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 proposition declares the nature of God; the inference, the duty
of man. The observations lie plain.
_Obs._ 1. God is a pure spiritual being: “he is a Spirit.” 2. The
worship due from the creature to God must be agreeable to the nature
of God, and purely spiritual. 3. The evangelical state is suited to
the nature of God.
I. For the first: “God is a pure spiritual being.” It is the
observation of one,[337] that the plain assertion of God’s being a
Spirit is found but once in the whole Bible, and that is in this place;
which may well be wondered at, because God is so often described
with hands, feet, eyes, and ears, in the form and figure of a man.
The spiritual nature of God is deducible from many places; but not
anywhere, as I remember, asserted _totidem verbis_, but in this text:
some allege that place (2 Cor. iii. 17), “The Lord is that Spirit,”
for the proof of it; but that seems to have a different sense: in the
text, the nature of God is described; in that place, the operations
of God in the gospel. “It is not the ministry of Moses, or that old
covenant, which communicates to you that Spirit it speaks of; but it
is the Lord Jesus, and the doctrine of the gospel delivered by him,
whereby this Spirit and liberty is dispensed to you; he opposes here
the liberty of the gospel to the servitude of the law;”[338] it is
from Christ that a divine virtue diffuseth itself by the gospel;
it is by him, not by the law, that we partake of that Spirit. The
spirituality of God is {a181} as evident as his being.[339] If
we grant that God is, we must necessarily grant that he cannot be
corporeal, because a body is of an imperfect nature. It will appear
incredible to any that acknowledge God the first Being and Creator of
all things, that he should be a massy, heavy body, and have eyes and
ears, feet and hands, as we have.――For the explication of it,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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