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,…

§. 6. The sum of that which I am now concerned in, in Mr. Sterry's Treatise is, That the Freedom of all things is to act according to their natures; and so is that of the will of man; and that in God and man, Necessity and Liberty concur, and that whatever we do or will, we do or will it necessarily, as being moved to it by the first caus• and a chained connection of necessitating causes; by which all things in the world are carried on: That a will not determined by God, but left to a self-determination ⟨p. 109⟩without Gods predetermining causality, is not to be asserted, as contrary to Gods Goodness, Wisdom, power▪ &c. That sin is a privation formally, and all that is positive in it is directly and not by accident of Gods positive causation (else with the Manichees we must hold two first causes;) And that the formal privation is from the wi•lidrawing of necessary Divine causation of the contrary, and God is the Negative necessitating cause of it: Even as he causeth Light by the shining of the Sun, and causeth darkness by its setting or not •hining: or as he causeth substances and shadows, Life and death; And that all sin thus as necessarily followeth Gods not giving the contrary, or his leaving the defectible Creature to itself, as the darkness followeth the Lights removal; And this was the entrance of sin into the world; the Woman being Necessarily deceived, necessarily sinned; and all good and evil is thus (as to necessity equally) to be resolved into Gods causing and not causing Will; what he will cause cannot but be, and what he will not cause cannot be: And this is the beautiful variety and harmony in the Universe: In God himself is nothing but perfection, but the Greature being the shadowy Image of God, defectibility and imperfection is essential to it: so that he reduceth Morality to the frame, and necessity of physical motion, and maketh Moral Good and evil to be indeed as much natural good and evil and of the same kind (except as in another subject) as Summer and Winter, heat and cold, day and night, health and sickness, life and death, animate and inanimate, the unavoidable diversifications of the will and work of God; And that every permission of his will is accompanied with a positive volition of the thing permitted, (And yet that Will is not properly in God, but so called after the manner of man:)