A26883:776
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.
500. For we dare not here presume peremptorily to determine Negatively, that God doth not positively Will his own non-agency or non-volitions; because we know how dark we are and distant from God, and unfit to say any thing but certainties of him, as certain truth: But we abstain from the contrary assertion, as utterly unproved, and we will impute no needless acts to God as his Perfection: Though we yield to reputative moral denominations.
501. And so I contradict not the language of Aquinas 1. q. 14. 9. who saith, that God knoweth such non-entities as never will be, ut possibili•. And esse in potentia quamvis non in actu is more than nothing. But remember that esse in potentia speaketh the esse Potentiae, but the possibile is a pure nothing. So that this is but to know the Potentia, and not any thing else. Yet no doubt but God knoweth all things as they are in himself; that is, he knoweth that he can do all things, and knoweth what he knoweth and willeth; but this is no esse creatum but God himself, at least as to that which never will be. But if any will call it a knowing of things possible which are nothings, when God knoweth his own Power to make them, we quarrel not with words, while the sense is known.
502. But remember that it is not the Knowledge, but Decrees and Volitions of God that our enquiry now is about: And Aquinas and his followers commonly say, that Gods will goeth not so far as his knowledge; and that he knoweth indeed mala ex bon• of which they are the privation (as no doubt he doth so far as it is not imperfection to be said to know them, or as they are objects of knowledge) but yet that Mala neque vult, neque •• lit, sed tantum non-vult, as Lombard said.