A26923:434
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.
§. 12. Yet all these diversifying, distinguishing, denominating Causes of God's Intellections, Volitions and Operations, must not (even denominatively or relatively) be counted or called Efficient Causes of God's Acts, nor strictly final but objective. And therefore here it must be considered what Cause an Object is, which Philosophers are not well agreed in. But I think I may safely say, That as to moral acts, the Object is to be reduced to such a cause materialis or constitutiva as they are capable of, not of the Act as an Act, but as this act, in specie, denominated from the receptive terminating matter ⟨p. 93⟩or object. And though to Man, to know this or that, and to will this or that ad extra, seem somewhat really different (or modally at least) from knowing and willing our selves or some other Object, yet in God it is not to be called ex parte sui, a real or modal difference at all.
§. 13. Yet I assert not that the Ratio prima of all these Diversities of the Divine Acts is ex terminis seu recipientibus: For the first Reason is in and of God himself: For it is God that maketh all diversities of Effects and Changes; and so it is from those divers Effects of his own Will, that his Will is relatively ex connotatione termini diversly denominated. But that in God which is the Ratio prima diversitatis, is not divers, but his one simple essential Will; so that it is the diversity of Objects which is the immediate Reason of distinguishing God's acts, (of which before).
§. 14. These things premised, I come nearer to the Question, if that which existeth not do truly cause, it must be either efficiently, constitutively, or finally. The two first are denied by the common Reason of Mankind. That which is not, cannot effect: Nothing can do nothing. And to say it is not, is to say, it constituteth not. And as it is certain, that causa finalis non efficit, yea, is but causa metaphorice operans, so it is certain, that no Creature causeth any thing in God, no not finally.