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,…

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.

503. Ockam Quodlib. 3. q. 6. hath the question, Utrum Cognitio intu• tiva potest esse de objecto cognito? And he 1. concludeth that per potentiam divinam potest esse de object• non existente; but he meaneth only quod fuit vel fuerit. 2. That naturally it cannot be. And faith that Contradictio est quod viso sit, & tamen illud quod videtur, non sit in effect nec esse possit: Ideo contradictio est quod chimaera videatur intuitive: fed non est contradictio quod illud quod videtur nihil sit in actu extra ca some suam, dummodo possit esse in effectu, vel aliquando fuerit in rerum natura—Unde Deus ab aeterno videt omnes res factibiles, & tamen unc null fuerunt—By which it is plain, that he meaneth as Aquinas, that it is not as Nothings, but as Possibles and Futures they are known even by God, saving that Aquinas and his followers judge that they are from eternity fore-known in their proper existence, by reason that all times and things are present in Eternity. Now to know a Possibility of a thing, is