Sacred Demonstrations, or the Christian Euclid, Book II (1543) - Page 18

Effected things are of two kinds: either established or fortuitous, from a patent or latent motion. Ends, likewise, are usually divided into two ways: into intermediate and ultimate.

4. A cause, as a genus, is that which some effect follows, or can follow. For God is also a cause in potency of future good; how much more so are the others?
5. An effect is that which follows some cause.
6. An end is that for whose sake effects are done by a cause; but there is an end only in effects proceeding from will. Furthermore, will exists in God, in separate substances, and in man. The definitions and explanations of causes must be set forth.

4. Many primary causes cannot be given. Whence it is necessary that there be one supreme cause, whether in nature or in art, to which the ultimate one is also referred. The first cause of all, God, creating all things for the sake of an end, is the final cause; it is ultimate in work and use, and is first in the acting mind, for whose sake the others exist. It is called the first efficient causative cause. Between the two, two others necessarily intervene: material the substance out of which something is made and formal the essence or design, which, since they cannot be separated from things or effects, are therefore called "proximate," for the reason that they are in the substance of the thing, whereas the two extremes can be absent. "Certain" causes are those that always or for the most part act in the same way; "uncertain," "contrary," or "latent" are those not subject to reason; "manifest" are those patent to the senses or to reasoning; "antecedent" are those that can long precede a thing or effect in potency, such as plethora an excess of bodily fluids leading to disease; "joined" are those such as the inflammation of humors in a fever and the resulting symptoms. The inept ascribe the uncertain causes to fate, fortune, and chance, and because they are ignorant, they even wish to ascribe manifest causes to these, wishing to strip them of an ordered [nature].