A26919:214
The divine life in three treatises
The divine life in three treatises ... by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Francis Tyton, 1664
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.
I answer, If you call sin Nothing, as a shadow, darkness, death, &c. are nothing (for all that we abhor them) then you answer your selves; If you call it something, we are all agreed, that its but such a something as man can cause without Gods first causing it; It sufficeth that God do the part of a Creator in giving man the free Power of choosing or refusing; and the part of a preserver, in maintaining that power, and as an universal cause concurring to all acts in genere, as the sun doth shine on the dunghill and the flowers: and that he also do the part of a just Governor in prohibiting, and dissuading, and threatening sinners.
I answer, If you call sin Nothing, as a shaddow, darkness, death, &c. are nothing (for all that we abhor them) then you answer your selves; If you call it something, we are all agreed, that its but such a something as man can cause without Gods first causing it; It sufficeth that God do the part of a Creatour in giving man the free Power of choosing or refusing; and the part of a preserver, in maintaining that power, and as an universal cause concurring to all acts in genere, as the sun doth shine on the dunghill and the flowers: and that he also do the part of a just Governour in prohibiting, and disswading, and threatning sinners.
Object. But how can sin Eventually be, if God decree it not, seeing all Events are from his Will?
I answer 1. We are agreed that he Causeth it not. 2. And that he doth not so much as Will the Event of sin as sin. 3. And that he willingly permitteth what is by him permitted. 4. And that sin is such a thing as may Evenire, be brought forth by a bare permission, if there be no Positive Decree for the Event. As a Negative in the effects, requireth not a Positive Cause, so neither a Positive Will for its production. There are millions of millions of worlds, and individual creatures, and species Possible, that shall never be: And it is audaciousness to assert, that there must be millions of millions of Positive Decrees, that such worlds or creatures shall not be. 5. Nor is it any dishonour to God, if he have not a Positive Decree or Will about every Negation (as that all the men in the world shall not be called by a thousand possible names rather then their own, &c.)