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,…

§. 14. If you say, that the word [Coaction] importeth reluctancy, o• unwillingness, or opposition; I confess with Scotus, that Potentia passive is well distinguished, into naturalem, neutram, violentam: and that the word Coaction may be so strictly taken, as to signify no motion but of a violated Patient: and so it is but lis de nomine: But a Necessitating motion o• • natural, and neutral patient is the same thing, what name soever you call it by. And they that acknowledge the pravity of the will, and its corrupt averseness to God and spiritual good, must needs, by this rule, make Gods gracious change by predetermination to be a coaction, as being the motion of a contrarily disposed patient: contrarily, I say, i• instanti prior; for the motus is supposed to change its disposition and act at once: But if still they say, that it is not contrary in eodem instanti, and that's its liberty; I say, then if the Devil had power as easily to effect by physical premotion a hatred of God and will to sin, in all men, as I can move my pen, it were no loss of Natural Liberty. And so mans liberty differeth not from a beasts, or from a plants, indeed, but only in the Nature of the Act: one willeth, when the other doth but appe•er•, but all by the like physical unresistible efficiency from other cau•es. This is but to play with the name of Liberty.

§. 14. If you say, that the word [Coaction] importeth reluctancy, o• unwillingness, or opposition; I confess with Scotus, that Potentia pass•v• is well distinguished, into naturalem, neutram, violentam: and that the word Coaction may be so strictly taken, as to signifie no motion but of a viola•ed Patient: and so it is but lis de nomine: But a Necessitating motion o• • natural, and neutral patient is the same thing, what name soever you call it by. And they that acknowledge the pravity of the will, and its corrpt aversness to God and spiritual good, must needs, by this rule, make Gods gracious change by predetermination to be a coaction, as being the motion of a contrarily disposed patient: contrarily, I say, i instanti priore; for the motus is supposed to change its disposition and act at once: But if still they say, that it is not contrary in eodem instanti, and that's its liberty; I say, then if the Devil had power as easily to effect by physical premotion a hatred of God and will to sin, in all men, as I can move my pen, it were no loss of Natural Liberty. And so mans liberty differeth not from a beasts, or from a plants, indeed, but only in the Nature of the Act: one willeth, when the other doth but appeer, but all by the like physical unresistible efficiency from other caues. This is but to play with the name of Liberty.