est jactura, quæ lucro majore compensatur. If any step before us, we have small cause to envy them; nunquam erit felix, quem torquebit felicior.-Sen. The fulfilling of aspiring desires, would be but the cutting off the ambitious man's delight: for there is more pleasure in the expectation of such things than in the possession; it being the nature of terrestrials to promise more than they can perform, and to seem better at a distance than when you draw too near. In the hope and prosecution of them there is delight, such as accompanieth delusions and golden dreams; but when a man hath all he would have, his stomach is overset, and the pleasure is gone; which made the moralist thus comfort men of the lower rank: Age potius gratias pro his que accepisti; reliqua expecta, et nondum plenum te esse gaude. Inter voluptates est superesse quod speres. What pleasure is then in the sure grounded hopes of the saints! But I must stop. My Lord, as I was unwilling to direct to you a mere complimentary empty epistle, so am I encouraged to use this freedoin with you, because I am very confident you can discern a faithful monitor, both from an accuser on the one side, and from a flatterer on the other. That the God of peace may establish you, sanctify you throughout, and keep you blameless and undefiled, is the hearty prayer of, Your much obliged servant, Kidderminster, August 20, 1655. RICHARD BAXTER. AN ADVERTISEMENT EXPLICATORY. Especially about the necessity of God's execution of his threatenings, or of Christ's satisfaction: to prevent misunderstanding. LEST any understand what I have said a few pages hence, as if I wholly denied common innate principles, observe, that it is only actual connate knowledge that I deny, and in respect to which I say that the soul is rasa tabula; but I confess a natural passive power for the knowing of them, and a greater disposition, or aptitude in the intellect to understand them, than conclusions drawn from them; and so that an infant also may have a sanctified intellect, by such aptitude and disposition. But I think not that ever these would be acted, in an ordinary natural way, without the help of some sense. Also, that I may not be misunderstood in that great controverted point, about the necessity of the execution of vindictive justice in man's suffering, or Christ's satisfaction, I shall briefly declare my thoughts about it, in these few propositions. Prop. 1. It is not a mere necessitas consequentiæ, or logical necessity of the verity of an enunciation that we inquire after; for it is on all hands confessed, that Christ's death was thus necessary. 1. Necessitate immutabilitatis, ex suppositione decreti divini. 2. Necessitate infallibilitatis, ex suppositione præscientiæ divinæ. 3. Necessitate infallibilitatis et veracitatis divinæ, ex suppositione prædictionis. Because God decreed it, foreknew it, and foretold it. 2. We do not mean a simple necessity in existing, as God is ens necessarium. For all creatures are confessed to be con tingent beings. 3. Nor yet do we mean an hypothetical necessity, existentiæ qua res quando est, necessario est. For this is but logical, and is undoubted among us. 4. No man among us doth affirm that God doth necessarily punish sinners by such a natural necessity as inanimates, or brutes, act by, that do it quantum in se, &c. Ut ignis urit. 5. Nor yet do any affirm that it is by enforcement necessary to God; either violentiæ, for that is only in natural agents; or coactionis, which is on free agents, for none can force God against his will. 6. Whereas some talk de necessitate determinationis among men, as when the will is determined by God, and the practical intellect, (habits and objects concurring,) and thereupon raise disputes, whether answerably in God, his eternal wisdom and communicative nature may not be said to determine his will, to create the world in time, and do whatever is done, and so whether there were not necessitas determinationis? And also, whether there were not necessitas ad finem; that is, whether it were not best that God's glory should be attained, and thus attained, and no other way would have been so well, and whether all this be declared by the event? I suppose these be arrogant, presumptuous disputes, which I dare not offer to determine. Only I say, that I suppose, as to man, they lay a false ground; seeing the intellect doth not properly determine the will, but only necessarily concur as a propounder of the object, (which is but a moral cause of the determination,) that so the will may determine itself. And of God's own determination of our wills, yea, in gracious acts, a reverend divine, in a late writing, (Mr. Capel, Part 4 of Tempt. p. 38,) saith, "We do not determine God's will, nor doth God immediately determine our wills, but by infusing a life and soul, as it were, of grace. By an habit of grace, deserved for us by Christ, God makes our wills determine themselves to follow him; and this the Scripture calls, not a forcing, but a drawing of us, not as we draw a man to the gibbet, but as we draw a man to a wedding who hath the wedding garment, or as we draw a sheep after us with a bush of ivy, as we draw children after us with nuts and apples, by way of persuasion, indeed, which is so forcible, that Scripture calls it a kind of constraining." 7. But let us suppose, for I shall not contradict it, that the common determination is right, that God created the world, not necessarily, but freely; not only as freedom is opposite to coaction, and to any extrinsic, imposed necessity, which are unquestionable, but also to an intrinsical necessity, so that his wisdom, and communicative nature, or glory, did not necessitate the creation of the world, but that he so willed to create it, that consideratis considerandis, he might have nilled it, and in this sense did freely create it. I say on this common ground supposed we shall proceed, though I fear such high inquiries myself. 8. God having freely created the world, and made man as he is, a reasonable creature, it followed, by a necessary resultancy from the nature of man, and compared with God, that man was God's subject, and to be ruled by him, and God was his sovereign Ruler. This necessity is the same as there is of every relation, a positione subjecti, fundamenti, termini. It is a contradiction for a rational creature to be made by God with a capacity of, and inclination to, an immortal felicity in the fruition of God; and yet that this creature should not be God's own, and his subject, and God be to him, by right of that creation, both Proprietary and sovereign Rector. 9. When God is once become the Rector of mankind, it is necessary that he actually rule him (supposing that he continue his being, nature, and so that relation). To be a ruler, is to be one to whom it belongeth to rule actually. It is necessary, therefore, from God's natural perfection, that he do the work of that relation which he hath himself assumed, and thereby undertaken to do; both justice and veracity, wisdom and goodness, require it. If God should say, 'I will be man's ruler,' but will not rule him, it would imply some contradiction or unfaithfulness. And therefore to do so would be the same as to say so. 10. If God must necessarily rule, he must necessarily give laws, and execute them; for legislation and execution, whereto judgment is usually necessary, are the parts of government: at least let us first conclude the necessity of legislation; for it is a contradiction to rule the rational creature without a law. 11. As we know no necessity of creation, so know we no necessity of God's making positive laws; but that God did it so freely that he might have done otherwise, or not done it, while man was in innocency; though some think that even then, supernatural revelation and positive precepts were of necessity ad finem. 12. The whole law of nature, which was such to innocent man, did necessarily result from the nature of man, as related to God and his fellow-subjects, and as placed in the midst of such a world of objects; and so is legible in rerum natura. It is a contradiction for man to be man, so related to God and the creatures, and not to be obliged to esteem and love God above all, and to obey all his commands, to love one another, and other duties of the law of nature. 13. There are some duties that are founded in the relation of our very rational nature to the holy, perfect nature of God, as to esteem him and believe him to be most powerful, wise, good, &c.; to reverence, love, and obey him, &c.; and some duties that are founded in the relation of our natures one to another, ' and some from the inseparable, innocent principle of self-love. All these have their necessary original with our natures, by resultancy therefrom; and God cannot (that is, he will not, because he is perfect) dispense with them: nor yet reverse them but by destroying our natures, which stand so related, and are the foundation thereof. But yet those are not absolutely necessary for the future; because it is not absolutely necessary that God should continue those natures in being. He may annihilate them, supposing that he had not declared that he will not, and then these natural duties cease upon the cessation of the subject; but while man is man, it is contradictory and impossible that such natural good should not be good, and such natural evil as is contrary to it be evil. 14. There are some duties of the law of nature founded in natural, but mutable, accidents, relations, moods. These are indispensable duties, while these relations or other accidents remain, which are the foundation of them; but God can destroy the obligations, by changing and destroying those relations and accidents: so he did warrant the Israelites to take the Egyptians' goods, by changing the proprietary; and so he can dissolve most of the obligations of the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments, as to this and that particular person, by a change of the person or thing, but not dispense with it rebus sic stantibus. 15. By what hath been said, the great question may be determined, whether any thing be eternally good or evil; or any thing indispensably good or evil; or whether God wills things because they are good, and nills them because they are evil, or they are good and evil because God willeth and nilleth them? for it being from the relation of the human nature to the Creator and fellow-creatures, that natural duty doth result, it is impossible that it should quoad existentiam be a duty before the creation. All duty is some one's duty; but when there was no subject it could be no one's duty: therefore no duty; but quoad essentiam in esse cognito, we may say, that this or that was good or evil from eternity; which is no more but this, that if there had been such creatures in being, from eternity, this or that |