But the Scholastics ask, “Do these external signs always signify the internal will and good pleasure of God, so that it is always lawful to judge from them concerning the certain will of God?”