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
The inordinacy of the heart to one lust may imply a stronger contempt
of him, than if a legion of lusts did possess the heart. It argues a
greater disesteem, when he shall be slighted for a single vanity. The
depth of Esau’s profaneness in contemning his birth‑right, and God in
it, is aggravated by his selling it for one morsel of meat,[263] and
that none of the daintiest, none of the costliest――a mess of pottage;
implying, had he parted with it at a greater rate, it had been more
tolerable, and his profaneness more excusable. And it is reckoned
as a high aggravation of the corruption of the Israelite judges (Amos
ii. 6), {a146} that they sold the poor for a pair of shoes; that is,
that they would betray the cause of the poor for a bribe of no greater
value than might purchase them a pair of shoes. To place any one thing
as our chief end, though never so light, doth not excuse. He that
will not stick to break with God for a trifle, a small pleasure, will
leap the hedge upon a greater temptation. Nay, and if wealth, riches,
friends, and the best thing in the world, our own lives, be preferred
before God, as our chief happiness and end but one moment, it is an
infinite wrong, because the infinite goodness and excellency of God
is denied; as though the creature or lust we love, or our own life,
which we prefer in that short moment before him, had a goodness in
itself, superior to, and more desirable than the blessedness in God.
And though it should be but one minute, and a man in all the period
of his days, both before and after that failure, should actually and
intentionally prefer God before all other things; yet he doth him an
infinite wrong, because God in every moment is infinitely good, and
absolutely desirable, and can never cease to be good, and cannot have
the least shadow or change in him and his perfections.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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