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,…

YOU may think this should have come first; but for some reasons I have reserved it to this place.

§. 1. I think the Ignorance of this in a great measure is common to all mankind: But the Ignorance of mens Ignorance, and presumptuous contending about what we understand not, pretending (even to triumphant scorn of dissenters) that we do understand it, is the very life of most of our contentions about these points.

§. 2. My own judgement is, that our own Intellection and Volition in the body, are Acts that take in so much of the sense, imagination, and corporeal spirits, into that of them which we perceive and denominate, as that we cannot tell how far the Acts even of our own separated souls will differ from these which we here perceive, and from perception call Intellection and Volition. And much less do I know the difference between Gods Vital-activity, Intellection and Volition, and ours. Some likeness there is, or else ours were not his Image: But all Schoolmen and Divines agree, that the names are not Univocal, and that it is not the same Thing in God as in man, which these names signify; And that no man can have a formal conception of them. I am satisfied that a glow-worm or the fire in a flint, yea or in a stick or clod, is incomparably liker the Sun, than Man's poor Life, and Intellection and Volition is like to Gods. And if so, how unfit are we unnecessarily to dispute of these acts of God with curiosity? or at all so as implieth a nearer likeness? The Lord knoweth that I would with reverence withdraw from this consuming fire, and no further meddle with it, than the Glorifying of God, and the pacifying of the contentious, and the healing of divisions, and calling off the presumptuous, doth require.

§. 2. My own judgement is, that our own Intellection and Volition in the body, are Acts that take in so much of the sense, imagination, and corporeal spirits, into that of them which we perceive and denominate, as that we cannot tell how far the Acts even of our own separated souls will differ from these which we here perceive, and from perception call Intellection and Volition. And much less do I know the difference between Gods Vital-activity, Intellection and Volition, and ours. Some likeness there is, or else ours were not his Image: But all Schoolmen and Divines agree, that the names are not Univocal, and that it is not the same Thing in God as in man, which these names signifie; And that no man can have a formal conception of them. I am satisfied that a glow-worm or the fire in a flint, yea or in a stick or clod, is incomparably liker the Sun, than Man's poor Life, and Intellection and Volition is like to Gods. And if so, how unfit are we unnecessarily to dispute of these acts of God with curiosity? or at all so as implyeth a nearer likeness? The Lord knoweth that I would with reverence withdraw from this consuming fire, and no further meddle with it, than the Glorifying of God, and the pacifying of the contentious, and the healing of divisions, and calling off the presumptuous, doth require.