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,…

Answ. True: And remember that a true Power is that quâ verè possumus; and not that faculty which could do this or that if God will predetermine it, and otherwise cannot; no more than the Sun can shine without him. When God withholdeth the Influx necessary to action, such a faculty is no true power as to that action in that State.

XX. By preventing Grace efficacious as aforesaid, the Liberty of the will is not destroyed, nor the actual use of it hindered, but is wonderfully perfected and roborated.

Answ. There is a Liberty that is perfected by some even necessitating ¹predetermination of God: And there is an inferior Liberty of Imperfect Viators, which some efficient Divine predetermination (feigned by you) would destroy. And if God did by that insuperable premoving influx (which omnipotently moveth all things) predetermine all men and Devils to all the wicked Volitions and actions that ever were done, with all the circumstances, and as respecting every object comparatively, so that no creature ever did nor can resist such a predetermination any easier than make a World, this were to destroy the true Liberty of that Creature, with his innocency and felicity: however you may at pleasure put the name of Liberty on, and deny the name of Necessity to, such an absolutely necessitated Volition and act; and then may say, that they are premoved and predetermined to do the Act of all sin freely (or constrained to do it without constraint,) and so the liberty of the will is established. For I see not but cogere ad Volendum is as apt a phrase, as cogere nolentem ad agendum; when a will formerly innocent is irresistibly predetermined by physical efficiency, to all those comparate circumstantiate acts, which are forbidden in Gods Law, and that on pain of mans damnation.