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. You have done as the Incendiaries of the Church have done from the beginning of contentious Disputes: you have chosen a word unexplained ¹to make a ma•ter of reproach of, which hath so many significations, and is so uncertainly used, that Philosophers themselves, even in their greatest accurateness, know not what to fix upon; though there are few words which they are more concerned to be agreed in, if they could. But where the thing is unknown, no wonder if there be discord about the Name. Fortun, Licetue alone de natura primo movest may suffice to evince this. But I perceive you take not Nature for Principium motus et quietis, &c. nor for the essence of things, matter or form, or both▪ nor with Scotus de potentia for the passive power, nor in other senses usually intended by various Writers: But for the created status & ordo rerum, and the motus thereby alone caused. And if this he NATURE with you, you cast your self into inextricable difficulties to know what you say. For 1. We are very much ignorant of second Causes, and their concatenation and co-operations; who ever took in pieces this great Engine of the Universe (as men do a Clock or Watch) to find out the form and compagination of each part? or ever understood it. 2. Who can tell certainly what is done by this compagination of Causes and ²co-operation according to its primitive state, who knoweth not the whole Engine, but some parts alone (not so much as one sand is to the whole Earth) seeing that it is the whole that co-operateth to the foredescribed motions? And 3. Who knoweth how far God hath fixed the state and operation of second Causes? and how far he is pleased to alter them from their first state and course of motion, or daily doth it? 4. And who is so well acquainted with the state of the Universe in the Creation, and the state of it now, as to be able to make an accurate comparison, and tell whether or how much it is since then altered? or whether all things continue just as in the beginning. 5. Yea it is certain, that a great alteration was made both on mans Soul and Body, and on the Earth by the sin of Adam, and the Curse. 6.

B. You have done as the Incendiaries of the Church have done from the beginning of contentious Disputes: you have chosen a word unexplained