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,…

357. Gods eternal Omniscience proveth, that at no instant he had a will properly Conditional quoad actum: Because he that at the same instant fore-knoweth whether the Condition would be done or not, must needs have his will to be thereby absolute. But yet if it had pleased God to suspend the Act of his own Volition, upon a humane Condition, it would not have exposed him at all to the charge either of mutability or dependence: which is very clear. For 1. It is presupposed his Will as Voluntas & Essentia is unalterable, and is not that of which we speak. 2. But only his ⟨p. 56⟩Volition as terminated on this or that object, and so as haec volitio ab objecto denominata. 3. And his efficient Volition, and Power is terminated on objects in time, without mutation in God. 4. And N. B. that God doth suspend his own Possible Volitions in many cases; As he doth Not will to make more Worlds, more Men, more Suns, more Laws, &c. than de facto he will make. 5. And it is no more defectiveness in God to suspend a Volition for a time, than thus to do it for ever. 6. And it is no more Dependence on the Creature to Terminate his Volition only on a qualified subject (performing the Condition) than to terminate his Efficient Power and will on such or such a qualified subject. As e. g. He terminateth his Omnipotent Concurse for Generation only on the materia seminalis recte disposita; He concurreth to burn by fire, &c. And if his Acts effectively Transient may be terminated only and temporarily on disposed objects, If he did so in acts Objectively Transient, and did freely not-will the damnation of man till he had actually sinned, but suspended his will freely till then, and then de novo terminated it on the said qualified object, I see no show of Dependence or Mutability. For I oft cleared it before, that the termination of Gods Knowledge, Will or Power on any particular Object, is in him no addition to its essence; And doing it de novo, is no change in him but in the Creature only; no more than it would be a change in the Sun or its active Emanations, if a thousand new creatures newly receive its Influx and are moved by it variously according to their several Conditions. Yet I have before given reasons why incipere jam praedestinare is more incongruous language.

357. Gods eternal Omniscience proveth, that at no instant he had a will properly Conditional quoad actum: Because he that at the same instant fore-knoweth whether the Condition would be done or not, must needs have his will to be thereby absolute. But yet if it had pleased God to suspend the Act of his own Volition, upon a humane Condition, it would not have exposed him at all to the charge either of mutability or dependence: which is very clear. For 1. It is presupposed his Will as Voluntas & Essentia is unalterable, and is not that of which we speak. 2. But only his