A26923:367
An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches
An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches by reconciling explication without much disputing. Written by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for John Salusbury, 1691
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.
§. 8. They that hold, That God doth by immediate physical efficient predetermining Premotion principally and unresistibly cause every sinful act, with all its modes and circumstances, do certainly deny all certainty of Faith, and so subvert all Christianity: For the formal Object of all Divine Faith, is God's Veracity, (that God cannot lye) if God could lye, our Belief could have no certainty: Now God speaketh to us, but by inspired men, and not by an essential voice of his own: And if God cause, as aforesaid, all the Lies that ever were spoken by Men or Devils in the World, then no man can be sure that he doth not so by Prophets and Apostles, or that ever they say true: And God's Veracity then is gone.
§. 8. They that hold, That God doth by immediate physical efficient predetermining Premotion principally and unresistibly cause every sinful act, with all its modes and circumstances, do certainly deny all certainty of Faith, and so subvert all Christianity: For the formal Object of all Divine Faith, is God's Veracity, (that God cannot lye) if God could lye, our Belief could have no certainty: Now God speaketh to us, but by inspired men, and not by an essential voice of his own: And if God cause, as aforesaid, all the Lyes that ever were spoken by Men or Devils in the World, then no man can be sure that he doth not so by Prophets and Apostles, or that ever they say true: And God's Veracity then is gone.
§. 9. They that think •o evade this Evidence by the difference of Predetermination and Inspiration, and say God inspireth no Lies though he predetermine all by physical Premotion, do labour in vain: For, 1. No man can ever prove that any Inspiration doth interest God more in the Act or Lye, than physical Predetermination doth: For how can God be more the Author of any Act than by effectual premoving the Creature to act it, and that by immediate physical Predetermination? What doth Inspiration do, but so move the Mind, Will and Tongue of a Prophet? No man can name more that Man is capable of. 2. But if there were a difference, we are not capable of understanding that difference so well, as to prove that God can cause all the Lies in the World by predetermining Premotion, and yet can cause none