An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature

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Nathaniel Culverwell. An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature

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AN ELEGANT AND LEARNED DISCOURSE

OF THE LIGHT OF NATURE

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The clearest understanding of Culverwell’s judicious balancing of the divine attributes is provided by the impressive conclusion to chapter 11, which rises to a sustained endorsement of reason comparable to the paragraphs of Hooker and traceable, like those, to scholastic sources. Here the subtle distinctions of Suárez are transformed by Culverwell’s metaphoric vigor into the humanistic assertion that, “The more men exercise reason, the more they resemble God himself” [117]. Arguing from the premise that “The understanding of God thus being fill’d with light, his Will also must needs be rational” [114], Culverwell concludes that the separation of these attributes is misleading. “Now the understanding of God being so vast and infinite, and his will being so commensurate and proportion’d to it, nay all one with it; all those Decrees of his that are the Eternal product and results of his minde and will, must needs be rational also; For in them his understanding and will met together, his truth and goodnesse kissed each other” [115]. Such emphasis upon the divine reason and reluctance to oppose it to the divine will are thoroughly Thomistic. “All law,” Thomas asserts, “proceeds from the reason and will of the law-giver; the Divine and natural laws from the reasonable will of God; the human law from the will of man, regulated by reason.”

The Candle of the Lord

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