Richard Baxter's Catholic theology plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriors who,…Richard Baxter's Catholick theologie plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriours who,…

187. If these Teachers mean that no man hath any power freely to specify the Acts of his own will, by any other help of God, besides necessitating predetermining premotion, and so that every man doth all that he can do, and no man can do more than he doth; They dishonour God by denying him to be the Creator of that Free-power, which is essential to man, and which God himself accounteth it his honour to create. And they feign God to damn and blame all that are damned and blamed, for as great Impossibilities, as if they were ⟨p. 75⟩damned and blamed for not making a world, or for not being Angels.

187. If these Teachers mean that no man hath any power freely to specifie the Acts of his own will, by any other help of God, besides necessitating predetermining premotion, and so that every man doth all that he can do, and no man can do more than he doth; They dishonour God by denying him to be the Creator of that Free-power, which is essential to man, and which God himself accounteth it his honour to create. And they feign God to damn and blame all that are damned and blamed, for as great Impossibilities, as if they were ⟨p. 75⟩damned and blamed for not making a world, or for not being Angels.

188. Thus also such men, teach that Christ strippeth a Christian of two things, His Sins, and his Righteousness: Or that Two things must be ¹cast away, for Christ; Sins and Righteousness: But they should speak better, if they would not deceive; nothing is to be cast away as evil but Sin. Righteousness, truly such, is Good, and never to be cast away. If it be no Righteousness, why do they falsely say that we must cast away our Righteousness. To cast away a false conceit of Righteousness, is not to cast away Righteousness, but Sin only. Indeed besides Sin, we are said justly to cast away that which would be the Object and Matter of Sin: And the phrase is fitlyer applied to a thing Indifferent, than to a thing necessary, least it seduce. There is nothing so Good, which may not be made the object of Sin, not Christ or his Righteousness, or God himself excepted; But we must not therefore say that we must cast away God or Christ, because we must not thus objectively abuse them: So Holiness and true Righteousness (Inherent or imputed) may be objects of sinful pride and boasting; But it is not edifying Doctrine therefore to say that we must cast away Inherent and Imputed Righteousness: But yet true self-denial requireth that we deny our Righteousness (Inherent or Imputed) to be that which indeed it is not. And so when men accounted the Jewish observations to be a Justifying Righteousness in competition with, and in opposition to Christ, Paul counteth it as loss, and dung, and nothing in that respect: when yet elsewhere he saith, I have lived in all good Conscience to this day. And Christ himself fulfilled that Law and Righteousness. So if a man will conceit, that his common Grace will justify him without Holiness, or his Holiness, without Pardon and the Righteousness of Christ, he must deny this Righteousness; that is, he must deny it to be what it is not, and must cast away (not it, but) the false conceits of it: And so if any Libertine will say that Christs Righteousness imputed to him, will justify him, without faith, or be instead of Holiness to him, he must deny Imputed Righteousness thus, to be what indeed it is not.