An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches

§. 36. 1. Bradwardine, and some that go his way, do deny the being of any such thing as we now dispute of; and say, That God's essential will, as a will, is the immediate Efficient, and the Act of Man is the Effect, (e. g. Faith,) and because God willeth that Act, it doth immediately exist, as the World did, by his creating will: And so here is no place for the Dispute of Sufficient Grace: For God's Will is certainly sufficient to cause what he will cause: And Man's Act either is existent or not: ⟨p. 169⟩And there is no Grace antecedent to it, to be called insufficient, unless you will vainly say, that Gods essential Will is sufficient to nothing but what he produceth, which is a Dispute unfit for sober men.

§. 36. 1. Bradwardine, and some that go his way, do deny the being of any such thing as we now dispute of; and say, That God's essential will, as a will, is the immediate Efficient, and the Act of Man is the Effect, (e. g. Faith,) and because God willeth that Act, it doth immediately exist, as the World did, by his creating will: And so here is no place for the Dispute of Sufficient Grace: For God's Will is certainly sufficient to cause what he will cause: And Man's Act either is existent or not: ⟨p. 169⟩And there is no Grace antecedent to it, to be called insufficient, unless you will vainly say, that Gods essential Will is sufficient to nothing but what he preduceth, which is a Dispute unfit for sober men.

§. 37. 2. But because the contrary Opinion is far more common, that there is an inward Grace (e. g. to believe or consent) antecedent to our Act, whose sufficiency is questioned, it poseth the Wits of all the Schoolmen (much more is it above many Contenders that never so much as studied it) to say, what it is. The Notions of Alvarez (who calls it motus) and of Vasquez, and others I have elsewhere considered, and here pass by: And I have showed, that I take it to be so far past man's reach, as to be unfit for hot Contention. But so far as we may conceive of it, it must be in this twofold notion: 1. As it is some Divine Impress on the Soul, which is Analogous to the Vis impressa received from the Mover in the Patient in corporal Motion. 2. That this Impression received, doth in primo instant, put the Faculty into such an immediate Ability to the Act, or such a state of Disposedness to the Act, as may be called a Moral Power (the natural Faculty being supposed) and puts the Will in such a state as to the act of Consent, as that it can do it, but is not necessitated to it, nor actually determined, but can forbear. And this is called sufficient Grace. 3. And in the next instant when the Will doth consent, God and Man are both Causes or Agents, and the Grace is effectual by both Causes, God the first, and Man the second.