Accidental events are also produced by secondary causes, but they happen by chance, not regularly and not as a result of purpose.
With the former it understands the simple substances, known as angels in the Bible and as "secondary causes" and "separate intelligences" among the philosophers.
Natural events are produced by secondary causes, which bring the objects of nature to their perfection.
A cautious thinker will not venture in any single instance to pronounce an event to be so extraordinary that God could not have brought it about by the use of secondary causes, but must have intervened directly.
Since that which is produced by the laws of nature is really produced by God, the Biblical miracles consist merely in the fact that eyewitnesses report events of which they did not know the secondary causes.
For one who has discovered the secondary causes, the fact remains, as such, but not the miracle.
When out of communion, the soul becomes distracted by looking at secondary causes, and subordinate agents, just as David was distracted by looking at Nabal.
We are constantly ensnared by looking at secondary causes; we do not realize God in everything.
Both Peter and Abishai were living upon the surface, and looking at secondary causes.
They are all attempts to account for the conservation of the world by "the conservation and transformation of energy," that is, by secondary causes, which in reality are only conditions and not real causes.
The earthquake was the product of "secondary causes"--of inherent nature-forces which now exist and act independent of the agency and control of God.
No doctrine of prayer or special providence is to be his excuse for not looking straight at secondary causes, and acting, exactly so far as experience justifies him, as if he were himself the divine agent which antiquity fabled him to be.
If so, Providence either acts through the agency of secondary causes, as in other diseases, or not.
The other error is the notion that the idea of "creation" excludes the idea of the action of secondary causes.
That all such theories should take the form of a derivation of the new from the old seems to be inevitable, perhaps from our inability to conceive of any other line of secondary causes in this connection.
Conditions, however, whether positive or negative, are no sooner called into existence than they become causes in their turn and produce further conditions, and so on ad infinitum, thus giving rise to the whole train of secondary causes.
The doctrine that the planets are secondary causes, is, therefore, not supported by the circumstances of the phenomena.
Both hypotheses cannot, however, be well founded; and his reason will call on the astrologer to give up the doctrine of indices of fate, and prefer that of secondary causes.
Secondly, because if the distinction between the contingent and the necessary is to be referred only to secondary causes, this must be independent of the divine intention and will; which is inadmissible.
For the providence of God produces effects through the operation of secondary causes, as was above shown (Q.
God's immediate provision over everything does not exclude the action of secondary causes; which are the executors of His order, as was said above (Q.
That all such theories should take the form of a derivation of the new from the old seems to be inevitable, perhaps from our inability to conceive of any other line of secondary causes, in this connection.
The above list will hopefully provide you with a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "secondary causes" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this group of words.
