a) God is the First Cause (_causa prima_) and Prime Mover (_motor primus_) of all things, and all created or secondary causes (_causae secundae_) derive their being and faculties, nay, their very acts from Him. If any creature could act independently of God, God would cease to be _causa prima_ and _motor primus_.(706)
The influence of the First Cause is universal, that is to say, it produces all creatural acts without exception,—necessary and free, good and bad,—because no secondary cause has power to act unless it is set in motion by the _motor primus_.
In influencing His creatures, however, God adapts himself to the peculiar nature of each. The necessary causes He determines to act necessarily, the free causes, freely. All receive from Him their substance and their mode of action.(707) The rational creature, therefore, though subject to His determining influence, acts with perfect freedom, just as if it were not moved.
b) In spite of free-will, however, the influence which God exerts on His rational creatures is irresistible because it proceeds from an absolute and omnipotent Being whose decrees brook no opposition. What God wills infallibly happens.(708)
Nevertheless, God is not the author of sin. He moves the sinner to perform an act; but He does not move Him to perform a sinful act. The malice of sin derives solely from the free will of man.(709)
c) Since the divine influence causally precedes all creatural acts, God’s concurrence with creatural causes (_concursus generalis_) must be conceived as prevenient, not simultaneous. The Divine Omnipotence not only makes the action possible, but likewise effects it by moving the will from potentiality to actuality.(710) Consequently, the causal influence which the Creator exerts upon His creatures is not a mere _motio_, but a _praemotio_,—and not merely moral, but physical (_praemotio physica_).(711) It is by physical premotion that God’s prevenient influence effects the free actions of His creatures, without regard to their assent.(712) Free-will is predetermined by God before it determines itself.(713)
d) If we analyse God’s physical predeterminations in so far as they are created entities, we find that they are nothing else than the effect and execution of His eternal decrees, embodied in the _praedeterminatio physica_. It is the temporal execution of the latter that is called _praemotio physica_. Hence we are justified in speaking, not only of a temporal _praemotio_, but of an eternal _praedeterminatio_, in fact the terms are often used synonymously.(714)