A26923:70
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. V. The Sun and all igneous substances, have their formal Powers, that is, Motive, Illuminative, and Calefactive: The motion (in power or act) is not formally the Light, nor is the Light the Heat, nor is the Heat the Light or Motion: Nor are these three Suns or Substances, but one Substance is in all three, whose form we necessarily conceive of by this triple inadequate Conception. ⟨p. xii⟩And thus it is in all the Creatures of Active Nature, which the Receptivity of the Passive also answer; and as I have proved elsewhere through all Morality also.
Melanchthon, Loc. Come. per Maulium, p. 3, 4. mentioneth many such instances in the Sun, in Astronomy, in Music, in Geometry, in Grammar, in Arithmetic; to which Logic and Politics might be added, All Effects have only three Causes, which in the general of Causality are one; that is, the Cause efficient, Constitutive, and Final. For Matter, Receptive-disposition (called Privation) and Form, are but the three parts of the Constitutive Cause. My M•th. Theol. instanceth in many more.
Melancthon, Loc. Com. per Maulium, p. 3, 4. mentioneth many such instances in the Sun, in Astronomy, in Musick, in Geometry, in Grammar, in Arithmetick; to which Logick and Politicks might be added, All Effects have only three Causes, which in the general of Causality are one; that is, the Cause efficient, Constitutive, and Final. For Matter, Receptive-disposition (called Privation) and Form, are but the three parts of the Constitutive Cause. My M•th. Theol. instanceth in many more.
§. 17. It is certain that the three grand Attributes, Principles, Primalities, Essentialities, or Formalities (as men diversly call them) of which the three Faculties of the Soul are an Image, are in God, not univocally the same as in Man, but eminently and transcendently. And his other Attributes (of Truth, Mercy, Justice, &c.) are these variously exercised and related; that is, Vital-act, Intellect, and Will, called as Perfect, Omnipotent Activity, Omniscience (or Wisdom) and Goodness or Love. And I have proved (ubi supra) that these are not Accidents in God, but his Essence, in a threefold formal Conception, truly distinguishable; some say Ratione rationata; some say formaliter, and some, ex connotatione & relatione ad objecta, and perhaps all little differ in Sense.