A26883:2736
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.
B. Yet more notions! what is futurity? any thing or nothing? nothing certainly: For quoad ens, it is terminus diminuens; and nothing is no cause. But it is Gods knowledge that Sin will be, which is to be called the Cause of Gods Decree, as sine qua non, if any be. But I must deal most about futurition with the Calvinists, when I come to save you from Dr. Twice his Ferula.
B. Yet more notions! what is futurity? any thing or nothing? nothing certainly: For quoad ens, it is terminus diminuens; and nothing is no cause. But it is Gods knowledge that Sin will be, which is to be called the Cause of Gods Decree, as sine qua non, if any be. But I must deal most about futurition with the Calvinists, when I come to save you from Dr. Twisse his Ferula.
A. I pray you then open me the matter as it is your self.
B. I will make your Cause better than you have made it; But not by making other mens worse, but by opening the reconciling truth. 1. I shall tell you in what sense Gods Will and Decrees may and must be said 1to have an extrinsic cause, without change in God. 1. Know therefore that Gods Essence is his Will, but not as Essence. To say that God is God, and that God willeth this or that, are not terms of the same signification. 2. Gods Will is his Essence denominated from some amiable good as the Object; and so there is ever quid respectivum in the notion of Will. 3. As God willeth himself, the Act being perfectly immanent, his Will is called himself much more properly, than his Will of things extrinsic (which is ever either effectively, or at least objectively transient;) Because it is God that willeth, and that is willed or loved, (which made many Ancients say, That this was the third Person in the Trinity.) 4. But as God willeth things ad extra, though it is his Essence that so willeth them; yet it is unfit to say simply, that this Will is God; e. g. that to will Peter's Salvation is God, because the name Will here includeth the thing willed. 5. And therefore when we speak of Gods Will in the universal notion, as abstracted from all particular Objects and Acts, it is less inconvenient to say simply, that this Will is God, than when we speak of his Will in act ad extra. By this time you may see, that though Gods Will, as his Essence, hath no cause; yet his Will as denominated extrinsically from the Object, may have some kind of Cause that is