A26919:595
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.
Answ. No doubt he may and doth give him such gifts as actuate and perfect Nature: but some Disposition to our ultimate end is essential to our Nature; and therefore to assign man another ultimate end, and to give a Disposition to it, of which he had no seed, or part, or principle before, is to make him another creature. I confess that in lapsed man, the Holy Disposition is so far dead, as that the change maketh a man a New Creature in a Moral sense (as be is a New Man that changeth his mind and manners:) But still Nature hath its aptitude as Rational to be employed for its Maker; so that he is not a New Creature in a Natural sense.
An actual or habitual willingness to this Holy employment, a promptitude to it, and a due understanding of it, is the New Creature Morally so called which is given in our sanctification: But the Natural aptitude that is in our faculties as Rational, ⟨p. 245⟩to this holy life, is essential to us as men, or as Rational; even to have the Potentiam naturalem which must yet have further help or moral life to actuate it. And Adam had both these: The one he retained, or else he had not continued a man, The other he lost, or else he had not had need of Renovation.
6. If Adams Nature had not been Disposed to God as to his End and Sovereign, then the Law of Nature (to adhere to God, and obey and serve him) was not written in his heart: And then it would not have been his duty to adhere to God, and to obey and serve him; which is so false, that even in lapsed unrenewed Nature, there is left so much aptitude hereto, as will prove him to be still under the obligations of this Law of Nature, even actually to adhere to God, and to obey him, which a dead man, a mad man, or an Infant is not (immediately.)
6. If Adams Nature had not been Disposed to God as to his End and Soveraign, then the Law of Nature (to adhere to God, and obey and serve him) was not written in his heart: And then it would not have been his duty to adhere to God, and to obey and serve him; which is so false, that even in lapsed unrenewed Nature, there is left so much aptitude hereto, as will prove him to be still under the obligations of this Law of Nature, even actually to adhere to God, and to obey him, which a dead man, a mad man, or an Infant is not (immediately.)