A26883:2385
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,…
Richard Baxter's Catholic theology plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriors who, 1. by contending about things unrevealed or not understood, 2. and by taking verbal differences for real,Richard Baxter's Catholick theologie plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriours who, 1. by contending about things unrevealed or not understood, 2. and by taking verbal differences for real,
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1675
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
And Predestination is an ambiguous word: If it be taken for All Gods fore-decreeing, or all about man, or all of Good to us; then our Being is the first effect of it in us, and the making of the World a preparatory effect, &c. And so, no doubt, the first effect supposed us no men, before, and therefore no condition in us. But if you take Predestination for Gods decree of Giving us Grace and Glory only, then it is presupposed that we are lapsed sinners.
And the decree of damning men is exercised only on them as foreknown damnable sinners; And the decree of penal denying Grace or faith to sinners for sin, supposeth them such punishable sinners: But the bare Negation of a Decree to give faith to one to whom the absence is no privation, is unfitly called Reprobation, (though men may talk at their own rates;) And we grant that some such no-decrees have no condition in the objects, for they have no objects: e. g. If you will feign that God decreed from eternity, to give me no faith before the Creation, or before I was born; or to give Innocent Adam no faith in a Saviour as dying for him▪ this were no reprobating act. But when God hath given men a Saviour with his common grace to believe in and accept, here if he deny them necessary grace to believe, it is a penal act. And note that Christ and Common grace as absolutely given to mankind, and offered to individuals, ever goeth before mens accepting or refusing him: And no man to whom he is offered, refuseth him for want of necessary help, till by sin against that grace he forfeit it.
XII. God by an absolute and efficacious decree of his Will, antecedently to the prescience of the future good use of free-will, predetermined all good acts, which are done in time, specially those by which the predestinate come to eternal life.