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
3. In a strong addictedness to sensual pleasures (Phil. iii. 19).
Who make their “belly their god;” subjecting the truths of God to
the maintenance of their luxury. In debasing the higher faculties to
project for the satisfaction of the sensitive appetite as their chief
happiness, whereby many render themselves no better than a rout of
sublimated brutes among men, and gross atheists to God. When men’s
thoughts run also upon inventing new methods to satisfy their bestial
appetite, forsaking the pleasures which are to be had in God, which
are the delights of angels, for the satisfaction of brutes. This is an
open and unquestionable refusal of God for our end, when our rest is
in them, as if they were the chief good, and not God.
4. In paying a service, upon any success in the world, to instruments
more than to God, their sovereign Author. When “they sacrifice to
their net, and burn incense to their drag.”[260] Not that the Assyrian
did offer a sacrifice to his arms, but ascribed to them what was due
only to God, and appropriated the victory to his forces and arms. The
prophet alludes to those that worshipped their warlike instruments,
whereby they had attained great victories; and those artificers who
worshipped the tools by which they had purchased great wealth, in
the stead of God; preferring them as the causes of their happiness,
before God who governs the world. And are not our affections, upon
the receiving of good things, more closely fixed to the instruments
of conveyance, than to the chief Benefactor, from whose coffers they
are taken? Do we not more delight in them, and hug them with a greater
endearedness, as if all our happiness depended on them, and God were
no more than a bare spectator? Just as if when a man were warmed by
a beam, he should adore that and not admire the sun that darts it out
upon him.
5. In paying a respect to man more than God. When in a public
attendance on his service, we will not laugh, or be garish, because
men see us; but our hearts shall be in a ridiculous posture, playing
with feathers and trifling fancies, though God see us; as though
our happiness consisted in the pleasing of men, and our misery in
a respect to God. There is no fool that saith in his heart, There is
no God, but he sets up something in his heart as a god. This is,
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