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,…

§. 3. 4. If the question be, Whether the giving of faith be so great a work that no Power below Omnipotency could suffice to do it? I answer, it is a presumptuous paltry question of rash men. But yet if it must be answered, it must be negatively: Because as Omnipotence is more illustrious in the making of the world, than in causing a man to believe; so Christians agree that the world it self (as I said) is not an adequate effect of Omnipotency: Which maketh so many of the subtlest Schoolmen conclude that God could not be proved to be Omnipotent by the whole Creation •as such, were it not further to be gathered from the notices of his perfection. Which were false if by Omnipotence they meant only a Power that can do all that is done: But they mean An Infinite Power; which they say must be so seen in an Infinite effect. But the world is not Infinite.

§. 3. 4. If the question be, Whether the giving of faith be so great a work that no Power below Omnipotency could suffice to do it? I answer, it is a presumptuous paltry question of rash men. But yet if it must be answered, it must be negatively: Because as Omnipotence is more illustrious in the making of the world, than in causing a man to believe; so Christians agree that the world it self (as I said) is not an adequate effect of Omnipotency: Which maketh so many of the subtilest Schoolmen conclude that God could not be proved to be Omnipotent by the whole Creation •as such, were it not further to be gathered from the notices of his perfection. Which were false if by Omnipotence they meant only a Power that can do all that is done: But they mean An Infinite Power; which they say must be so seen in an Infinite effect. But the world is not Infinite.

§. 4. As to the second question, it is either de nomine or de re. If the former, let every man speak as he list for me, rather than I will contend with him, whether Creation of faith be a fit name. As to the matter, 1. It is agreed on, that faith is not a substance; 2. Nor an Accident con-created with a substance; 3. Nor a composition of substances into one, done by secondary Creation, Generation or Art. 4. But that it is the right ordered Act of a substance, whose natural power which performeth it, was pre-existent, though without that act and the moral disposition. Therefore it being a Modus entis or modus modi that we talk of, the common name is Alteration and suscitation, actuating and ordering: But if men sober sometime call it a New Creation (as indeed the whole frame of holiness together is called the New Creature in the Scriptures) and sometimes the Divine nature, sometimes Regeneration, sometimes a Divine Artifice, Alteration, Conversion, Sanctification, &c. it is the same thing that is meant by all their several names.