Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n
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A27059
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Two disputations of original sin I. of original sin as from Adam, II. of original sin as from our neerer parents : written long ago for a more private use, and now published (with a preface) upon the invitation of Dr. T. Tullie / by Richard Baxter.
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Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.
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1675
(1675)
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Wing B1439; ESTC R5175
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104,517
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242
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Writers I pray you say not that I send you to School to them I do but answer your earnest request Sect. 47. But 4. I also intreat you to tell me whether you differ from me in the rule of counsel which I there gave the ignorant people or not If you did not you would never have given me such a summons If you do deal openly with your Scholars and the World and tell them whether your meaning be that the major vote of those that never read Logick Physicks Metaphysicks Law Medicine c. is to be believed before one Aristotle Downame Gassendus Zabarell Grotius Cook Littleton Cujacius Fernelius c. Tell your Scholars that you are but one and they are many and must believe themselves before you in defining Justification Faith c. Tell all the University that thus they must use their Tutors Should Mr. Ainsworth's Church of Separatists have judged of all his critical expositions by the major vote Tell the World that all the Criticks and Dr. Walton's Labours and all such mens must stand or fall at the judgment of the majority of people or Ministers that never studied those tongues If you think I take my self for one of these Judges you are quite mistaken And I may ask you Are you not herein a man singular even to admiration And yet will you plead thus as if it were against singularity Are not all Protestants Papists Christians learned Heathens agreed of the Rule that I gave All your University save your self I hope in charity do think that your Professors and Readers and Tutors are to be believed in their several Professions and Readings before all their unlearned Pupils or any others that are ignorant What sort of men in the World are more faulty in tying up mens Faith too much to men than the Papists are And yet I presume you know that they commonly acknowledge that in Dogmatical difficulties especially such as depend on Arts and Sciences such as Defining for the most part is the majority even in a Council that are therein unlearned learned are not so much to be heard as one eminently learned in those things One Gabriel Ockam Greg. Arim One Scotus Rada Lychetus One Pennous Vasquâ—â— Ruiz Or if you had rather one Bradwaâ—dine Bannes Alvarez Twisse is more to be heard in telling us what Concurse Predetermination Natural Free-will are than many that never studied the point though yet perhaps the best of them may deserve little regard about unsearchable things If you please but to read Mr. Femble his Vind. Grat. you will find somewhere almost the very words of the rule or saying of mine which you exceptingly recite Sect. 48. 5. But what mean you to bring in the intimation that thus the great truths of God will depend on humane suffrages even whether God shall be God I beseech you consider 1. Whether you do well to number Artificial Logical Definitions controverted by the greatest Divines with the great truths of God How various are the Definitions of Justification considered also variously as Constitutive Sentential Executive in this life at the last Judgment in fore Dei iâ— foro Conscientiae in foro Humano Civili Ecclesiastico c which are given by great Divines And how various the definitions of Faith between that of Camero and such others as place it in the intellect Amesius and such others as place it in the will Davenant and such others as place it in both Pemble and such others as make them one faculty The differences about the act the formal object the material object as whether with Chamier we must hold that the spirits inward testimony that you are justified be verbum Dei Fidei objectum with abundance such are too too many when yet perhaps most mean the same thing and differ but in Logical notions And do you well to frighten men into suspicions and contentions out of their charity and peace by telling them that these are the great truths of God and likening them to the Question whether God shall be God As if you knew not that by such melancholies and phantasms the Church hath been brought into the unhappy military distracted state that it is in It is work fit for a Divine and Healer to make the World believe that the great truths of God and the Godhead it self are at the stake in such Logical quarrels and that men differ further than they do 6. But did you not see that I before expresly excepted all matters necessary to Salvation from humane trust Some will say I doubt too far that see not other explications 7. And I beseech you is it all one for truth to depend on humane suffrages yea God himself and for an ignorant man or Scholar to depend on his Teacher so far as fide humana to believe him before ten unlearned men Is this fit doctrine for a Doctor and Master of a Literate Society Say then in your Lectures Hearers and Scholars this and that is the true definition of Faith and Justification even of the various sorts of Faith and Justification but while I tell you so regard and believe what I and many such others say to you no more than you would do many unlearned men or any dissenters that tell you that I erre or speak heretically herein lest God and his Truth depend on humane suffrages And because I fain would but cannot find any other meaning in your words without taking you to be guilty of what I would not suspect and consequently that you expect no more regard or belief of this your Treatise as such I cease from any further animadversions on it as the less necessary Only adding that your conclusion that soundeth loud with the name of Popery needeth no other answer than what I have formerly given Mr. Crandon Mr. Eyres Mr. Bagshaw Mr. Danvers and such others who oft cry out Antichristian a frightful word when they needed but awakening to convince them that they were but frightned in a dream ERRATA PAg. 1. lin antep r. T. Tully p. 191. l. 12. r. God p. 215. l. 16. r. integris We Quest Whether Infants have Original Sin Aff. And of Original Righteousness THat I may as briefly and yet as clearly as I can considering that necessary brevity dispatch this Controversy I must 1. tell you what original sin is and 2. assert open the Affirmative proposition and 3. give you some Arguments for it I. In order to the first we must 1. enquire What sin is 2. What the word Original here signifieth 3. What Original Righteousnes was 1. Sin is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an irregularity or a dissonancy or disconformity to the Law of God in a subject It is any defect inclination or action contrary to the rule of Righteousness The form of it is Relative Disconformity is a true relation as well as Conformity as crooked is as well as straight and dissimile as well as simile 2. We now call it Original sin because it
TWO DISPUTATIONS OF Original Sin I. Of Original sin as from Adam II. Of Original Sin as from our Neerer Parents Written long ago for a more private use and now published with a Preface upon the invitation of Dr. T. TVLLIE By RICHARD BAXTER Exod. 20. 5 6. and 34. 7. Visiting the iniquity of the Fathers upon the children and upon the childrens children unto the third and fourth Generation of them that hate me LONDON Printed for Robert Gibbs at the Golden-Ball in Chancery-Lane 1675. To the Impartial Friends of Sacred Truth who are above the dominion of carnal Interest Faction and false Prejudice and are cured of the Malady of PREFIDENCE and HASTY JVDGING before they have heard and weighed evidence which is the corrupter confounder and disquieter of the Church and World Sect. 1. IT hath seemed good to a Doctor of the Vniversity of Oxford Dr. I. Tully whose name is honoured for Learning and Moderation I believe deservedly though I know him not newly to exercise his zeal and pen to save men from the danger of some Doctrines which he taketh to be mine Of the rest I shall God willing give a distinct account elsewhere That which I am here to consider of is found pag. 128. Justif Paulin. in these words Vnum vero praetereundum non censeo licet ab argumento magis alienum videtur estque novum quoddam inter novissima Praefatorem scilicet nescio quo fortunante Mercurio aliud invenisse peccatum originale multo citerius quam quod ab Adamo traductum est O caecos ante Theologos quicunque unquam fuistis Serio interim monendi sunt juniores ne temere illius Theologiae talia paradoxa parturienti fidem habeant Deus novit me nullo in personam Viri Rever aut aestu aut praejudicio nedum odio cui ex animo sane fausta foelicia precor omnia hoc monitum injicere sed amore veritatis uno utque satis conscientiae fiat ita liberasse animam Whereupon he next advertiseth me out of some words of my own c. Sect. 2. I have great reason to love his love to truth and the souls of men whom he would save from the danger of such errors as he supposeth me to be guilty of And I have no reason to dislike his fidelity to his conscience but rather to wish that true conscientious tenderness and fidelity were more common among the Teachers of the people and the Teachers of those Teachers Sect. 3. And far be it from me to judge him so uncharitable as to doubt whether we his ignorant brethren love not truth also and the fouls of men and search not after it with some impartiality and industry yea and would buy it at as dear a rate as others though through our sin and weakness we may not have had so good success And it is a praise to our Creator rather than to us that we love that which by natural inclination we must needs love Being and Truth are necessarily good and all evil is from good and for good Our good intentions justify not our errors nor the reasonings and considence by which we set them off as truth And by our bold and hasty judging of those things which our reasonings shew we never well digested or understood and our censures of those that perhaps better understand them we should but call men to suspect those understandings as not very like to know much more than others which no better know themselves Instead therefore of calling out to the Academical youth to take heed of the Theology of those worthy eximious persons who are my Censurers I humbly entreat them with candid impartiality to search after truth and to receive all that deserveth that name from the Censurers and to reject all that I or any other offereth them which is against it and proving all things to hold fast that which is true and good yea and to help me to see my errors that I may repent and publish my retractation Which I shall not judge any more than Augustine did to be in vain though it should please others as well as this learned Dr. to cull out for his coufutation the first Book that ever I wrote about four and twenty years after I had publickly for the crudity and unfitness of many expressions in it retracted it and to pass by about sixty others since written and some yea many much more largely and distinctly than that which I retracted on the same subject Sect. 4. But though I am more obliged than such knowing men as he to suspect my own understanding that suspition will not warrant me to resist the light nor to reject that which seemeth to me to be evidence of truth nor to forbear the rendering a reason of my judgment that I may be better informed by a confutation if I erre or if I do not may not desert that which deserveth a just vindication And though I am one of those who never was worthy of his honourable employment to teach men to be Teachers of the Flocks of Christ and these fourteen years have been judged unworthy or unmeet to teach the most ignorant Congregation in these Lands yet I doubt not but I may have his leave and concurrence in bewailing the lamentable condition of the poor people by reason of such ignorant and unhappy Teachers as I and others of my rank have long been Alas how great is their temptation and what perplexities must they needs be cast into when we that have studied night and day with our most earnest desire to know the truth whatever it cost us and with our most searching serious thoughts and with our daily prayers for divine illumination do yet remain not only ignorant but so dangerously erroneous that if some did not silence us and others call out to the people to take heed of us it seems we were like to be their deceivers and to do them more hurt than good And if this were but I and a few more such or only the many hundreds that now are silenced the case were less lamentable But alas it is the case of almost all the Christian World for the people to be cast by their Teachers weaknesses into such distracting perplexities as these The Greeks call to their people to take heed of the Romans and the Romans to theirs to take heed of the Greeks As also to take heed of the Protestants and all as Hereticks or Schismaticks that are not the subjects of the King of Rome And the Protestants requite them The Lutherans say take heed of the Calvinists and the Calvinists say take heed of the Lutherans and Arminians The Conformist saith take heed of the Non-Conformist and some Non-Conformists say take heed of the Conformists till the poor people know not when they are safe but are tempted to live as we did in the great Plague in 1665 when each one fled from the face of others lest every man that approached them should infect them Whom