Selected Sermons of Jonathan EdwardsEdwards, Jonathan
Religion
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards
Edwards, Jonathan
Congregational churches -- Sermons; Edwards, Jonathan, 1703-1758; Sermons, American
2. Hereby is demonstrated how great God's glory is considered
comparatively, or as compared with the creature's. By the creature's
being thus wholly and universally dependent on God, it appears that the
creature is nothing and that God is all. Hereby it appears that God is
infinitely above us; that God's strength, and wisdom and holiness are
infinitely greater than ours. However great and glorious the creature
apprehends God to be, yet if he be not sensible of the difference between
God and him, so as to see that God's glory is great, compared with his
own, he will not be disposed to give God the glory due to his name. If the
creature, in any respect, sets himself upon a level with God, or exalts
himself to any competition with him, however he may apprehend that great
honor and profound respect may belong to God from those that are more
inferior, and at a greater distance, he will not be so sensible of its
being due from him. So much the more men exalt themselves, so much the
less will they surely be disposed to exalt God. 'Tis certainly a thing
that God aims at in the disposition of things in the affair of redemption
(if we allow the Scriptures to be a revelation of God's mind), that God
should appear full, and man in himself empty, that God should appear all,
and man nothing. 'Tis God's declared design that others should not "glory
in his presence"; which implies that 'tis his design to advance his own
comparative glory. So much the more man "glories in God's presence," so
much the less glory is ascribed to God.
3. By its being thus ordered, that the creature should have so absolute
and universal a dependence on God, provision is made that God should have
our whole souls, and should be the object of our undivided respect. If we
had our dependence partly on God and partly on something else, man's
respect would be divided to those different things on which he had
dependence. Thus it would be if we depended on God only for a part of our
good, and on ourselves or some other being for another part: or if we had
our good only from God, and through another that was not God, and in
something else distinct from both, our hearts would be divided between
the good itself, and him from whom, and him through whom we received it.
But now there is no occasion for this, God being not only he from or of
whom we have all good, but also through whom, and one that is that good
itself, that we have from him and through him. So that whatsoever there is
to attract our respect, the tendency is still directly towards God, all
unites in him as the centre.
USE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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