A26923:394
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.
§. 16. And there was such a Power in Adam's Will, by which he could have willed what he did not •ill, and by which he could have rejected the Temptation: And this without any other Grace, than that which he then had, and used not.
§. 17. Otherwise all the sin of Adam and the World would be resolved into the necessitating Will and Work of God, and so all Faith would be subverted.
§. 18. Therefore Man's Will was such a Faculty as could be a causa prima, of the moral modification or specification of its own Acts: (Not a causa prima simpliciter, but thus, secundum quid.) For else God must be the causa prima of Sin, which is the ill modification of that Act.
§. 19. I know that to Nature the Reasonings of our late Infidels, to prove, That every Act of the Will is as truly necessitated as the motions of a Clock, do seem plausible and hard •o answer; because it seemeth strange, that in any mode of Action Man should be a first Cause of it, and that a Creatures Act should have no superior Cause in any mode: But on the other side the Evidence is cogent, 1. That God is able to make a self-determining Power, that can thus do: For it is no contradiction. 2. That it is congruous, that below