A26883:2646
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.
§. 30. III. Accordingly I think, that God made man a free self-determining agent, that he might be capable of such Sapiential Rule: And that it is a great Honour to God, to make so noble a Nature, as hath a Power to determine its own elections: And though such are not of the highest rank of Creatures, they are far above the lowest: And that God (who we see delighteth to make up beauty and harmony of diversities) doth delight in the Sapiential Moral Government of this free sort of Creatures: And though man be not Independent, yet to be so far like God himself, as to be a kind of first-determiner of many of his own Volitions and Nolitions, is part of Gods Natural Image on Man.
§. 31. IV. Accordingly I take Duty to be Rewardable and Laudable; and sin to be odious as it is the Act of a free agent: And that the Nature of Moral Good and Evil, consisteth not in its being the mere effect of physical premotion, but in being a Voluntary Conformity or Disconformity to the Sapiential Rule of duty, by a free agent that had Power to do otherwise.
§. 31. IV. Accordingly I take Duty to be Rewardable and Laudable; and sin to be odious as it is the Act of a free agent: And that the Nature of Moral Good and Evil, consisteth not in its being the meer effect of physical premotion, but in being a Voluntary Conformity or Disconformity to the Sapiential Rule of duty, by a free agent that had Power to do otherwise.
§. 32. V. Free-will then is not only the same with willing it self, or a mere agency according to Nature, by the premotion of the first determining necessitating Mover. It is not only such a freedom as Fire, Water, Beasts, and every moved thing hath, (to be moved according to the first Moyers action) which is in the, will of man; But it is a Power to be a first determining Specifier of its own acts as Moral: Not that it is never predetermined, but that it can do this.