A26892:814
A Christian Directory
A Christian directory, or, A sum of practical theology and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortify every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.A Christian directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortifie every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1673
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
§. 7. It is a matter of great difficulty to understand how sin first entered into the innocent soul: And it is of great importance, because an error here is of dangerous consequence. Two sorts seem to me to make God so much the necessitating cause of Adams first sin (and so of all sin) as that it was as naturally impossible for Adam to have forborne it according to their doctrine, as to have conquered God. 1. Those that assert the Dominican immediate Physical pre-determining pre-motion: (which no created power can resist.) 2. And those that say the Will acts as Necessitated by the Intellect in all its Acts (and so is necessitated in all its Omissions); and that the Intellect is necessitated by Objects (as, no doubt, it is, unless as its acts are sub imperio voluntatis); and all those objects are caused and disposed of by God. But it is certain that God is not the cause of sin; and therefore this certainty over-ruleth the case against these Tenets.
§. 7. It is a matter of great difficulty to understand how sin first entred into the innocent soul: And it is of great importance, because an error here is of dangerous consequence. Two sorts seem to me to make God so much the necessitating cause of Adams first sin (and so of all sin) as that it was as naturally impossible for Adam to have forborn it according to their doctrine, as to have conquered God. 1. Those that assert the Dominican immediate Physical pre-determining pre-motion: (which no created power can resist.) 2. And those that say the Will acts as Necessitated by the Intellect in all its Acts (and so is necessitated in all its Omissions); and that the Intellect is necessitated by Objects (as, no doubt, it is, unless as its acts are sub imperio voluntatis); and all those objects are caused and disposed of by God. But it is certain that God is not the cause of sin; and therefore this certainty over-ruleth the case against these Tenets.
§. 8. At present it seemeth to me, that sin entered in this method. 1. Sense perceiveth the forbidden thing: 2. The appetite desireth it: 3. The imagination thinketh on its desirableness yet further. 4. The intellect conceiveth of it (truly) as good, by a simple apprehension. 5. The Will accordingly willeth it by a simple complacency or volition. Thus far there was no sin: But 6. The Will here adhered to it too much, and took in it an excess of Complacency, when it had power to do otherwise: And here sin begun. 7. And so when the Cogitations should have been called off: 8. And the Intellect should have minded God, and his Command, and proceed from a simple apprehension to the comparing Act, and said [The favour of God is better, and his will should rule,] it omitted all these acts, because the will omitted to command them; (yea, and hindered them) 9. And so the intellect was next guilty of a [non-renuo] [I will not forbid or hinder it] (and the will accordingly). 10. And next of a positive deception, and the will of consent unto the sin, and so it being finished, brought forth death.