On Providence & The Cause Of Sin (Vermigli’s Common Places, Vol. 3)

Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562) was a forgotten giant of the Protestant Reformation. Born in Florence, Italy, and rising quickly to leadership within the Augustinian Order in Italy, Vermigli discovered the gospel of justification and embarked on a reforming career that would take him to Naples, Lucca, Zurich, Strasbourg, Oxford, and finally back to Strasbourg and Zurich again, as he worked shoulder-to-shoulder with other leading Protestant Reformers Heinrich Bullinger, Martin Bucer, and Thomas Cranmer. He left behind him voluminous biblical commentaries and treatises, and a band of faithful disciples who collected his writings into the massive theological compendium, the Loci Communes.

Appearing now in English for the first time since 1583, On Providence and the Cause of Sin is the next installment in Davenant Press’s ongoing translation of the Loci Communes of Peter Martyr Vermigli. Presented here in a clear, readable, and learned translation, we first have Vermigli’s treatment of the topic of providence, accompanied by related questions on God’s control over both the Fall and temptation to sin. With his characteristic rigor, Vermigli provides a masterful Reformed articulation of the relationship between necessity, contingency, and God’s sovereignty. With the Scriptures as his final authority, the Church Fathers as his guides, and philosophy as his handmaid, Vermigli produced Loci that withstand the rigors of time and remain a helpful guide to Protestants everywhere.

185 pages.

From the Book

“The Greeks call providence προνοία or προνοή [foreknowledge]. The Hebrews derive [the word hashgachah, “superintendence”] from the verb hisgiah in the hiphil, meaning “to precisely see and distinguish.” As for its definition, Cicero says in his book On Invention, “It is that by which something future is foreseen before it takes place.” But if this definition be applied to divine providence, it does not capture the latter, because that definition denotes merely knowledge of the future and the faculty of knowing in advance, whereas divine providence includes not only the knowledge of God’s mind but also his will and election by which it is fixed and determined that events will happen in one way rather than another. Besides these things, providence also includes the power and capacity to direct and govern the things for which he is said to make provision, since we find in things not only their very substance and nature but also the order by which they are connected to one other and tend one to another, such that one thing helps another or one thing is completed by another. And things have been well ordained in both of these respects, for all of them were said to be good individually with regard to themselves and to be very good generally with regard to order. That this order exists in things can be proved from the very nature of order. For Augustine defines order as an arrangement of equal and unequal things that allocates to each what belongs to each. And everyone knows that the parts of the world are varied and unequal if they be compared with one another. Further, both the testimony of experience and the teaching of the sacred writings show how fittingly God has allotted to every one of them their own places and their proper spots and positions. For we are told that God set a limit for the sea and the waters and that they do not dare to go beyond the boundaries prescribed for them [Prov. 8:29], and further that he measures the air with his fist [Isa. 40:12], and so on.