A26883:3766
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.
C. It is one thing for God to work with the Word, and another thing to work by the Word: The first we confess; But if God work by the Word, then he must operate first on the Word, which is the Preachers act; and so by that Word on the soul, and not immediately: Therefore I rather think that the word is a concomitant than an instrumental cause.
B. 1. You wrong your self and Christ in that you will not believe him, John 3. that we mortals know not the way and manner of the Spirits accesses and operations on the soul, any more than the cause of the wind whose sound we hear. Do you not know, that you do not know how Gods Spirit moveth our intellect and wills, and how he maketh use of instruments; except secundum quid in some particles revealed. 2. An hundred Texts of Scripture (which I omit lest I be tedious) tell us that the Word is a means or subordinate cause (to God) of his informing and reforming operations on mens souls. And it's dangerous to dream of any second cause that is so concomitant as to be but co-ordinate with the first cause, and not subordinate to it. And the word is not only subordinate to God as Instituter by Legislation and Declaration, but also to God as efficient operator. 3. God can work two ways by the Word, which are within our reach (besides others) 1. As it is the act of the speaker, by exciting and illuminating him. 2. As it is the species (as they call it) received by ⟨p. 164⟩the senses and imagination, which God can by his power set home to the attainment of the due effect. 4. And yet I know not any, or many of your Adversaries that deny that besides this Divine operation by the Word, God hath another immediately on the soul, exciting it to operate upon the Word, as the vis plastica vitalis materna operatur in semen jam receptum. But I will here forbear to trouble you with the physical difficulties, whether the Word heard be only objectum intellectus, or also causa efficiens (as light is both to the eye.) And whether it be operative on the intellect, or only terminative, with other such like.