A27004:506
The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…
The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural evidence the being of God ... : the second part, of Christianity, proving by evidence supernatural and natural, the certain truth of the Christian belief ... / by Richard Baxter ... ; also an appendix defending the soul's immortality against the Somatists or Epicureans and other pseudo-philosophers.
London: printed by R. White for Fran. Titon, 1667
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.
CHAP. XI. III. Of GOD's Relation to Man as his BENEFACTOR and his END. Or as his CHIEF GOOD.
THE Three Essential Principles in God, do eminently give out themselves to Man in his Three Divine Relations to us. His Power, Intellect and Will; His Omnipotency, Omniscience and Goodness; in his being our Owner, our Ruler, and our Chief Good. The two first I have considered already; our Omnipotent Lord or Owner, and our most wise Governor, and our Counter-relations with the duties thereof. I now come to the third.
THE Three Essential Principles in God, do eminently give out themselves to Man in his Three Divine Relations to us. His Power, Intellect and Will; His Omnipotency, Omniscience and Goodness; in his being our Owner, our Ruler, and our Chief Good. The two first I have considered already; our Omnipotent Lord or Owner, and our most wise Governour, and our Counter-relations with the duties thereof. I now come to the third.
For the right understanding whereof, let us a little consider ⟨p. 81⟩of the Image of God in Man,1 in which we must here see him. It is Man's WILL, which is his ultimate, perfective, imperant faculty; it is the proper subject of Moral habits, and principal agent of Moral acts: And therefore in all Laws and Converse, the WILL is taken for the Man; and nothing is further morally Good or Evil, Virtuous or culpably Vicious, than it is Voluntary. The INTELLECT is but the Director of the WILL: Its actions are not the perfect actions of the Man: If it apprehend bare Truth without respect to Goodness, its Object is not the highest or felicitating or attractive Object, and therefore the act can be no higher: if it apprehend any Being or Truth as good, it apprehendeth it but as a servant or guide to the WILL, to bring it thither to be received by LOVE. The perfect excellency of the object of humane acts is Goodness, and not mere Entity or Verity. Therefore the excellentest faculty is the Will: It is Good that is the final-Cause in the object of all humane acts: Therefore it is the fruition of Good which is the perfective final Act; and that fruition of Good as Good, is, though introductorily by Vision, yet finally and proximately by Complacencies, which is nothing else but Love in its most essential act, delighting in its attained object. And for the executive Power, though in the order of its natural being, it be before the Will, yet in its operation ad extra, it is after it, and commanded by it.