Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 13
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Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 13
Literature -- Collections
And there is really likewise an analogy or consent between the beauty
of the skies, trees, fields, flowers, etc., and spiritual
excellencies, though the agreement be more hid, and require a more
discerning, feeling mind to perceive it than the other. Those have
their airs, too, as well as the body and countenance of man, which
have a strange kind of agreement with such mental beauties. This makes
it natural in such frames of mind to think of them and fancy ourselves
in the midst of them. Thus there seem to be love and complacency in
flowers and bespangled meadows; this makes lovers so much delight in
them. So there is a rejoicing in the green trees and fields, and
majesty in thunder beyond all other noises whatever.
Now, we have shown that the Son of God created the world for this very
end, to communicate himself in an image of his own excellency. He
communicates himself, properly, only to spirits; and they only are
capable of being proper images of his excellency, for they only are
properly _beings_, as we have shown. Yet he communicates a sort of a
shadow, a glimpse, of his excellencies to bodies, which, as we have
shown, are but the shadows of beings, and not real beings. He who by
his immediate influence gives being every moment, and by his spirit
actuates the world, because he inclines to communicate himself and his
excellencies, doth doubtless communicate his excellency to bodies, as
far as there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of face and
sweet airs in men are not always the effect of the corresponding
excellencies of mind; yet the beauties of nature are really emanations
or shadows of the excellencies of the Son of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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