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,…

C. You know that in that our Divines do differ. Some that write of the Order of the Decrees, make Gods Glory the end of Salvation and Damnation, and these the end of Grace and permitted Sin, and these the end of Creation, &c. But Dr. Twice writeth against them (even Perkins and Beza, &c.) maintaining that God hath but two Decrees; one de fine, and the other de mediis; and that his End is but one.

C. You know that in that our Divines do differ. Some that write of the Order of the Decrees, make Gods Glory the end of Salvation and Damnation, and these the end of Grace and permitted Sin, and these the end of Creation, &c. But Dr. Twisse writeth against them (even Perkins and Beza, &c.) maintaining that God hath but two Decrees; one de fine, and the other de mediis; and that his End is but one.

B. If you are no better agreed, bear with others that differ from you. But either you diversify Gods Decrees by their connoted Objects, or as divers intrinsic real Acts in God. If you say the latter, your own Party, and all the School-Divines, will say you blaspheme, by making God divisible or compounded, and will call you Vorstians. If the former, how innumerable must you make Gods Decrees? And why may not the Order as well as the species and number of them be so denominated from connotation? And then you will say that God first intended to make man as the end of inferior Creatures, and after decreed to make them for man. And he first decreed that there should be fruit, and then that there should be a Tree to bear it, and then that this Tree should be rooted in the Earth, and then that it should be planted, and then that there should be Earth and Water to nourish it, &c. And if poor man be but a little part of Gods Creation, unless we could anatomize the whole frame of the Universe, how should we know just what place and order our own interest hath in such a frame among so many millions of millions of Creatures, of which Angels and the superior World are nobler than we? Is he to be numbered with the Churches Friends, who will make us such work, and lay mens love and peace upon it?

B. If you are no better agreed, bear with others that differ from you. But either you diversifie Gods Decrees by their connoted Objects, or as divers intrinsick real Acts in God. If you say the latter, your own Party, and all the School-Divines, will say you blaspheme, by making God divisible or compounded, and will call you Vorstians. If the former, how innumerable must you make Gods Decrees? And why may not the Order as well as the species and number of them be so denominated from connotation? And then you will say that God first intended to make man as the end of inferior Creatures, and after decred to make them for man. And he first decreed that there should be fruit, and then that there should be a Tree to bear it, and then that this Tree should be rooted in the Earth, and then that it should be planted, and then that there should be Earth and Water to nourish it, &c. And if poor man be but a little part of Gods Creation, unless we could anatomize the whole frame of the Universe, how should we know just what place and order our own interest hath in such a frame among so many millions of millions of Creatures, of which Angels and the superior World are nobler than we? Is he to be numbred with the Churches Friends, who will make us such work, and lay mens love and peace upon it?