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,…

The sixth Crimination.

C. For ought I can understand, some of them acknowledge no Corruption nor Grace in the Will, as having no Habits, but mere Indifferency or Liberty; but think that the illuminating of the understanding is enough to change the will.^*

C. For ought I can understand, some of them acknowledge no Corruption nor Grace in the Will, as having no Habits, but meer Indifferency or Liberty; but think that the illuminating of the understanding is enough to change the will.^*

1. *The Remonstrants say, Synod. circ. art. 3. &▪ 4, p. 15. [Voluntatem i• super Deus in obsequium suum fle ctit, & ad actu• fidei & obedienti• ita inclinat per spiritum suum sanctum verbo utentem, ut voluntas per illam operationem non solum possit obedire, •ed & obediat quoties obedit; non ex se, an• per se, aut a se.

B. 1. These are a few odd persons, that differ from the generality of your Adversaries: and I am not to justify all that every man writeth. 2. But even of these I suppose the meaning of the most is, but this, that sin began in the Intellect, and there Grace must begin: and that God worketh on the will but mediante Intellectu. And these Camero held as well as they; and so do many more. And these seem to differ, not about the necessity of Grace, but the manner of its conveyance to the will; whether it be only by the intellect. 3. And as the wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear its sound, but know not whence it cometh, or whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit. We know that the will is vitiated as ill as the understanding, and needeth Grace as much as it: and that God is as near to the one in his operations as to the other, and giveth real Grace to both. But because the intellect is in the natural order, the first in acting, and the will but second; and because the act is commonly (and reasonably) supposed to go before the Habit (though not before all Divine Influx ad actum;) therefore men are uncertain whether God who first acteth the Intellect, do not by its act, first operate on the will. But this dependeth much on the Physical Controversy, whether the Intellect determine the will ad speciem actus, or at least really and efficiently move it; or rather only present the object to it, and so work but in subserviency to the material cause, which is constitutive indeed of the act in specie, but not efficient: and the perception of it goeth to the conditio objectiva, without which it is no object to the will. This I incline