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,…

§. 6. The Liberty of the Will is threefold, 1. Liberty of Contradiction, or exercitii; 2. Of ^†Contrariety or specification in the Act: 3. Of objective specification, which is Liberty of Competition. 1. The first Liberty is to will or not will; to nill or not nill. 2. The second is Liberty to will or nill this. 3. The third is Liberty to will This object or That, or to nill This or That.^*

1. †Note, that the Papists confess, that by Christs Case it is proved, that Libertas specificationis inter bonum & malum is not necessary to merit: So Pet. • S. Joseph. Thes. Univers. pag. 90.
2. *Of the real difference of these three, see Rob. Baron. Metaphys. I take not that which many Schoolmen call Liberty of Complacence to be another sort of Liberty: Though I distinguish Liberty of simple Complacence, from Liberty of election; as being a prior distribution: And I deny not, but that Liberty (of Complacency specially) may stand with necessity of immutable disposition, yea▪ and with some sort of necessitating operation of God; as is in Christ and the Glorified: And in this large essential sense Liberum and Voluntarium are all one, supposing Voluntarium to be the act of a self-determining unconstrained will. So that the word [Free-will] being so exceeding ambiguous (as my foresaid Scheme showeth) we must be sure that we pretend not the Controversies de nomine to be de re. But it is the Indifferency of a Viators will that we have now to do with, and not that state of perfect determination, or that Amplitude or advancement of the will, which Gibie•f and such others talk of: And note that by [Posse agere vel non agere] which we put into the definition of free-will, we must not mean that Potentia moralis metaphorica, which is nothing but the wills moral disposition or habit; but the Potentia Naturalis: And so it may be said of Christ and the glorified, that their not sinning or not willing sin, is not ex impotentia naturali, but ex perfectione.Of the real difference of these three, see Rob. Baron. Metaphys. I take not that which many Schoolmen call Liberty of Complacence to be another sort of Liberty: Though I distinguish Liberty of simple Complacence, from Liberty of election; as being a prior distribution: And I deny not, but that Liberty (of Complacency specially) may stand with necessity of immutable disposition, yea and with some sort of necessitating operation of God; as is in Christ and the Glorified: And in this large essential sense Liberum and Voluntarium are all one, supposing Voluntarium to be the act of a self-determining unconstrained will. So that the word [Free-will] being so exceeding ambiguous (as my foresaid Scheme sheweth) we must be sure that we pretend not the Controversies de nomine to be de re. But it is the Indifferency of a Viators will that we have now to do with, and not that state of perfect determination, or that Amplitude or advancement of the will, which Gibief and such others talk of: And note that by [Posse agere vel non agere] which we put into the definition of free-will, we must not mean that Potentia moralis metaphorica, which is nothing but the wills moral disposition or habit; but the Potentia Naturalis: And so it may be said of Christ and the glorified, that their not sinning or not willing sin, is not ex impotentia naturali, but ex perfectione.