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,…

578. For they make Men and Devils to be but a second pre-moved predetermined Cause of the Act (of Volition and Execution) whence the formal obliquity necessarily resulteth: But 1. God is certainly the Cause of the Nature which is the Agent: 2. He is the Cause of the Law which maketh the act in specie to be sin: His saying, Thou shalt not commit Adultery or Murder, maketh Adultery and Murder to be sin, when they are committed, which they would not be without the Law. 3. God causeth and ordereth all the objects and occasions. 4. And now they also say that God willeth ut peccatum fiat, (and is the first predetermining Cause, even the total Cause, of all that is in the act and all its circumstances, without which predetermination it could not be.) So that man doth but will what God first willeth, and act what God first moveth him unavoidably to act, as the pen in my hand. 5. And the Law and the Act being put in being, the Relative obliquity is but the necessary result, and hath no other cause.

579. And note here what Estius before cited (after Aquinas) saith that to Will that peccatum sit vel fiat, is all that the Sinner himself doth, when he willeth sin. And therefore it's a vain thing here to distinguish between willing sin, and willing the event, futurity and existence of it, ut peccatum fiat vel eveniat: (Though I confess I was long detained in suspense if not deceived by that distinction.) For he willeth sin, who willeth the existence of it, or that it be or come to pass.

580. And note, that it is both matter and form, Act and obliquity which they say God willeth ut fiat: For it is sin: And forma dat nomen. It is not sin, but by the form of sin. But if they had said otherwise, it had been all one: For he that willeth the fundamentum, relate and correlate, ¹