The Existence and Attributes of God, Volumes 1 and 2Charnock, Stephen
Religion
The Existence and Attributes of God, Volumes 1 and 2
Charnock, Stephen
God (Christianity) -- Attributes; Providence and government of God -- Christianity
1. Formally. When he actually judges this or that thing to be his
chiefest good, and orders all things to it. So man doth not formally
judge sin to be good, or any object which is the incentive of sin
to be his last end: this cannot be while he hath the exercise of his
rational faculties.
2. Virtually and implicitly. When he loves anything against the {a143}
command of God, and prefers in the stream of his actions the enjoyment
of that, before the fruition of God, and lays out more strength and
expends more time in the gaining that, than answering the true end
of his creation: when he acts so as if something below God could make
him happy without God, or that God could not make him happy without
the addition of something else. Thus the glutton makes a god of his
dainties; the ambitious man of his honor; the incontinent man of his
lust; and the covetous man of his wealth; and consequently esteems
them as his chiefest good, and the most noble end, to which he directs
his thoughts: thus he vilifies and lessens the true God, which can
make him happy, in a multitude of false gods, that can only render
him miserable. He that loves pleasure more than God, says in his heart
there is no God but his pleasure. He that loves his belly more than
God, says in his heart there is no God but his belly: their happiness
is not accounted to lie in that God that made the world, but in the
pleasure or profit they make their god. In this, though a created
object be the immediate and subordinate term to which we turn, yet
principally and ultimately, the affection to it terminates in self.
Nothing is naturally entertained by us, but as it affects our sense
or mingles with some promise of advantage to us. This is seen,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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