An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches

§. 19. Suffer not the Quaerist to confound the three forementioned Senses of [the Will of God,] and you may resolve almost all the ordinary questions about it, as is before intimated, without any more ado. As, e. g.

§. 19. Suffer not the Quaerist to confound the three forementioned Sences of [the Will of God,] and you may resolve almost all the ordinary questions about it, as is before intimated, without any more ado. As, e. g.

Qu. Is God's Will resistible?

Ans. 1. God's Will, as it is his Essence, cannot come into the Question, as not being passive, and so not properly resistible. 2. As God's Will is taken for the objects and effects of his will, many of them are resistible: As his Commands when they are violated are resisted morally; so one effect of God's will, or one Creature moved by him naturally, may resist another. 3. If the question be only whether the respective Termination of God's will, and the Denomination of it as thus or thus terminated, can be resisted? I answer, 1. Not by any resistance upon the Essential will of God so terminated. 2. Not by making God to be willing and not willing of the same thing in the same respect at the same time; for that is a contradiction; and were to make the same Object to be and not to be at the same time, Contra necessitatem existentiae. 3. Not by preventing or destroying any Object or Effect which God's will so produceth, as that no Creature hath power to hinder. 4. But when he will cause one sort of motion, and himself cause a greater contrary motion, or enable a free Agent so to do, this contrary motion resisting the other motion, which was the effect of God's will, his will is denominated as resisted respectively. The same may be said of Passive Resistance.