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,…

5. The Jesuits, and all others explode this Opinion of Duràndus as singular, but give so little and slender reason of their dissent, as would draw one the more to suspect their cause. Instead of it they scarce know what to assert: But Bellarmine and the chiefest of them, under a pretended opposition, speak (I think) the same in other words, Even an Universal Concurse like that of the Sun, which operateth in specification according to the nature of Recipients, which specify the effect. Which Universal Influx, no doubt, Aureolus and Durandus include in Gods sustentation of Nature: For to sustain an Active Nature in all its Active disposition, by a suitable active Influx, is universally to cause its motion. The difference they are unable to assign.

5. The Jesuits, and all others explode this Opinion of Duràndus as singular, but give so little and slender reason of their dissent, as would draw one the more to suspect their cause. Instead of it they scarce know what to assert: But Bellarmine and the chiefest of them, under a pretended opposition, speak (I think) the same in other words, Even an Universal Concurse like that of the Sun, which operateth in specification according to the nature of Recipients, which specifie the effect. Which Universal Influx, no doubt, Aureolus and Durandus include in Gods sustentation of Nature: For to sustain an Active Nature in all its Active disposition, by a suitable active Influx, is universally to cause its motion. The difference they are unable to assign.

6. After these come Hobbs, Cartesius and Gassendus, with a swarm of Epicureans, (a Sect commonly despised even in Cicero's time, and yet called Wits in ours by men that have no more wit than themselves); and some of these say, that Motion needeth no continued cause at all, any more than non-movere: But when a thing is in motion, it will so continue, because it is its state, without any other continued cause than the motion it self. And so they may as well say (and some do) that when a thing is in Being, it will so continue till it be positively annihilated, without any continued causation of its being. As if esse & existere were nothing more than non esse; and agere were no more noble a mode of Entity than non agere, and so needed no more (that is, no) Cause. (For non esse & non agere need no Cause:) When this distraction is worn out and shamed, the next Age will reproach us for attempting the confutation of it; And yet the Wits of this delirant Age have not the wit to understand a Confutation.