A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian EthicsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
If you say, the will's first sinful adhesion in the sixth instance,
could not be, unless the intellect first directed it so to do; I deny
that, because the will is the first principle in men's actions _quoad
exercitium_, though the intellect be the first as to specification. And
therefore the will could suspend its exercise and its excitation of the
mind. In all this I go upon common principles: but I leave it to further
inquiry; 1. How far the sensitive appetite may move the locomotive
faculty without the will's command, while the will doth not forbid? And
whether reason be not given man, as the rider to the horse, not to
enable him to move, but to rule his motion: so that as the horse can go
if the rider hinder not, so the sensitive appetite can cause the actions
of eating, drinking, thinking, speaking sensually, if reason do but drop
asleep, or not hinder. 2. And so whether in the first sin (and
ordinarily) the sensitive appetite, fantasy, and passion be not the
active mover, and the rational powers first guilty only by omitting
their restraining government, which they were able to have exercised? 3.
And so, whether sin be not (ordinarily) a brutish motion, or a voluntary
unmanning of ourselves, the rational powers in the beginning being
guilty only of omission or privation of restraint; but afterwards
brought over to subserve the sensitive appetite actively? 4. And so,
whether the will, which is the _principium actus quoad exercitium_, were
not the first in the omission? The intellect having before said, This
must be further considered, the will commanded not that further
consideration, when it could and should?
However, if it be too hard for us to trace our own souls in all their
motions, it is certain that the will of man is the first subject of
moral good and evil; and uncertainties must not make us deny that
which is certain.
The reader who understandeth the importance and consequence of these
points, I am sure, will pardon me for this interposition of these
difficult controverted points (which I purposely avoid where I judge
them not very needful in order to the defence or clearing of the
plainer common truths): and as for others, I must bear their censure.
The degree of sinfulness in the will lieth in a stiffness and
obstinacy, a tenaciousness of deceitful temporal good, and an
eagerness after it; and stubborn averseness to spiritual good, as it
is against that temporal fleshly good. This is the will's disease.[99]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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