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. We little know when God worketh Immediately, and how far His Efflux or Action ex parte agentis I oft tell you hath no degrees being himself: The degrees are in the Received Impress on the Soul. And it's like this special differencing Grace consisteth in a special degree of Impress: But when that Impress is made by the Spirit without the Instrumentality of Means, we know not. God can make our own Imagination, and spirit,, and inward temperament a means undiscernably to us. 2. If I have proved to you that even the universal Grace it self with common means, may attain the effect, and doth in many, who dare question, whether All, yea One extraordinary or special Means added by God to that Common Influx, (with a will of success) may ascertain the effect. It were Blasphemy to say that God hath not Wisdom enough thus to attain his ends, by a series of adapted means, in conjunction with that Grace.

C. But methinks you spin too fine a thread, when you talk of an Impress of the Spirit on the Soul, as the first Effect, (of God alone, or God and the Means) antecedent to faith or the Act of man as the second effect (of God and Man together). I find not that our Curiousest School Wits do talk much of such an Impress.

C. But methinks you spin too fine a thred, when you talk of an Impress of the Spirit on the Soul, as the first Effect, (of God alone, or God and the Means) antecedent to faith or the Act of man as the second effect (of God and Man together). I find not that our Curiousest School Wits do talk much of such an Impress.

B. 1. You will find the same sense in the Thomists and many of the Schoolmen: And methinks it is clear in it self. The Act of Faith is done by us: Our Souls have need of some Grace to be the Cause or it. The Cause goeth before the Effect. This Cause must not be out of us, but within us: Grace therefore must be first within us as a Cause, before it is within us as the effect of it. Yea, Action being nothing but Modus Agentis, is not a fit recipient it self immediately of a vis impressa: It is the Soul or faculty that must Act; and to say that Gods Influx is not on the Soul or faculty as the recipient, but on the Act of that faculty alone, seemeth to be unintelligible, if not absurd. It is our Act, or our Soul that needeth help or Grace? If not the Soul, but the Act, then we have need of none at all: For the Act is yet future, that is, is no act, and nothing, and so hath no need. 2. But if really you will hold to the opinion that our Act it self is the first Effect of Gods Influx or Will, then take notice, that all our controversy here between you and the Arminians, what Grace is sufficient, and what effectual, is at an end; And it is on your part, and for the truth that I spin that thread which you account too fine.