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,…

B. 1. The Will acteth by reason, when it cleaveth to that good which is simply apprehended by the Intellect. The simple apprehension goeth first; e. g. [That this Fruit offered Eve is good and desirable]: This is true, and here the Will adhereth to it as good. Then should the understanding think comparatively of a greater Good, and say [This is evil as forbidden and as it hindereth a greater Good:] And this it performeth not, because the Will is here the beginner of the Sin: not perhaps by a positive nolition or forbidding the Intellect the comparing Thought; (for that it doth not without show of reason) but by neglecting or omitting to excite the Understanding ad exercitium; which it is brought to in Adam and Eve, 1. By diversion, being before taken up with the Creature. 2. By voluntary neglect or sloth. For the Will can omit its act without reason, and yet be a rational appetite. And the beginning of the Sin may be this omission of the Will, or its over tenacious adhering to sensible good, apprehended truly by the Intellect. 2. And we have not so much acquaintance with the faculties of our ⟨p. 152⟩own Souls, as to be sure that sense, and passion, and fantasy can do nothing immediately on the Will to help or hinder it. We find that the Will easily followeth Passion, and very hardly goeth against it. 3. Nay we are not certain, but there may be more brutishness and less reason in many Sins, than most imagine; and that the violence of the sensitive appetite and passion, may not prevail both with the Will to forbear the excitation of the Intellect, and with the Intellect to omit its opposite Judgment, though neither Will or Reason in the first instant give consent. There are some also that think that we are scarce sure that the Will and the sensitive Appetite are two several faculties, rather than one between two guides. I say not as they: But this I will say, that I grow daily more confident, that they that make the rational and sensitive Soul in man to be two, and their Brethren, that without all show of proof, magisterially face us down, that the Soul at death puts off all sense (because it exerciseth it not by the same Organs which were adapted to the Bodies use), do both of them heinously wrong the Church, and darken many Truths, and open the way to Infidelity.

B. 1. The Will acteth by reason, when it cleaveth to that good which is simply apprehended by the Intellect. The simple apprehension goeth first; e. g. [That this Fruit offered Eve is good and desirable]: This is true, and here the Will adhereth to it as good. Then should the understanding think comparatively of a greater Good, and say [This is evil as forbidden and as it hindereth a greater Good:] And this it performeth not, because the Will is here the beginner of the Sin: not perhaps by a positive nolition or forbidding the Intellect the comparing Thought; (for that it doth not without shew of reason) but by neglecting or omitting to excite the Understanding ad exercitium; which it is brought to in Adam and Eve, 1. By diversion, being before taken up with the Creature. 2. By voluntary neglect or sloth. For the Will can omit its act without reason, and yet be a rational appetite. And the beginning of the Sin may be this omission of the Will, or its over tenacious adhering to sensible good, apprehended truly by the Intellect. 2. And we have not so much acquaintance with the faculties of our