A10663:1033
A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soul of man With the…A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soule of man With the…
A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soul of man With the several dignities and corruptions thereunto belonging. By Edward Reynolds, late preacher to the honourable society of Lincoln's Inn: and now rector of the Church of Braunston in Northamptonshire.A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soule of man With the severall dignities and corruptions thereunto belonging. By Edvvard Reynoldes, late preacher to the honorable society of Lincoln's Inne: and now rector of the Church of Braunston in Northamptonshire.
London: printed by R. Hearne and John Norton for Robert Bostock, 1640
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Others there have been yet more Impious, which seek to fasten all the Corruptions of their Wills on something above the Heavens, even the Eternal Foreknowledge and the Providence of God: As if my Foreknowledge, that on the morrow the Sun will rise; or that such men as these shall one day be brought to a severe Doom, were the Cause working Necessity of the next Day, or the last Judgement. It is true indeed, Gods Prescience employs a Necessity of our working after that manner, as he foreknows: but this is Necessitas only Infallibilitatis, in regard of his Undeceivable Knowledge, which ever foresees things as they will certainly come to pass by the ⟨p. 545⟩free or natural workings of the Agents, whence they proceed. It is not Necessitas Coactionis, or Determinationis, whereby the Will of man is without any other disposition or propension in it self, enforced or unspontaneously determined to the producing of such Effects. The Actions of our Will are not therefore necessarily executed, because they were foreknown, but therefore they were foreknown, because our Will would certainly execute them, though not without Freedom and Election. And for Providence notwithstanding there be Providentia Permissiva, whereby1 God hath determined to suffer and permit men to sin; and moreover a Disposing Providence in Ordering2 all things in the World unto his own Glorious Ends, yet we may not presume to think that God doth determine, or actuate, impel, and3 overrule the wills of men to Evil. It is true indeed that nothing is done which God in all respects4 doth will, shall not be done with the secret Will5 of his good pleasure (for who can withstand his Will) and that his purposes are advanced by all the operations of the Creature: but yet he doth not so work his Will out of mens, as thereby to constrain and take away theirs (for indeed the constraint of a liberal and free Faculty, is (as it were) the extinction thereof) This were an Argument of Weakness, as if he were not able to bring his own Ends about, but by chaining and […] his Oppugners from exercising the Freedom which he first gave them; nor do his own